[MUD-Dev] Geometric content generation

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: Brian Hook [mailto:bwh at wksoftware.com]
> At 10:50 AM 9/24/01 +0100, Dan Harman wrote:
 
>> Thats where the reallocation aspect is again a helpful factor. In
>> the end, the main objective is to create a system which
>> acknowledges the difficulty of designing balance, yet doesn't
>> penalise the player for our inevitable design mistakes.
 
> What we're doing for our space adventure on-line game is letting
> your _character_ become as advanced as you want through use.  No
> skill points to allocate -- you naturally become better at the
> things that you do.  Skills aren't even capped based on a level or
> anything else, thereby discouraging "evening up your skills"
> before levelling up.
 
> There's a constant reinforcement mechanism with this approach --
> you tend to want to do the things that you already do well.  And
> because the secondary part of advancement is upgrading and
> modifying your space ship, making money is almost as important as
> increasing skill, so you'll get pushed into doing things you're
> already good at so you can buy a ship with better parts.

I've considered upcapped systems before, and whilst I strongly
believe that your balance should indeed be maintained with uncapped
numbers (i.e. so it scales indefinitely) I think having a top level
of 60 or whatever is a strong motivator. I know I would never have
returned to EQ each time I quit if I didn't have this niggleing
completeist aspect to my psyche that just wants to get 60th (58 and
counting right now ;). If the system scales you can always up the
nominal cap once the mean level base is higher. Sure its moving the
goal posts, but at least there is a goal post. I concede that I may
be unique in liking this aspect, but I think milestones have an
intrinsic motivating appeal.

The counterargument of course, is that if you remove levels, you
remove any pressure from people to level up which may be a good
thing. Not sure whether anyone would buy that though as if skills
have a level, they'll just use them as a proxy.

> The other aspect of our design is that the ship is the central
> balancing agent.  No matter how good you are as a fighter pilot
> you're still going to suck in a dogfight piloting a barge.  And no
> matter how good a trader you are, you can't carry that much stuff
> in your interceptor.  And since you can only own a single ship,
> "muling" isn't an option.  So even though your _character_ may
> become very powerful, your character's actions are not overly
> powerful since they will always be mitigated by the inherent
> weaknesses of their current spaceship.

Thats a nice way of handling the balance. Its pretty similar to the
re-allocation argument in that you can change the nature of your
character by changing your ship.

I just think this kind of flexibility is forward looking. When
people inevitably whine about x, they don't have to live with it,
they can go and play with whatever it is they think is overpowered
etc. Everyones happy, and the developers can fix the issue when they
get time.

Dan
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