[MUD-Dev] re: Crafting Systems - preventing recipe decomposition?

[Sie Ming]

From: "John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com>

> Quick question (for those with experience with craftingd/etc
> degenerating into recipe systems, with full-details published on
> fan sites):

Speaking mostly as someone who spent considerable time
deconstructing crafting recipes and formulas and posting them on
websites...

> So, (to finally get to the point ;), what if you had a recipe
> based system (crafting, spellcasting, etc) with, say, 8 different
> actions that could be combined in sequences up to, say, 10 actions
> long, giving you 8^10 possible combinations, and then every time a
> new player-character was generated, the server randomized which of
> those possible combinations mapped to actual game recipes?

If you go with a system where the combinations (for crafting,
spells, whatever) are generated randomly for each player, you can
avoid the possibility of basic procedures generating advanced
outcomes by putting the procedures into categories.  You won't have
a player generated for whom whistling summons forth the Blinding
Cone of Death(tm), because Blinding Cone of Death(tm) is a second
level spell, and they require an "easy, easy, medium" combination of
actions.

So you're generating each character's recipes sort-of randomly, but
you're requiring that they are gradiated from easy to hard.  This
does limit the possible combinations, and makes publishing them
easier than pure random, but this will mostly be a problem at low
levels where, presumably, there are fewer choices of actions.

You will certainly have people publish that making a Potion of
Eternal Flosing requires a combination of common, very common,
uncommon, uncommon, uncommon, very rare ingredients to make, but
maybe that's an acceptable compromise between players getting
enjoyment from sharing knowledge and from discovering things on
their own.

You'll have to take care that the items in each category are really
in that category.  It will throw the game off for someone if one of
your "very common" ingredients is in reality "rare".  When I was
suggesting alchemy changes for UO we came up with this general
spread:

  very common                     NPC(low priced),
  common                          NPC(medium priced), spawn rate(high)
  uncommon                        NPC(high priced),spawn rate(medium), 
  monsters(easy)
  rare                            spawn rate(low), monsters(medium)
  very rare                       monsters(tough)

HTML formatted version in context is here: 

  http://uo.stratics.com/alchemy/community/ideas/sieming308.shtml#reagents

Then we found out that LOTS of the players who were doing alchemy in
UO were really really really against any system where the
ingredients were not all the same for everyone.  Maybe they didn't
get the safe guard against the problems with some folks getting easy
recipes to advanced potions, and maybe it was just different from
what they were used to.  I don't know, but I thought I would mention
it.

Sie Ming
AKA
Lloyd Sommerer

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