[MUD-Dev] Preventing recipe decomposition (why?)

[Sie Ming]

[Sean]

> Anecdotes aside, rather than ask how to make a skill system
> uncrackable, why not ask why you'd want to do such a thing in the
> first place.

Well, since you asked, here are the reasons that I've heard in the
past.  And, while I don't necessarily think that doing it by
randomizing ingredients/results is the best way to do it, I do think
some of these goals are worthwhile....

  1) Differentiate Player Knowledge from Character Knowledge. Why
  would you want to do that?  Perhaps to make the game more real?
  If you have to actually gain knowledge instead of looking it up on
  a website to become good at something then becoming good at
  something will mean more.

  2) To cut down on mules.  By raising the bar of entry to trade
  skills higher you also reduce the number of people who will create
  trade skill mules.  I am not suggesting that this is the best way
  to cut down on mules, just that it will serve to reduce them.

  3) To allow those who enjoy it to participate in any "discovery"
  aspect of your trade skills.  There are those who maintain that
  this is forcing a style of play on everyone so that a few people
  can enjoy this aspect of the game when they could just as easily
  enjoy it by simply not reading websites.  I'd like to address
  those issues with some highly suspect arguments.

    a) Forcing styles of play is what game designers do.  You allow
    freedom where you can, and don't allow it when it will have an
    effect that you think is detrimental.  THere is nothing wrong
    with removing some options from players if it makes your game
    more like you want it to be, even if some players disagree.
    It's a big world with lots of games.

    b) It is NOT as much fun to discover something if you know that
    everyone else knows it already.

    c) I am not saying that you need to require everyone to
    participate in the discovery aspect of your game.  Let them also
    buy that knowledge from others in the game.  Apart from it
    seeming a little silly, I would not see anything wrong with me
    paying someone who could make a x-ray vision potion for that
    knowledge even though for him that knowledge is X, Y, Z, Z, Z
    and for me it is Z, Y, Y, W.

Personally, I prefer skilling the randomization aspect, and would
just require characters to obtain the knowledge themselves before
they could make something.

Sie Ming
AKA
Lloyd Sommerer


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