[MUD-Dev] It's About Time Department (Mule Characters)

[Valerio Santinelli]

From: "John A. Bertoglio" <jb at co-laboratory.com>

> The recently released RPG from Microsoft has an unusual solution
> to "mule" characters. They allow you to add a real mule to your
> party! This the first time I have seen this in a game. Of course,
> a mule uses a slot that could be occupied by another fighter or
> magic user but the convience of not having to stop quests to
> unload loot is worth the loss of firepower. The mule tends to hang
> back in combat but has a fairly potent rear hoof kick attack (as
> well as amusing animations) and high hitpoints that allow it to be
> fairly self-sufficient in combat. The mule gets experience and
> improves its skills with time just like any other character in the
> game.

The pack-mule solution has not been judged that great by players of
Dungeon Siege. The mule is actually a real dumb character (as it
should be) and whatever you drop on the mule is usually not worth to
bring around. Probably the real problem isn't the mule itself but
the way your characters can find items and powerful weapons and
armours along the quests. It's pretty easy to find magical weapons
and whatever you carry with the mule drops value very fast and
becomes crap in no time. And you can use spells to turn items into
gold and you lose only a little percentage of the items value. All
the players I speaked with have dropped their mule as soon as they
realized that it was unnecessary and that another fighter in the
party does make a difference, while the mule gets killed fairly
easily and it isn't a good warrior :) The pack-mule would have been
a good resource if Dungeon Siege was balanced differently. I expect
people to code scripts for Neverwinter Nights in order to recreate
the pack-mule in that game.

--
Valerio Santinelli
HateSeed.com Founder (http://www.hateseed.com)
In Flames Italia Webmaster (http://www.inflames.it)
My Lab (http://tanis.hateseed.com)



_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev