[MUD-Dev] No bots allowed

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: shren [mailto:shren at io.com]
> On Tue, 26 Feb 2002, shren wrote:
 
>> Has anyone tried rescaling player power against monsters?  It
>> takes a phenomenal swordsman (hypothetically in real life) to
>> fight two or three competant fighters.  Something like:

> Correcting my own math mistake:

> Making the master fighter around a match for the three warriors,
> while the master fighter can take on at least twice as many
> monsters.

This leaves you trying to balance two factors with only one set of
numbers, which is setting yourself up for a bit of a design
nightmare. It has always struck me as logical to try and keep
monsters and players of the same level equally powerful as then you
don't have the pvp balancing nightmares in the first place.

If you want the orcs to go down so easily to the highly skilled
swordsman, why not make them of appropriate level & skill? If its
really that easy, he shouldn't even be getting as much xp (or
whatever motivating factor) from killing them as he would killing a
duellist of equal swordsmanship.

Having the same number dictate a different level of skill at the
same task in different situations is a hack, and an impure design in
my eyes. It certainly won't help you keep a handle on your game
dynamics, which one should strive to keep pure or face an eternal
balancing nightmare.

Another design error I've seen, is having skill levels that don't
increase actual ability on a predictable line or curve; normally
because they used bytes to store the data in (hey RAM's cheap now, I
know managed storage isn't but still).

Oh and whilst I'm at it, the next mistake is to have skills whose
effect has a secondary *transparent* governing factor
(e.g. level). Everquest does this, such that if I have a skill of
100 in 'one hand blunt' at level 30, I'm no where as near as
effective as I would be at level 40 with the same skill level. The
smart thing to do is unhook level from the equation, and cap the
skill at a given level such that skills level is the only factor to
take into account.

These convoluted and badly thought out mechanics need to stop if we
want to make these games more accessible to non-powergames. I admit
that as a bit of an RPG geek I like getting my head around complex
rule sets, but I'm pretty certain I'm in a minority...

Dan
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