[MUD-Dev] No bots allowed

[shren]

On Wed, 6 Mar 2002 Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com wrote:
> 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.

Wouldn't the result of this be monsters that are powderpuffs?  The
monster AI in any game I've played is no match for even a
below-average player.  Every game I've played has monsters with
stats that the players could never hope to have, yet these monsters
are killed often and in large numbers.

Where's the real difficulty, anyway?  If you wanted to design my
system, then you'd balance the players against the players, then
once you got that down, you'd build monsters balanced against the
players squared.  I know it's not trivial, but you talk as though
it's impossible.  It's not, and I think it would make a very
interesting game.

> 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.

I agree with the XP issue.  I disagree with the rest.

Say that one of your player's first exposure to the genre of fantasy
is the Lord of the Rings movie.  Watch the movie.  In the beginning
we see an army of orcs vs an army of humans, and we assume the
average orc is about as powerful as the average human - otherwise
one side would dominate the other and we'd have no story.

Yet...

At the end of the movie we see the nine kill, between them, at least
50 orcs, and furthermore they do so at a tactical disatvantage,
being scattered and seperated, whereas the orcs are doing the
tactically sound thing and attacking in mass.

>From this we conclude that while the average orc is equal to the
average human, the above average human is equal to about 20 orcs.

  h = o
  aah = 20 * o

Unless you do something tricky with the numbers, as I suggest, you
can't help but come to the conclusion that:

  aah = 20 * h

Which for me creates serious issues if you're trying to have any pvp
at all.  Skill is thrown right out the window in the majority of
encounters, because by and large one combatant is going to squash
the other like a bug.  But this is the way it is, everywhere - in
every mud-like game I've been on, you're expected to go make a
maxxed out character before you get into pvp, because otherwise you
can't contribute, you're cannon fodder.  Worse, you're generally
expected to make a maxxed-out character tailored to pvp, because the
difference between two maxxed out characters, one designed for pvp
and one not, is extreme.

My point is that it shouldn't be.  But it usually is, because games
seem to keep using tolkien-style sources for inspiration, yet close
thier eyes to the fact that letting players be of such disparate
power levels - AGAINST EACH OTHER - is always going to label the
weaker characters as 'victims'.  Most players don't show up
repeatedly to be victims.

> 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.

I can see this point of view, but you reduce the number of genres
you can implement greatly.  'Pure design' has little true merit in
my eyes when it doesn't make a good game.

> 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).

Predictable curves are good.  My system would have two curves
instead of one, which, while elaborate compared to other systems, is
well within player comprehensibility.

> 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.

Never played EQ or even seen EQ played.  It does sound like a mess.

> 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...

Convulted does not necessarily equal badly thought out, but usually
does.

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