[MUD-Dev] No bots allowed

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: shren [mailto:shren at io.com]
> 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.

I've never understood that either, because none of these games have
any real tactics in the straight melee combat, nor in the spell
combat. Its simply a case of damage over time. The reason the
current online games had the super powerful monsters designed for a
whole group was due to polygon count as far as I can tell. Saying
that humans are so superior that monster AI couldn't cope, whilst
fashionable doesn't really cut much ice when you analyse it.

> 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.

Nothing is impossible, but why make things unnecessarily
complicated. Having to come back and hand tune every aspect of the
game for the first 5 years of its existence is tiresome, so why set
yourself up for it?

>> 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

Well ignoring the fact that it's a film, and directed for dramatic
effect not realism, one would note that they weren't actually
engaged with 20 orcs at a time, more like 5. Of course, these aren't
just above average humans.  They are absolute heroes, and if they
had been slaughtering an evil human force, your maths would be just
fine.

Anyway, the main thing that is being skirted here, is that you
haven't specifically quantified what you mean by saying 1 human = 5
orcs. I won't want to assume you have a very simple combat system,
so what is the result in your system of fighting 5 people at once,
with 3 of them behind you?  There should be bonuses for the people
behind to their damage, there should be caps on the number of
enemies a player can actively engage and defend against. The elf
chap with the bow seemed to score a lot of 1 shot kills too, from
this one might infer that against monsters of lower level he has a
very high chance of landing critical hits. As soon as you start
moving away from a simple combat system to a tactically rich one
half your problems just melt away. Rules like those I've mentioned
mean that if 5 level 5's get a jump on a level 50 (metaphorically
speaking) they might well be able to take him down if the ambush is
well planned.

> 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.

Well see my point above about tactically rich combat. There are so
many factors to bring into it that are simply overlooked in current
games. Why can't I place some treasure in a swampy bit of terrain,
go hide up a tree and snipe at anyone foolish enough to try and
collect it? In theory they should be mired tring to get to it having
had to shed their armor to swim to it and be ripe for my arrows. In
any current game, they'd pick it up and them come hammer me assuming
the item hadn't rotted on the ground before they walked by ;)


>> 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.

Indeed, in the end, reality has very little to do with game
rulesets. There is no reason why you shouldn't just model the
behaviour you find compelling.  However, I remain unswayed on the
purity aspect of the game design. I firmly believe that if you don't
have a mathematically robust and simple system, powergamers will
discover and exploit oversights which will have you constantly
scurrying to apply band-aid after band-aid to a convoluted rule set.

>> 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.

I agree, but what convoluted often means is that you won't have been
able to work through every permutation of the rule set. When you
have 50k people playing, they will, and then they will exploit your
oversights. Playing the current crop of games is pretty educational,
you learn a lot about rules that don't scale well just from looking
at the games evolution. I now know not to ever put something like a
complete heal spell in my games, having seen the negative impact it
has had on everquest. I wouldn't have spotted that problem when
designing spells, had I not played EQ.

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