[MUD-Dev] Alternatives to Permadeath

[Jon Leonard]

I've been pondering Dr. Bartles statement that a game means more
with Permadeath in it, in that it is not longer possible to achieve
the highest level (or whatever) merely by persistence.

It seems to me that it'd be possible to have other ways of limiting
high advancement to players of greater skill.  The first method that
came to mind was having a scheme with exponentially decaying unspent
experince.

So a player would play normally, killing mobs (or the applicable
equivalent) and gaining experience.  When they had enough, it could
be spent on some advancement (or saved for a different advancement
costing more), but with a significant time limit.  Assuming that the
experience/time available to a player is significantly limited by
player skill, the cost for advancement could climb to the point
where a player of lesser skill simply couldn't maintain the unspent
experience buffer required to advance.

There are obvious ways to tune this: Limit experience decay to when
the player is logged on, to avoid requring 24x7 play.  Or perhaps
decay at a faster rate after the first hour's play on a given day,
etc.

Are there other schemes which accomplish this better?

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