[MUD-Dev] Alternatives to Permadeath

[Blane Bramble]

From: "Jon Leonard" <jleonard at slimy.com>

> 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.

I'm not sure about better, but you could always introduce the
concept of character ageing. As a players character gets older, the
rate at which skills are degraded would increase, thereby causing
them to spend more time just maintaining their current skill
base. You could offset this with some sort of knowledge/experience
thing, possibly leading to a group of very powerful "wizards" who
will never be able to gain enough levels to gain immortality, but
have superior magical skills compared to younger, fitter (possibly
higher level) characters. Difficult to achieve the balance though.

Blane.

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