[MUD-Dev] How much is enough? Communication design

[Travis Casey]

Monday, April 29, 2002, 9:23:07 PM, David B. Held wrote:
> From: "Miroslav Silovic" <miro at vams.com>

>> What you just described could be easily prevented if battles are
>> non-reproducible.  For instance:
 
>>   - Make daytime, weather and season affect the player's combat
>>   capability (ever tried to run in a full chainmail during
>>   summer?)
 
>>   - Make each monster unique and variable. Make their power vary
>>   with tribe and group, and globally vary them between spawns (if
>>   you have spawns).
 
>>   - Add attributes to the player that go up and down, in semi-long
>>   term. Ideas could be morale, mood, wakefulness, fatigue, hunger,
>>   thirst, etc. If you make these affect the to-hit chance and
>>   damage, well, any result of the experiment would be pretty much
>>   useless.

> Yes, these are all good ideas.  Furthermore, I would add that having
> property, and allowing players to collect different sets of gear
> would also help keep things interesting.  For instance, suppose an
> NPC offered a bounty on a dragon.  Your stock plate armor is good
> against 80% of the mobs you encounter, but for this job, you want to
> go with the flame-resist mithril mail that you won on some quest.
> So you go home, drop off the standard armor, and get your best
> dragon-fighting gear.  Then you go dragon-hunting.  After you're
> done, you hear that there's trouble in the mountains, and some
> settlers need help fighting yetis.  So you go home, put on your best
> anti-ice gear, and go fight yetis.  This would alleviate the
> "everyone looks the same because they all have the same best gear"
> syndrome that occurs on a lot of MUDs.  If people can anticipate
> what to expect with certain challenging mobs/groups, they have time
> to set up differently, and use different eq.

And don't forget the possibility of other restrictions on gear --
social, fatigue, etc.  Wearing a sword in public might get you
arrested in some places, but you can carry a knife or a cane.  Wearing
full armor to a ball just doesn't work.  And so on.

In an old D&D campaign I played in, I had a character who owned four
sets of armor:  concealable leather armor for when he needed
inconspicuous armor, a suit of mail for when he needed heavier armor,
but needed to wear it for a while, field plate for when he knew he was
going into battle, and a set of decorated plate for formal military
events.

--
Travis Casey
efindel at earthlink.net

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