[MUD-Dev] Star Wars Galaxies: 1 character per server

[Vincent Archer]

According to Caliban Tiresias Darklock:

> For example, I could buy a skill like "dark vision" to make things
> easier while I was crawling around dungeons. Eventually, I might
> discover that there are no dungeons that provide enough of a
> challenge for characters above level 12, and I'd have to start
> doing all my adventuring outside instead. If "dark vision" gives
> you severe combat penalties in the light, it now becomes a
> liability.
 
> What are the options at this point? Ideally, I'd like to get the
> points back so I can use them on something else, but chances are I
> can't have all the points back. If I can get some of them back,
> fine, I'll take them, but chances are I can't do that either. So
> I'd like to turn off the skill and not use it, but have the option
> to turn it back on later. Failing that, I'll grudgingly accept
> that I have to just throw out the skill and make a mental note not
> to buy it again. If you want to be a real bastard and make me buy
> a counter-skill that gradually attenuates and eventually removes
> the limitation, I'll grumble about it, but I'll probably do it.
 
> But what you actually get in today's games is -- nothing! I either
> live with what I've got, or I throw out everything. That just
> plain

Well, you can do it in today's games.

If you're playing UO, that is.

Dissatisfied with Tactics? Ok, set it to unlearn, and start
practicing something else.

And it's not that different from what SWG looks set to do. Instead
of percentile skills, you get binary skills, but the same principle
applies. You get a pool of skill points, and as you progress, get to
spend them.

And then you hit a ceiling, because you can't be godlike in
everything, or all characters will end up exactly identical in the
end. At one point you have exhausted your skill points. To progress
along one specific path, you have to prune other skills. You have to
differenciate.

Typically, it takes about as much time to get to, say, absolute
total mastery of magic, as it takes to get to absolute total mastery
of melee. And it takes as much effort to get one of the path while
discarding the other as it takes to get it from scratch. So people
find they have to discard their mage to become a melee (in SCS)...
while they could have the melee *and* the mage (in MCS).

You can go the AC2 way. Skills have XP pooled into them. When you
set a skill to unlearn, you recover as much XP from the skill as you
gained, so you can switch twice faster. In theory. There's other
considerations (monster strength curves and XP curves) that mean
it's basically a lot harder to switch most skills than it is to get
them from scratch, unless you are max level. Which is why people
create multiple characters in AC2 to get a feel of the different
development paths, when they could (in theory) switch paths at any
time.

Basically, it boils down to the following:

People hate to throw away their achievements.

--
	Vincent Archer			Email:	archer at frmug.org

All men are mortal.  Socrates was mortal.  Therefore, all men are Socrates.
							(Woody Allen)

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