[MUD-Dev] D&D vs. MMORPG "complexity"

[Amanda Walker]

On Wednesday, April 30, 2003, at 01:26  PM, Dave Rickey wrote:

> What is "seniority" and yearly raises but the treadmill in the
> real world?

Funny you should bring this up.  I've never had a job where I got
promotions and yearly raises (and twice now have taken pay cuts when
voluntarily changing jobs for ethical reasons).  I tend to get
rewarded based on extremely wide-ranging knowledge, contacts, and
experience, not on how much I've sat in a particular chair.  This
does match my gaming style--exploratory, social, much more
interested in finding out than in keeping score...

> It wasn't my first choice for the crafting system.  But in all
> truth, I didn't have the time or resources to really pursue
> exploring alternatives, and it was more important to me that the
> system *work* than that it was new and different.

Shrug.  It's one of the things I found to be a great letdown.  I'd
love to play a game as just a crafter.  But after learning the DAoC
crafting system, it became quickly apparent that the crafting
treadmill was even more tedious than the combat treadmill (and quite
dependent on it, since the only effective way to buy materials was
to kill stuff for loot to sell).  I bought the game after hearing
about the crafting system.  I quit the game after giving up on it.

Now, this is not a criticism of your design--I'm not in the middle
of the gaming bell curve, so it may well have worked well for most
players.  It certainly didn't work for me.  Then again, my idea of a
crafting system would be creating content, not just using a money
sink to create mediocre loot.  My idea of a find crafting tool would
be Maya, Rhino3D, or AutoCAD :-).


Amanda Walker


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