[MUD-Dev] variable difficulty levels (was: ghost mode)

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: David Snyder [mailto:david at mail.isc.rit.edu]
> On Thursday, September 11, 2003, at 10:08  AM, Corey Crawford wrote:

>> If your difficulty level is set high you get more
>> stat/skill/spell/whatever points when you actually do level. If
>> you set it low, then you level faster but have a less powerful
>> character in the end.

> I can't really see this working in a level-based environment for
> the simple reason that given enough time everybody hits the level
> cap. At that point the developers are going to have a tough time
> explaining to the player of the path of least resistance why their
> character has some fraction of the power that their friends
> have. Perhaps if that player could go back and "re-earn" some
> levels if desired it could work, but there are quite a few
> pitfalls there as well.

EQ has exactly this problem, and players happily level up with the
easier characters and then continuously bitch that their characters
aren't as good when they hit the cap. That field test pretty much
proves your hypothesis.

If you really want to wind the players up, add in another race which
requires more xp, but is intrinsically better after they've leveled
up on the old race. That seems to get a nice reaction too ;)

Dan
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