[MUD-Dev] DGN: Why give the players all the numbers?

[Zach Collins {Siege}]

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003, Matt Mihaly wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Sep 2003, J C Lawrence wrote:

>> If you don't provide them the players will compute them
>> themselves, document them on web sites, and then use those
>> numbers and formulae.  Empirical observation is a well honed art
>> in the computational min-maxer.

> You know, this may be true in a handful of the largest muds like
> Everquest and whatnot but in most muds, it's not true. That's
> never happened in any of ours, for instance. There are no websites
> full of formulas.  There's no knowledge of what the damage
> formulas are among the playerbase, etc.

It's common knowledge that the beginning short sword is useless,
that a character's punch and kick attacks do more damage; the sword
is only there to explain how to probe and use the real weapons
you'll get later.

It takes about 20-30 kicks from a non-martial artist to kill a black
rat.  A basic weapon reduces that to about 7 hits.  I suspect that
the black rat has slightly more hit points than a level 20
character, as well as equal defense.  A typical level 21 rat-killer
must heal after every black rat to be sure of surviving combat with
the next one, and healing during combat is strongly recommended for
best survival.

Character experience is on an obvious exponential curve; it probably
takes six and a half hours of solid rat-killing to get from level
25-26, and the recieved experience for this activity is not as
efficient as following a moderately high-level character through
some of the more difficult areas while attempting to strike
finishing blows.

I learned that from a few weeks of playtime on Achaea, making only
casual and social observations.  Sure, this information isn't on
websites everywhere, but it is rather easy to obtain for oneself.
Someone actually dedicated to discovering the details would have
much of this knowledge within the same amount of time.

--
Zach Collins
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev