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

[Matt Mihaly]

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, Zach Collins (Siege) wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Sep 2003, Matt Mihaly wrote:

> 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.

But this is what I mean. These are mainly incorrect. There's not
even a relationship between player and mobile hitpoints. They are on
a completely different scale as is all damage done to players or
mobiles. I also just tested a black rat with a non-martial artist
and killed it in 6 kicks, with no criticals.

I mean, there's so little knowledge about actual numbers out there
that I often hear Achaea's experinced combatants claiming that PvP
damage is entirely percentage based and thus extra maximum hitpoints
give no extra advantage in terms of ability to take damage. (It's
not and I'm even on public record telling them that.)

> 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.

I'm not saying no information is obtainable. I'm just saying that
the people who claim that there's no point in hiding numbers because
numbers will be easily available via reference material on websites
or whatnot are expressing a degree of cynicism not warranted by the
experience of most muds.

--matt
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