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

[Matt Mihaly]

On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com wrote:
> From: Matt Mihaly [mailto:the_logos at ironrealms.com]

>>> 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.

> True, but I'd be confident in asserting that it is a matter of
> scale combined with the nature of your players.

> Mana regeneration rate is hidden in EQ, but it didn't take long
> for people to turn a packet sniffer on it and work it out, same
> for vaious hidden armor protection caps etc. It all got worked
> out, and in fairly fast order. Of course all these things are good
> imho, it keeps the devs honest and sometimes unearths
> discrepancies between how the devs think they've implemented it,
> and how its actually working.

Yeah, but there are thousands of muds out there and a handful of
EQ's. I'm not willing to make universal rules based on the
experience of a handful of games.

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