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

[Kwon J. Ekstrom]

Matt Mihaly wrote:
> 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.

What percentage of muds are derived from common bases?  I'd say
about 99.9% of muds are derived from a common base, with a good 50%
of those being mostly unmodified (on the code-side) and a handful
being modified to the point of coming up with new strategies.

I personally, can login to a SMAUG or Circle and if it's anywhere
close to stock, can point out alot of the equations and whatnot.  To
an extent this information causes alot of codebase loyalty due to an
reasonable expectation.  In short order, I can ussually determine
the major deviations from stock.

Managing the expectations of players is part of a mud developer's
job. I've seen muds which have either stayed too close to stock to
draw a playerbase and those who strayed to far and lost what players
they had.

Either way, I'd say an extremely small percentage of games aren't
derived from some version of stock.  It's quite simple to find
guides on how to play most stock muds, with some of the larger muds
having their own guides.  Those with either a dedicated playerbase
or staff.

-- Kwon J. Ekstrom
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