[MUD-Dev] A world without charity

[Eamonn O'Brien]

From: Corpheous Andrakin <corpheous at yahoo.com>

> So according to your system, I can't hand over MULTIPLE items of a
> lower value just because you have a slightly higher ranked item?
> What if I wanted to trade three Level 4 quality gems for your
> Level 6 quality sword?  You may as well make it a single player
> game, that's half the fun, arguing over prices and trying to get
> the best price possible for your item or get the best deal
> possible from the other person.  The only thing I can possibly see
> that this does beneficially is control the economy so you can
> prevent inflation.

I mentioned that you could supply some method for trading items up
in grades, you just have to make sure that gathering sufficient
items to trade up to a level is at least as difficult as getting the
higher valued item. If you allow for trading up in item values it
will become harder to make sure you dont break the economy though,
since if you have any 1 item that is very common at a given value
level it may be usable to fasttrack getting to the higher valued
items, if you disallow this or make it difficult then it would be
easier to manage.

>> If you want to allow newbies to be helped, then you can easily
>> permit free trade of the lowest grades of items.

> So newbies can't get anything other than the crappiest of items?

No, newbies cant be given anything other than the crappiest of
items. They can still find them for themselves.

>> This system could solve several problems:

>>   1. Twinking. Since you cannot give items to your newbies until
>>   they find equally useful items, twinking becomes a much more
>>   restricted option.

> I gurantee the newbies will still have the "best" equipment they
> can possibly equip if they're in a good guild.

If the physical act of giving the item to the newbie is not
possible, how can they get the best items? They would obviously have
the best crappiest items (i.e. the best freely tradable items), but
if they are not capable of gathering equally valued items, then they
will not be able to get items of that class.

>> Problems with this system.

>>   1. It prevents genuine acts of charity.

> Taking charity out of a game is not cool, but that's an opinion.

Agreed there, what I am unsure is how much of a negative this is. A
lot of people would like to earn their equipment themselves, but do
not want to end up as a weakling because everyone else has all the
handouts. This presumably costs games some players, why join a long
running game, when you will most likely miss out on a lot of
discovery because there is already a surplus of powerful items
floating around. Isn't the best bit of a game the first while when
you move from really cruddy sword up through the grades and end up
overjoyed when you find an average sword? When you get relatively
high level equipment handed over the first day you play, it
basically means you have been condemned to playing for ages before
you find anything good. This cycle can then continue, you are never
capable of finding any item worth using.

> Wait a minute, why is gold useless?  I thought that might be the
> savoir of your idea, where you put a price on how much the item
> was worth and you'd have to trade that amount to get it from
> another player.  Without that, gold has NO use in your game much
> less someones "10 billion coins".

I suppose this is a related issue, why arent the best items worth
millions of coins? But it is the same as I mentioned above, if gold
worths are supposed to equate with the item worth, just having one
or two items that are overvalued will endanger the economy.

>>   4. It is a little clunky. Values have to be a bit arbitrary.

> Players will complain...a LOT about how one sword is better than
> another sword and why does the suckier sword have a higher value
> than the good sword?  The balance issues and the testing that
> would HAVE to go into this boggles the mind.  I know of no game
> that was tested this throughly.

The balance issue is less important for value than relative
scarcity. If there is a single high value item that is common, it
would be easy to gather those and use them as worthless trade tokens
to get around the trade restrictions. Scarcity is something that can
be determined relatively easily.

>>   5. Players will complain when they cant trade so come up with
>>   some backstory nonsense about why items refuse to be just
>>   handed over.

> So give the player a bunch of BS as to why they can't do
> something?  Players don't stand for that just so you know.  I
> wouldn't just quit your game, I'd boycott it.

So all the LotR players who are told they cant be a wizard will
boycott it? Players will boycott games which need level requirements
to use items? (that doesnt even count as backstory). Every game has
some backstory that is used to fudge the untity nescessitys of game
design. Maybe I should have phrased it like "make sure it is an
integral part of your game world that magic items are all demon
posessed, with the strength of the demon determining the strength of
the item. These demon items exert a strong pull on their owners, and
may only be removed by brute force, or in the case where the demons
are equally powerful strong willed owners may on occasion exchange
them for other items. Of course some items are mundane, and may be
freely traded, discarded or whatever". I am sure a decent writer can
come up with something better. Take a world like the warhammer
world, Note: I am not up on the design of Warhammer Online, this
mostly is to do with how the tabletop games work, Warhammer Online
could be completely different for all I know) where the most
powerful of magic items are the daemon weapons of chaos. They are
only wielded by the most vile of chaos champions who by their very
nature are not a charitable sort. The idea of a chaos lord just
handing over his daemon weapon for no gain is anathema to world
itself. It is possible to make a world where people are generally
opposed to each other, rather than cooperative. By the way, I have
seen many games I didnt like, and many I didnt buy. I have yet to
see one so terrible as to incite me to organize a boycott.

>>   6. You may have to make some sort of group loot system (let
>>   your players bid with all that gold they no longer need) or the
>>   grabber will not be able to give over the item.

> So for every single loot drop you have to roll on an item ala a
> Dragon Kill Point system/Tarasque system?  What if there's
> multiple mobs, and the window for loot rolling pops up?  What if
> someone who doesn't need the item at all just throws money at it
> to piss you off?  Meh, this last one isn't that bad of a
> suggestion, it does have upsides.

Hopefully the above group loot sorts this out. Forcing up the price
to get more gold for yourself in this situation would be a valid
goal. If they dont need the item and throw money at it, then you get
their money and they get an item they dont want.

Eamonn
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