[MUD-Dev] Playing catch-up with levels

[Stephen Routledge]

<EdNote: Attribution fixed>

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 11:56:14 +0000
cruise  <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:
> Vincent Archer wrote:

>> Then why not work with that? Take the best of both worlds: a full
>> freeform skill based system *with* classes and level?

> Certainly, a lot of players will create "straight" thieves,
> warriors or wizards. But I suspect the far greater number will
> want to have a warrior who's taken the time to learn some healing
> magic, or a thief who can cast invisibilty, or a blacksmith who's
> not entirely defenseless, or...

> Saying, this is what players are used, this is what a lot of them
> are going to do doesn't mean you have to force everyone to play
> like that. A fundamental of games is choice. Otherwise they become
> a film (please note exaggeration for emphasis... :)

There will always be people searching for the "ultimate" combination
of skills under such an open ended system though.  No matter how
well something is balanced there is always an optimal character
build that is more effective, in terms of whatever measure of
performance you wish to use, than anything else.  Over the course of
a games life this becomes even more pronounced as people become more
familiar with the mechanics and learn to min/max in the best way
possible.

I understand that there will always be people who deliberately
choose to play characters who are quirky or unique (or realistic?)
at the expense of raw power and effectiveness but more often than
not the average player just wants something that is "good".  They
don't want to play something that makes their game experience overly
difficult or perhaps ends up relegating them to a minor niche within
the world.

Eventually you can end up with a situation where giving the player
large amounts of freedom with respect to character build actually
drives them into choosing one of the optimal templates so that they
can have what they consider to be a more satisfying experience.  It
ends up reducing ultimate variety rather than increasing it.  You
have hundreds of different possibilities and no one using them.

In a way providing a class selection tells the player "here is a
type of character that fulfills a definite role we have created in
game".  You can also use it to stop any one character being overly
effective in multiple areas and removing the need for a more diverse
population.  I'm not sure whether forced diversity is good but I
would arguably find that more interesting.

- Stephen Routledge
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