[MUD-Dev] Playing catch-up with levels

[John Buehler]

Zach Collins writes:
> On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 jfreeman at soe.sony.com wrote:

>> I think it's not even close to being done, and possibly here to
>> stay.  Players migrate to it, even when given a pure free-form
>> skill system.  They make "fighters", "mages", "clerics" and
>> "thieves" out of whatver system you give them.  Regardless of the
>> genre.

>> You try to give them more and different... and they work-around
>> your "obnoxious designs" to get back to what they really want:
>> classes.

> They don't necessarily want classes.  They want jobs, perhaps.
> They want clearly defined roles, so they don't have to spend time
> on the eternal and mind-racking question "why am I here".  I'm a
> warrior; I'm here to fight.  I'm a mage; I'm here to cast spells.
> I'm a healer; I'm here to tend injuries.

> I'd say give them archetypes, and then let them modify their
> characters from that point.  Give them job titles, and let them
> choose appropriate skills.  Give them weapon and spell choices,
> grouped by type, and let them choose a few types they want to use.
> > And I love the idea of unlearning skills to level new ones I
> haven't tried yet.

I guess a lot of folks are fooling with that idea.  I've been
railing at the 'irrevocable decision' problem in gaming for quite a
while.

My own preference for a skill system is to have a tree of skills, a
pool of points and to let players specify what competency they want
in the available skills.  The points flow into the skill tree over a
period of time, increasing their skills as time goes by.  Perhaps
after a week or a month, they have the skills that they want.  This
has the advantage of keeping newbie skills low on day one so
anything foolish that they do will have minimal impact.

They can retweak their skills at any time.  They oopsed when they
picked longsword, and realized that short sword competency would be
better.  So they say "move the points from longsword into short
sword".  That happens slowly, as before.  Perhaps the next day, they
are at half competency in longsword and half in short sword.  A day
later, the change is complete and they have their long sword
competency.

So skill rebalancing can be started at any time, with extreme
changes in skills requiring longer delays.  I can respec from
warrior to full-on mage in a month, being a poor man's hybrid after
two weeks.

I don't do levels.  The achievement game is orthogonal to skills.
Consentual PvP would be the primary way to pursue a sense of
achievement.  The constant reconfiguring of characters would make
PvP pretty interesting, I think.  And that PvP would be political,
military, and economic competition.

I believe that such a system still wants the archetype as a starting
point.  Players would take one look at the skill tree and uninstall
the program.  So templates for fighters, blacksmiths, politicians,
etc., would all want to be the first line of exposure - and a way of
talking about what sorts of things go on in the game world.  Fooling
with the whole skill tree would come later.

JB
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