[MUD-Dev] Playing catch-up with levels

[John Buehler]

Cruise writes:
> Steven King wrote:

>> SWG's skill system is alot like this, except there is a cap on
>> the number of skills you can advance and skills don't degrade if
>> unused (unless you count selling skills back).  In that system,
>> the game mechanic is visible to the player, which can be a
>> driving factor: The player knows how much he needs for the next
>> mark, then tries to achieve it.  It would be interesting to see
>> how players would react if the mechanic was kept invisible (or at
>> least transluscent).  Out of sight, out of mind.  Have fun, don't
>> worry about how it works.  Your character will be more accurate
>> the more he uses his sword, and will cause slightly more damage
>> since he knows the best way to slice/jab/etc.

> Exactly - by hiding all the numbers and calculations it makes it
> /much/ harder to game the system, or just repeat the "best"
> strategy.

While I'm a fan of removing the internals of the game from view, I'd
say that it doesn't matter whether you give players a clear metric
or a fuzzy one.  If they have a next goal, they'll figure out a way
to measure it.

For example, players will count the number of goblins that they have
to kill from one skill to the next.  Or the number of iron boots
that they have to craft before their blacksmithing improves.  The
numbers of skill uses will be a fuzzier metric, but they're still
going to measure how difficult it is to move from one skill to the
next.

Fundamentally, this is about the fact that you're dangling a carrot
in front of your horse.  Because the carrot is there, the horse will
pursue it.  And if it can't see that there is a distance of three
feet between it and the carrot, which would permit it to predict how
far away the carrot is, you can believe that it can count its own
steps and find out how far it is through its experience.

Players worry about how stuff works when they're trying to solve a
problem multiple times. If they've already moved from Accomplished
Longswordsman to Master Longswordsman before by killing orcs, at
least one player is going to count the number of orcs so that the
next time they want that competency through the "use it or lose it"
system, they're going to be able to predict when it will happen.

Obsession over advancement in systems like this happens because the
players know that the advancement is coming.  Knowing when it will
happen is too enticing.  So somebody measures it after having done
it once, then publishes that information on the web.

JB
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