[MUD-Dev] Playing catch-up with levels

[Douglas Goodall]

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.

At this time, I would like to point out that the most addictive (and
most likely to be perceived as fun) reward schedule is random
ratio. If you hide the mechanics from the player and ignore the
"fairness" of "x time invested always equals y skill points," you
could make an unusually addictive skill system with this
method. Whether you should do this is a matter of some debate.

Somewhat off topic... The only graphical persistent world game I
worked on (which was not released due to investors pulling
out... and I will refrain from mentioning the name due to the
continued existence of an extremely embarrassing web site) used a
method similar to this. Skills increased with use after a random
number of uses. Skills did not "decay" without use, but once you
passed an upper limit on the total number of skill points you could
have, any further increase in any skill would reduce another skill
(actually the increase would trickle up a skill tree, so it could
increase similar skills, then any excess would be removed from the
other branches of the tree). All numbers were hidden from the
player. Instead of seeing skill points or a progress bar, your
character screen showed only adjectives (poor, skilled, master,
etc).
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