[MUD-Dev] Playing catch-up with levels

[Vincent Archer]

According to ext.Christer.Enfors at tietoenator.com:

> I was thinking I should let players hire NPC trainers, and then
> define which skills (not just one skill) this trainer would teach.
> The player (or guild) would then charge money from other players
> (or guild members) for access to this trainer. Thus, the player
> has in effect created his own class. If it's good, he'll even be
> able to profit off of the access charges. A military guild could
> boast "we give our members access to a Swordsman trainer, a Spy
> trainer and a Healer trainer at a discount!". The trainer would
> also incur costs for its owner, so in order for the owner to make
> a profit, the skill set (read: template) he gives his trainer has
> to be good enough for other players to want to pay for).

The problem with this approach is exclusive trainer access. Can you
use different trainers? If you can use multiple trainers without
penalty, then you're not accessing a "class", you're using "that
trainer with skill X & Y, and that other with Z".

And you cannot afford to lock players with one trainer: if they can
use only their original trainer, then griefers can set the trainer
prices to X millions golds suddendly, and freeze completely your
character progress without recourse (except dropping all skills and
restarting at another trainer).

The next obvious idea is to lock by skill: you can train at a
trainer if and only if you do not have (yet) a skill that the
trainer cannot teach. Since the obvious "marketing move" is then to
advertise "we have a trainer that offers every skill", you need to
defeat that, by making the maintenance costs of skills
exponential. Class creators then have to select how wide the skills
they place on the trainer: too wide and it's too expensive. Too
small, and no one's interested.

And, finally, there is the problem of the chicken and the egg. How
do the characters initially get money to create the trainers? You
need to create "basic trainers", who make essentially free classes.
Those free classes must not be competitive with player-designed
classes (otherwise, people use the basic trainers), yet efficient
enough that people can earn enough to create the first set of
trainers.

All in all, an interesting idea.

--
	Vincent Archer			Email:	archer at frmug.org

All men are mortal.  Socrates was mortal.  Therefore, all men are Socrates.
							(Woody Allen)
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