[MUD-Dev] Playing catch-up with levels

[ext.Christer.Enfors at tietoenator.com]

Vincent Archer wrote:
> 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?

My plan was to allow a player to access multiple trainers. But the
owner of each trainer will be able to set a "weekly access fee" for
access to each trainer. This means you pay X gold to be allowed to
use the trainer for one week. So if you want to access two different
trainers, you'll have to pay two fees.

Guilds can also choose to allow free access to their trainers for
their guild members. But since the trainers come with maintenance
costs, the guild would have to finance that somehow.

> 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".

I suppose you could regard the separate access fees for each trainer
as a penalty. But it doesn't really matter to be if players are
accessing a "class" or not, I like the system no matter what it's
called. :-)

> 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.

I wasn't planning on placing any restrictions on what trainers you
can use. The trainer owner can place restrictions though, such as
you have to be a member of their guild, you have to pay the weekly
access fee, etc. However, I intend to let each trainer only teach a
set number of skills. The trainer owner can easily get around this
by hiring a second trainer of course, but that's not a problem since
each trainer comes with maintenance costs. And players aren't likely
to want to pay for access to both trainers.

Also, the more advanced the skills a trainer teaches, the higher its
maintenance cost will be. Teaching advanced magic requires a lot of
expensive reagents (read: maintenance cost), etc.

> 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.

You seem to be assuming that you need skills to make money, which
isn't true in my design. Newbies will be able to make money by
performing simple tasks like picking berries in the forest, and
selling them. There are skills that would make this easier or
quicker for them, but these skills are not required. Once the newbie
has made a little money doing this, he can buy tools (such as an
axe) that allows him to make money more quickly (such as chopping
down trees and selling the logs). After doing that, he'll have
enough money to pay for access to a cheap trainer which offers basic
skills.

Oh, and I should probably mention that you don't have to have access
to a trainer to increase your skills in my design. Skills incrase
with use. Having access to a trainer (and spending offline time
training with him) just allows you to increase your skills faster
than training on your own would allow.

--
Christer Enfors, AKA Dannil
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev