[MUD-Dev] Better Combat

[Byron Ellacott]

cruise wrote:

> To re-iterate, then: "How do we make players /want/ to fight
> monsters?"  Everything so far seems to suggest making combats more
> dynamic, allowing players (and mobs) to counter and
> counter-counter.

I've found that combat is fine as long as it's something that's
happening on the way to doing something with more meaning.  In a
D&D-esque MUD context, I have no problem wading hip deep through the
virtual blood of foes to reach some goal, perhaps a particular mob
whose staff has a knob on the end, but when you ask me to go kill a
few hundred mobs to gain experience, apathy is the order of the day.

This suggests to me that linking experience to kills isn't the right
choice.  I'm sure this has been discussed on MUD-Dev only a few
months ago, but I don't keep postings long, and there's no search
facility on the kanga.nu archives that I can find.  The general
argument was that kills was just a convenient rule of thumb for
measuring an adventure. These days, a kill is elevated beyond 'rule
of thumb' status, usually becoming the entirety of the adventure.

Granting experience for completing quests, as long as those quests
aren't obviously pointless and have a difficulty commensurate with
their complexity.  By this I mean that a "Get me 10 pelts!" quest,
which has no back story and no deeper meaning, should never require
the player to search hard for the pelt giving creatures.  In
contrast, "Find and slay the bandit chief!" could require the player
to find a group of bandits, defeat them in combat, discover
information leading to the guy in town selling them caravan
departure times, intimidate that guy into spilling the bandit
chief's location, and then kill the chief and his band.  More
difficult, yes, but the player is actively solving puzzles or doing
miniquests along the way.

I believe World of Warcraft is giving the bulk of a player's
experience through quests, though I can't comment on the quality of
the quests offered.

You can also grant experience for exploration.  Enter a new region,
find an interesting spot for the first time, reach the top of the
mountain, etc.  There's nothing stopping you from having combat in
there, since the interesting spot might be the nesting ground of the
giant sewer rats, or the mountain might be the home of some
particularly nasty orcs. The point is, the combat wasn't what got
you the experience.  The, well, experience was.

And finally, you can grant experience for achievements.  You and
your group(s) just killed the Big Bad Dragon, which presumably meant
you fought your way through the Dragongate.  Heyhey, have a few
million xp.

What you have to counter is that MMOs are services, and income is
related to time.  So if you do away with 'the grind' and fail to
replace it with something that takes just as long, you might have
cost yourself some income.  Then again, you might gain some by
opening up to new markets - which MMO released since EverQuest
/hasn't/ promised to be casual player friendly, and which of those
has lived up to that promise?

--
bje
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