[MUD-Dev] Exponential experience points and levels

[ceo]

zgj22 at drexel.edu wrote:
> From: ceo <ceo at grexengine.com>

>> I fancy playing a game where you get exponentially more exp per
>> situation the more you are (statistically) outgunned. Is anyone
>> running one? :)

>> If you beat someone of lesser ability, again you get nothing -
>> and may even lose experience ("character grows accustomed to
>> lesser

> Another lurker dropping out of the woodwork...

> That is an interesting concept, however I don't think that players
> of a Massive/MUD would necc. take to it very well... but only
> because of the dropping XP bit. To penalize a player for something
> that may be out of their control will be seen either as a bug, or
> as bad game design.

> An example:

>   Bob is a 15th level warrior. He decides he is going to take on a
>   17th level Doom Bunny. However, to get there, he needs to go
>   through the Dark Carrot Patch, which is infested with 11th level
>   Lesser Evil Rabbits. He goes through the patch, and is viciously
>   assaulted by a virtual army of malicious
>   fluffballs. Unfortunately, because of the sheer aggressiveness
>   of said rabbits, he has to kill each one that approaches him,
>   totaling 10 in all. After killing them, he realizes that he has
>   just lost 3 times the XP he would get by going to kill the Doom
>   Bunny in the first place. He gets PO-ed and stops playing.

Therein lies the hardest problem: writing the fitness function to
describe how you "score" the combatants comparitive chances of
success.

It's hard enough in a one-on-one scenario, but - as you point out -
composing multiple scenarios on either or both sides makes it even
more tricky.

Off the top of my head I can think of lots of different approaches
(which is part of why I want to see how others have done it...).

  e.g. "greedy grouping of scenarios": don't count the individual
  battles, but use a greedy algorithm that sucks up every successive
  battle into a running total. A set of "termination conditions"
  cause it to evaluate at that moment and reset.

For instance, could have the following termination criteria:

  1. Player enters a designated "safe area"

  2. Player heals to full health whilst no monsters actively
  targetting them

  3. More than 60 seconds have elapsed since the last battle

  ... etc

e.g. "quest-writer groupings": monsters are artificially manually
grouped by a content-writer, and e.g. Lesser Evil Rabbits are marked
as having no negative effect unless the player fails to enter combat
with a Doom Bunny. This could be evaluated e.g. 2 minutes after the
last LER was encountered, so that the player has time to kill the
LER's, take a breather, then hunt down the DB - but if they just
kill the LER's and run away (or fail to find the DB, and go home
empty-handed) then they will suffer the negative effects.

...etc

Adam M
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