[MUD-Dev] Playing catch-up with levels

[John Buehler]

Kwon J. Ekstrom writes:
> Vincent Archer wrote:
>> According to ext.Christer.Enfors at tietoenator.com:

>> 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.

> Well, you could also ask "how do the players get the money to
> visit trainers", obviously there are other sources of wealth.
> Also, I'd suggest making a couple of dummy guilds with basic
> trainers and allowing the playtesters or event the morts of imms
> to run them.  This would reward people for playing the game, and
> prevent the need to balance player-run vs basic trainers.  If you
> choose the players to reward wisely, it would encourage a growing
> player-base.  Choose poorly and they'll simply strangle what few
> players you have.  (smart players would encourage growth because
> it advances their cause... more players = more people using their
> trainers)

Alternately, make players the trainers.  I'm sure this has been
considered before and/or implemented, but it's not something that
I've seen other than in teaching a language in EverQuest.  The twist
is to make the process of training another character a skill itself.

So if I choose to make training a priority and I'm willing to expend
skill resources on training others, then I can train other
characters in the skills that I have.  The speed at which I can
teach and the level of skill competency that I can communicate
depends on my skills at teaching.

What this really brings to a game is mobility of education, and
separates education from money.  Good will can be enough to gain new
skills.  Trading skills becomes a form of barter.

A character out in the middle of nowhere can teach advanced
wilderness skills to another character that hasn't been properly
prepared (shades of "Jeremiah Johnson").

A character can visit a foreign land, learn skills, then bring them
back to teach others.

If teaching is a difficult thing to master, then I may only be able
to teach you basic competency in the skills that I possess.  This
works as a governor on having every Tom, Dick and Boffo spreading
perfect instruction of every known skill to every character in the
game.  Thirty percent competency in Spinning Kick might be a
significant advantage against those who are unskilled in martial
arts.

This makes the trading process more interesting because my character
might have 40% Short Sword Riposte competency while your has 30%
Spinning Kick competency.  While I may also have some Spinning Kick
ability and you may have some Short Sword Riposte ability, we may be
able to boost our competencies by trading in some instruction.

So a second thing that this brings to a game is a new form of
currency - learned skills.  Depending on the variety of skills and
their applicability (desireability) in the pursuit of a good time in
the game, the currency of skill swapping could be an effective way
of getting players to interact.

An aid in that interaction would be flagging a character when your
character sees it using a skill that it has never seen before - or
that your character has seen before, but that you've told your
character to seek out.

It seems like there would be a fair bit of potential return here.
All characters would be seeking out new skills.  Political,
economic, crafting, military, hobby, you name it.

Player sponsored NPC trainers could be a way of storing skills so
they can be transferred to other characters, except that the NPC
would probably be limited to a certain location.

Game sponsored NPC trainers (e.g. NPC sponsored NPC trainers) could
serve as the starting point for the basics in training any set of
skills.  For example, the NPC blacksmithing guild may be the
starting place for learning blacksmithing skills.  If you're not
interested in blacksmithing, you don't have to have the
blacksmithing skills show up in your skill list/tree/display.

Want to extend this farther?  Make monsters have skills that they
can teach.  Get in good with a certain tribe of monsters and you can
learn a trick or two from one of them.

Skills have become an item of trade.  Little variations on skills
would then be common in the game, meaning that instead of all
spinning kicks using the exact same animation, little variations in
the animation (and the characteristics of the kick) would be
present.

Effective skill management tools would have to be available to the
player, just as effective inventory management tools are needed
today.

JB
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