[MUD-Dev] Playing catch-up with levels

[Threshold RPG]

On 27 Apr 2004, at 13:41, Douglas Goodall wrote:

> At this time, I would like to point out that the most addictive
> (and most likely to be perceived as fun) reward schedule is random
> ratio. If you hide the mechanics from the player and ignore the
> "fairness" of "x time invested always equals y skill points," you
> could make an unusually addictive skill system with this
> method. Whether you should do this is a matter of some debate.

Can you elaborate on this? If I am understanding you correctly, you
are describing a system that I personally DESPISE and I know a lot
of players that hate it as well.

It sounds like DAoC's crafting system. You can sit somewhere making
armor and whether or not your skill goes up is totally random. You
might make 10 shields and get nothing, then later make 3 shields and
raise 3 points.

People easily forget about "good runs" and only seem to recall the
bad runs. It is an absolutely miserable and painful system.

Virtually every crafter I knew wished it would just be a set # of
items to raise a skill point. Then they wouldn't have to feel like
they were getting hosed.

> Somewhat off topic... The only graphical persistent world game I
> worked on (which was not released due to investors pulling
> out... and I will refrain from mentioning the name due to the
> continued existence of an extremely embarrassing web site)

How cruel. You allude to such an incredibly juicy nugget and don't
even give us something nice to google so we can find it on our own?
:(

>  Skills increased with use after a random number of uses. Skills
>  did not "decay" without use, but once you passed an upper limit
>  on the total number of skill points you could have, any further
>  increase in any skill would reduce another skill

Ugh.

This sounds absolutely miserable. I would snap the CD in half of any
game that inflicted this kind of horror upon me.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Hartman, J.D. (http://www.threshold-rpg.com)
President & CEO, Threshold Virtual Environments, Inc.
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