[MUD-Dev] Playing catch-up with levels

[Sean Howard]

"John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com> writes:

> I'm not a fan of juggling equipment.  It mostly means hassle.

I'm pretty sure that any Diablo II fan will disagree :) But seriously,
other than equipment and levels, how else would you define capabilities?
Classes, maybe?

>  I'd prefer to have scenarios subtle enough to permit players to be
> successful by using their own approach

That would be particularly difficult to balance. For instance, if a
warrior type could breeze through a group in 10 minutes to get the reward
(at the cost of healing), a stealth type would take 40 minutes (at the
cost of time). On a MUD where the reward makes successive missions easier,
pretty much everyone will pick the warrior type and you'll have wasted
your time designing for the 5% that are the stealth type.

Don't get me wrong. I'm no advocating forcing players into specific
playing styles dictated by the designer. It's just that if it really is
different strokes for different folks, perhaps there should be exclusive
scenarios dealing with each stroke. Warriors wouldn't take the stealth
missions (unless they wanted to).

> I wouldn't want to design encounters that require players to carry
> equipment for the four types of challenges present in the game.  I think
> we want players to be able to be somewhat innovative - not pack mules :)

Not neccessary with proper metaphor and design. For instance, if going
into a fire dungeon, you know that bringing a fire sword isn't going to
help. It isn't that the player will carry 7,000 pounds of equipment for
those 'just in case' missions - knowing the mission beforehand and
planning appropriately for it.

For instance, there is a dungeon in a volcano, so you need to bring an ice
sword (which does double damage). However, on the path there are plenty of
stone enemies which are all but immune to ice. Do you bring a quake sword
too, for the trip there, or do you stock up on more ice equipment and just
avoid the stone enemies, or do you bring a general purpose sword which
works equally well with all enemies but isn't that great against any one.
If you've got a group, perhaps you can coordinate equipment?

With the level system, players going to a dungeon bring their best
equipment (there is almost always best equipment) and kill anything that
is their level or lower on the way to the dungeon.

> In current games, if all characters and monsters were level 50,
> players would quickly visit everything in the game at a pace that
> THEY found entertaining and be done with the game in a couple weeks
> to a couple months.

I can't tell if that is sarcasm or not. :)

> There are other side effects of course, but pacing the players
> through the game content is probably the most valuable one to the
> publshers.

Right, but grinding is probably the number 2 complaint (behind
bugs/nerfing). And people will always find a way to maximize the grind. In
SWG, back when droid engineer really sucked, it took 40,000 xp to reach
the first tier skills, and the only thing you could make gave about 40 xp.
People create grinding macros to get up as quick as possible - and because
the 40 xp was good for the amount of resources used, it was still
used to grind up to the second tier (something like 60,000
additional xp) so that one could create Advanced Frame Units. You
could do the whole thing in about 3 VERY boring days.

Obviously, the designers wanted create a pace that the player works
through, but most players didn't care for the pace - especially when
the introductory skills were uninteresting and the pace was
completely unbalanced.

On the other hand, City of Heroes seems so blandly balanced that the
game gets monotonous. You can only play in one area of the city
until level 5, then you can play in the next one. At level 15, you
can go to the next one and never have to visit that first one for
much.  The growing up seems so forced that I could literally see the
rest of game being played for me. I could predict what skills I'd
get at what level, which areas I'd get to visit, how long it would
take to get there, and so on.

I went to one area out of turn and died almost immediately - taking
me to the hospital which was quite a distance from the area exit. I
was stuck and it took about 4 or 5 attempts of running across the
area before I finally made it. That's not fun. All it does is
reinforce the limitations of the level system.

--
Sean Howard - www.squidi.net
Webcomic: A Modest Destiny
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