[MUD-Dev] Playing catch-up with levels

[Douglas Goodall]

Threshold RPG wrote:

> 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.

Google says...

  http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/behsys/operant.html
  http://www.hanrob.com.au/faq/reward.htm
  http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/skinner.html

The psychology of gambling and several economics experiments are
particularly helpful to game designers. At the very least, I'd suggest
learning about the Superstitious Rat and the Multi-Armed Bandit.

DAoC's crafting is dull because there's no choice, no involvement. Random
ratio is probably the only way to make it even remotely tolerable (though
the rewards are too small and too far apart at the high end--a mistake
almost all RPGs make which leads to extinction and, ultimately, less $$$).
Players don't complain about long strings of success... but they do
remember them and will continue to pursue them unless the rewards are too
small or too far apart. If you gave DAoC's crafting a FR schedule, the
players would whine just as much. Their complaints would be slightly
different ("I made 50 pieces and didn't get any skill points!!!" vs. "This
is pointless. You always get 1 point for every skill/50 hinges."), but in
the end, even fewer players would pursue crafting if it was FR. Frustration
is bad, but boredom is unforgivable. Some players who throw the joystick
across the room will calm down and pick it up again. And again. And again.
My ex-roommate playing Abe's Oddysee is a great example of this...

DAoC's crafting is like a slot machine (a single-armed bandit). It only
appeals to a certain personality. Other games of chance that offer even
minor choices (which number to put your chips on, whether to stay or
hit--anything that gives more than one lever to pull) work on the same
principles and are much more popular. With a little more effort, you can
give players interesting choices between money/ingredients, time, quality,
and chance of success in any crafting system.

Try a simple experiment yourself. Make two otherwise identical Flash or
Blitz Basic RPGs. In the first, make every monster give 200 XP. In the
second, make them give 100 + d200 XP. Get a hundred of your closest friends
to play them. Record how long your friends play each one before getting
bored. Like too many game design debates, similar research has already been
done in psychology or economics. I doubt future game researchers will
arrive at dramatically different conclusions.

There is a negative correlation between what players claim to want and what
they will pay for. Despite numerous complaints about "the grind," CRPGs
with faster (or absent or shorter or more limited or FI or FR) advancement
have done worse in the marketplace. I don't trust anything players say or
most developer theories. I trust player actions. Which games have the most
subscribers? Which game activities occupy what percent of their time? Do
players who spend more time on X than Y quit at a higher rate? Do players
quit more often after x days played, y days real time, or z levels? Some
game companies are even kind enough to publish a limited set of this
valuable information.

Eliminate the grind from a game of (mostly) chance, and players will love
you... until a few weeks after your game is released when they all go back
to complaining about the grind in some other game they're willing to
pay money for. In CRPGs, the grind is the game.

As for the skill decay system, I was describing how the game worked,
not how I think it ought to be. If I could do it all over again, I
would use a diminishing returns system instead of a hard skill
cap. Of course, if I had to do it all over again, I'd probably enter
a completely different field. Like plumbing. I mean, it brought
Mario fame and fortune and even a princess, right?
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