[MUD-Dev] DESIGN: Online adventure games

[Malcolm W. Tester II]

From: Mike Rozak [mailto:Mike at mxac.com.au]

> What if the friends wanted to work together on the same quest?
> You'd need a way for them to partner up so their quests would both
> require the same solutions. (Or is there a way around this?)

Multi-player quests can be created, and to solve them, you must
'register' with another player or players.  Multi-player quests
actually set a number of "required players to solve", so you have to
register with the correct players, who are then asked if they want
to do it too.  Once registered, everyone gets the same modules.

> What is the purpose of having levels? Is it to keep players from
> entering portions of the world until they have "done their time"
> on the levelling treadmill (which is also a way to reduce
> cheating)? Or to provide a numeric goal? As a metric to compare
> two competing players? Or as a mechanism to gradually introduce
> new game-design elements? (Such are more complex spells.) Or to
> force them to make interesting decisions about resource (xp)
> allocation into skills? Something else? All of the above?

I believe that everyone likes (needs) a way to measure their
progress.  We do it in real life all the time, and lots of people
with more experience than I on this list have mentioned it as well.
That's the primary purpose.  Just to give the achievers more
satisfaction.  It can also be used for the classic methods, as you
say, such as guilds or entrance to new areas.  That's more up to the
individual wizards though.  >From a core mudlib standpoint, it's
solely for satisfaction.  As a sidenote, there are no practical caps
on levels such as found in older libs.  I've always found that a
nuissance, especially when you have 20 levels, and wizards are level
21+ and the mud's been around a while, and you decide to increase
the level max for players but find that the code phrase
"this_player()->query_level < 21" is hardcoded everywhere in the
lib.  There is a theoretical cap, and that is the limit of integers
in lpc for experience.

-Malc
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