[MUD-Dev] Removing the almighty experience point...

[David Wright]

On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 17:03:11 +0200, Vincent Archer <archer at frmug.org> wrote:
> According to David Wright:

>> Of course, some players are just lazy and won't 'crawl' even if
>> there is no penalty to do so... so in conjunction with your idea
>> above, something to motivate them to move along instead of
>> sitting in one spot ala dynamic exp/spawn times would go a long
>> way towards motivating players to crawl instead of camp.

> The recent Everquest expansion, Omens of War, features a zone
> where camping a single spot is actually counterproducing to
> experience.  Mobs are very widely spaced, in twisty corridors and
> most of them have a short path patrol within their area.

> People that attempt to set up a camp in a single spot face very
> long "pull" times, which quickly grow into a non negligible amount
> of time compared to the time it takes to pull a monster. Combine
> with the fact that the "puller" cannot go very far from its group
> (or the XP is lost when the monster dies) during combat, the fact
> that there is no safe unpatrolled area anywhere except the zone
> entrance, and you have a zone that requires you to keep moving.

> You only camp a spot by crawling in a circular loop around a
> specific spot (typically, the known location of a named monster).

Heh, my comments were directed at an entirely different thread of
which I mis-pasted to this one, but to reply to your comments:

If your referring to proving grounds or possibly riftseekers, you
ignored the fact that named there almost always spawn in a static
location. At this segment of time of the expasion, experience gain
is a byproduct of the real goals of the players that are playing
there.  That is, to get spells and/or loot (either upgrade or
saleable stuff).

In this situation, the long pulls and low mob density do lessen the
potential exp intake of a group, which would/could make it
preferable to crawl, but since the primary goal for most are to
power up via camping spell runes/loot mobs, it bypasses the
motivation to crawl (thus giving up potential named spawns).

And for what its worth, there are plenty of 'safe spots' to setup
'camp' in MPG, although I haven't spent a lot of time in riftseekers
to say the same for there.

Now, if the named spawned in different places, or more roamed more
that could help, or if the loot/runes dropped rarely/uncommonly
across zone trash, with the named always having a rune (of some
type) + loot (instead of being rare/uncommon) that are 'triggered'
by crawling instead of camping, that would be super cool.

This 'triggered' named spawning is something that can happen, and is
already somewhat implented in a few zones already... a good example
is the weapon masters in ferubi that drop peice to trigger the smith
event.

This would be the type of dyamic spawn patterns I was referring to.
Couple that with dynamic experience base on how long a mob has been
a live, and you provide very postive motivation to 'crawl' instead
of camping and pulling constantly respawned mobs with minimal exp.
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev