[MUD-Dev] Wish revisited

[olag at ifi.uio.no]

Zach Collins wrote:
> On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 16:03:49 +0100 (CET), olag at ifi.uio.no
> <olag at ifi.uio.no> wrote:

>> Problem: The user kills his own monsters.  Solution: The creator
>> does not place the monster, but specify what kind of environment
>> the monster should spawn in. The monster isn't spawned
>> immediately.

> Alternate solution: Creating monsters costs resources, such as
> credits or XP. However, the auto-spawn solution may work very
> well. Both of these solutions can be combined.

I don't think creating should carry a cost. Good creators might hate
playing the game, but love building things which other people
enjoy. We want people to build as much as possible. It is, after
all, not put into the game until it is needed. More coal, more
diamonds. ;)

> Problem: Griefing will extend even here. "Aw, man, I died! These
> stupid eyeball things suck!" "Heh, this was fun, but I don't like
> you.  They suck." People won't rate cleverness, at best they'll
> rate their effort to reward ratio. Too much effort, and no reward
> will be big enough; too much reward, and players will view this as
> an easy way to buff their characters.

What if they rated it by qualities such as "entertaining", "poetic",
"sexy" etc?Or what if they had a limited set of positive and
negative moderation points? They would know that they would get more
of what they give a good rating and less of wat they give a bad
rating. Then you could remove the most deviant voters from the
end-result (for a particular creator).

> Sure, occasionally you may end up with super-tough creatures, but
> if you use the auto-spawn feature, you can have tougher monsters
> show up only in zones rated for toughness. If the player isn't
> good at combat, there's a good chance they'll never see their new
> creation.

*nods* If you have enough players to aggregate statistics for a
particular design in an acceptable fashion.

> As for too much reward for the effort, XP would be calculated
> based on toughness, while loot will be either typical for the base
> monster-type or one bonus prize if the creature is labelled as
> elite or a boss - and this label automatically boosts certain
> stats, so that a Little Bitey Eyeball Weenie becomes the Little
> Bitey Eyeball Master.

But how do you know that it was tough the first time a player
succeeds?

My basic idea was that players design camps of monsters, not just
individual monsters. I think that allows more interesting scenarios
with a relatively simple design that is relatively simple to use.

So, a camp with squishy monsters could be lethal if designed
right. I think you need that flexibility in order to provide unique
encounters in terms of game-play.

The other reason for having players design camps is that it makes
rating possible. Having players rate each mob is going to be too
tedious. Rating the entire camp is workable.

> As I note above, creature-making ties directly into
> worldcrafting. You could have the monster-maker and the
> place-maker; perhaps their skills are closely associated, perhaps
> they're different paths in the crafting tree. However, every
> dungeon needs its minions.

Yes, it is a possibility. Not really my philosophy though, as I view
this type of design as OOC, but I guess you could build a fictional
background that turned it into an IC activity.

Ola.
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