[MUD-Dev] Reward system for social gaming?

[cruise]

Matt Chatterley spake thusly...

> Many skills fit into the practice model - cookery, weaponscraft,
> woodwork, etc, many don't - languages, reading and writing,
> map-making, etc.

> Two options immediately jump up:

>   1. Don't require any RL time to elapse. Teaching is
>   instanteneous and restricted to a 'N teachers per day' or 'N
>   learning from teachers per day' system. Further limits can be
>   arranged by taking the skill difference between pupil and
>   teacher into account, etc.  > 2. Make the players involved DO
>   something with a short RL time elapse.  I'm at a loss as to what
>   'something' might be, though - perhaps entering a series of
>   semi-random commands - or completing a short puzzle to acquire
>   the knowledge?

I'm starting to think that many things that are currently
implemented as "skills" in such games don't need to be.

Map-reading for example, can use the player's ability, rather than
the character's. Ditto for foreign languages, which can be presented
as codes of varying difficulty, for example.

Then there is no need to have teachers teaching these skills, which,
as you state, is flawed.

Arguably, if combat, crafting or magic-casting becomes sufficiently
intricate then even those skills can be naturally occurring within
the player. Beat 'em ups have no need for skill-based stats
("Zangief attempts to peform a spinning piledriver, but rolls a 4
and fumbles!") since the skill is in the hands holding the
controller.

While some kind of abstraction is obviously necessary, I think we've
become so obsessed with numbers that we've removed any requirement
for skill from the player.

--
[ cruise / casual-tempest.net / transference.org ]
   "quantam sufficit"
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