Feb 7 2008, 1:23 pm
In response to Lpeters
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ACWraith
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How? By removing all of the old challenges?
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Don't forget that if you refuse to play the game for any length of time, your character will probably die of dehydration, or worse, an exploding bladder. Because you can't put off real life whenever you feel like it, you have necessities to attend to!
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Baladin, let me save you a lot of trouble and tell you the best way to deal with Garthor: ignore him. Don't respond to his baiting posts. He hates that.
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Lummox JR wrote:
You could easily have stats that can't be raised, that stay the same for the character throughout. It's just very uncommon. You could also easily have stats that can be raised, but at the cost of other stats. So the total value of all the character's stats stays the same, but individual stats can be raised or decreased gradually. If that were the case, the only advantage the experienced players would have would be more focused statistics. While a standard character might have stats that were all around 50/100, so a dedicated warrior might well sacrifice his abilities to read, bargain and play the lute in order to increase his accuracy, evasion and stealth to 90/100 through use. | |
Baladin wrote:
Never even bothered to read that whole post Garthor. But I already know what it pretty much says. Whatever. I think perhaps that even a compromise would do the entire argument a lot of good. What you propose, in your system, generates characters through a 100-600% spread of power, or a 16.7-100% spread. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that you have some additional training points to spend, but the fact still remains that 1d6 is a big dice spread. If you instead used something more like 3-4 or even 3-5, you're talking about a spread of 100-133% or 100-166%. Having the strongest character in the game "only" 66% stronger than the weakest, is a lot better than having UltimaFite that deals 9600 damage, and NoobSauce that deals 1600. The more you do to decrease the spread in the end - the better, at least in the opinion of the people who have responded on the topic so far. ~Polatrite~ P.S. That still may not be good enough - they probably just want no randomization at all. | |
Polatrite wrote:
P.S. That still may not be good enough - they probably just want no randomization at all. Personally, I could deal with a little bit of randomization, but the randomization must have a way of balancing itself out. If playerA gets uber high strength, give him a low defense/hitpoints/whatever and, then playerB, who has low strength, yet he has high defense/hitpoints/whatever will stand some form of a chance. If your are going to use such gross randomizations as Baladin does, you really have to have some way to balance it out to ensure there's not some uber freak on steroids running around. | |
Leveling up is a type of Character Development. But its one of the worst and most unoriginal types. Not really character development, at least in a literary sense. Leveling up is just an increase in numbers. It doesn't usually add any depth to a character in standard implementations. Character development needs context. When Trenton the Bard lost his parents to a fire as a child and so had to be cared for by his aged aunt who was a bit off, that is background. Trenton decides to embark on a life of adventuring with his old childhood friend, an ex soldier and veteran of General Lethius's invasion into Ocert, Rapatian. When the duo kills 20 rats, there is zero development.A s they explore, Trenton becomes increasingly disturbed by Rapatian's brutality and callousness towards others, but also recognizes Rapatian is a stalwart friend and would die to protect the bard. This is character development. It gives insight into personality. For example, after the rat hunt Rapatian threatens the reneging innkeeper who hired them to get the promised payment and later seduces the old man's daughter to make his point, that is development. When Trenton learns of this and returns his share to the distraught daughter, who angrily throws it in his face, we learn more of Trenton, etc. This is why most MCRPGs are so weak- there is little or no character development or story arcs to really develop them. | |
Jmurph wrote:
When the duo kills 20 rats I'm touched, and I feel like I connect with the main character more now. I understand his motives, goals and personality at a deeper level. | |
"Leveling up" suggests that a player has done so many things and has become better.
It is an "experience level". The basic leveling up gives you a balanced way of handling character attribute progression: you get a number that tells you how many more things you have to do to become stronger, and when you reach it, you are awarded (the award is usually relevant to the character's setup. IE: class, race, and even personality). Then (usually), the amount required increases, making it harder to get better. I think this is perfectly acceptable. Your method is nice. (note this method is used in lots of games. final fantasy 2 uses this) It allows you to build the statistics you'd like to build. Unfortunately, this works in few situations. If you're doing it this way, you really have to: no character classes. a class means that they are aiming towards certain statistics and abilities. you have to allow them to pick their own abilities. since you're building your own character, you have to be allowed to pick all of your own abilities. this is obviously because abilities are related to your statistics. Those are just two reasons it wouldn't work on a game where you're a character being lead through a story. Like, you know, most RPGs. Leveling up is fine. So is personal statistic building. It all depends on the situations, and what you prefer. | |
Dragonn wrote:
Am I the only one who thinks conventional "leveling up" is idiotic, boring, tedious, and unoriginal? Taking a few pages out of the book "Virtual Worlds" by Richard Bartle, one of the most influential game developers of all time - he created the first MUD, and has worked as a consultant on just about every major online RPG to exist. In his book, Richard states that leveling up gives players a psychological step - a tangible increase in power that happens instantly, that gives players a goal - to move on for the next statistical step where they increase. Without doing this, what is the incentive to keep moving? Procrastination IS a huge problem - if you could spend 30 minutes raising your power just a tiny bit now, or spend the same 30 minutes tomorrow, let's just put it off until tomorrow. However, if you can spend 45 minutes to gain a level, netting a larger increase in stats, it's much more appealing from a psychological level. The reason that leveling up is idiotic, boring, tedious, and unoriginal is not in the CONCEPT of leveling up, it's in the EXECUTION of the games that use it, just like Foomer said. If you used a skill system, where every time you hit something with your axe, you would gain 1 point of "axe experience" and eventually raise your axe skill, would that be MORE or LESS tedious? The answer? MORE tedious. Why? Because now the ONLY way to increase your axe skill is by hitting things. And moreover, if it's not implemented properly, the things you hit for the most damage, or with the least risk, still give the same amount of axe experience as a sinister crime lord or a dragon. You say "But we'll make it so that when you hit a high level dragon, you gain more axe experience than if you stab a mountain goat!" To which I respond: Exactly! By making the system more complex, you make it less prone to tedium. Leveling still has an advantage over this skill based approach - you don't have to always do the same thing to raise your axe skill, you don't always have to hit things. You might be able to do quests or crafts that have absolutely no combat, and still raise your axe skill next time you gain a level up. Just something to chew on. ~Polatrite~ | |
Why not a class development system
As soon as you join the game Certain percentages of difficulty will be added to certain stats making it easyer for some players to have a high stat in one area and makeing it harder for them in another that way there is some difference in how well you do and how long it takes to master a skill That way you still have grinding but it will be easyer in some areas for everyone but not the same areas so that everyone has to adapt to the skills they have | |