Jun 3 2002, 9:31 pm
In response to Lord of Water
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Garthor
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The problem is, that would encourage people to be jack-of-all-trades. I'd go get a friend to kill (and he can kill me) then stop him as he tries to steal from me (and the other way around) then doing a quick, easy quest, foraging a bunch for food, buying the other half from players (as hard as that may be), stealing stuff from my friend, and the other way around, trading $500 of stuff to my friend, then buying it back, then do some monument/building work. That would rake in 8-9 skill points. These things should be mostly mutually exclusive, and should increase in difficulty as you get more skilled. If somoene is a jack of all trades, they might advance quickly through all the work, but it will be harder and harder to do so. I think I have a great idea for a system that would encourage roleplaying/social interaction. Unfortunately, Lexy decided to ban me, so I can't give these ideas out. Oh well.
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A supplement to this is to do what some text-MUDs do: provide a safe haven (a tavern, temple, or inn) to put your character to sleep in before logging out... gives the player a choice... I've got something similar to this... novice characters can "log out" safely by going through a door that represents the Hall's dormitories. If you just log out anywhere else, your character will remain in the world an hour or so, until one of the friendly wizards in the Hall senses your confusion summons you to safety. Advanced characters can have safe areas in their own burrow.(Actually, your whole burrow can be a safe area if you manage it right... but at least in my small scale tests, it's proven to be more fun to leave the burrow entrance open and have a few "public" areas.) | |
Unfortunately, Lexy decided to ban me, so I can't give these ideas out. Oh well. I can't stop you from giving the ideas out. In fact, if you have ideas, this is the place to put them. :P As far as the ban goes, it's not like I didn't warn you... and it's not like you're still banned. I never keep anyone banned for much more than 24 hours unless I find their key or behavior patently offensive. LoW's system isn't actually that bad, it would just be inapplicable to my game, which doesn't take such a mechanistic view of things. How would the game know if you're buying stuff from someone? Maybe you happen to owe them some berries and they happen to owe you some bark. Or defeating someone who tried to steal from you? "Stealing" could be knocking someone out and looting them, picking up the stuff they set down while shuffling inventory, sneaking into their burrow and taking their possessions, using a pickpocket skill/command... okay, looting and pickpocket command, it could detect. But how would it know if the items lying on the ground or in the burrow weren't left there for the person taking them or for general use or whatever? You know, take an acorn, leave an acorn. Again... I could make it so that you can get "experience points" for performing certain actions. I could categorize it, so that you could specialize... then your character would get points for doing the things your character does, and someone else's character could get points for doing the things that character does. Well, that's exactly what my system does. I've just saved myself the trouble of coding it. Right now, I'm running a private game with a friend where we're testing out various enterprises. Right now, she's a shrew and I'm a mouse, specializing in brewing and forestcraft instead of the usual mouse forte of magic. We're doing nothing but making exceptional quality durberry wine... any thing she finds that's not useful for that pursuit, we're using to stock a burrow or make necessaries (blankets, etc.), and wine that's not exceptional quality, we're drinking to speed up production (durberry = mind point recovery.) This is what our two characters do, they make wine. How would getting points for making wine be different from getting points and making wine? Given that we're going to make the wine anyway, the end result is the same, and in a simulation, it's the end result that matters. | |
Lesbian Assassin wrote:
and wine that's not exceptional quality, we're drinking <font face="Arial, Helvetica">Is there any penalty in excess drinking? (I find the image of a shrew and mouse completely pissed rather amusing anyway) :)</font> | |
This has the same basic effect as an experience system, except that to reap the benefit, you don't have to spend those hours performing some mindless task that may or may not be in any way related to your conception of your character. Instead, you can spend them wandering hither and yon, doing what you think your character should be doing. In essence, you're being "rewarded" for playing your character the way you would play him or her if no one was telling you what to do. My own taste, if I were designing along these lines, would probably be to break game activities into categories -- maybe a handful, maybe a whole bunch -- such as attacking monsters, chatting, wandering, crafting items, whatever, and the player's activity in each endeavor is tallied over time. So when time X passes and benefit Y is reaped, Y is actually divided up among the player's skills according to how frequently they were used. And presto! I'd have the exact thing you were trying to avoid... guess I didn't help much here. :) | |
Gughunter wrote:
My own taste, if I were designing along these lines, would probably be to break game activities into categories -- maybe a handful, maybe a whole bunch -- such as attacking monsters, chatting, wandering, crafting items, whatever, and the player's activity in each endeavor is tallied over time. So when time X passes and benefit Y is reaped, Y is actually divided up among the player's skills according to how frequently they were used. And presto! I'd have the exact thing you were trying to avoid... guess I didn't help much here. :) Heh. The problem with any kind of formula system is that it encourages powerleveling, and yet you can't tell how to advance a character without some kind of formula, because formulas are what computers do. It's a major dilemma. Lummox JR | |
Lummox JR wrote:
Heh. The problem with any kind of formula system is that it encourages powerleveling, and yet you can't tell how to advance a character without some kind of formula, because formulas are what computers do. It's a major dilemma. And heres the thing- Most games only have one way of advancing a particular area. Taking Everquest as an example, the only way to raise Sneak is to use it over and over again. What if a succesful sneak past a highly perceptive person raised your sneaking ability, or something else(Ok, sneaking was a rather stale example). Take 'Wisdom' as an example(Referring to wisdom as the knowledge of ancient lore, history, and whatnot). One way to raise wisdom would be to read new tomes with stories about the world, traverse areas that no one else has, complete quests to discover more about the world, perhaps mingling with other societies(again using Everquest as an example, or any tolkien-esque world). If you were a human, learning about orkish lore and magic might increase your wisdom. That same concept can be applied to many things. I do not believe the problem is in the fact that something can be done repetetively to gain a higher rank in that ability, I believe it has something to do with the choices you are presented with. If suddenly you have the choice between improving your skill with a sword in the following ways, it might be much more fun: Fight oponents which have atleast equal or better skill at handling their weapons Join a Guild of Swordsmen, and practice with friends in a sparring hall. Study scriptures, detailing fighting stances and techniques for improving your skill with a sword etc. Alathon\\ | |
Well, in one of my older projects, there were quite a few things that counted as stealing. One, naturally, was the sucessful use of the pickpocket skill. Other fairly easy-to-decect cases included estate break-ins and theft by force. There was a trade command that was very suitable for trading things, and there was an inventory sorting system, so when you drop things it is considered to be trash.
Now, so far as doing the same person over and over for mutual benifit, that's where a "not in x cycles" thing comes into play. I think one of my pont-givers said something about stealing from someone you have not stolen from in 5 cycles. So, you could still have a mutual agreement with somebody, but you could only get points from stealing from that person every 5 cycles. Then again, you could make a group of steal partners that would allow you to steal from them. But then, perceptive theives would be able to see that someone was very easy to steal from and would probably attempt a steal from either that person or the theif who just robbed him right away. As for the argument that such a system encourages jack-of-all-trades chars, that is not all true when you add in a large enough base of things that can be done. If you have, say, 50 theif-oriented things to do, 120 agriculture-related things to do, 25 warrior-related things to do, and so on, with overlapping deeds of course, it would be very hard to keep a good jack-of-all-traded char with a max. of only 8 or 12 skill points per cycle. The smart RPer or even powergamer would find what things are easy for them to do, and get in a routine of doing those things. However, the system would force them to diversify their activities. I would likely complete a number of building requirements per cycle, as I like to develop things. I would also probably do some evil things and destroy some buildings, to keep up my evil status. I would then have to spend my skill points on skills like dodge so that I can evade the hordes of warrior-like good samariatin players who will try to avenge my victims. Another great plus of such a system is that macroing going to help almost none. If you really want to get all 13 (example) of your possible skill points this cycle, you have a lot of work to do and have to get into your char for awhile. Most players would probably accept only 6 through 10 of the skill points because of the difficulty of obtaining all of them. -Lord of Water | |