<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when. --> <!--X-From-R13: X Q Znjerapr <pynjNhaqre.rate.ftv.pbz> --> <!--X-Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 15:04:15 -0800 --> <!--X-Message-Id: 199901132304.PAA87981#under,engr.sgi.com --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Reference: 11A17AA2B9EAD111BCEA00A0C9B41793EDC92B#forest,origin.ea.com --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, [MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com"> </head> <body background="/backgrounds/paperback.gif" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#006000"> <font size="+4" color="#804040"> <strong><em>MUD-Dev<br>mailing list archive</em></strong> </font> <br> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] <br clear=all><hr> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> Date: [ <a href="msg00142.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00144.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg00140.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00157.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#00143">Author</A> | <A HREF="#00143">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#00143">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: [MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when. </LI> <LI><em>From</em>: J C Lawrence <<A HREF="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</A>></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 15:04:09 -0800</LI> <LI><em>Reply-To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> On Wed, 13 Jan 1999 09:58:36 -0600 Koster, Raph<rkoster#origin,ea.com> wrote: >> From: J C Lawrence >> Quoting from: >> >> <A HREF="http://mud.sig.net/raph/gaming/laws.html">http://mud.sig.net/raph/gaming/laws.html</A> >> > Presumably the quote was offered up to make you consider whether > having sculptors or whatever is desirable, necessary, or even > feasible. Surely. My internal phrasing was an attempt to broaden the scope of the considered goals of players by offering a formal statement that considered their intersection. > Quite aside from whether it is, I have become convinced that the > secrets to a really long-lived, widely appealing online game *in > the gaming sense* are multiple paths to advancement, ease of > switching between paths of advancement, clear milestones in said > advancement, and ideally, no sense of running out of significant > milestones (eg the ladder does not feel finite). <nod> <ponder> I quibble with that slightly. Clear, or at least apparent advancement paths to known goals are important. However I also see significant value in sideline growth opoortunities that are "advancement" per se (the player/character can now do things he could not do before), but which don't necessarily relate to known longer term goals (eg "learn to whittle chess pieces from driftwood"). The reason for this quibble is that I see these philips as the key to expressive fertility, and, by the simple means of watching your players use of them, of finding new areas/goals/activities to expand/build_on as you increase the depth of the game (eg notice that people are playing chess with the whittled pieces, so add a chess AI and other explicit game supports). Without such side-items there is a reduced stock of raw bits for players to start building with to *show* you want they really want (cf the old rule about satisfying player wants destroying the game). Yes, flexible game mechanics can do a lot of this (cf the monster farms for sparring in UO), but adding abilities-to-do seems the real key to providing the seeds of later outgrowths. Perfect if minor example: The fishermsn in one of the LPC libs. Reese has commented several times that they were a throw-away feature that got ad hocly dropped in, and yet significant numbers of players like playing fishermen and swapping stories about the virtual big one that got away. > These four secrets together are a tall order. Quite. > An analysis of classic designs based on the above four principles > would argue that: I'm not certain on this, but I suspect that actively ensuring that there are no uber-characters or otherwise stereotypic characters (even if only as a presumed logical ideal to attempt to approach with a real character) is key to this. As soon as you get characters being gradated variations of the same definition you've lost, as you then have a battle for nearest approximate to a single, and thus known, goal, and that instantly reduces the player-apparent complexity of the game down to a selection of which particular uber-target to go for next. If instead all characters are *really* unique (largely guaranteed significant functional difference from all others), then even if you have a limited set of presumed uber-target characters, the path that any given character has to take to get there will be different and *none* of them will arrive at the same or similar locations but will instead create wildly variant approximations of the uber-target. I suspect that once you reach that point that the deviance from the uber-target will then be more interesting than the uber-target, thus actively working to devolve the perceived value of the uber-target. <<Does this make any sense?>> Without digging up the archives, I'm reminded of a post I wrote to Marian on controlling/influencing player actions where I drew the analogy that controlling player actions is much like attempting to control a torrential river rushing (and cutting a channel) across a soft plain (King Knut?). In that model putting up dams is doomed to failure as the torrent will perceive them as targets and aggressively undermine them. In the above character development model, the goal is to create an evenly distributed mesh of minor tributaries (one stream per player), which wander, cross, and fragment the plain. The problem being to prevent larger stream formation. -- J C Lawrence Internet: claw#kanga,nu (Contractor) Internet: coder#kanga,nu ---------(*) Internet: claw#under,engr.sgi.com ...Honorary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith... </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <UL><LI><STRONG>References</STRONG>: <UL> <LI><STRONG><A NAME="00132" HREF="msg00132.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</A></STRONG> <UL><LI><EM>From:</EM> "Koster, Raph" <rkoster#origin,ea.com></LI></UL></LI> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00142.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00144.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD Design doc - Combat</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00140.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00157.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#00143"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#00143"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> <ul><li>Thread context: <BLOCKQUOTE><UL> <LI><STRONG>[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM> <ul compact> <ul compact> <LI><strong><A NAME="00123" HREF="msg00123.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Wed 13 Jan 1999, 01:17 GMT </LI> </ul> <LI><strong><A NAME="00132" HREF="msg00132.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</A></strong>, Koster, Raph <a href="mailto:rkoster#origin,ea.com">rkoster#origin,ea.com</a>, Wed 13 Jan 1999, 16:03 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00139" HREF="msg00139.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</A></strong>, Mik Clarke <a href="mailto:mikclrk#ibm,net">mikclrk#ibm,net</a>, Wed 13 Jan 1999, 20:29 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00140" HREF="msg00140.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</A></strong>, Marian Griffith <a href="mailto:gryphon#iaehv,nl">gryphon#iaehv,nl</a>, Wed 13 Jan 1999, 20:48 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00143" HREF="msg00143.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Wed 13 Jan 1999, 23:04 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00157" HREF="msg00157.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</A></strong>, Andy Cink <a href="mailto:ranthor#earthlink,net">ranthor#earthlink,net</a>, Thu 14 Jan 1999, 03:08 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00134" HREF="msg00134.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</A></strong>, Caliban Tiresias Darklock <a href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</a>, Wed 13 Jan 1999, 16:39 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00138" HREF="msg00138.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</A></strong>, Nathan F Yospe <a href="mailto:yospe#hawaii,edu">yospe#hawaii,edu</a>, Wed 13 Jan 1999, 20:07 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00145" HREF="msg00145.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Wed 13 Jan 1999, 23:19 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </ul> </LI> </UL></BLOCKQUOTE> </ul> <hr> <center> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] </center> <hr> </body> </html>