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<H1>[MUD-Dev] Re: PvP and mob capacities (was "List Peerage")</H1>
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<LI><em>To</em>: <<A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A>></LI>
<LI><em>Subject</em>: [MUD-Dev] Re: PvP and mob capacities (was "List Peerage")</LI>
<LI><em>From</em>: "Caliban Tiresias Darklock" <<A HREF="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</A>></LI>
<LI><em>Date</em>: Mon, 25 Jan 1999 13:32:10 -0800</LI>
<LI><em>Reply-To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI>
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<PRE>
-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Cink <ranthor#earthlink,net>
To: mud-dev#kanga,nu <mud-dev#kanga,nu>
Date: Monday, January 25, 1999 12:53 PM
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: META: list "peerage"
>At 02:25 AM 1/25/99 -0800, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
>>Having been deeply involved in Telmaron, the first reasonably successful
>>commercial MUD provider, I take that a little personally. ;)
>
>I have to state that I was referring specifically to mudservices,
>and the mudservices clones that have been popping up like weeds in
>the last year or two. I meant no offense to your specific provider :)
>(Or to anyone's, honestly)
I know you didn't, but I still had to stand up and go HEY! ;)
>The goal of mudservices appears to get more new people into the market.
I think we've had several long and heated threads about whether this is a
good thing or not. ;)
>Somebody must know something tho, there's quite a bit of
>mud hosting available for purchase nowadays.
I think a large amount of the "profit" realised by a MUD provider is having
that T1 in the basement. ;)
>>Or, conversely, that if this is what PvP combat boils down to, something
is
>>seriously wrong with it.
>
>Actually, I think the problem is a lack of balance in the game systems.
I've
>seen a lot of muds where the players are fairly well balanced against the
>mobs, but to make the players strong enough to kill the mobs, the players
>wind up being so strong they kill each other way too fast.
How I've dealt with this: a player is ALWAYS harder to kill than a mob. Mobs
just sit there and need to be smacked. Players can set decoys, lay traps,
and conceal their capabilities. I like to make the game something which can
be played deceptively. Look, there's a guy with only 200 fighters, and we
have 40,000! Let's kill him! Oops... he REALLY had 98,000 fighters... I
*hate* camouflage... I think I'll go back to whacking enemy fighters, at
least you know what you're getting into there.
>Maybe the problem isn't balanced PvP, but just general imbalance in the
>mud? My oldest and biggest mud pet peeve is that mobs can often do things
>that a player cannot do.
My system gives a LOT more capability to the player than to the mobs. Mobs
are pretty basic; they only really know "us" and "not-us", and their
standard mobprog equivalent would be "if not-us then
whack-repeatedly-with-big-stick". Not very sophisticated, I know, although
there are some mitigating factors like the "hit list": the enemy does
coordinate on a strategic level, but it's really sort of like overwhelming
the player with lots of angry hornets. All they know is that someone threw a
rock at the nest, and all they can do about it is swarm and sting. But that
doesn't make them any less distasteful to be around. ;)
>Every time a new mud starts
>up, it spreads the supply of people willing to work on a mud that
>much thinner. Every other mud has that much more difficulty finding
>builders and coders.
I would strike toward the root of this problem by examining the idea that
playing a combat MUD bears little or no resemblance to running one, which is
in stark contrast to MUSH and those other servers which provide a restricted
but reasonably equivalent coding/building interface to the playerbase at
large.
| Caliban Tiresias Darklock caliban#darklock,com
| Darklock Communications <A HREF="http://www.darklock.com/">http://www.darklock.com/</A>
| U L T I M A T E U N I V E R S E I S N O T D E A D
| 774577496C6C6E457645727355626D4974H -=CABAL::3146=-
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<ul><li>Thread context:
<BLOCKQUOTE><UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00282" HREF="msg00282.html">[MUD-Dev] exploration points</A></strong>,
diablo <a href="mailto:diablo#best,com">diablo#best,com</a>, Tue 26 Jan 1999, 11:42 GMT
<LI><strong><A NAME="00281" HREF="msg00281.html">[MUD-Dev]</A></strong>,
Juha Lindfors <a href="mailto:jplindfo#cc,helsinki.fi">jplindfo#cc,helsinki.fi</a>, Tue 26 Jan 1999, 09:37 GMT
<LI><strong><A NAME="00271" HREF="msg00271.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Reset Death</A></strong>,
Quzah [softhome] <a href="mailto:quzah#softhome,net">quzah#softhome,net</a>, Mon 25 Jan 1999, 23:41 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00287" HREF="msg00287.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Reset Death</A></strong>,
Wes Connell <a href="mailto:wconnell#eden,com">wconnell#eden,com</a>, Tue 26 Jan 1999, 16:50 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00264" HREF="msg00264.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: PvP and mob capacities (was "List Peerage")</A></strong>,
Caliban Tiresias Darklock <a href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</a>, Mon 25 Jan 1999, 21:36 GMT
<LI><strong><A NAME="00263" HREF="msg00263.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Who is? (was about level vs skills)</A></strong>,
Caliban Tiresias Darklock <a href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</a>, Mon 25 Jan 1999, 21:24 GMT
<LI><strong><A NAME="00259" HREF="msg00259.html">[MUD-Dev] Who is? (was about level vs skills)</A></strong>,
Marian Griffith <a href="mailto:gryphon#iaehv,nl">gryphon#iaehv,nl</a>, Mon 25 Jan 1999, 19:47 GMT
<LI><strong><A NAME="00253" HREF="msg00253.html">[MUD-Dev] Reset Death</A></strong>,
Wes Connell <a href="mailto:wconnell#eden,com">wconnell#eden,com</a>, Mon 25 Jan 1999, 16:54 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00261" HREF="msg00261.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Reset Death</A></strong>,
Mik Clarke <a href="mailto:mikclrk#ibm,net">mikclrk#ibm,net</a>, Mon 25 Jan 1999, 20:35 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
</UL></BLOCKQUOTE>
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