22 Feb, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Hello,

My MUD is almost ready for beta and I wanted to toss out a small line to see if anyone wanted to help beta test. I need some good testers to help get my MUD on track before it's full launch to the public. It's important that I have a beta phase because of the strict balanced nature of my game and player-killing systems.

About Vile

My MUD is designed around being an easily accessible game where you can just log in and start killing players. There are no levels just PKILL rank progression. Therefore you start out powerful with little to no grinding right out the box. You just log in, join the battle, and have fun. It's a very simple concept.

There are 4 base classes (necromancer, rogue, warrior, and wizard) with 3 to 5 specialized classes per base class (example: warriors have knight, paladin, brute and weapon master). Each specialized class only has around 10 to 15 abilities (skills or spells). It's designed to be small so you gain more abilities through PKILL rankings.

Players progress through PKILL. You gain PvP experience when you kill other players and that experience levels your PvP Rank. Ranks also give you special points in which you can by special abilities based on your specialized class. You can also buy new sets of armor (armor sets basically) with certain ranks that you gain off the backs of others.

My MUD also features a similar system used in DAOC. We have style chains for our skills. That means you have one skill that's an "Opener", another skill that's your "Followup" and a ending skill that's your "Closer". You must hit with your opener before you can use your followup, and you must hit with your opener and followup before you can use your closer (chain). These are also based on actions you do in combat. If you parry then you could have a style chain just for parrying your opponent. The same follows for other defensive actions like evade and block.

What I need Tested

I need help with classes, abilities they hold, armor they wear and the prizes they gain. I want to make sure the balance is decent enough for players when they seriously start playing. All you will have to do is jump in and play versus other players in combat. Then report any bugs or constructive feedback on the "fun" factor of the game.

Please let me know if you're interested by responding to this thread or sending me a private message.
22 Feb, 2010, Kayle wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Well, the MUD definitely sounds interesting, and I'd be more than willing to help out if I wasn't horrible at testing things. I might jump on after the beta testing phase though, I enjoy a little PK now and again.
22 Feb, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
Littlehorn said:
Players progress through PKILL. You gain PvP experience when you kill other players and that experience levels your PvP Rank. Ranks also give you special points in which you can by special abilities based on your specialized class. You can also buy new sets of armor (armor sets basically) with certain ranks that you gain off the backs of others.

Advancement through PK is a tricky thing to handle. If players can earn exp from killing each other then they'll just create a load of alts as fodder, or even take turns killing each other for mutual benefit.

How does your design address this issue?
22 Feb, 2010, Tonitrus wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Littlehorn said:
Players progress through PKILL. You gain PvP experience when you kill other players and that experience levels your PvP Rank. Ranks also give you special points in which you can by special abilities based on your specialized class. You can also buy new sets of armor (armor sets basically) with certain ranks that you gain off the backs of others.

Even ignoring the issues KaVir mentioned, how will you avoid power inflation? The most skilled players will gain kills and use those kills to advance, making them even better at killing than they already were. This will make them even more effective killers, while leaving their victims just as weak. How do you plan to address this?

I'm all for advancement through pk if you manage to pull it off, I'm just curious as to how you plan to do so.

One method I've seen is to make increases in damage come with decreases in health, so that more powerful people get more and more lethal, while also getting more fragile. In theory this is a feasible way to do it, but in practice I'm not sure it works so well, and some people would prefer health to damage.
23 Feb, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Littlehorn said:
Players progress through PKILL. You gain PvP experience when you kill other players and that experience levels your PvP Rank. Ranks also give you special points in which you can by special abilities based on your specialized class. You can also buy new sets of armor (armor sets basically) with certain ranks that you gain off the backs of others.

Advancement through PK is a tricky thing to handle. If players can earn exp from killing each other then they'll just create a load of alts as fodder, or even take turns killing each other for mutual benefit.

How does your design address this issue?


Diminishing returns on kills, no-multiplaying and enforced no-free kill rules. Kills are recorded for player tracking; it will be obvious to those outside and inside the bubble. We have been apart of similar systems for nearly 8 years now enforcing the same logics with little to no problems. It would only be a problem, logically, if the MUD grew so large that kills were happening every minutes to every second where no one paid any attention to the statistics behind it. I hope we get to that point. I want that problem. :)


Tonitrus said:
Littlehorn said:
Players progress through PKILL. You gain PvP experience when you kill other players and that experience levels your PvP Rank. Ranks also give you special points in which you can by special abilities based on your specialized class. You can also buy new sets of armor (armor sets basically) with certain ranks that you gain off the backs of others.

Even ignoring the issues KaVir mentioned, how will you avoid power inflation? The most skilled players will gain kills and use those kills to advance, making them even better at killing than they already were. This will make them even more effective killers, while leaving their victims just as weak. How do you plan to address this?

I'm all for advancement through pk if you manage to pull it off, I'm just curious as to how you plan to do so.

One method I've seen is to make increases in damage come with decreases in health, so that more powerful people get more and more lethal, while also getting more fragile. In theory this is a feasible way to do it, but in practice I'm not sure it works so well, and some people would prefer health to damage.


I think you mean, "How will you scale the good players from the bad players?" You can sub out good/bad with hardcore/casual or whatever you like. The intention is that skilled players are on top. This is not a game designed around not rewarding players skill, knowledge and tactics. I don't think there are any good games out there that don't reward players for being "good". Besides the poor choice of clarification, you're right. Scaling is very important to this system. I'll try to break it down into pieces for you.

Your character only grows stronger in items and abilities that the player must select when advancing in rank. Items for one are not as important to your character as you may assume. They do have value but don't solely determine the outcome of the fight. The intention is to be scaled in small increments and not huge bursts. This will keep the gap between lower ranking players versus higher ranking players very small.

There will still be a gap, the gap is not the enemy.

Ranking is designed around your standard leveling progression system. It's based on the power of the character and the power of your target. Then you toss a cap in there just in case the power of your character figures out how to defeat god. In our system, you don't lose experience from death. You only move forward, therefore new players have only one direction to go – up. This helps bridge the gap some more.

Depending on beta testing, there may be a system in place to boost players if they are too low or restrict them all together (range). I'm leaning away from that until I see further stastics on how slow players may progress in the system. If anything, adjustments will be made so that if you're fighting someone too high of rank, your characters power is slightly boosted and or your opponens is slightly reduced.

I'm more incline to follow the above than decreasing health. Health is meaningless in a system where you have 10 on 1.

Thanks for the feedback.
23 Feb, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Littlehorn said:
Diminishing returns on kills, no-multiplaying and enforced no-free kill rules.

Diminishing returns won't help against alts, but it'll be a pretty big hurdle for legit players if your playerbase is small, which will make it more difficult to reach critical mass. It may also result in a feeding frenzy when some fresh meat (i.e., a newbie) connects, and that's going to make it even harder to build up a playerbase. A pure PK mud cannot survive without players.

Multiplaying isn't something you can stop. You can reduce it by laying the smack down on the worst of the offenders, but it'll cost you a few legit players along the way, and it will still happen. It's an issue on many muds, but your game rewards multiplaying far more than most, and your target audience is likely to be particularly competitive.

I'm not quite sure what "enforced no-free kill rules" are. Are you proposing handing out punishments to players if you feel they didn't put up enough of a fight? What if they're just plain incompetent? What if they're an alt playing through a proxy and pretending to be incompetent?
23 Feb, 2010, Runter wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
I'm not quite sure what "enforced no-free kill rules" are. Are you proposing handing out punishments to players if you feel they didn't put up enough of a fight? What if they're just plain incompetent? What if they're an alt playing through a proxy and pretending to be incompetent?


Doesn't sound too far out there considering all the MUDs enforcing varying RP related rules.


My only suggestion, as a long time PVPer myself, is to make the game less experience-level-whatever-centric to your players power base. At the end of the day, no matter how much someone games your system to gain stats, the great equalizer should be not being able to game the actual serious competition when the time comes.
23 Feb, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Littlehorn said:
Diminishing returns on kills, no-multiplaying and enforced no-free kill rules.

Diminishing returns won't help against alts, but it'll be a pretty big hurdle for legit players if your playerbase is small, which will make it more difficult to reach critical mass. It may also result in a feeding frenzy when some fresh meat (i.e., a newbie) connects, and that's going to make it even harder to build up a playerbase. A pure PK mud cannot survive without players.

Multiplaying isn't something you can stop. You can reduce it by laying the smack down on the worst of the offenders, but it'll cost you a few legit players along the way, and it will still happen. It's an issue on many muds, but your game rewards multiplaying far more than most, and your target audience is likely to be particularly competitive.

I'm not quite sure what "enforced no-free kill rules" are. Are you proposing handing out punishments to players if you feel they didn't put up enough of a fight? What if they're just plain incompetent? What if they're an alt playing through a proxy and pretending to be incompetent?


I understand where you're going with this KaViR but you're being a bit too extreme. I only say this from personal experience in MUD's with similar PvP Progression systems and what they have done to reduce the problems. Nothing you have mentioned is new nor being ignored for the future of this project.

New players will be encouraged to fight and die. Death has no loss other than personal opinions. I didn't include any type of loss here because it hinders the quality of PvP. That means, in my personal experience, players who have a lot to lose don't fight as much or they only fight when they can win (for example: ganking).

You are right, multiplaying is always a issue for all MUDs even Godwars. I'm sure detection on such things will be hasty and dealt with accordingly. However, one thing you are mistaken. Being high rank does not have a huge impact on the player base. But it's very possible it happens and no, I don't believe it will magically slip by our knowledge that some mysterious person with friends that have ip's from all over the world (proxies) is mysteriously one of the highest ranking players on the game.

We've enforced no-free kills for many years with no problems. This includes punishments that are normally warnings with stats reset to bannings if for some reason the player doesn't understand it's exploiting the system. This would be more common than multiplayers and in my experience, the amount of people who died on purpose were obvious, reported by the players and or detected because they were quitting the game with a bang.

This is not me saying there wont be problems but in my experience with similar systems for many many years it's not that extreme. Feel free to disagree with that, but it's only opinion; not fact. :biggrin:
23 Feb, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Littlehorn said:
I understand where you're going with this KaViR but you're being a bit too extreme. I only say this from personal experience in MUD's with similar PvP Progression systems and what they have done to reduce the problems.

Which muds, out of curiousity? I don't recall ever hearing of a pure PK mud which offered advancement through PK, but I'd definitely be interested to see how they avoided the issues I listed without driving off their playerbase.

Every PK mud I can think of either has PvE as well, or no advancement at all. The former works because it allows PK exp to come indirectly from mobs (the PvE players earn exp and the PvP players steal exp). The latter works because there's no tangible benefit to serve as an incentive for killing alts.
23 Feb, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Littlehorn said:
I understand where you're going with this KaViR but you're being a bit too extreme. I only say this from personal experience in MUD's with similar PvP Progression systems and what they have done to reduce the problems.

Which muds, out of curiousity? I don't recall ever hearing of a pure PK mud which offered advancement through PK, but I'd definitely be interested to see how they avoided the issues I listed without driving off their playerbase.

Every PK mud I can think of either has PvE as well, or no advancement at all. The former works because it allows PK exp to come indirectly from mobs (the PvE players earn exp and the PvP players steal exp). The latter works because there's no tangible benefit to serve as an incentive for killing alts.


Devil's Silence (1998). The original launch didn't have PvP ranking but later on (I believe around 2000) they added PKILL Ranking system. You had 2 tiers (went to 3 tiers around 2001) and leveling to max took about a hour and end game was entirely clan based PvP. PvE was correctly adjusted to only support the PvP platform (how you attain your items and quested for new ones). This MUD is on it's last leg now that it has been shutdown and the code being distributed around (much like Godwars when you had your code stolen). It has spawned other similar MUD's like ParadoxMUD and has been played by a dedicated community of PKillers for many many years.

This was our game to play outside of Godwars. We didn't like Godwars and the concept was not for us. We played what we believe to be the only PKILL MUD on the net compared to all others at that time. The systems and designs for my MUD are influenced by Devil's Silence, the one true PKILL MUD in my mind. I want to honor it's developers (Alecca/Darhoth/Garathel/etc) with a new MUD they would be proud to have influenced and would also play.

Let me know if you have any more questions KaViR. You're not the only one here who has been designing MUD's since the 90's. :evil:
23 Feb, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Every PK mud I can think of either has PvE as well, or no advancement at all.


Littlehorn said:
You had 2 tiers (went to 3 tiers around 2001) and leveling to max took about a hour and end game was entirely clan based PvP.

But surely that's just PvE until you hit maximum level, followed by PvP with no advancement - i.e., the two approaches I described above?

On the other hand, I suppose if you can max out your character in an hour then you could probably get away with pure PvP advancement, as it's hardly worth the hassle of creating alts if you're going to hit maximum in an hour anyway. I hadn't realised it would be quite that fast to reach the top level, but if that is the case then I agree your proposal looks a lot less abusable.

You'll still have issues with the initial players logging on and having no way to advance, and having people max after an hour won't help either, but I presume you've other activities to keep people entertained while waiting for opponents to connect. Will there be any mobs at all, perhaps for practicing player (as opposed to character) skills?
23 Feb, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
KaVir said:
Every PK mud I can think of either has PvE as well, or no advancement at all.


Littlehorn said:
You had 2 tiers (went to 3 tiers around 2001) and leveling to max took about a hour and end game was entirely clan based PvP.

But surely that's just PvE until you hit maximum level, followed by PvP with no advancement - i.e., the two approaches I described above?

On the other hand, I suppose if you can max out your character in an hour then you could probably get away with pure PvP advancement, as it's hardly worth the hassle of creating alts if you're going to hit maximum in an hour anyway. I hadn't realised it would be quite that fast to reach the top level, but if that is the case then I agree your proposal looks a lot less abusable.

You'll still have issues with the initial players logging on and having no way to advance, and having people max after an hour won't help either, but I presume you've other activities to keep people entertained while waiting for opponents to connect. Will there be any mobs at all, perhaps for practicing player (as opposed to character) skills?


Devil's Silence was designed for fast leveling. There is no real leveling in Vile other than your rank. The rank defines your standing in PvP and can define what new progression your character attain (items/abilities). This is the same logic applied to your traditional FPS. You don't play your traditional FPS to progress with items; you play to progress in standing (if any exist but in today's game they do. Reference: Team Fortress II, Battlefield II)

The problem with having nothing to do is what plagued Devil's Silence over time. Even though there were people on, no one were fighting. They were not fighting because the loss was too great (looting, rank decrease). In Vile, you don't have looting and you don't loose ranking on death. There shouldn't be a reason why you're not fighting in my MUD unless you don't want to show others your death (pride, can't escape this ever). Therefore, the design is encouraging you to always fight if people are on. Giving you less downtime spending twiddling your thumbs. The downtime will always exist however, as any game online. I'm focused on reducing it as much as possible rather than trying to eliminate it.

I have thought about countering downtime in extreme cases by offering crafting and solo encounters in the PvP areas. There will be boss encounters where players can run through a epic encounter to attain a special loot drop. It would be simple, short and random. Crafting is being given to certain classes to add more theme to the specialized class. For example, Shades are Rogues who specialize in poisons and toxic offense. They will have Envenom, where they can craft poisons to be applied to weapons (DoT's, DD, Debuffs). Both of these systems support and play in PvP.

The design here is not your traditional cookie-cutter MUD. The idea is simple. You log in, you fight, you have fun. It's really simple to understand. In my opinion, it's really what Godwars should have been about the most to me. Casual friendly gameplay that has good PvP. Much like the gameplay you get from logging on Counter Strike for a hour, killing some people and then logging off.

Hope that better addresses your concerns.
23 Feb, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Littlehorn said:
Devil's Silence was designed for fast leveling. There is no real leveling in Vile other than your rank. The rank defines your standing in PvP and can define what new progression your character attain (items/abilities). This is the same logic applied to your traditional FPS. You don't play your traditional FPS to progress with items; you play to progress in standing (if any exist but in today's game they do. Reference: Team Fortress II, Battlefield II)

True, but FPSers don't generally have persistent character improvement. You might earn cash to buy better weapons and armour next round (eg CounterStrike), but these are usually short-term benefits. Experience is earned by the player rather than the character, and advancement (if any) tends to be primarily cosmetic.

A good example of a mud working like a FPS would be Genocide (I believe it was actually the first pure PK mud).

Littlehorn said:
I have thought about countering downtime in extreme cases by offering crafting and solo encounters in the PvP areas. There will be boss encounters where players can run through a epic encounter to attain a special loot drop. It would be simple, short and random.

Not sure about the crafting (those who love crafting rarely seem to enjoy pure PK, and vice versa), but solo activities definitely helped me build up a playerbase back when I was running Gladiator Pits III. Originally there were no mobs at all, and it was very difficult to get people to stay online (which resulted in the usual vicious circle). Providing some NPC opponents for combat practice resulted in people hanging around longer, increasing the chances of someone being online when a new player connected. The mud had no advancement (other than a PK rating) so there was no mechanical benefit from killing mobs, but it wasn't a bad way to improve your playing skill.

Two other approaches I've found effective are:

1) Scheduled events that run at the same time every day, encouraging players to log on at specific times. Many players will go out of their way to visit for the event, but often get caught up while they're on and end up hanging around a lot longer than they'd intended.

2) Private safe locations where people can chill out for a while, or if they just want to chat for a bit, or keep an eye on things when they're too busy to give the mud their full attention. Some PKers seem to hate the concept of "safe zones", but the fact is every mud has them - if they're not explicitly provided in-game, the "quit" command will provide an offline "safe zone". The difference is that if the players are online, they're far more likely to get drawn into in-game events and PK challenges - and new players are much more likely to hang around if the game doesn't appear deserted.
23 Feb, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
I would rather add more defined systems that improved PvP value, like territory control for clans. There are many avenues to take in order to keep people online and active I think. It's something that can be addressed when the time comes but first, beta to see the feedback.
23 Feb, 2010, agricola wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Littlehorn said:
Devil's Silence was designed for fast leveling. There is no real leveling in Vile other than your rank. The rank defines your standing in PvP and can define what new progression your character attain (items/abilities). This is the same logic applied to your traditional FPS. You don't play your traditional FPS to progress with items; you play to progress in standing (if any exist but in today's game they do. Reference: Team Fortress II, Battlefield II)

Your proposed system has players unlocking new abilities/items/whatever as they reach new ranks - something that is only achievable through PvP victory. The more skilled players will hence have access to more abilities/items/whatever than the less skilled players - these extra abilities/items/whatever will presumably give them some sort of advantage over those that don't have them.

That's like giving more powerful guns to Battlefield 2 players after they've tallied 100 kills.

It's effectively a level system in which levels are called 'ranks', experience points are called 'player kills' and there's absolutely no penalty for death. This is not a bad thing, but it is quite different from the BF2 system (and most other FPSes), which doesn't give particularly skilled players further, artificial advantages over others by boosting their stats, equipment or versatility.

As KaVir points out, some FPS games do have fairly simple advancement systems but these are not persistent, and games like CounterStrike also have minor death penalties (you lose all your equipment as well as some cash).

Twinking on WoW really irritated me because regardless of whether I was more skilled than a particular twink I generally couldn't beat them one on one due to their superior equipment. This is something you want to avoid with your advancement system because if newbies can never beat higher ranked opponents, they'll quit the game. How you balance the top rank with the bottom in such a way that people are both able to and encouraged to advance, I don't know. In many ways I think PvP advancement should be more about ego stroking than tangible benefits.

In any case, I've never been particularly great at MUD PK, but I like the idea of PK advancement. I really enjoyed DAoC for the brief time that I played it. Its predecessor was a MUD, I believe, and I know of a couple MUDs that have taken inspiration from it (I'm doing so myself). Out of interest, what base are you using, if any?
23 Feb, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
You get better abilities that fit different roles. Not really more powerful. It does add to your characters overall usefulness and ability to counter in battle. You can translate this into increased power if you like. There has to be some power increase, I'm just trying to make clear it's not in huge bursts. The gap needs to be there to make the content more challenging (hopefully).

Twinking on WoW was more item based. Most of your characters power came from items. In a sense, it made you feel overpowering thus keeping people hooked on twinking. However, that is not us and we will avoid making items rule the outcome of the fight other than using certain items correctly (weapons, debuffs from items etc).

It started out in ROT but I have ripped out my systems and put them into QuickMUD (ROM). It was a better base to build from in the long run.
23 Feb, 2010, Runter wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
True, but FPSers don't generally have persistent character improvement.


All the FPSers I've been involved with in the last so many years do. Usually levels, character talent trees, equipment, etc etc. The two I'm currently playing a ton of is MWF2 and MAG.
23 Feb, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
Quote
True, but FPSers don't generally have persistent character improvement.


All the FPSers I've been involved with in the last so many years do. Usually levels, character talent trees, equipment, etc etc. The two I'm currently playing a ton of is MWF2 and MAG.


Well I admit it's been quite a few years since I last played a FPS, but in the old days I would just fire up the game and start from scratch each time. I used to be a big fan of Quake and Half-Life mods.

However I did play a little Battlefield 2 a couple of years ago, and reading over it again it seems you can unlock features as you progress. I don't remember the advantages being particularly noteworthy though - certainly nothing even remotely close to the sort of character power difference you'd see between newbies and top players in most graphical or text muds.
23 Feb, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
However I did play a little Battlefield 2 a couple of years ago, and reading over it again it seems you can unlock features as you progress. I don't remember the advantages being particularly noteworthy though - certainly nothing even remotely close to the sort of character power difference you'd see between newbies and top players in most graphical or text muds.

Apparently Modern Warfare 2 has all kinds of unlockable perks that give you very clear and sometimes dramatic advantages over people without them, like laser sights, silent footsteps, invisibility from aircraft, etc. I don't play the game so I can't say much more, but I think there's a clear trend in current FPSs that isn't really comparable to the FPSs of old like Quake and Half-Life.
23 Feb, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
KaVir said:
However I did play a little Battlefield 2 a couple of years ago, and reading over it again it seems you can unlock features as you progress. I don't remember the advantages being particularly noteworthy though - certainly nothing even remotely close to the sort of character power difference you'd see between newbies and top players in most graphical or text muds.

Apparently Modern Warfare 2 has all kinds of unlockable perks that give you very clear and sometimes dramatic advantages over people without them, like laser sights, silent footsteps, invisibility from aircraft, etc. I don't play the game so I can't say much more, but I think there's a clear trend in current FPSs that isn't really comparable to the FPSs of old like Quake and Half-Life.


This is correct and it's a good thing. They keep people sticky.
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