30 Apr, 2010, Parhelion wrote in the 1st comment:
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Does anyone know if there have been any serious discussions done on the relationship between quantity vs. quality when it comes to player options in MUDs? An example of what I mean here is how some games offer 4-5 races or classes, while others have upwards of 25 (the worst/best offender I've seen thus far is RetroMUD with its expansive class system).

How does offering such a selection pan out for the quality of the MUD? How does it effect its genre, and what sort of players are drawn in?

The topic came up when I was talking with the owner for another MUD. I was attempting to discuss with him the design issues with his race selection when I realized that I had not read anything like this before within the MUD community and it seems like a pretty basic topic for design.
30 Apr, 2010, Lyanic wrote in the 2nd comment:
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The topic has come up before (on TMC, I know), but I can't point you to anything specific. In my own experience, I've found that players tend to gravitate toward quantity, without giving consideration to quality. Let's take your example of races/classes, for instance. Most MUDs (not all, but most) have a very shallow and cookie cutter approach to implementing races/classes. They tend to have only a handful of unique skills/traits/etc each, and they get rehashed endlessly. It's pretty easy to take an existing race/class, copy/paste it, and then change the names of all the skills/traits/etc. That's just about the first thing every newbie MUD coder figures out. The end result is that players become accustomed to this and develop a "more is better" mentality. Therefore, when said players connect to a MUD that has 4-5 races/classes instead of 25-30, they immediately think it's indicative of a less developed game, when in reality it could very well be a more developed game.
30 Apr, 2010, Idealiad wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Yeah, I just searched through some TMC archives but didn't find anything, though I know there's stuff there as Lyanic said.

Maybe one thing to do is list games that are examples of either end of the spectrum. God Wars 2 is a good first example.

I hesitate to say, 'of quality', since there's no reason you can't have quality and quantity, though it's more rare.
30 Apr, 2010, quixadhal wrote in the 4th comment:
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It's rather difficult to provide a large quantity of really good quality races/classes/anything really. The watch-word these days is "balance", and so if you want to provide 20 unique races, and 20 unique classes, and actually have all the race/class combinations which are allowed be balanced against one another AND your PVE content… that's a lot of work.

Look at the current crop of MMO games. Most have about 8-10 races, and about 8-10 classes, which certain combinations locked out. They have multi-million dollar budgets to hire people who do nothing else besides take log files and run the numbers, and look at the sea of whine on the forums, and try to work out which things are out of balance. Every patch, they adjust things and tweak them, for years after launch.

So, while you can have both, you shouldn't really try for both. I would try for quality and let new races or classes come into the game as you find ways to make them really unique. For one thing, that makes the game feel more dynamic, since the players can see it evolve over time.
30 Apr, 2010, Parhelion wrote in the 5th comment:
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I agree with Quix's summation that you shouldn't try for both.

In my experience, though, it seems to be a pretty pivotal topic that depends on what you were trying to do.

There are some considerations here that I'm thinking of that are going to pretty much dictate how you go:
1.) Are you building a MUD that will be centric on the environment and roleplay, or are you building a MUD that is made for PvP or achievement-based (grinder) action?

If you are going for a RP-type MUD, I think the most strategic thing to do is to have fewer races; without even going into how having too many races thins out your already tiny playerbase and writing staff, having too many races gives you the appearance of being "stock" or "unoriginal", and in my experience most roleplayers will see this and pass over it faster than you can blink.

In a PvP MUD, having a variety of races and class selections is vital because those games are concerned with character builds and kit optimization. Providing a wider variety choices provides players with more gameplay time and strategy builds.


2.) Are you looking to throw up a MUD or write one that is original?

Sadly, I feel that the reason there are so many MUDs out there with the huge race or class selection are like that because they come pre-packaged in the newbie-friendly stock MUDs… and even when they don't, how hard is it to come up with a stat list for a race you are already familiar with from generic fantasy? Every time I see "naga", "halfling", and "drow" occupy the same race selection list, I die a little inside.

Although, I have to say, from my Crimson MUD II days, my most favorite races were "satyr" and "snotling". (Mind you, I played female satyrs, for the lolz.)

3.) Are you trying to be successful?

Okay, that's a bit of a slanted question. But I honestly cannot think of that many truly successful games that have some sort of mega char-gen option palooza. Depth is achieved in these games in more subtle ways or through active gameplay, rather than giving players 30 races, 15 start classes, 40 remort classes, 700 levels, and 32,000 skills to choose from.
30 Apr, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 6th comment:
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Lyanic said:
Therefore, when said players connect to a MUD that has 4-5 races/classes instead of 25-30, they immediately think it's indicative of a less developed game, when in reality it could very well be a more developed game.

Agreed, but I think the idea is also propagated by certain listing sites. When someone searches through the TMC listings, for example, they'll see "Extended class selection" and "Extended race selection" as bullet-point listed features, and I can understand how a newbie might interpret these as "enhancements" (compared to a non-extended selection).

Parhelion said:
In a PvP MUD, having a variety of races and class selections is vital because those games are concerned with character builds and kit optimization. Providing a wider variety choices provides players with more gameplay time and strategy builds.

I agree with your second sentence, but not the first. More races and classes don't necessary increase the number of viable choices - and if you're not careful they may even reduce the number, due to the increased difficulty in balancing them combined with spreading their abilities too thinly and/or crossover between different classes and races.

Giving players more options is definitely something worth striving for IMO, but there are many ways to do that - you don't even need races or classes.

On a related note, I've recently been considering merging multiple class concepts together, as there are a lot of potential classes I like, but I don't want to create a full class for each. But it's not easy to decide where to draw the line.
30 Apr, 2010, Lyanic wrote in the 7th comment:
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KaVir said:
On a related note, I've recently been considering merging multiple class concepts together, as there are a lot of potential classes I like, but I don't want to create a full class for each.

Sometimes it's scary how often we independently come up with the same ideas. I started a redesign of my Werewolf class about a year ago (still not implemented) to transform it into a more generic Shapeshifter/Werebeast class, including various subclass selections, such as those mentioned on your forum. I think the one I'm most excited about is Werepenguin.

There are other ideas I've had for classes that didn't seem like they could be fleshed out enough - Lich, Paladin, Geomancer, etc. I plan to roll those into subclasses of the existing classes at some point in the future, as well.
30 Apr, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 8th comment:
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Lyanic said:
I started a redesign of my Werewolf class about a year ago (still not implemented) to transform it into a more generic Shapeshifter/Werebeast class, including various subclass selections, such as those mentioned on your forum. I think the one I'm most excited about is Werepenguin.

Werepenguin?! I quite fancy adding wereraven, and perhaps some other werebirds, but their main advantage over other werecreatures would be their ability to fly. On the other hand, I suppose penguins are superb swimmers who would at least be able to move around on land as well (addressing my main concern with the idea of weresharks), and you could give them a bunch of cold-oriented bonuses.

I've got werefox and werebear already, although I'd like to make them feel a bit more independant from werewolf, and perhaps allow them to branch out a bit (polar werebear, grizzly werebear, etc). Werecats are something I've planned for a long time (branching into weretiger, werelion, werepanther, etc), but I'll keep them thematically dark as I don't want the mud turning into a furryfest. I'm still tempted to keep werecat completely separate from the others, though, and base it on Egyptian mythology.

A werebat would be pretty cool too, I can imagine its hybrid form looking a bit like Markus Corvinus from "Underworld: Evolution", but the main problem is what to call it - "Bubba the wolfman" sounds okay, but "Bubba the batman" sounds plain silly (although I guess he could have a wererobin sidekick). It would also tread on the toes of the vampire class (something people already complain about because of the vampire's ability to shapechange into a wolf).

Lyanic said:
There are other ideas I've had for classes that didn't seem like they could be fleshed out enough - Lich, Paladin, Geomancer, etc. I plan to roll those into subclasses of the existing classes at some point in the future, as well.

I use Geomancer, Pyromancer, Aeromancer and Hydromancer for unclassed spellcasters who specialise in one of the four flavours of elemental magic. These are more like the semiclass idea I played with in GW Deluxe though, they're not real classes.

I'm planning to base Liches on a rough interpretation of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, so that should provide enough thematic flavour to flesh out the concept (no pun intended). A 'Death Lich' would be much like the typical D&D lich, while a 'Famine Lich' would be more like a fantasy ghoul, a 'Pestilence Lich' would be more like an intelligent zombie and a 'War Lich' would be a bit like Death Knight, or perhaps a T'lan Imass. Thus while the class is based on a single theme, it's varied enough to permit a variety of playing styles - exactly what I look for in a potential class.

I already have dracoliches as a subclass route branching from dragon, which makes it tempting to play with the idea of Deluxe-style hybrid classes, but I think I'll avoid doing that.

I don't have paladins, but I've recently been toying with the idea of an... (drawing inspiration from darker themes such as Supernatural and The Prophecy). Once again though, they're not a full class - instead they're a specialised route for the Mage class, whereby they transcend their physical bodies and travel to a higher plane. I've not yet decided whether to explicitly refer to them as angels, but the references should be fairly clear - spiritual beings with feathered wings and flaming swords, who come from a realm of light.
30 Apr, 2010, Lyanic wrote in the 9th comment:
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KaVir said:
I'm planning to base Liches on a rough interpretation of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, so that should provide enough thematic flavour to flesh out the concept (no pun intended). A 'Death Lich' would be much like the typical D&D lich, while a 'Famine Lich' would be more like a fantasy ghoul, a 'Pestilence Lich' would be more like an intelligent zombie and a 'War Lich' would be a bit like Death Knight, or perhaps a T'lan Imass.

I rather like this idea. I was just planning to have Lich (your 'Death Lich') be a subclass of Mage, with both Paladins and Black/Death Knights as subclasses of Knights.

KaVir said:
Thus while the class is based on a single theme, it's varied enough to permit a variety of playing styles - exactly what I look for in a potential class.

I take almost the opposite approach to designing classes. I focus on an overarching play style that embodies the class, only taking care to ensure that it is radically different from that of any of the other classes. As such, most players on my game end up making a character of each class.

KaVir said:
I've not yet decided whether to explicitly refer to them as angels, but the references should be fairly clear - spiritual beings with feathered wings and flaming swords, who come from a realm of light.

Ascended?
30 Apr, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 10th comment:
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Lyanic said:
KaVir said:
Thus while the class is based on a single theme, it's varied enough to permit a variety of playing styles - exactly what I look for in a potential class.

I take almost the opposite approach to designing classes. I focus on an overarching play style that embodies the class, only taking care to ensure that it is radically different from that of any of the other classes. As such, most players on my game end up making a character of each class.

Many players on my game do the same thing - the classes each offer enough unique options and flavour that there's plenty of incentive to try them all. But they're also varied enough to keep people trying out new builds with their old characters. I like seeing diversity among members of the same class.

Lyanic said:
KaVir said:
I've not yet decided whether to explicitly refer to them as angels, but the references should be fairly clear - spiritual beings with feathered wings and flaming swords, who come from a realm of light.

Ascended?

Transcended…mages have four mutually exclusive Belief power - Ascension, Enlightenment, Immanence and Transcendence. Immanence allows the mage to strengthen their connection with the material world, eventually becoming a full elemental being. Transcendence is an opposed viewpoint, whereby the mage transcends beyond the material world entirely. I treat Ascension and Enlightenment as inner beliefs - the mage remains physically human.
30 Apr, 2010, Lyanic wrote in the 11th comment:
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KaVir said:
Many players on my game do the same thing - the classes each offer enough unique options and flavour that there's plenty of incentive to try them all. But they're also varied enough to keep people trying out new builds with their old characters. I like seeing diversity among members of the same class.

I suppose I allow diversity within classes (pick 4 out of 5 of each group of powers type thing), just to a lesser extent than you. On the other hand, I'd say I differentiate each class from the others to a greater extent than you. It balances out (if I discount your dragon class….it's too awesome and makes comparisons unfair).

+1 to thread hijacking
01 May, 2010, Parhelion wrote in the 12th comment:
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Well at least it was meaningful and still relates to design. :P
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