07 Oct, 2007, Chaos wrote in the 1st comment:
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Chances are, if you're reading this, you've had a need for some kind of diminishing returns formula from time to time, and found how a lot of the ones that get thrown around don't necessarily work so well for MUD purposes. After, oh, some years of that, I put one together that does very well for me, and now I've published it on the Lost Souls Grimoire. The reason I don't just put it up as a code snippet is that the way it's presented really works best as a web page; there's an explanation of what it does, interactive calculators so you can see it in action, and code for it in six languages. Anyway, hope folks get some use out of it. :)
07 Oct, 2007, Davion wrote in the 2nd comment:
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Feel free to add it to the articles section. It should facilitate the need for a website presentation.
08 Oct, 2007, Conner wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Ok, it's late, I've finally finished fighting my server to compensate for my slowly dying hard drive after getting home from a week and a half long family road trip, so forgive me if this sounds dimwitted but, can you give an example of where this would be useful in-game?
08 Oct, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
It is useful when you want something to be less useful the more you do it. For example, doing the same skill over and over again might mean you learn less and less. Or killing the same mobs over and over again. Etc. Basically any time you want to add incentive to vary activity (or, put another way, if you want to 'punish' repetition).
08 Oct, 2007, Kayle wrote in the 5th comment:
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I'd actually though of the idea of applying diminishing returns to certain debuffs placed on players in PvP and possibly even PvE. For instance if you had a spell that lowered an enemies resistance to fire, then if they ontinue to cast it as it wears off, they would lower it less and less until it doesn't work at all.
08 Oct, 2007, Conner wrote in the 6th comment:
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Ok, I get it, thanks David.. and Kayle, that's still effecively "punishing repetition". *shrug*
Doesn't Smaug already use something like that for determining Xp when fighting the same mob repeatedly?
08 Oct, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 7th comment:
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Yup, SMAUG keeps a list of previously killed mobs, and the higher the count, the less XP you get. There's also something about int difference coming into play but I don't really remember how.
08 Oct, 2007, Conner wrote in the 8th comment:
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So, couldn't one conceivably just use that same, existing, code elsewhere too if they wanted to? (Not knocking what Chaos has presented here at all, just saying that if we already have it in place, effectively, couldn't we just use it instead of incorporating another function?)
08 Oct, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Sure, if you wanted to. What Chaos has provided is just one way to calculate diminishing returns. Other people use inverse squares, an exponential decrease, linear decrease, and so on. It depends on how quickly you want the returns to diminish. It's a lot easier to understand by comparing different graphs, I think. In any case it's not quite appropriate to say that this formula is the formula for diminishing returns: rather, it's one way among many to scale down a number.
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