13 Jun, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 61st comment:
Votes: 0
flumpy said:
no its part of the game. It is not playing the game at all.

Well it would depend on the individual game, but in most muds there is a clear goal - to reach the top "level". Achieving that requires you to complete challenges (usually consisting of killing mobs), which in turn requires you to master the rules (which includes learning how to create a strong character).

If you don't want players doing that, then you should change the rules and/or goal to encourage a different style of play. Otherwise you're sending out conflicting signals - the mechanics suggest one style of play, while the staff promote another.
14 Jun, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 62nd comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
flumpy said:
no its part of the game. It is not playing the game at all.

Well it would depend on the individual game, but in most muds there is a clear goal - to reach the top "level". Achieving that requires you to complete challenges (usually consisting of killing mobs), which in turn requires you to master the rules (which includes learning how to create a strong character).

If you don't want players doing that, then you should change the rules and/or goal to encourage a different style of play. Otherwise you're sending out conflicting signals - the mechanics suggest one style of play, while the staff promote another.


That, right there, is the distinction between an actual Role Playing Game, and the perverted number shoot-em-ups we have today, which are what most kids think of when they see RPG. In a real RPG, the goal is to finish the adventure, which will result in your character evolving, developing new skills, and becoming more powerful in the process. Computer "RPGs" have flipped it around so the goal is to become the most powerful character, with the story as optional descriptive fluff to keep you entertained as you level.
14 Jun, 2009, flumpy wrote in the 63rd comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
That, right there, is the distinction between an actual Role Playing Game, and the perverted number shoot-em-ups we have today, which are what most kids think of when they see RPG. In a real RPG, the goal is to finish the adventure, which will result in your character evolving, developing new skills, and becoming more powerful in the process. Computer "RPGs" have flipped it around so the goal is to become the most powerful character, with the story as optional descriptive fluff to keep you entertained as you level.


… in a nutshell.
14 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 64th comment:
Votes: 0
I thought that RPGs were more about character development in general than finishing an "adventure" – that is already specializing the notion of a role-playing game.
14 Jun, 2009, flumpy wrote in the 65th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
I thought that RPGs were more about character development in general than finishing an "adventure" – that is already specializing the notion of a role-playing game.


AFAIK the only qualification for an RPG is that you assume some sort of "role" and, er, play some kind of game… the rest is kinda open to interpretation
14 Jun, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 66th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
I thought that RPGs were more about character development in general than finishing an "adventure" – that is already specializing the notion of a role-playing game.

I would say that even character development doesn't need to the main focus of an RPG. In my opinion, an RPG is simply a game in which the players assume the roles of fictional characters, with rules for determining the outcome of their actions.

There are many ways to play an RPG, although different systems better support different styles. Take a look at the old D&D system, where exp was almost entirely earned from killing monsters, a task that was made easier the stronger your character was. Thus the game itselfactually rewarded you for optimsing your character, even if the practice of doing so was frowned upon by certain cliches - which in turn resulted in some players deliberately creating weak characters, as if that somehow "proved" they were better roleplayers.

Personally I don't mind how people run their RPGs, as long as everyone is having fun. I'm actually running a tabletop D&D campaign at the moment, where the primarily focus is on the story - therefore I don't award exp at all. Instead, the players simply gain levels at predetermined turning points in the story.

However muds aren't necessarily RPGs (at least not in the tabletop sense of the word). Only a minority of them require the players to assume (and act out) a role - in most muds it's perfectly acceptable to treat your character as your playing piece in the game. Flumpy referred to Nanvaent as being his mud, and Nanvaent lists itself on TMC as a "Non-Roleplaying Mud", so I don't think he was refering to roleplaying when he made his "playing the game" comments.
14 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 67th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
I thought that RPGs were more about character development in general than finishing an "adventure" – that is already specializing the notion of a role-playing game.


At least for most muds I have played this certainly rings true.
14 Jun, 2009, flumpy wrote in the 68th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Flumpy referred to Nanvaent as being his mud, and Nanvaent lists itself on TMC as a "Non-Roleplaying Mud", so I don't think he was refering to roleplaying when he made his "playing the game" comments.


OK let me clarify my comments one more time.

"Playing the game" involves more than just crunching the numbers.

I have been a game player for most of my childhood and adult life, and although numbers in the games I play are useful, if the story or game does not challenge me or keep my interest I will not play for long. I want some realism, balanced with some strategy (numbers or no), and I want to advance if I get something right and expect to be punished if I get something wrong.

Even if I play in a mediocre way I will expect not to be as good as the guy who figured it all out BUT I want to be rewarded when I've spent 13 hours of my life figuring out which button to push or slaying 1000 orcs and killing their king. Even if I did have to spend all my gold or whatever just to do it.

Whether the numbers are big or small does not matter to me.

DON'T GET ME WRONG

I want to see numbers sometimes (I actually expect them in some places) like my +2 bastard sword or whatever. But that should be an element of the gameplay, not the be all and end all. Otherwise it all just turns into a big game of rock paper scissors (yawn).

(actual roleplay in the sense described above never really comes into it for me btw, although I must give it a go one day)

[edited to add the rock paper scissors thing]
14 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 69th comment:
Votes: 0
flumpy said:
KaVir said:
Flumpy referred to Nanvaent as being his mud, and Nanvaent lists itself on TMC as a "Non-Roleplaying Mud", so I don't think he was refering to roleplaying when he made his "playing the game" comments.


OK let me clarify my comments one more time.

"Playing the game" involves more than just crunching the numbers.

I have been a game player for most of my childhood and adult life, and although numbers in the games I play are useful, if the story or game does not challenge me or keep my interest I will not play for long. I want some realism, balanced with some strategy (numbers or no), and I want to advance if I get something right and expect to be punished if I get something wrong.

Even if I play in a mediocre way I will expect not to be as good as the guy who figured it all out BUT I want to be rewarded when I've spent 13 hours of my life figuring out which button to push or slaying 1000 orcs and killing their king. Even if I did have to spend all my gold or whatever just to do it.

Whether the numbers are big or small does not matter to me.

DON'T GET ME WRONG

I want to see numbers sometimes (I actually expect them in some places) like my +2 bastard sword or whatever. But that should be an element of the gameplay, not the be all and end all.

(actual roleplay in the sense described above never really comes into it for me btw, although I must give it a go one day)


I like a good healthy dose of randomness too. :)
14 Jun, 2009, flumpy wrote in the 70th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
I like a good healthy dose of randomness too. :)


hell yea


but I'd like a couple of warning shots across the bow first please..
You hear the floorboards creak beneath your feet. Further north the floor looks more unstable.

>n

You go north.

[description of old house]

You foot goes through one of the floorboards! You better think about moving quick!

>n

As you start to move further north, the floorboards give way beneath your feet! You plummet downward…

You plummet downward…

Ouch! That hurt!!

..

Of course the floorboards giving way was random. But I was given a warning.
14 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 71st comment:
Votes: 0
I'd like to see a perception stat or something determining the warnings, but yeah. :)
14 Jun, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 72nd comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
I heartily disagree with this statement. The logical conclusion of your argument is that essentially random choices should yield a character just as powerful as choices made very deliberately, which strikes me as a far more broken game design. There's a difference between extreme min-maxing that tweaks things to the "basis point" (0.01 of a percent point) level, and making a coherent set of choices.


So you're saying that the goal of a game is entirely about the skills and abilities you select in some character menu somewhere instead of how well the player plays the actual game itself? By that reasoning, any game that lacks character customization is pointless. You might as well remove combat, crafting, exploration, and socializing from your game because those are just superfluous time wasters compared to the real meat of the game: figuring out which combination of skills gives you the best stats and abilities.

Quote
Surely, somebody who adds a single point to ten kinds of elemental magic will be less powerful than somebody who adds all of the points to a single one: it's very hard to justify that the first character should be equally able to function in the world on average as the latter.


Why not? I mean, sure, if you assume that more points in any element of magic means your spells from that element are more powerful, and that 10 points in one element means that you can do 10x more damage than someone with 1 point in each element because of the specific math you decided to put behind it all, then you are correct. There is no game design rule that states that's how it has to work, though. You are explicitly choosing a game design that lets the player shoot himself in the foot; there is nothing at all forcing you to do that, though. That's 100% entirely on you if you decide to make your game work that way.

Quote
Surely you agree that some level of specialization is helpful to game design, which implies naturally that some choices can be worse than others.


Sure, specialization is pretty important in a multi-player game design. So force the players to specialize! Don't even give them the option of spreading out skills to the point they have made an underpowered, useless character! If magic element specialization is required, don't let the player put 1 point into each element! There are a million ways to avoid this problem, David. Make skills mutually exclusive. Get rid of the pure point system and go with a tag-and-auto-level system or use a pure class system. Use a power/ability/perk/feat-based tree system instead of a skill-based one. Or heck, just make it so that picking 10 elements _is_ just as useful as having one element, like D&D has done with its Wizards since the 70's (clearly there's some prior art here to build off of). Let the players change skill assignments so if they find out they did make a broken character, they can fix it without wasting half a year building a new one. Alter your mechanics so having 10 points in one element means you get 10x damage multiplier for your spells and that you can cast 10x as many spells, while having 1 point in each element means you still get a 10x damage multiplier for all spells and you can cast 10x as many spells but only by using all the spells (e.g., magic power level is the sum of all element skills, and individual elemental skills simply reduce the casting cost of each element or increase the per-element mana pools or reduce casting time or so on). I'm sure you could come up with 20 more solutions with 5 minutes of brainstorming.

If your design makes it possible for a player to sink 60+ hours (or full days even) into making a broken character (at either end of the spectrum) then your game design needs at least a tiny bit of adjustment.

Quote
But it doesn't follow that all possible choices should be equally viable (viable in the sense of having a fair share of ups and downs, of course).


Yes it does. Because the point of a game is to _play the game_, not to stalk the forums to figure out which combination of 50 different skills lets you p0wn n00bs the best. Nobody wants to play a game where the PVP boils down to Bob the Badass always winning because he just comes in and uses his Megaflare spell he got by picking the right Skill Lottery numbers during character leveling, and nobody wants to play a game when large parts of the content are unplayable because they require the character's numbers to be shuffled in the proper order. Nobody wants to find out 40 hours into playing that haha, only n00bs put points into Survival because its a near useless RP skill and wasting points in it means you'll always be stuck behind the curve, or that haha, spreading out magic skills doesn't mean that you're well-rounded and learned, it just means that you're now equivalent to a pack of level 1 kobold shamans that any level 3 character built by a l337 d00d can wipe out in two rounds of combat.

The only way a player's character creation choices should negatively affect him is if he chooses to build a character he doesn't like due solely to his own preferences, and not because his choices created a character that is ineffective and unfun for him or anyone else to play. if a player likes hack-and-slash and he built a wizard, okay, he screwed up, and that's entirely his bad. But if he wants to play a hack-and-slash character and thinks axes are cool and picks axe-specialization skills and abilities, and then 4 months and 80 levels later finds out that the best equipment and best abilities are only available to characters who specialize in swords, he's going to be pretty fraking pissed off. And he's going to wonder why the hell the game even put axe specialization in at all. Same as the people who spread out their elemental magic skills – perfectly logically thinking that that would make them more well-rounded and useful as a party member – are going to wonder why you even gave them the choice to spread out their magic skills if you very intentionally never wanted them to do so.
14 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 73rd comment:
Votes: 0
elanthis said:
Quote
Surely, somebody who adds a single point to ten kinds of elemental magic will be less powerful than somebody who adds all of the points to a single one: it's very hard to justify that the first character should be equally able to function in the world on average as the latter.


Why not? I mean, sure, if you assume that more points in any element of magic means your spells from that element are more powerful, and that 10 points in one element means that you can do 10x more damage than someone with 1 point in each element because of the specific math you decided to put behind it all, then you are correct. There is no game design rule that states that's how it has to work, though. You are explicitly choosing a game design that lets the player shoot himself in the foot; there is nothing at all forcing you to do that, though. That's 100% entirely on you if you decide to make your game work that way


I think it would be reasonable in a design to unlock higher tier combination magic even without having to have all of your points in one discipline(even possibly with adding all of the points in different magic.), but I think the general point Elanthis was making is it's based entirely on the design.
14 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 74th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
I would say that even character development doesn't need to the main focus of an RPG.

FWIW, and I should have been more clear, I meant "character development" in the literary sense, not the sense of gaining XP, advancing stats, etc.

elanthis said:
David Haley said:
I heartily disagree with this statement. The logical conclusion of your argument is that essentially random choices should yield a character just as powerful as choices made very deliberately, which strikes me as a far more broken game design. There's a difference between extreme min-maxing that tweaks things to the "basis point" (0.01 of a percent point) level, and making a coherent set of choices.


So you're saying that the goal of a game is entirely about the skills and abilities you select in some character menu somewhere instead of how well the player plays the actual game itself?

I don't see exactly how that follows from what I said above. I certainly never said that how one plays the game given a character doesn't matter, I merely said that coherent choices should beat random or otherwise poor choices in the context of determining character strength. In fact, I would argue that what I said already covers actually playing the game, which after all involves making choices as you go along.

elanthis said:
Quote
Surely, somebody who adds a single point to ten kinds of elemental magic will be less powerful than somebody who adds all of the points to a single one: it's very hard to justify that the first character should be equally able to function in the world on average as the latter.


Why not? I mean, sure, if you assume that more points in any element of magic means your spells from that element are more powerful, and that 10 points in one element means that you can do 10x more damage than someone with 1 point in each element because of the specific math you decided to put behind it all, then you are correct. There is no game design rule that states that's how it has to work, though. You are explicitly choosing a game design that lets the player shoot himself in the foot; there is nothing at all forcing you to do that, though. That's 100% entirely on you if you decide to make your game work that way.

Well, give me a game design where this would actually work, and then we can talk. I find it difficult to believe that one could create a character weak in all aspects that somehow beats a character very strong in just one. The 1-point character would have to have a way to nullify or otherwise cancel the other character's strength such that it wouldn't overwhelm the lack of ability.

elanthis said:
Quote
Surely you agree that some level of specialization is helpful to game design, which implies naturally that some choices can be worse than others.


Sure, specialization is pretty important in a multi-player game design. So force the players to specialize! Don't even give them the option of spreading out skills to the point they have made an underpowered, useless character!

Well, you were saying that you wanted to give people all these choices to do things that would be fun. I didn't figure that you meant you were, in fact, removing choices. This obviously changes the situation quite a bit.

That said, again I was using choices very generally speaking, not just about character development. I maintain that it's difficult, or impossible, to completely remove the possibility of some choices simply being poorer than others for the purposes of determining strength. A stupid example is about the character who keeps trying to kill the dragon, always dies, and never gains XP, vs. the character who chooses things to do more strategically.

The whole point of games is to make choices that work well. This is almost the definition of playing a game. You'd have a whole lot of work to do to argue that you can remove all notion of important choices from a game. You can see this even in games like checkers.

elanthis said:
If your design makes it possible for a player to sink 60+ hours (or full days even) into making a broken character (at either end of the spectrum) then your game design needs at least a tiny bit of adjustment.

I simply cannot agree with this. You seem to want to protect people from their own stupidity in all possible cases. Anyhow I don't think what you mean and what you say are actually the same; I suspect that you are making bigger, more general claims than what you actually mean, given other things you have said in plenty of places.

BTW, all of these choices are made not only at creation, but as you go along, so arguably are in fact part of "playing the game". I think one thing at least is clear: it's not a game you'd like to play…
14 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 75th comment:
Votes: 0
DH said:
elanthis said:
If your design makes it possible for a player to sink 60+ hours (or full days even) into making a broken character (at either end of the spectrum) then your game design needs at least a tiny bit of adjustment.

I simply cannot agree with this. You seem to want to protect people from their own stupidity in all possible cases. Anyhow I don't think what you mean and what you say are actually the same; I suspect that you are making bigger, more general claims than what you actually mean, given other things you have said in plenty of places.


I think in most games players won't really know enough about the game to make the best important decisions at creation. To some extent, maybe allowing players to repick or reset attributes or talents or abilities would indirectly alleviate the "making a broken character" argument.
14 Jun, 2009, Sandi wrote in the 76th comment:
Votes: 0
As a general observation, I don't think one should invoke "good game design" as a crutch to support one's personal preferences in gameplay. Any comprehensive theory of game design should include all games, whether they rely on chance to give everyone an equal chance, or knowledge of game mechanics to create an interplay of tactics and strategy that strongly favors experience (consider, as examples, Blackjack* and Chess).

Specific to this thread, I agree with KaVir that the terms "roleplay" and "RPG" should be used as they're currently used, and that pedantically insisting that they had a very different meaning 30 years ago is shooting yourself in the foot, especially when it comes time to advertise.

In other news, I've played David's game and I like it a lot. In my own game, it's advised that players start several characters to find a race/class combination that fits their playing style. With this in mind, there are several ways to fast-track school so that experienced players can skip what they don't need. So yes, by intention, it's highly likely that your first character or four will become less than effective by level 10, and require a restart. This is not 'bad design' - it's my way of dealing with the fact the average MUD is over all too soon, or an endless grind of unending levels where you're stuck with early choices made back when you were clueless. (If you're not familiar with my codebase, it only has 30 levels. I used ROM because as a Builder I wanted the furniture, but as a player I prefer Merc. (and ,in fact, I used the Merc const.c file for greater differentiation between classes)) My basic design paradigm is Chess, not AD&D. :evil:


* and here I mean the card game itself, not the betting on the card game. In the card game, all players have an equal chance, while the dealer has a slight edge.
14 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 77th comment:
Votes: 0
Well, yes, that's what we said earlier. I agree that you should not place undue weight on character creation, actually I might have started this whole little tangent by saying exactly that. But not all choices regarding one's character are made at creation…
15 Jun, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 78th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
elanthis said:
Quote
Surely, somebody who adds a single point to ten kinds of elemental magic will be less powerful than somebody who adds all of the points to a single one: it's very hard to justify that the first character should be equally able to function in the world on average as the latter.


Why not? I mean, sure, if you assume that more points in any element of magic means your spells from that element are more powerful, and that 10 points in one element means that you can do 10x more damage than someone with 1 point in each element because of the specific math you decided to put behind it all, then you are correct. There is no game design rule that states that's how it has to work, though. You are explicitly choosing a game design that lets the player shoot himself in the foot; there is nothing at all forcing you to do that, though. That's 100% entirely on you if you decide to make your game work that way.


Well, give me a game design where this would actually work, and then we can talk. I find it difficult to believe that one could create a character weak in all aspects that somehow beats a character very strong in just one. The 1-point character would have to have a way to nullify or otherwise cancel the other character's strength such that it wouldn't overwhelm the lack of ability.


Easily done. Let's say you put all your points in fire magic. You're da bomb. You can nuke anyone into oblivion! You are now facing an Asbestos Golem, 100% immune to fire damage. As you're running for your life, elanthis walks up and pokes it with a weak ice spell, which causes it to crumble into dust. As you choke on the asbestos particles, he casts another weak air spell which whisks them all away and clears the air.

Contrived? Perhaps… but a jack-of-all-trades character CAN win in all circumstances. A specialist WILL win in some, but will lose in others.

You have to design the system with those kinds of things in mind though. Maybe all types of magic/skills/etc gain abilities to ward against others at lower levels, so a point spent in an opposing school will help you shield against your own (IE: learn ice to protect against fire).

My earlier mini-rant of role playing vs. number-crunching is aimed at the idea that we (the MUD community) seem to put more time and effort into balancing numbers and mechanics, rather than telling stories, and telling stories is exactly where text games are their strongest. Sure, you need some rules and mechanics and numbers to keep players active and interested, but the more time goes on, the more convinced I am that a storyline, and letting the players unfold that story by their actions, is the way to keep things interesting.

Which is more fun? Getting a 17,000 point "crit", or getting a 17,000 point crit against the undead gopher that's been haunting the subdivision next to the old cemetary for years? Looting 5,000 gold, or looting 5,000 gold in the tunnels the aforementioned gopher dug between the hillside of the Parker mansion and the underground sprinkler network of the subdivision? If the context doesn't matter, if the story isn't important, we should just make a MUD that's a one-room schoolhouse and let everyone fight in the classroom. Whomever gets the biggest number has their name with a gold star on the board.
15 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 79th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Easily done. Let's say you put all your points in fire magic. You're da bomb. You can nuke anyone into oblivion! You are now facing an Asbestos Golem, 100% immune to fire damage. As you're running for your life, elanthis walks up and pokes it with a weak ice spell, which causes it to crumble into dust. As you choke on the asbestos particles, he casts another weak air spell which whisks them all away and clears the air.

Contrived? Perhaps…

I don't think that a contrived example is worth spending much time discussing. If you're not talking about a whole coherent game design, it's not terribly interesting as a counterpoint. I could find plenty of contrived counterpoints to your contrived example and we'll all have engaged in a very pleasant exercise of Who Can Waste the Most Time. :rolleyes:

Here's a teaser. In your example world, it seems clear that the jacks-of-all-trades win, so people who choose to specialize lose whereas the ones who don't win. If you say that the jack-of-all trades can always win, you've just created another form of super-power, except that you give it to generalists, not specialists. In other words, your game favors players who choose generality over specialty. We're back to square one.
15 Jun, 2009, Sandi wrote in the 80th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
DH said:
elanthis said:
If your design makes it possible for a player to sink 60+ hours (or full days even) into making a broken character (at either end of the spectrum) then your game design needs at least a tiny bit of adjustment.

I simply cannot agree with this. You seem to want to protect people from their own stupidity in all possible cases. Anyhow I don't think what you mean and what you say are actually the same; I suspect that you are making bigger, more general claims than what you actually mean, given other things you have said in plenty of places.


I think in most games players won't really know enough about the game to make the best important decisions at creation. To some extent, maybe allowing players to repick or reset attributes or talents or abilities would indirectly alleviate the "making a broken character" argument.

David Haley said:
Well, yes, that's what we said earlier. I agree that you should not place undue weight on character creation, actually I might have started this whole little tangent by saying exactly that. But not all choices regarding one's character are made at creation…


David, just to be clear, you were replying to Runter, not to me, right?
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