12 Mar, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 81st comment:
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KaVir said:
The idea was that skills, equipment slots, supernatural powers, hairy feet, etc, are all "extras" that could be assigned values and distributed equally…but at a later point. Perhaps the human has the 10 point physical ability "can wear stuff", while the troll has the 1 point ability "eats anything", the 3 point ability "really big claws" and the 6 point ability "heals faster than wolverine". Thus when the human becomes a troll they give up their old physical ability and gain the three new ones.

But all of that stuff comes later, and isn't important in the stat phase.

Hmm. By separating it this way, you're excluding the possibility of imbalanced stats that get balanced later, though. Maybe humans get 10 total stats in the stat phase and trolls only get 5. To offset this, humans might get 10 points worth of "abilities" later, but trolls get 15, giving them both a total weight of 20 points, and balancing them out again. One of the more balanced games I've ever played (StarCraft) was balanced in this manner. If you just looked at unit "stats", the Zerg were inferior to the Terrans, who, in turn, were inferior to the Protoss. But this was balanced by giving each different weighted abilities - Zerg got things like speed, multiple zerglings per larvae, etc. while Terrans got the only early game ranged attack.

Anyway, I know that was an RTS example, which isn't really comparable, but from a balance perspective, I think it's still relevant.
12 Mar, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 82nd comment:
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Yes, I agree that it doesn't make sense to consider stats on their own. I don't know why you (KaVir) are assuming that the sum of two balanced systems is also a balanced system; interactions between the two could disrupt that balance. So although you might have balanced stats, and then balanced skills, the combination of stats and skills could yield unbalanced results.
12 Mar, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 83rd comment:
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Deimos said:
By separating it this way, you're excluding the possibility of imbalanced stats that get balanced later, though

Then include them at the same time as the stats if it makes it easier for you to understand, it makes no difference to the example.

But it still doesn't address the problem of allowing players to combine the mental attributes of one race with the physical attributes of another.

Deimos said:
Anyway, I know that was an RTS example, which isn't really comparable, but from a balance perspective, I think it's still relevant.

Then perhaps an RTS analogy will make it easier to explain. You've said that the StarCraft races are well balanced against each other. But how well balanced would it be if you could take half of your units from one race and the other half from another race?
12 Mar, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 84th comment:
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KaVir said:
Then perhaps an RTS analogy will make it easier to explain. You've said that the StarCraft races are well balanced against each other. But how well balanced would it be if you could take half of your units from one race and the other half from another race?

Ah, but you can. :wink: Zerg can infest a Terran command center and start producing Terran units, allowing for you to have an army with some of one and some of the other. Of course, this is balanced in overall design by other outside factors, which is why I say such balance can be struck in this case by factors like equipment. I'll admit that it's harder to balance such complex systems, but it's definitely possible.
12 Mar, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 85th comment:
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Honestly it's hard to compare balancing Starcraft races to balancing different builds of a single wizard. It would be more like balancing fighters and wizards. It's not necessarily wrong for a balanced system to allow suboptimal decisions. Even if optimally played all SC races are equal (let's assume that, for the sake of the argument), there is no requirement that a suboptimal series of decisions will still make the Zerg comparable to the Terrans.

So when one speaks of balancing a MUD, what exactly is meant? Do you mean that every possible combination of race and class will be equally powerful? Or do you mean that every combination of race, class, and stat allocation is equally playable? What about skill decisions? It's easy to come up with additional questions like this.

Let's assume that players know how to make optimal decisions to build their characters. In such a world, I think it's generally understood that all players looking the same is fairly uninteresting. It's also, perhaps less generally, understood that it's uninteresting when all mages look the same. How far along does this reasoning go?
12 Mar, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 86th comment:
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David Haley said:
So when one speaks of balancing a MUD, what exactly is meant?

In this thread I'm just talking about balancing the basic building blocks. More specifically:

KaVir said:
Different forms can be balanced against each other.

Different stats can be balanced against each other.

But when some of your stats are transferred and some are replaced, then shapechanging allows you to have more (or fewer) stats than you would normally have.
12 Mar, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 87th comment:
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In that case, I have this question from earlier: "I don't know why you (KaVir) are assuming that the sum of two balanced systems is also a balanced system; interactions between the two could disrupt that balance."

Let's assume that your forms are all balanced inter-forms, and all your stats are all balanced inter-stats. How do you know that the combined system of stats and forms is balanced? For example, unless you also do work with how you switch between forms, characters could pick one stat set to optimize their 'mind', and a form to optimize their 'body', and then rapidly switch between their normal and shifted forms depending on what is needed.

More generally, I don't really understand how balancing separate sets of basic building blocks means that the combinations of other building blocks is also balanced.
13 Mar, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 88th comment:
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Everything a player is, has, or does has to be taken into account. You can't balance a game in chunks, then cross your fingers and hope the various combinations of those chunks end up balanced. Or, at least, I've never seen anyone do this successfully.

Edit: Guess I should refresh the page before replying. Redundancy is redundant!
13 Mar, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 89th comment:
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David said:
In that case, I have this question from earlier: "I don't know why you (KaVir) are assuming that the sum of two balanced systems is also a balanced system; interactions between the two could disrupt that balance."

In response to my example?

Because it was a completely fictional system, and I only posted it as a simple example to demonstrate the problems with a polymorph system that transfers some stats and replaces others. Arguing about the balance of the fictional system is rather missing the point.

David said:
More generally, I don't really understand how balancing separate sets of basic building blocks means that the combinations of other building blocks is also balanced.

It doesn't, but in my experience it's much easier to balance the combinations if you first balance the basic building blocks.
13 Mar, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 90th comment:
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Well, ok. I'll fully agree that in the fictional system as presented, the partial stat transfer when polymorphed problem causes issues. However I am not yet convinced that it necessarily poses problems, although I am inclined to agree that it would make life harder to balance.

As for the building blocks, what you say makes sense as well. But it seems that you miss out on interesting combinations, such as people with high intelligence being able to use items that might compensate for other weakness. Then again, perhaps these combinations are too interesting, to the point of being so complex they can't be reasonably balanced.
13 Mar, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 91st comment:
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I pretty much agree with David on those points, but I don't think such combinations necessarily have to be too complex if you don't design with them in mind from the get-go. If you establish your quasi-balanced system first, and then start tweaking things up and down, here and there, it'll much likely be a lot easier to create interesting dynamics that would hve taken far too much planning in the beginning.
80.0/91