15 Jan, 2013, Orrin wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
Kelvin said:
The big difference between renting and repairing is that repairing doesn't disproportionally "punish" casual players. A casual player can leave the game for a few weeks, come back, and find everything as it was.

In all IRE games (AFAIK) equipment decay is independent of played time, so a casual player returning after a long absence will have to replace all their equipment. I assume this is designed to stimulate the in game economy for player crafted items and encourage the purchase of non-decay equipment from the cash shop.
15 Jan, 2013, Kelvin wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
Orrin said:
Kelvin said:
The big difference between renting and repairing is that repairing doesn't disproportionally "punish" casual players. A casual player can leave the game for a few weeks, come back, and find everything as it was.

In all IRE games (AFAIK) equipment decay is independent of played time, so a casual player returning after a long absence will have to replace all their equipment. I assume this is designed to stimulate the in game economy for player crafted items and encourage the purchase of non-decay equipment from the cash shop.

Does actual usage of the equipment also cause wear, or is it strictly time-based?

IRE's motivation is going to differ a lot from non-commercial games, as you've pointed out. I guess we'll never know, but I wonder if IRE would keep the system if they were non-commercial?
15 Jan, 2013, Splork wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
Kavir and others have listed many of the benefits of rent already but I will list the main ones for us:

1) It helps us keep control of our economy. With any established game, gold creep can become a major dilemma over time. There are many reasons for this and we do the best we can to control those as well. Rent provides a steady stream of outgoing gold. It also helps encourage our players to spend gold on player vaults and houses to store their equipment. The costs of these additions are steep and remove even more gold.

2) It helps us control equipment hording. The better equipment has an extremely high rental value, unless its worn. We don't believe in our players losing eq which they spent hours of their real life gaining, so we do not allow items to become damaged, stolen by another player, etc. Because the equipment also has level restrictions, they can not simply create another character and store the items rent free. Due to these items costing so much to rent with, they often either sell or trade the items to other players. This helps those players who may not have the ability or skill to acquire it. It also helps keep the better equipment in-game, communication between players, and several other smaller aspects.

3) We have a wide range of no rent items( an added equipment type ), similar to the idea which Kavir and others have mentioned here. They range from powerful potions to overpowered vorpal/chop type weapons( do 1/7 the amount of damage to the mob and can chop your own head off). When these weapons are popped and available, groups immediately start and our who list instantly grows.

These are just three examples of many for our game. Are there other ways to achieve some of these results, sure. But I feel our time is much better off spent adding things like Talking Mobs, Dynamic Maps, Live Blogs, MSDP , etc.

Spending time revamping a system which works perfectly well for our game seems relatively pointless. I dislike PK, so I stay away from those games and we do not allow it on ours ( unless we are having our tournaments). Others dislike rental systems and they stay away from those games and think of alternate routes to use for theirs.

Mud world is great, plenty of options for plenty of picky players:)
15 Jan, 2013, Runter wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
I never called it a rent system, but I had a limited inventory and a way to store items at a price. If players wanted to store items beyond the cap (which was I think 20) when they leave the game then they could purchase deposit boxes. It was a flat rate over time not depending on number of items in box. They paid the rent on the box when they returned to the game before being able to retrieve items. It accumulated based on how long the box had been sealed.

We held an annual auction of boxes not claimed after 2 years near the end of the year. Other players would bid on the contents of the box not knowing what was inside, Only the in-game weight, and who it belonged to. Generally the fee after 2 years would be somewhat high and that was the minimum bid of the auction, but many times the auctions would go many times above the fee and was an effective gold sink.

Although I should mention that if there were no bidders we placed the box into a queue that we originally planned to be marked for archiving. When we planned it, it was a concern, but over the years as resources became abundant we never actually archived anyones box and upon logging in they were able to buy it back without assistance from the staff even beyond 2 years, if auction was unsuccessful.
15 Jan, 2013, plamzi wrote in the 25th comment:
Votes: 0
Kelvin said:
Splork said:
Sloth handles rent much in the same way Plamzi addresses theirs at Bedlam. Reading his post, I felt like I was describing my game, thats how similar our designs are in regards to rent.

Its really sad to see so many players biased towards good games simply because they use a rent system. I can see why, as the original design was horribly done and did indeed penalize players and cause several of the issues which Kelvin addressed in his original post. However, many of us have so greatly altered this system, that very little if any of those pertain to our MUDs.

Fair enough, but on the flipside, do you really feel your rent system is a necessity? Is there no more elegant way to achieve whatever it is that you're trying to do?


Curiously enough, since the aforementioned thread, we made rent optional. Basically, there's a lot of stigma associated with renting, and we're making a host of changes to appeal to casual players more. So, you no longer have to rent, but you can rent for a small level-based fee and preserve all your buffs (as well as the buffs of all your followers). That way we keep the feature, but we no longer have to fight with newcomers who, for various reasons, take it for granted that their eq will be saved pretty much no matter how they play.

That said, I strongly stand by my earlier comments that it is all about the implementation. And the implementation would depend entirely on what kind of player you wish to appeal to.

One positive effect of renting that I'm already missing is the fact that it discourages people from alt-hopping. This in turn makes grouping easier and makes people more likely to try things they haven't done before with a given alt (instead of just hop on whichever alt they found makes doing such-and-such easiest).

When rent became optional, I also lost a bunch of ways to reward people: rent reduction for long sessions, rent reduction for being a "nobleman" (titles earned by helping others), rent reduction via high charisma stat, rent reduction in a purchased house upgrade.

As for losing a great money sink, that loss will probably be felt gradually by way of currency inflation. I'm not so concerned about that since we now have a healthy number of end-game goals, some of which we can always charge more for.

I think you're very smart to be asking yourself whether it's possible to achieve the benefits of renting without actually having rent. You could have a system that has virtually the same effect as a well-implemented rent system, but by another name, and as long as you can say that your game has no 'rent', you'll have better luck with new players. Regrettably.
15 Jan, 2013, Splork wrote in the 26th comment:
Votes: 0
Not a bad idea:)
15 Jan, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 27th comment:
Votes: 0
One nice thing you could do with rent, to make it a carrot rather than a stick, is to give people who rent a buff so they get double XP (or increased money gain, increased magic find, whatever) for some amount of time after the log back in.
15 Jan, 2013, mangan wrote in the 28th comment:
Votes: 0
Rent seems (to me) to be one solution to a problem, as KaVir and others mentioned. I don't personally like rent since I've had numerous players that will log on for anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 hours to just socialize, while at work or doing other activities at home or surfing the web. Rent seems like it would punish the social gamers. I'm a much larger fan of a "pay for use" model, such as a repair system. If you don't repair the items you are using, then you cannot continue to use them once their durability gets too low. Other options are to make them less effective, or if they get in too poor of shape then allow them to break.

This model still does not prevent the unused items from remaining in circulation, such as the issue of limited quantities of special items. Although I really like the idea of having such items, I do not currently have a solution that would fit well in the environment of my game. The cons from the immediate solution (rent) do not outweigh the benefits for the players I develop for. In another game design, I could easily see this being the opposite - I don't imagine Counter Strike players logging into a game to just chat. ;) (Not a MUD, but there have been MUDs similar in concept: little character advancement, pure PK. I'm thinking Gladiator Pits III as an example, although it actually had a room to chat in, iirc.)
15 Jan, 2013, Orrin wrote in the 29th comment:
Votes: 0
Kelvin said:
Orrin said:
Kelvin said:
The big difference between renting and repairing is that repairing doesn't disproportionally "punish" casual players. A casual player can leave the game for a few weeks, come back, and find everything as it was.

In all IRE games (AFAIK) equipment decay is independent of played time, so a casual player returning after a long absence will have to replace all their equipment. I assume this is designed to stimulate the in game economy for player crafted items and encourage the purchase of non-decay equipment from the cash shop.

Does actual usage of the equipment also cause wear, or is it strictly time-based?

IRE's motivation is going to differ a lot from non-commercial games, as you've pointed out. I guess we'll never know, but I wonder if IRE would keep the system if they were non-commercial?

I don't think equipment use causes any additional wear, no. I don't know for sure but I doubt the system was set up specifically to take advantage of premium non-decay items as there are only a few different types of those. I expect it was originally about saving database space, otherwise it doesn't make sense for items to decay in a fixed amount of time regardless of use or played time.

If your gear is mostly player crafted as it is in IRE games then a decay system that forces players to purchase new equipment rather than simply repair or rent is probably preferable.
15 Jan, 2013, Hades_Kane wrote in the 30th comment:
Votes: 0
To chime in here, and like Kelvin, I'm not picking on rentable games either, although rent was my first long term experience as a MUDer, once I've played ones that don't have it, I haven't looked back. But keeping in the vein of conversation on alternate ways to handle the benefits gained from rent…

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1) It helps us keep control of our economy.

There are any number of gil sinks that can be added. Aside from what people are comparing to a psuedo-rent system of equipment degradation, some other ideas (some of which are in use in my game) include toll guards for shortcuts around certain areas, transportation systems (boats, trains) that cost money, the ability to recharge wands/staves, player personal space such as houses, ships, airships, etc., mini-games that players bet on (gambling is almost always a good money sink, as it has the slim chance of a payoff, and it's human nature to be greedy), we also have a chocobo racing/training system that costs up front money, and if you want to grow your chocobo with better stats, there is upkeep cost there too.

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2) It helps us control equipment hording

It seems like low inventory capacity would handle this, and the plus side, more incentive for player houses/storage that further adds a money sink.

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3) We have a wide range of no rent items( an added equipment type ), similar to the idea which Kavir and others have mentioned here


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Some items are limited in number, so that not everyone can have one. The rent ensures that if someone stops playing, any limited items they've got will be circulated back into the game. And of course while they are playing, there's always the chance of death stripping the gear from them. There's no way they can put the gear into hibernation, like would happen with an inactivate character in a Merc derivative.


One thing we are going to do is add a system similar to what others have described. But, the flip side to limiting whether people can quit with them or having to load offline characters to remove them, I'm planning on having these items stored in a separate file that is checked when a player logs in and when the MUD boots. When the MUD boots, if one of these items hasn't been logged in after X days, it will have a few different behaviors it can do, including resetting itself somewhere completely random, triggering a quest for the item, picking a particular spot, or one of a few locations. When a player logs, if the file has a match between item and player, it'll load on the player in whatever location they quit with it on. This way, the system can be regulated/automated without immortal intervention. These will likely be one of a kind items, and when a player possesses them, they will be flagged as PKable regardless of their prior status (losing the item would return them to normal), and there may be other conditions for losing the item other than inactivity. There will be some, I'm sure, that will leave the player if the player dies, some may be any death while others may only be PK. Others could be alignment dependant, others might have a set amount of time. We have yet to add this, but I'm sure once we do, it will prove to be popular.


But anyhow, those are just some of my thoughts on other ways to accomplish similar things.

Though, different strokes for different folks, of course :)
15 Jan, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 31st comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
One thing we are going to do is add a system similar to what others have described. But, the flip side to limiting whether people can quit with them or having to load offline characters to remove them, I'm planning on having these items stored in a separate file that is checked when a player logs in and when the MUD boots. When the MUD boots, if one of these items hasn't been logged in after X days, it will have a few different behaviors it can do, including resetting itself somewhere completely random, triggering a quest for the item, picking a particular spot, or one of a few locations. When a player logs, if the file has a match between item and player, it'll load on the player in whatever location they quit with it on.


Very similar to what (and how) I did it, but the unique item is stored in the character so I dont have to save if (or where) the player was wearing it etc. The only thing I have to check at boot is if the item is player owned or not, and load it or not accordingly.

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if one of these items hasn't been logged in after X days,

I thought about it as well, but I ended preferring a 'not logged for xxx hours in the last seven days'
It avoids people just logging on and off just to keep an item that is most likely an important one offline. Sometimes just to piss off anotherone that has an ongoing RP on questing for it as an example.

Btw for those items, you need to think precisely on how you want to deal with them: selling, buying, giving to mob, sacrificing, echanting to destruction etc. There are lots of differents ways to destroy an item. (unless you dont care about it and just reload them if you dont find them anywhere)
15 Jan, 2013, Splork wrote in the 32nd comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
It seems like low inventory capacity would handle this, and the plus side, more incentive for player houses/storage that further adds a money sink.


We do this as well…
16 Jan, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 33rd comment:
Votes: 0
Diablo2 limited inventory and chest capacity as well: the result:lots of mule.
19 Jan, 2013, Telgar wrote in the 34th comment:
Votes: 0
Kelvin said:
I guess I should have been more specific in my original thread. The rent systems I am bemoaning are the ones that you pay into at X intervals, and you lose everything if you run out of money.

I'm not a big fan of the "you must quit in X location" stuff, either, but I can agree to disagree and understand that this may be desirable for certain kinds of games. That's probably another issue and another discussion entirely.


I am completely on board with you here, on both points actually. However I still think rent is really the only viable way to control equipment distribution, unless you want to impose more draconian systems like QIC.

What would you think of a rent system where rent is optional, can only be done at inns, but has perks. Specifically, nobody will steal your stuff. You still have to pay lodging costs per-day, and if you can't pay the bill, the inn-keeper will hold some of your items as collateral until your debt is payed off. Not all of your equipment will be held for ransom, so you still have a functional character. Also, the inn-keeper is more wary about treating very powerful players this way, so rent phases out towards a negligible fee once you reach top-level. Players who reach a certain level of debt (achievable via some hours of game play) do not incur any more; the inn-keeper will keep warning them, and after a time (real world elapsed time of at least a month), finally begin to auction off their items and keep the profits. This will happen upon login, not upon logout, so it always happens in the player's presence. Items not sold at auction will be tossed.

This discourages low-level storage characters or mules, and keeps high end items under control by allowing them to remain with high level players (even if they do not play for a long time), or else risk being sold off at auction (where any player is free to buy it). It doesn't directly destroy equipment unless nobody is around who happens to desire it.

In addition to this, there is a parallel system called camping. You may camp anywhere you like; some zones are more dangerous than others and carry higher risk that you will have a dangerous encounter, of which you will be notified next time you log in. When you do log in, you'll still be in the same location. Thieves might maraud your party while you are camping and get ahold of some valuables. In addition, since you are not receiving the valuable bed and breakfast treatment of an inn, you will heal up at a much slower rate and consume any perishable items you need for food water. If you run completely out of food, you may be in very bad shape, you could even have died (you'll be notified when you log in, and you'll have to mount a corpse recovery expedition). Of course, this is also level balanced as well. A high level player making camp would not make camp in such an obvious location, nor would they be an easy target for brigands. They also should have learned enough about the ways of the world to have found viable sources of food and water in their area (unless they choose to camp in a very dangerous zone).

Both systems are somewhat similarly balanced and the overall goal is that high level players never have to worry about hanging on to their stuff, no matter how long they go without logging on. They have earned the right to keep that high end equipment with the time and dedication they put into playing. This incentivizes the level system, promotes healthy eq distribution, and disincentivizes storage characters. Co-incidentally, it also provides a money sink for top-end players - those that choose to keep mules around either have to pay rent, or may have to outbid others to keep hanging on to that unused eq when the innkeeper auctions it. So it actually encourages them to level those characters up into proper PCs as well.

Maybe I'm just overly optimistic, but I can't see a single fatal flaw in those game mechanics.

Would you play a game with such a system?
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