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Kayle
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#17 id:11752 Posted Sep 5, 2008, 3:32 pm
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I'm gonna snip some of this new novel out. :P
Hades_Kane said:--Newbie School--
As far as the newbie school thing goes, we have worked really hard on making our newbie school as useful as possible. Upon coming in it, you are asked your experience level with the game, and you have 3 options: 1) Total MUD Newbie, 2) End of Time Newbie, 3) End of Time Veteran.
Our pre-auth (when I finish it -.-;) will work a bit the same way. If they've completed pre-auth before they'll be given a phrase to say at a particular room, to skip pre-auth, answer a single question, and recieve all their gear, plus a little bit of a bonus gift. If they haven't, they're going to learn about playing a mud (even if they know the basics, because a lot of the basics will be changing on MW.) from the start.
Quote:--Hometowns--
We have three hometowns that players can start at. There are a few reasons for this... 1) Anticipation of a larger playerbase that's probably unlikely :p 2) Much of our world layout and story is revolved around three major clans/governments, and each government has a hometown city, 3) We are working on a playable storyline where players will quest through most of the game, and up to about level 20 or so, each hometown will have a different story.
We have something similar in the works for MW, but we have 6 "Nations" that compete and a 7th neutral one that oversees that none of the others do things that are underhanded or violates the rules of conflict. (Long story, very relevant to MW's history.) And as players get higher in level (which will not be easy, but at the same time not terribly difficult. MW's focus isn't about getting to top level and then doing the other stuff the game has to offer, but rather do the other stuff as you level.) They'll find themselves being sent to other nations on diplomatic quests, or to the neutral nation to do something. They might also find themselves being sent into battle to defend their nation against invaders from an opposing nation, or even from a monster invasion of sorts.
For this, Well, It's hard to sum everything on this up. As far as our systems go, most of the staff plays, or is familiar with 3rd Edition D&D, and we've decided that we like the balance that comes with a system based off theirs, so using D&D as a guideline (yes Quix, even for the item stats :P no 100d1000+1000 weapons on MW. At least not yet.  ) we're designing our systems off that, with our own edge to it. We'll still have the automated combat, but it will be less... spammy, and more roleplayable. For instance, unless you're dual wielding, you only get 1 attack per round, with a chance (based on type of weapon) to make a combo attack which would allow you to hit for a couple more times. (this may change as we refine things further, as it stands now though...)
Magic will stop your automatic attacks while you cast, similar to yours, except players will need certain abilities before they could strengthen a spell, or make it an area attack, etc. MW will also feature different types of magic in addition to the different elements. Arcane, Divine, Psionics, Songs (for the bard), Dances (for the bladesinger), Runic, Ritual, and Runic Ritual are all of the types of magic I believe. Magic isn't something we've spent a lot of time focusing on yet, because we had been focused on Combat, and now our focus is switching from Combat (since it's mostly done) to Classes.
As far as classes go I agree that they should all play differently, Which is going to be interesting on MW, because players will be able to combine up to 6 classes on their character, all with varying levels but all adding up to at most 60. That doesn't make any sense. Let me try that again. Ok. On MW we have 16 classes available at creation. But there are 42 "prestige" (for lack of a better word) classes that players will be able to pick up throughout the world. But it's not like a remort system. You don't just become the new class. It's just tacked on to your current one. For instance, Timmy is a level 10 Shield Dwarf Warrior. And he comes across an old dwarf in an elaborate set of armor. Said Dwarf sets Timmy a task, Timmy completes it and returns. The Old Dwarf then teaches him the secret to being a Dwarven Defender. So now, when Timmy has enough experience to level up (it's not automatic on MW), he can choose to take a level in Dwarven Defender and would then be a level 10 Warrior/1 Dwarven Defender. Players will be able to take 6 total classes, but the prestige classes are limited to 10 levels. You won't be able to level any higher then that. So Timmy, assuming he likes Dwarven Defender, by the time he hits level 60 (our level cap) would be 50 Warrior/10 Dwarven Defender but his level is 60. So, you could in essense end up with a jack of all trades kinda character who's a 10 Paladin/10 Mage/10 Ranger/10 Psychic Warrior/10 Cleric/10 Runecaster.
But I'm nearing Novel length myself... And I forgot what I was going to talk about now anyway, so... yep.
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quixadhal
Wizard
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#18 id:11761 Posted Sep 5, 2008, 6:09 pm
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DavidHaley said:One city is workable, even though I I think a game can suffer by being too focused on a single city, but several cities is quite a bit harder, if anything because people will be heading to each of the "magnet" cities. The way to prevent that is to make the only relevant city to them their starting city, but now you've sort of divided your playerbase by the number of starting cities (as far as this is concerned).
This is one of the reasons I think it's vital to have content for all the level ranges mixed, spatially. If your level 20 fighters base themselves out of a larger city, they'll never be around to interact (and help!) the newbies unless the game gives them a reason to be near them. Put a level 20 dungeon under the hillside right behind the grocer in one of the newbie villages. Make SURE the newbies know not to go in there, either by limiting access, or (my preference) putting enough warnings up that people who READ will know it's too dangerous for them. People who run around in brief mode will figure it out when they get killed 3 steps in the door. :)
If you have 4 starting races (for example), you might want the mid or higher level content to both have peaceful quests that get them to return to their own starting area, and combat/stealth/etc quests in the OTHER starting areas.
To avoid resource depletion, just make sure the resources in the starting area are not overly useful to higher level players. Mobs are worth little experience and drop coppers and junk equipment, natural harvestables are only useful for crafting lower tiers of gear or spells, etc. Sure, they can go around foresting elm branches, but they're not worth the time when they could be in the higher tiered zones harvesting teak.
The only gotcha here, is that the more areas you have, the more cross pollination you need. That means more work when developing ALL the areas.
Oh yeah, I should also mention I'm a fan of travel. I hate being able to just teleport from place to place, ignoring the wilderness. If you have two cities that are 50 miles apart, there should be things to do within those 50 miles! Having long travel times makes people want to spend more time around where they are, rather than making the long trek very often. So, once you DO get them to return to n00bland, they are more likely to hang around and look for things to do (thus helping the n00bs), before making the long hike back home again. That helps, but it does make it harder to entice them to go there.
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David Haley
Wizard
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#19 id:11762 Posted Sep 5, 2008, 6:18 pm
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Personally I don't think it makes much sense, in an IC and not OOC understanding, to have relatively dangerous dungeons right next to a town. There are some circumstances where you could explain it, but most of the time it's very hard to explain why this otherwise peaceful town exists right next to a rather dangerous place. Especially as the town grows in size, you would think that guard patrols would clear out most dangerous things -- or the town itself would be cleared out by the dangerous things in question.
Of course, from an OOC perspective, yes, it's useful to have things for high-level characters to do in the same place as low-level characters. I'm just not sure it outweighs the negative for me.
I believe in a concentric circles approach, where as you leave "civilization" things get more and more dangerous. You can have several centers, so that if you travel in a straight line the difficulty is not monotonically increasing or decreasing, but most established communities should be fairly safe (from a storyline perspective) and only outposts or frontier villages should be dangerous.
As for travel, I am somewhat torn. Of course, the land in between should not be completely uninteresting. But there is value in having "emptiness" that is dotted with interesting things -- this is one of the fun things to do in Morrowind/Oblivion. In this case, being able to fast-travel is very useful when you really just want to get from one place to another. Now, I'm not a fan of instant teleportation either; I prefer some kind of automated transport where you, say, hop on a carriage in a caravan and are moved across the road system. This adds all kinds of interesting opportunities for the world interacting with said caravan, e.g. bandits ambushing it.
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quixadhal
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#20 id:11793 Posted Sep 6, 2008, 7:24 pm
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True, although it means your challenges go from the simple mundane tasks to complex ones.
Perhaps the small village can't keep vermin like kobolds or goblins under control, and while there are small starter caves for them, you could place higher level content that lies behind hidden doors in the depths of the caves. A little clever scripting could make it only accessible to someone holding/wearing/wielding something that's only available from higher level content.
In larger cities, the objectives become more urban. Sure, you won't find caves with orcs near a big metropolis, but you might very well find secret societies working to restore an ancient god to power. You might also find dissodents who are unhappy with the current leaders and work to overthrow them, or ex-patriots who don't like the invaders who have taken control of their city. It could be even more grey... perhaps various factions within the city are working against each other, and the player can choose to encounter one or more of them. They could be doing business in plain sight, in the local taverns... or in basements or sewer tunnels... or perhaps in the estates of the weathy.
Consider. Our starting village consisted of three streets. Really, two roads leading out of town, and one perpendicular short street that was the "main drag", all 7 or 8 rooms of it. The two chunks of the "main road" that head east and west out into the wilderness both overshoot the "main drag" by a few rooms to have a bit more "downtown".
Now, there are a couple of farms set just off the roads, visible as you walk along the road. There's a deserted mansion on a small path to one side, and a church in a small field formed by the west and main streets. All around this, is grassland, with rolling hills to the south and east, mountains to the north, and dense forest to the west.
Near the village (about 12 steps away) we put a small kobold den in the hillside. This is far enough that the village guards won't do anything about it, but adventurers can get there and lay waste with their mighty level 5 newbies. A graveyard behind the cemetary, the mansion, and a small mushroom ring in the grasslands all provide content for folks from levels 1-9. However, one of the toughest mobs in the game (Asgard the Lich) spawns under exactly the right conditions in the same graveyard. Newbies are told to avoid the graveyard during the nights of the new moon, and those who ignore that warning learn to flee very quickly. This was one thing that got higher level players to revisit the starting area and hang out, trying to get drops from the Lich.
I'm a big fan of not letting space go to waste. Just because the building you wandered around in at level 5 didn't seem to have anything besides a few rats to kill, doesn't mean there wasn't anything else there. The trick is to have NPC's give players hints to go search their old stomping grounds for content they missed before. In modern games, you can use quests... in our old Diku, we had to hope people paid attention to NPC chatter or room descriptions.
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KaVir
Wizard
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#21 id:11833 Posted Sep 8, 2008, 5:15 am
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DavidHaley said:Ah, yes, and this has done a great deal of harm to interesting races and classes. It is almost inevitable that, if everybody is to be able to play solo equally well, all classes end up converging to being very similar, just with different names put on the various actions. The differences become superficial only, in that one person casts a spell that does X damage, whereas the other uses an attack skill that does the same X damage.
The above comment reminds me of some feedback I once received in response to a design proposal: http://www.topmudsites.com/forums/advanced-mud-concepts/35-design-dragons-hoping-feedback.html#post369 (see posts #4, #5, #6 and #8).
I also made a post about the same topic on TMC, but I can't find it any more. I think I worked out that if you wanted every skill to be functionally unique at the fundamental level, you'd end up with about 9 total skills (and a few of those could argubly be combined as well).
However I think it's perfectly possible to make each class feel very different while still giving them sufficient overlap of the fundamental abilities that they can be played solo. A good example of this IMO is the White Wolf World of Darkness system, where vampires, werewolves, mages, changelings, etc, are very distinct from each other, but (because they're designed to be played in groups of one supernatural type) also each cover all of the fundamental abilities. White Wolf doesn't refer to them as character classes, but from a game design perspective that's pretty much exactly what they are.
DavidHaley said:Personally I don't think it makes much sense, in an IC and not OOC understanding, to have relatively dangerous dungeons right next to a town. There are some circumstances where you could explain it, but most of the time it's very hard to explain why this otherwise peaceful town exists right next to a rather dangerous place. Especially as the town grows in size, you would think that guard patrols would clear out most dangerous things -- or the town itself would be cleared out by the dangerous things in question.
In most muds, the dungeons are an unlimited source of monsters and treasure, and I think that's the part that really needs to be explained - was it created in the past by a mad wizard? It is some sort of enchanted location from a bygone era? It is the result of a powerful curse or planar convergence?
Once you've established that the dungeon has a neverending supply of monsters and loot, you no longer need to explain why it's still there, only why the town was built beside it. And that's not really a big stretch, in my opinion - with greedy adventurers heading into the dungeon for treasure (and returning rich and tired) it would make sense for some forward-thinking innkeeper to set up an establishment near the entrance. He'd likely need guards to deal with the occasional monster that wandered out, and permanently stationed guards would want to bring their families (thus needing housing). With families living in the area, there would be demand for food and clothing. Carpenters and stonemasons would be required to build up and maintain defences, alchemists and blacksmiths would would find plenty of customers among the guards and adventurers, and so on.
It would be a bit like a gold rush town, but unlike gold mines the dungeons wouldn't dry up, so the town would just continue to grow. Shutting down the dungeon (even if it were possible) would destroy the town's livelyhood, and the would-be hero who thought he was "saving" the town by finally sealing up the dungeon would be unlikely to receive the sort of appreciation he might have expected. In fact, that gives me an interesting idea for a tabletop adventure...
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......................... KaVir at God Wars II: godwars2.org 3000 Roomless world. Manual combat. Endless possibilities.
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Kayle
Wizard
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#22 id:11838 Posted Sep 8, 2008, 2:44 pm
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Firstly, Glad to see you around again KaVir.
I agree that classes can share skills and still play differently, in D&D 3rd Edition there's one skill set shared across all classes, and supplemented by class abilities like "turn undead" or the ability to cast spells, or a barbarian rage. They all have their advantages and disadvantages but can all be played solo for the most part. Granted it defeats the purpose of D&D to play solo, but still. :P
As for MUD Dungeons always being an infinite source of monsters, in most places it's never really explained. None of the MUDs that I've played have ever really taken the care to explain why the monsters show back up when you kill them aside from 'It's called repop, it happens every 15 minutes or so', and when I get told this I can't help but laugh and think, 'Hmm. Most Dungeon Masters would have a fit if you thought about things like that while playing at the tabletop.' I've considered adding a flag to certain key monsters in areas and dungeons that make them not respawn for an extended period of time, and maybe one that stops them from respawning while anyone is in the area. So that for instance, you raid a Hobgoblin encampment, and you kill the leaders lieutenants, they should stay dead, but at the same time, the "trash" (or unimportant) mobs should be able to respawn normally.
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David Haley
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#23 id:11839 Posted Sep 8, 2008, 2:51 pm
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I find it more acceptable to not explain repop than to explain why a village exists next to a really dangerous dungeon, let alone try to explain it by having the NPCs "understand" repop and building a whole industry around it. I suppose it's just personal preference, though. For me, repop is an unfortunate necessity of a multiplayer world. I think it's possible to not have repop like that, but it gets really complicated really quick to have a "living" world that never repops.
One could imagine there being several goblin dens, and if you clear it out, it's empty until a new band of goblins moves in. How you handle that is an interesting question -- are there roving bands looking for nice caves to hang out in? do you have randomized repops to simulate a band finding the cave? -- but it would make the world feel less artificial due to the repops. I dislike repops, I'm just not sure how practical it would be to get rid of them.
Not having a reset when people are in the area, or at least within some proximity of the reset, is generally a good idea IMO. It's bizarre to be clearing out a dungeon and discover that the entrance is filled with baddies after you cleaned out the deeper ends. Of course, this opens potential for abuse: if I don't want people to raid the dungeon all I have to do is hang out there.
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Fizban
Wizard
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#24 id:11840 Posted Sep 8, 2008, 2:55 pm
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Kayle said: I've considered adding a flag to certain key monsters in areas and dungeons that make them not respawn for an extended period of time, and maybe one that stops them from respawning while anyone is in the area. So that for instance, you raid a Hobgoblin encampment, and you kill the leaders lieutenants, they should stay dead, but at the same time, the "trash" (or unimportant) mobs should be able to respawn normally.
Perhaps even save a value to the player when they kill the mob? ie. The mob resets, but purges itself when a player that has already killed it before attempts to enter the room (assuming no other PC's are already in the room)?
This is of course slightly easier to implement in some codebases than others, but in Circle for instance it'd be as simple as:
Code (text): 1
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8 | Name: 'Flag Player When I Die'
Trigger Intended Assignment: Mobiles
Trigger Type: Death , Numeric Arg: 100, Arg list:
Commands:
set has_killed_ogreking 1
remote has_killed_ogreking %self.fighting.id% |
That would flag the player the mob was targetting, though if you wanted it to target every player in the room it could just as easily be:
Code (text): 1
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14 | Name: 'Flag Player When I Die'
Trigger Intended Assignment: Mobiles
Trigger Type: Death , Numeric Arg: 100, Arg list:
Commands:
set has_killed_ogreking 1
set people %self.people%
while %people%
if %people.is_pc%
remote has_killed_ogreking %people.id%
end
set people %people.next_in_room%
done |
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Last edited Sep 8, 2008, 2:55 pm by Fizban
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Hades_Kane
Wizard
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#25 id:11841 Posted Sep 8, 2008, 3:54 pm
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Almost everyone of our dungeon type of areas have "random encounters" in the vein of Final Fantasy.
Final Fantasy never bothered to explain it, so why should we? :p
But in that same line of thinking, how do you explain on most MUDs that you kill 'Trofiel, the Wanderer' or any number of citizens and don't get hunted down for murder, and 15 minutes later (or 15 hours in game time) he's wandering around again but doesn't seem to mind you at all.
I don't think the genre or game system really lends itself well toward being realistic or having explainable elements like that.
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......................... -Diablos of End of Time, eotmud.com:4000, Final Fantasy themed -- Seeking Builders! For more info visit: http://www.eotmud.com/
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The_Fury
Sorcerer
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#27 id:11843 Posted Sep 8, 2008, 5:03 pm
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Quote:
You'd still have the problem of that pesky brigand chief that always comes back, but at least it'd be a different "person" every time.
Substitute chief for captain or some army type rank, make the monsters global in scope and they can be resupplied from their own lands. Orcs are pretty good for this, they have a developed social order and command structure, they take over whatever natural landforms they can find, and once you wipe them out of one dungeon, they can be resupplied from the main orc camp. Or from their lands far far away.
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......................... bMUD: Custom server written in Ruby.
The Oriental Dojo Mud
The_Fury: Coder and Designer.
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KaVir
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#28 id:11844 Posted Sep 9, 2008, 5:20 am
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Kayle said:I agree that classes can share skills and still play differently, in D&D 3rd Edition there's one skill set shared across all classes, and supplemented by class abilities like "turn undead" or the ability to cast spells, or a barbarian rage.
Well I was really talking more about fundamental skills - for example the barbarian rage is really just a buff, while turn undead is a debuff. Equally the warrior's attack, the mage's fireball and the thief's backstab are all just ways to inflict damage.
If I recall correctly, in older versions of D&D the thief was the only class capable of disarming traps, while the cleric was the only class capable of healing and the mage was the only class capable of teleporting - those would be better examples of classes with unique fundamental skills.
Of course magic items changed that, and later versions of D&D resulted in a certain amount of crossover, but in my opinion it was a definite improvement. Sure, D&D is designed for a group of characters - but at least you're no longer required to have a representative of each core class simply to be able to play properly.
I managed to find the post I mentioned previously (I'll quote it as well, for people who don't belong to TMC's social network): http://social.mudconnect.com/lobby/forum_index/155
Quote:Well if you're classifying skills into broad categories like "damage, bonuses, minuses", you're going to end up no more than a handful of different skills. For example, the following eight skill types should cover almost everything:
Heal: cure, repair, etc.
Harm: kick, fireball, damage armour, break weapon, etc.
Buff: bless, sanct, enchant weapon, etc.
Curse: blind, weakness, poison, disease, etc.
Create: mount, portal, armour, etc.
Destroy: creature, weapon, etc.
Transport: summon, teleport, steal, disarm, etc.
Reveal: info about mobs, locations, etc.
Technically you could even merge Heal/Harm into 'Health' and Buff/Curse into 'Modifier'. You could probably even merge those two together as well...
But just because two skills do damage doesn't mean they have to be identical. Perhaps fireball inflicts heat damage on multiple opponents and their equipment at long range and can only be dodged, while a kick inflicts crushing damage on a single opponent at short range with a chance of also knocking them over. The end result might be the same - the opponent takes damage - but the two skills would have very different tactical uses.
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......................... KaVir at God Wars II: godwars2.org 3000 Roomless world. Manual combat. Endless possibilities.
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Hades_Kane
Wizard
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#29 id:11846 Posted Sep 9, 2008, 1:31 pm
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This is the type of discussion that I personally really like to see.
It isn't too technical as far as implementation, coding, or language goes, but I think that it can definitely help everyone perhaps think outside of the box a bit.
I know I enjoy being able to see others' approach to things like this... especially since my current project is coding a TON of skills :p
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......................... -Diablos of End of Time, eotmud.com:4000, Final Fantasy themed -- Seeking Builders! For more info visit: http://www.eotmud.com/
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The_Fury
Sorcerer
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Joined: Jun 1, 2008
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#30 id:11940 Posted Sep 11, 2008, 4:04 am
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Hades_Kane said:This is the type of discussion that I personally really like to see.
It isn't too technical as far as implementation, coding, or language goes, but I think that it can definitely help everyone perhaps think outside of the box a bit.
I know I enjoy being able to see others' approach to things like this... especially since my current project is coding a TON of skills :p
Yeah i do also, no one pushing dogma one way or the other, just people throwing thoughts and ideas onto the table and shuffling them about.
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......................... bMUD: Custom server written in Ruby.
The Oriental Dojo Mud
The_Fury: Coder and Designer.
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