<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs --> <!--X-From-R13: Oqnz Ivttvaf <nqnzNnatry.pbz> --> <!--X-Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 11:59:15 -0700 --> <!--X-Message-Id: Pine.SGI.3.96.980609111800.6559A-100000#zazu,angel.com --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Reference: E0yjF9b-0004S7-00#mail,kanga.nu --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, [MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:adam#angel,com"> </head> <body background="/backgrounds/paperback.gif" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#006000"> <font size="+4" color="#804040"> <strong><em>MUD-Dev<br>mailing list archive</em></strong> </font> <br> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] <br clear=all><hr> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> Date: [ <a href="msg00915.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00917.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg00906.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01030.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#00916">Author</A> | <A HREF="#00916">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#00916">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>[MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: [MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs</LI> <LI><em>From</em>: Adam Wiggins <<A HREF="mailto:adam#angel,com">adam#angel,com</A>></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 11:56:12 -0700 (PDT)</LI> <LI><em>Reply-To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> On Mon, 8 Jun 1998, John Bertoglio wrote: > From: Adam Wiggins <adam#angel,com> > >On Mon, 8 Jun 1998, Holly Sommer wrote: > >> The notion of converting to levelless MUDding is floating around > >> the MUD I admin, and I am curious as to how this is done elsewhere > >> (since I personally have never set foot in a levelless MUD). > > > >Levelless muds are hard to come by in the GoP field. Skill-based muds > >which have levels that do almost nothing (except for providing players > >with easy-to-understand feedback) are much more common. > > > >Right off the top of my head, the two completely level-less muds I'd check > >out would be YaMUD (if it's still around, it goes up and down) and, of > >course, Ultima Online. > > UO has levels. They are described by prose instead on numbers and are (as > of this week) defined by a sophisticated two dimentional matrix...but they > are still levels. There's two conflicting definitions going on right here. One is the conventional level notation, a single number, usually with a small range (ie 1 to 30) which, by itself, describes a given character almost completely. This is the form of 'level' that I assume Holly wanted to get rid of. The second one, the one you describe, is the definition more commonly used on this list. Since many (most?) of us are working on games without the conventional level notation described above, the term "high level" or "low level" has come to take on new meaning. In this case it's just a general term to describe how experienced a given character is. Tacking a 'class' onto it, such as 'warrior', narrows down where they have that experience invested, which makes conversations about other topics quite a bit easier, despite the fact that there is no character->GetClass() == CL_WARRIOR or character->GetLevel() < LOW_LEVEL. The second definition is broad enough that you could apply it to almost anything, anywhere. I might be considered a high-level programmer but a low-level football player. I doubt Holly really wants to get rid of *any* method of tracking this sort of "level", since that would render characters into fairly simple shells, which are not suitable if you desire (non-social) character advancement to be possible. In that spirit... > >Muds very skill/spell/gold/eq-oriented to the point of rendering levels > >almost moot include Legend and Arctic. On Legend, levels are really only > >practice points (one point per level). On Arctic, levels only affect how > >high your skills max out - if it wasn't for that, I'd never bother to gain > >levels there. (As it is, you don't "work" on gaining levels, you "work" > >on getting up your skills and learning new skills, and gain levels by > >accident.) > > This is how levels should function. *shrug*...'should' isn't necessarily the word. IMO if you're going to have levels at all (usually an old hang-on from a previous system; Arctic is nearly six years old, and at the time they started levels were ubiquious in the mud world), this is the way to do it. > After elementry school, people stop > talking about grade *levels*. People who have just received a Phd. do not > speak of graduating from the 19th (or whatever) grade, they describe their > specific accomplishment. True to a certain extent. People still tend to ignore specifics...for instance, caring more about what school someone graduated from than what they majored in, or just saying, "She'll know, she's got a PhD after all" even when the person in question has a PhD in math and they have a question about botany. Of course, there's a reason for this - generally someone that is more experienced in general will have a higher chance of knowing the answer to any given problem/question than someone with a lower level. When it comes right down to it, people still care about those simplistic metrics of your accomplishments, as they serve as general indicators of your much more complex and more difficult to define set of abilities. Ie, a company hires an engineer because he graduated from a good school and has 'worked as chief engineer at Newtech Systems for 3 years' on his resume. Are they hiring him for those reasons? No, they are hiring him because he's got many skills related to the task at hand. But those skills are much harder to define, display, and support. > All games which allow for improvement have levels. Again, a simplification I'm ignoring in order to answer Holly's post in the spirit in which it was asked. > Those designed by people with limited imagination (or a mechanistic POV) > use numbers. It is far more satisfiying to look at a character whose war > necklace has 4 dragon incisors, a glowing orb, 16 human ears with earrings > of famous warrior clans and gold wedding band. This, along with the proper > facial and body tatoos would suggest that this bad puppy is a high level > character with a bad attitude. He doesn't have to claim to be a level 65 > fighter...he either is one or is putting on a good show (which is itself > interesting from a game POV). Absolutely. > >As both a player and an admin I despise levels. I find it far easier to > >design, code, and play a game without such kludges. > >Be forewarned, > >however, that it makes game *balance* far more difficult to tune. > > Adam: Why would this be? Unless you are talking about things like players > can only fight other players within 5 levels or other artifical > stuff...those kind of meat axe tuning short cuts are clearly easy to tune > but the results are usually a joke. Well, in this case I'm speaking from direct experience, but you don't have to take my word for it - ask Raph. Anyhow, a simple glance at the problem will reveal why this is so: in one case you have a single number to adjust, plus some secondary values that relate directly back to that number. In a skill-based system, stuff is much more distributed. There is a large number of values, all of which affect each other in ways that are difficult to predict. In addition, a more complex representation of the characters (and, indirectly, the game world) simply implies more dependancies and more subtleties that can elude the designer. For instance, ditching levels means you now need some way to regular skill learning. Okay, so you make skills go up with use. But, players just sit around and spam skills to get them up, so you make skills only go up when being used 'against' something of slightly higher skill level as them (ie, a 45 climbing skill against a cliff rated at a 50 difficulty has a good chance to go up), and regulated by time (say, only once every fifteen minutes). This reasonably small change makes balancing advancement an order of magnitude more complicated. Before you'd just give them less "practices" for each "level". Now you have to go and push and pull numbers, and more specifically formulas which can get quite complex if you're ambitious. Not trying to argue against this at all, of course - anyone who's been reading the list any time for the last three or so years will know that I've always been a strong proponent of the stuff above. But I can understand how someone that wants to have simple character advancement in their mud without spending a lot of time working on it would stick with a simple metric like levels, giving them time to focus on other areas of the game. Adam </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <ul compact><li><strong>Follow-Ups</strong>: <ul> <li><strong><A NAME="01030" HREF="msg01030.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs</A></strong> <ul compact><li><em>From:</em> Matt Chatterley <matt#mpc,dyn.ml.org></li></ul> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <UL><LI><STRONG>References</STRONG>: <UL> <LI><STRONG><A NAME="00906" HREF="msg00906.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs</A></STRONG> <UL><LI><EM>From:</EM> "John Bertoglio" <alexb#internetcds,com></LI></UL></LI> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00915.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Mud websites</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00917.html">[MUD-Dev] META: Erroneous bounce messages.</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00906.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01030.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#00916"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#00916"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> <ul><li>Thread context: <BLOCKQUOTE><UL> <LI><STRONG>[MUD-Dev] Re: Analysis and specification - the dirty words of mud development?</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <LI><strong><A NAME="01155" HREF="msg01155.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Analysis and specification - the dirty words of mud development?</A></strong>, Bruce Mitchener <a href="mailto:ubmitche#mcs,drexel.edu">ubmitche#mcs,drexel.edu</a>, Sat 20 Jun 1998, 22:51 GMT </LI> </ul> </ul> </ul> <LI><strong><A NAME="01022" HREF="msg01022.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Analysis and specification - the dirty words of mu</A></strong>, Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</a>, Sun 14 Jun 1998, 06:15 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01121" HREF="msg01121.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Analysis and specification - the dirty words of mud development?</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Thu 18 Jun 1998, 01:40 GMT </LI> </ul> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00906" HREF="msg00906.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs</A></strong>, John Bertoglio <a href="mailto:alexb#internetcds,com">alexb#internetcds,com</a>, Tue 09 Jun 1998, 03:32 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00916" HREF="msg00916.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:adam#angel,com">adam#angel,com</a>, Tue 09 Jun 1998, 18:59 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01030" HREF="msg01030.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs</A></strong>, Matt Chatterley <a href="mailto:matt#mpc,dyn.ml.org">matt#mpc,dyn.ml.org</a>, Sun 14 Jun 1998, 12:25 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <UL> <li><Possible follow-up(s)><br> <LI><strong><A NAME="00908" HREF="msg00908.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs</A></strong>, Koster, Raph <a href="mailto:rkoster#origin,ea.com">rkoster#origin,ea.com</a>, Tue 09 Jun 1998, 14:29 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01087" HREF="msg01087.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Tue 16 Jun 1998, 23:12 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01052" HREF="msg01052.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs</A></strong>, Benjamin D. Wiechel <a href="mailto:strycher#toast,net">strycher#toast,net</a>, Mon 15 Jun 1998, 20:17 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL></BLOCKQUOTE> </ul> <hr> <center> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] </center> <hr> </body> </html>