10 Jan, 2013, yue wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
Ummmm. You have less than 100 players. You have 29,000 rooms. At that point, you have lost spacial identity. Repeating what you said after quoting me did not make your answer any more on point.
10 Jan, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
yue said:
I think remote areas that have creatures that give great experience but aren't terribly difficult to kill encourage exploration..

To find it initially perhaps. But most players will just ask "where's the best place to earn exp?", and then they'll stay there for as long as it remains profitable.

Even those who explore will rarely return to an area if it doesn't offer anything worthwhile. If you've got 300 areas, and 3 of them give much better exp than the others, then (barring any other incentives) 99% of your world becomes unused filler. Players will probably even complain that the areas are too busy, that there aren't enough mobs, etc - but when you suggest they visit other areas, they'll tell you those areas suck for exp, and that they're not worth visiting.

yue said:
What's the point of 30,000 rooms if they all offer the same experience?

Some muds automatically lower the exp on a mob the more you kill it, and this can at least encourage players to move around a bit. The same approach could be applied to entire areas, but it alone isn't enough to encourage exploration, as players will just alternate between a handful of familiar areas.

Some muds offer incentives like exploration exp and awards, and these can certainly encourage players to visit every part of the world, but it doesn't mean they'll hang around or come back.

Some muds offer area quests, and these can work pretty well - particularly if the quests offer rewards that don't accumulate, so that players can't grind them.

But if you want players to use an area regularly, it really needs to offer something that other areas don't. If each area offers something useful that can't be obtained elsewhere, then all of the areas will be used.
10 Jan, 2013, Splork wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
Sloth does much of what kavir mentioned:

Each player has a kill history. As the player levels, his kill history increases. There are no penalties for having a few of the same mobs in the initial hundred or so kills, however the more the same creature is killed, the less the mob is worth ( for this player ).

We increase the amount of experience a creature is worth depending on how long it has been alive. Doing runs in lesser known/run areas can lead to huge gains.

Another feature we use is area and room experience. We keep area stats which provide us with data on which areas are ran, how often, how deadly they are, and so on. The easier areas are automatically adjusted down and the harder areas are increased. Not so they are identical but so that there is not a huge discrepancy from one to the other. We also adjust this manually, depending on stats.

We give experience for reaching new areas and experience for exploring complete areas. We also keep live data on the webpage to display the top 10 or so exploration leaders for the week, month, year. Anything like this ( live data and acknowledgement ) seems to really keep the players interest.

Areas are normally targeted towards a class or classo or group or solo. What is good for one might be horrible for another.

We keep a list of new equipment we would like in-game and add some of these to new areas, and others to old/less popular ones. If a new item increases in power over an older one, we normally force the Immortal to add a forge which includes the old item. This helps maintain the important of the area/item.


One of the more fun features we have are continental configurations. Everyday, a new continent is picked and all the areas on that continent have things such as faster regeneration, better mob eq pop rates, fargate, no lost concentration, etc. Previously, I had toggled on just one of the bonuses and this did not have any affect at all. Toggling on all of them, per continent, has worked quite well to move the players around.

We do many other things but these come to the top of my head. Over the course of 21 years, bloat occurs and you do the best you can to keep things interesting and balanced.
10 Jan, 2013, Ssolvarain wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Some muds offer area quests, and these can work pretty well - particularly if the quests offer rewards that don't accumulate, so that players can't grind them.


I have a quest line (still in progress) that extends from one starting city all the way to a certain point where it meets up with the quest lines from the other starting cities. It can only be done once, and it sends the player to local areas that progress in level along with the quest line.

I even managed at one point to set up three different quests that could be take and completed out of order, while still progressing the quest line itself. But that's besides the point :3
10 Jan, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 25th comment:
Votes: 0
yue said:
Just curious, Why is balance desirable? I think remote areas that have creatures that give great experience but aren't terribly difficult to kill encourage exploration..


Unless you makes so going to a player is difficult (no tele no tracking system etc) the very second people see someone level faster than them around the same level they WILL go to him. Secret lost, exploration not encouraged. Thank you goodbye.
10 Jan, 2013, yue wrote in the 26th comment:
Votes: 0
@Splork: You listed a bunch of great techniques. I'm curious about areas targeting specific classes though. How is that achieved?
10 Jan, 2013, mangan wrote in the 27th comment:
Votes: 0
yue said:
Just curious, Why is balance desirable?

As Kavir mentioned in a later post, imbalance can cause content to be unused, and therefore it can be less valuable. (Splork has shown some methods to make it more valuable when unused, so this isn't a deal breaker, but still generally an unintended consequence.) In a multiplayer game, it has been my experience that players do not consider it fun when others have advantages that cannot be afforded to them or that weren't earned. To the extreme, we can consider immortals assisting specific mortal characters in fights or giving them free levels. This is especially important when players compete, whether it is in PvP or just prestige. To ground it back into the balancing of areas, and to a lesser extreme than just mentioned, areas that exceed the accepted balance in terms of value (whether via equipment, experience, or any other measure) will result in other content not being used. This also leads to lack of exploration once initially understood by a few social players, thus defeating one purpose of having anything but the "best" content.

yue said:
@Splork: You listed a bunch of great techniques. I'm curious about areas targeting specific classes though. How is that achieved?

I'm not Splork, but there are numerous ways to target areas for specific classes or group settings:
  • Pickable doors/chests to encourage thief/rogue play.

  • Immunities/resistances/vulnerabilities on creatures that cater to specific classes (vuln fire, resist slash, etc.)

  • Racist guardians to areas. (The MUD I develop has a guardian to some dwarven halls that needs to be killed to get past, unless you are a dwarf. Non-dwarves that pretend to be a dwarf get attacked.)

And there are many other ways beyond playing to just classes, combat, and player race. Additionally, each of the above can be used to encourage groups as well. Guardian may let the dwarf player's entire group pass if the dwarf player vouches for them. Thieves can unlock doors for the entire group. Mage might cast a spell so that the warriors swords are imbued with fire and no longer count as slashing damage.

This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather simply methods that are common in many code bases that support both classes and races.

The key is that "balance" doesn't guarantee that all players have the same game play in each area, but rather that there is equal opportunities through out the game for the style of game play their character is designed to have. (Purposefully leaving this ambiguous as to who "designs" a character's game play.)
10 Jan, 2013, Splork wrote in the 28th comment:
Votes: 0
Mangan posted quite a few nice ideas and actually his group comments are right on the mark in regards to SlothMUD. Our game has always been a "group" oriented game. This means that we go out of our way to encourage grouping. We have guardians which only allow groups into areas, we have groupexp bonuses every week, experience is determined by the number of group members( each additional group members adds experience, this encourages people to recruit players and not close groups), etc.

One of the main techniques we use to target a specific class is by tailoring the creatures in that area to that classo/class. One example would be the thief class. Thieves have the best opening move ( backstab ) and Immortals will often create mobs with high damage, many attacks, and low hit points( this creates a relatively nice exp mob). Most of the time, thieves can splork ( mob dies on backstab->yes, this is where my name came from ) these mobs and quickly move on to their next kill. If anything, they may take one or two rounds of damage. The other classes can not do this amount of damage without engaging the creature, thus they have to take several rounds of damage and end up wasting quite a bit of mana.

This is just one example but I think you get the basic idea. We balance this by only allowing so many stab mobs in one area. Immortals will push the limits and the experience calculator but these issues are caught by our walkers ( every area needs to be walked and approve by a senior Immortal ). By limiting the amount of these creatures in a particular area, we also force the players to move around.

Its a constant cycle.
11 Jan, 2013, yue wrote in the 29th comment:
Votes: 0
Wow, mangan and Splork: Thank you so much! Your two posts made for a fantastic read!! :)

Also, I am going to start playing SlothMUD now. I want to splork! :D

Rarva.Riendf said:
The very second people see someone level faster than them around the same level they WILL go to him. Secret lost, exploration not encouraged. Thank you goodbye.

In Realms of Kaos, this would NOT be the case. You go ask someone who isn't in your clan where they power-leveled so fast (not that you have anyway of knowing when another player gains a level) and they say, "GTFO NEWB!" Secret kept. That's part of the fun of the game. Maybe your experience has been different because you have been doing what everyone has been doing. Hence, you get the same result. Try something different? You might get a different result. You're welcome, auf wiedersehen.
11 Jan, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 30th comment:
Votes: 0
yue said:
Wow, mangan and Splork: Thank you so much! Your two posts made for a fantastic read!! :)

Also, I am going to start playing SlothMUD now. I want to splork! :D

Rarva.Riendf said:
The very second people see someone level faster than them around the same level they WILL go to him. Secret lost, exploration not encouraged. Thank you goodbye.

In Realms of Kaos, this would NOT be the case. You go ask someone who isn't in your clan where they power-leveled so fast (not that you have anyway of knowing when another player gains a level) and they say, "GTFO NEWB!" Secret kept. That's part of the fun of the game. Maybe your experience has been different because you have been doing what everyone has been doing. Hence, you get the same result. Try something different? You might get a different result. You're welcome, auf wiedersehen.


Maybe I just dont ask people and just follow/track/stalk tele to them…Oh wait your game does not provide such functions…must be very easy to gather people….either that or all your players are stupid enough to not be able to find were people are.
11 Jan, 2013, yue wrote in the 31st comment:
Votes: 0
You can follow, stalk, and page players. No teleportation. Clans can communicate over channels. It's also OPEN PK anywhere you can find a monster to kill. Towns are safe, but nothing to level on there.

The only stupid people are players who let other players sneak into their leveling spots, and players who don't figure out how to find the good spots. I'm withholding judgement where your concerned.. benefit of the doubt type thing.
13 Jan, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 32nd comment:
Votes: 0
As as I told you in PM you just need one griefer or bored enough high level player and all your secrets are gone. Period. It WILL happen, with any community big enough. Relying on secret in a multiplayer game is doomed from the start.
13 Jan, 2013, Ssolvarain wrote in the 33rd comment:
Votes: 0
Rarva.Riendf said:
As as I told you in PM you just need one griefer or bored enough high level player and all your secrets are gone. Period. It WILL happen, with any community big enough. Relying on secret in a multiplayer game is doomed from the start.


Yurp.
13 Jan, 2013, yue wrote in the 34th comment:
Votes: 0
Rarva.Riendf said:
Hell back in the days ->I<- was the one who made a website to reveal all the secret of the game I was playing in. Why ? Just to piss of the people who kept stuff from themselves taht could only be known by immortals.

My benefit ? Pissing them off..

Very informative PM. I'm not really interested in any further discussion with you, about anything. You're wrong, in the context I am referring to, and no amount of arguing with you about it is going to relieve your ignorance. http://www.realmsofkaos.com/ and play it yourself. I have played numerous games where keeping information secret is a key strategy to the game, and while there might be some sharing, the game is designed to change often enough to really make it impossible.
13 Jan, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 35th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
I have played numerous games where keeping information secret is a key strategy to the game


You fail at understanding human behaviour.

Quote
Very informative PM. I'm not really interested in any further discussion with you, about anything.


Why ? Cause I have been a griefer 12 years ago ? It could have been anyone doing it, you just don't want to admit it. I knew every little secrets, I revealed them, and nothing could be done against it. Because I had no interest in being "at the top". You see there are more than one way to play a game. Especially a social one.
13 Jan, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 36th comment:
Votes: 0
BtW , my interest in revealing secrets was also to have an even playfield so there actually was competition. Trouncing newbies just cause I was higher level or better eq never interested me at all, so the key to success was for for me that all people had the same informations. (Another way to piss the people that thought they were good player were in fact, they were jsut kids with too much time in their hands)
14 Jan, 2013, Hades_Kane wrote in the 37th comment:
Votes: 0
We ask that people keep quests, hidden spell combos, etc. "secret", and while a good number of people respect this (hoarding info for some, respect for the rules for others), many people do not.

The reasons range from honest mistake or naivety, to intentional disrepct for rules and authority, to helping out friends, to being overly helpful to newbies, to saving others frustration/work they endured, to trying to create challenges for themselves (like Rarva, I've done this, revealed secrets to my enemies in order to be more challenged), or trying to make their group/clan/guild the strongest.

It's going to happen.

It might not be a widescale problem, but people are going to share information.

The best an Admin can do is continue to discourage it, either by making routine changes to said secrets to keep them fresh and ever changing, or by the threat of removal/nerfing if they are shared too extensively.

We have at least one area in our game that has a decently long and difficult quest built into it that I made, and while a player could surely share how to solve/quest through the zone, the actual solutions to all of the puzzles are randomized by a pretty decent margin and tends to be a nice deterrent to people trying to share too much info about that one. Also, the rewards at one spot at least are based on how many times it took you to solve it, although I'm sure there's been some "where'd you get those running shoes?" and someone pointing toward Viper Manor.
14 Jan, 2013, mangan wrote in the 38th comment:
Votes: 0
There are also other reasons to give out secrets. I've done so for political reasons, within a game, while "in-character". Doing this enough earned quite a bit of favour, and many others that knew that I acquired such information would then share their secrets with me in order to befriend me and get more info. Sometimes it worked, sometimes I didn't have the answers they wanted but I would get a lot of info out of them anyway. Is this part of the game? I would think so.

Where is a line drawn saying "this is against the rules" and "this is helping a newbie"? In this context, even a veteran player is a newbie to the problem before them. If a certain mob always spawns with the running shoes, can a player tell them to get it off that mob? If the mob is behind a maze, can the player leader the other through the maze? If the maze is randomized to avoid a speed path through it and require thought, then can a player tell others the 'recipe' to solving it? If it's completely random and guess-and-check, can players share strategies on how to figure out the maze? (Drop unique items in each room for example, and map it on paper.)

My point here is that even if a game wasn't going to encourage the sharing of secrets socially, it cannot be policed. If it isn't allowed IC, then it will happen OOC. Even if it is detrimental to the sharer by making the sharee more powerful, that can also be beneficial to the sharer by making social bonds, improving the average character within their clan, etc.

These issues may even be diverted further, which will later be followed by more work arounds as the players see fit. If none of this is desired though, why have a social multiplayer game to begin with?
15 Jan, 2013, Hades_Kane wrote in the 39th comment:
Votes: 0
At least in the context of my game, things like leveling, questing, etc. aren't in character. In a lot of games (particularly Dikuratives) that have both IC and OOC enivornments, you level on whatever you can find. Whether it's a smurf village for the more stock games or just the random citizens of a town for others. In also many of these games, characters describe what they are wearing in their descriptions usually vastly different from the equipment they are actually wearing.

If they are wearing running shoes, it's for the stat boost of agility and the haste affect, not normally because it's the relic their character would normally be spotted with.

In a setup like this, sharing the info ICly really wouldn't fly. On RP Enforced or RPI MUDs where everything your character does is IC, then that would be a perfectly valid reason.

Acceptable means of help on such a quest in my game would be "There are a series of quests in Viper Manor that has some nice rewards." or "You can start the quest by talking to mob X." or "One of the puzzles is based on previous ones, so I would suggest tracking what you do in a notepad or something." or even "X puzzle rewards based on how many times it takes to solve."

I would probably be fine with someone pointing out that the running shoes came from Viper Manor, but I would rather the particular quest or puzzle not be pointed out. Vague hints, a nudge in the right direction, that's okay. What we don't want people doing is outlining step by step how to do a puzzle, or giving the solution to others away, etc.

And you're right, it's not enforcable, and we don't spend a lot of time trying. In fact, we pretty much just ask them not to. If we catch someone blabbing all over the place about stuff, sure, we'll do something, but if we add a hard to figure out and obscure quest and suddenly everyone in X clan has the reward, it's safe to assume someone has been sharing info, and it's time to take some measures, which could range from nerfing the item, changing the quest, or removing the quest altogether.
15 Jan, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 40th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
and it's time to take some measures, which could range from nerfing the item, changing the quest, or removing the quest altogether.


That leads back to point one: just balance the item from the start. then you just don't care.
There are two things to do in a mud (roughly): the pvm and the pvp.
Some people jsut use pve to get the means to pvp they dont give a fuck to this part, and everytime you make an item that break the balance of the game, it will be a NOT FUN time sink for them to get it
The one who enjoy the PVE will not even ask for the secret, as they want to find it by themselves.
The one who likes both may just stop playing their pk till they get the item that allow them to be competitive again.

(I do no talk about the spolied braf who just want everything now, as the only thing that pleases them is more power than the other)

So just make your item good, but not better than other items in the slot. Just different enough than only some people may be interested in them. The people not interested will then not look for it, hence less people will now all the secrets, by design. That is why blancing items and areas is good.
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