Posted by Rufus on 01/12
Okay, T-bone hits on some basic game design principles that
make legend very different from other muds... I'll go at them
point by point...
One being NO WAITING, shops open all hours, regen to full in
no time, fast repop times on mobs, no WAITING quests etc.
In every town there is at least one shop with most necessary
items that is open 24/7. Not all shops will follow this, for
the sheer fact that legend does attempt some movement towards
realism (not in all aspects, but in some).
Personally, I'm not happy with the repop times on here, and I've
been looking into ways of correcting this in a logical manner
(You have to understand, resets are a pain to deal with, and there's
TONS of them, and... not all mobs use the reset table to reload...)
And quests that wait here are few (there's three, maybe four) and
some of those have very good reasons (the quest requres sneaking in
at night, it takes time to make a sword, etc). As much as waiting
through the beowulf quest is a pain, it would not be nearly the
epic quest it is without the waiting periods.
As far as regen, legend is a slower paced mud than most, and a
lot of that has to do with pkill and the average damage things
do. On many diku variants, players able to do hundreds, even
thousands of damage a round is not unheard of. That would
destroy the game balance we have here entirely. Regenning based
upon actual time rather than relative time to the numbers
we use would be suicide. As a side note, however, I did increase
regen rates once, and I'm still not happy with them. I agree
that waiting too long is boring, however, if you make regen
happen too quickly, then it eliminates the need for healer
types in all but a select VERY few areas of the mud. In
comparison to most muds I play, Legend is very docile. You
can walk to 90% of the rooms freely without being attacked,
etc. The number is nearly opposite on most muds.
You can read news and use chat channels while sleeping even
though regen is super fast anyway.
Reading generic boards from anywhere will be reconsidered when
we rewrite the board files. It has been discussed heavily in the
past, and is just not terribly possible with the board/note
system we have now.
Identify is free in donation rooms & for spellcasters and cheap
for other classes.. It must put people off coming from other MUDs
not being able to find out whether what you're wearing is worth
peeing on til lvl 10.
Very little gear on legend is detrimental, which is not the case
I find on other muds. Another part of legend's basic design is
that there is a mystery to the game itself (those of you who
are hardcore paper RPG fans might appreciate that fact more than
others, however). Hence we do not readily give ample information
of exact numbers and statistics of items in the game. They are
there for discovery as well as for increase in abilities of the
wearers.
MOST eq on mobs is at least worth something to someone.
More areas aren't needed to increase the amount of useable eq here.
MOST eq on mobs is useful to SOMEONE here. A small rent cloak that
gives a few AC points is a good item for a newbie. Again, this
reflects upon the point of how legend is designed from a balance
standpoint. We have limits based on objects and also limits based
on logical relations of objects to their stats. As far as the
second sentence above, I'm not quite sure I'm parsing it correctly,
so I'll pass on that for now...
(more in the append)
From: Rufus
Monday, January 11, 10:16PM
There's plenty of useful wands, staffs, potions, scrolls etc,
they're cheap and you're not limited to just a few as you are
here because of rent.
Again, we have logical restrictions placed upon such objects.
Legend's game design basis lies primarily in history, not in
fantasy where such items are more apt to be found in abundance.
As far as the rent, that is something I will be addressing in
the near future with the builders because I feel too that the
rent of such items is a bit steep at the moment.
No xp loss from death! Yes you heard right, why should your
poor link or circumstance set you back an hour or 2 after all.
You do however get turned into a zombie and need to wait 10
mins before praying at an altar will restore you.
Okay, another game design perspective. Legend is not that
dangerous. In general, if you lose link, you're not going to
die. Even if you do, a couple hour setback isn't really that
harsh. Death on legend is SUPPOSED to be a penalty and stands
that way from a game design perspective. It is one of the few
penalties we actually have here.
Items aren't left on your corpse either, they're restored when
you are. A much better system IMO.
That is one of only a couple muds I know that does this. Most
either leave them on your corpse or the mobs loot them. I think
Legend strikes a balance, considering 90% of the time you can
recover your eq yourself, without assistance.
Everyone is able to pkill but only in certain areas, most
are no pkill, others are NPK and then there's CPK.
If you get killed in NPK, you lose nothing and are pretty
much were you were b4 dying only transfered out and requiring
a heal. CPK is more like what we have here, I haven't even
visited such zones and probably won't til I can hold my own.
Not going to happen. One of the many things that makes legend
unique is the way it handles clans and pkill. It's a legacy
carried over from Carnage and one that allows Legend's other
capacities (roleplaying, etc) to flourish within a logical
boundary.
Just one more for now, and the most important to me..
Not being able to screw up your character by wasting prac points!
Considering how many you get (54? 53? one of the two, it's late)
screwing up a few times on your first char isn't going to be
entirely detrimental.
A certain rare item may be found which loads randomly on any
mob in the game may be offered at a place for prac points.
You may also venture into the catacombs and collect eggs which
will get you a lesser amount of pracs but are also required for
multiclassing which in turn keeps the economy rolling as they
fetch high prices along with other randomly loaded items.
One goal of legend is to create an economy that is interractive
not just supportive. The econonmy of which you speak in these
few lines is just the latter... it's entirely player sided with
no interaction in the world itself.
Also, you hit on something that basically separates legend from
many other muds. It's unclassed, and will become moreso with
skilltrees. Multiclassing in a discussion on legend has no place, nor
any reference.
Don't get me wrong, I've played medivia (medevia? it's late)
before and I liked the game system. It has its good points and
some of the theories behind them may be incorporated into what
we have here, however the implemenation and basis from which
they come on a game design perspective are entirely different,
so different, in fact, that if we were to copy them verbatim,
we'd likely destroy this system. They're nice features in a game
that is designed to support those features. Unfortunately, the
direction legend is heading in has promise in offering up a
broader spectrum of things to offer, and a game design which we
hope will be revolutionary and fun, but most important, very,
very different.
Hope this clarifies at least my thinkings on some of the above
items. Again, I don't totally disagree with all of T-Bone's
points, however, I can see their application in certain systems
and not in others. The last thing I would ever like to see
sacrificed is anything that makes legend unique, be it the hometown/
axiom concept, the non-centralized mud basis, the superior writing,
the vast depth and detail of descriptions, or the logic by which
it is all laid out, or the pace which we achive by not going overboard
with numbers... It's not a perfect system, yet... by any stretch
of the imagination, and yes, we're entering basically the fifth year
of Beta testing. So expect, until we officially release
LegendMUD 4.0 (skilltrees, etc), it probably won't be as polished as
some muds who claim high playercounts.
-Ruf
From: Adolfus
Monday, January 11, 10:38PM
I agree with just about everything you say Rufus, and can see
your point of view in the others. I see more subtle things that
legend could possibly learn from medievia.
No waiting, I agree that it would be hard to change the wait states
on even regen on legend. What could be done is if not allow one
to speak on channels while asleep, it could be made that you could
hear them anyway. Also you can recieve tells there while asleep.
Which may sound silly, but when you consider you shouldn't be able
to tell anyone in the first place...they actually call it
telepathing there, which makes more sense overall I think, not
counting how everyone would be telepaths.
Along the same lines as wait states and being able to do high
damage etc, and no xp loss from death. Hopefully legend can
become a bit more dangerous, where dying is a more regular
occurence, and mobs come after you etc, along with more mobs
with improved AI like the dhurtah.
The amount of xp to level could also be raised a great deal.
I have no problem with leveling being extremely hard to do,
as long as the mobs are fun to kill and challenging. Making it much
harder to level and making the mobs more powerful, would allow a
greater variety of other things, such as usable staves potions
scrolls and spells. Spells like charm animal or charm person,
wands sold in stores with these spells on them etc. In my opinion
legend has never been very hard to play after you get past the
learning curve. ie in the old days after you figured out what eq
to get and actually got it, playing a dex char was simple.
Now its very possible to play con and str chars were before it
was extremely difficult. The main difficulty in legend is the
first time through, learning who teaches what skill and what
spell, theres room to raise the difficulty if it would
improve gameplay and add a few more options.
This would allow lower wait states, at least in regen, basically
now if you got the heals, theres not much stopping you from killing
anything. Example, green potions on medievia are in abundance,
you can buy them in backpacks on auction 74 at a time, for a
couple thousand coins, and they do around 30 hp heals, but
you can only quaff one each fight round.
As for identify on eq, I like the system ok here, its nice
to have a learning curve, where newbies arent handed everything,
but you must also realize that legend is more complicated eq
wise than most muds also. Not only do you need to get good ac
damroll and hitroll, you must worry about raising your fight
stat and manipulating other stats around a bit. I think this
is what most people are objecting too when they say there isn't
enuf +5 stat eq. Raising your stats is hard and there arent many
eq choices compared to other muds, Even if every piece of eq in
the game was +5 stat, there could still be a huge variety in eq.
While this would be vastly different it would allow builders to
add other things to eq, like protection from fire, protect from pierce
etc, not that there arent these things now, but they are mostly
unusable. Any eq that isn't +5 is a big decision to decide to
use, this just isn't the case on other muds and theres more
variety because of it. Not really asking for +10damroll swords
or anything, hrm well I won't make an example I figure you
know what kinda eq is possible, its just that because of rent
costs and the need to have +5 stat its usually unusable here.
Pk
Legend wouldn't have to be pk for everyone, leaving the
choice to enable the same, it could be made where most of
legend is neutral pk, where you keep your stuff and just need
to heal, and only a few areas are chaos pk, where your stuff
is left with your corpse. (not sure exactly how they do it there)
Also the majority of legend could be made no pk, and only some
areas made npk and cpk, this would broaden legend a great deal I
think in terms of how many ppl would be active in pkill.
Having areas where one could be save from pkill totally would get
more ppl to enable, having npk areas would get more ppl actually
pkilling, and cpk would satisfy those types that would actually
like to loot a corpse when they killed someone, without making
everyone a target. Its a very elegant solution imo.
I think its important when looking at other muds, not to look
to changing the system carte blanc over to something like
medievia, but to pick and choose what could help legend out.
One key to the npk and cpk areas on med is that they are some
of the nicer or more dangerous areas with more of the more
desirable eq in them. SL would be a prime canditate for cpk.
All the decent xp areas in indust would be good canditates for npk.
Of all the things on medievia I think the way they do pk has
the most promise to help legend out.
Adolfus/Beam
From: Rufus
Monday, January 11, 11:16PM
The main logical problem with nopk, pk and cpk 'zones'
(legend doesn't have 'zones' btw) is that if I step into this
room I can kill you, I step out, I can't. I don't think that's a
leap of logic this system is willing to take.
From: Adolfus
Monday, January 11, 11:29PM
One could also argue, that having one person in your level
range you can kill and another person in the room you cant kill
is a leap of logic also. Pkill definately is super hard to manage
once again I will give this link to a good article about pkill.
imaginaryrealities.imaginary.com/volume1/issue2/beyond_pk.html
Also its easy to find reasons not to do something, specially if
there the type where you say that just wouldn't seem right in our
system. Actually I think it would fix all problems with pkill
here, having no pk zones would allow all to enable, having
npk zones would give ppl a place to pk for no costs, ie no
eq loss no xp loss, and cpk could cost full loss of xp same as dying
to mobs and loss of eq. Just think ppl could rp being bandits
and ambush ppl in npk areas and the only hard feelings there
should be are that the victims char actually died, which does
tend to piss some ppl off even if they dont lose anything but
a bit of time. I urge you to look hard and see if you can
find any merit in this way of doing things Rufus.
And I must say your being very reasonable discussing this
with us, and its commendable, and all anyone can ask for
really, is for their ideas to get a fair shake
From: Papercut
Monday, January 11, 11:45PM
cpk and npk and stuff, where it's one room and then not the other..
are pretty much like safe rooms imho, just in a much larger scale.
the thing with zones is that it divides ppl into the city slickers
and the adventurers :p. would be interesting tho, to have an
experimental area where everyone becomes enabled upon entering :p
From: Adolfus
Monday, January 11, 11:51PM
I agree thats just what it is, most of the mud would be a safe room,
and other small areas could be npk and others cpk. Nothing could
happen to you unless you went in these areas, and even if you went
in an npk area there would be nothing to lose except a little
face maybe. And medievia even makes you do a quit y type of thing
before entering cpk where you have to type yes, so there wouldnt
be any problems where someone could say, oh i was minding my
business and so and so killed me for no reason.
Also if you consider how legend is mob wise we are very much in
a type of system that is similar to it now. If your not pkill
enabled on legend and know the areas you are safe, and remain
safe until you decide to go into a dangerous place. This is
very much like life, you would have an idea when you were
entering a nonsafe area, and most of the time probably nothing
would happen but there would be a risk involved in going
into certain areas. Now that article goes into it in
detail, but some muds do a justice code etc, with mobs
patrolling the towns, etc. It could be made where only the towns
and close surrounding areas were no pkill or npk, and the
very dangerous off the beaten path type places could be
cpk. If it would be better to have all rooms except the
safe rooms there are now be npk and only a select few
areas be cpk, then that would be an improvement imo also.
From: T-Bone
Tuesday, January 12, 02:23AM
You make valid points but it's easy to find a reason not to
do something. I'd be more inclined to implement changes where
the good points outweigh the "possibly" negative else very
little would get done.
From: T-Bone
Tuesday, January 12, 10:29AM
You mentioned keeping regen rates slow to keep healers useful
yet other MUDs seem to do manage both fast regen rates and
healers being desirable in groups?
One problem here is that healers that don't spam aren't
self sufficient enough but that alone isn't enough to keep
regen rates as they are considering the above.
Hmm, druid types need shapechange & a portal type spell to
get groups around the MUD quick'n easy. Perhaps players
would be more helpful if one could pop from London to
Tara with such a spell.
I also think MacDonald had a good point in a previous post
in more mobs should hunt, perhaps make it the default
requiring you to blind a mob to prevent it hunting.
Mmm, going off topic again.
From: Ronnie
Tuesday, January 12, 03:32PM
An idea. Since there is already a certain island on the mud that is a
total safe zone, from what someone told me, I hanvt had the oppurtunity
to test it myself, why not just one place set aside where anyone could
kill anyone else? The challenge wood itself is a good idea, but maybe
this feature could make the place itself more intresting?
From: Adolfus
Tuesday, January 12, 07:47PM
I think originally, correct me if im wrong, that the challenge
wood was gonna be an arena where one could use the feature
seen at the last pkill tourney where all could watch the fights.
And at least for a while it was considered for it to cost no
xp loss, or possibly less xp loss for clanned than nonclanned.
But that somewhere along the way this idea was set aside or discarded.
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