February 1999
- client images Chris Gray
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Ben Greear
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Adam Wiggins
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Chris Gray
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Chris Gray
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. T. Alexander Popiel
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Richard Woolcock
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Marc Hernandez
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers i Chris Gray
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers i Jon A. Lambert
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers i Chris Gray
- optimizing code diablo@best.com
- optimizing code Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- optimizing code Chris Gray
- code profiling Chris Gray
- World-file parsing and RTTI? The Arrow
- World-file parsing and RTTI? Mark Gritter
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- pet peeves Marc Bowden
- pet peeves Richard Woolcock
- pet peeves Koster, Raph
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- pet peeves Kristen Koster
- pet peeves Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- pet peeves Adam Wiggins
On Fri, 12 Feb 1999, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> That's a big pet peeve of mine. For the first ten to fifteen levels on most
> Diku variants, you can't afford anything. Then you can pretty much afford
> whatever you want. Cash, in the end, is a boolean value -- "if(level<15)
> goto hell; else give(cool_stuff);" -- which is basically meaningless.
Agreed. I think there's two problems here: one is that most muds have
a "faucet-drain economy, hold the drain" - that is, there's lots of money
sources, but very few things which actually consume it. Secondly, it's
easy to get large sums of money by the process of "scumming" - you don't
have to kill big bad critters or do any smart wheeling-and-dealing or
anything else to get lots of money. You only have to kill little creatures
with a small amount of money over and over and over, and eventually you'll
be rich.
I've seen a few muds with good money balance. In some cases, it's just that
the ecnomy has plenty of drains - good equipment costs an arm and a leg to
get repaired (and of course, high level players are always wearing a full
suit of good equipment), or costs a lot to rent, or both. The other trick
is to have a few *really* good things availible for obscene sums of cash.
For example, one mud had "specialization" - if you got a certain spell
ability up to 95% (the maximum, at which you fail the spell 5% of the time)
you could go to the high tower of sorcery and "specialize" it, thus permenantly
fixing your skill at 100%. This was a huge boon to mages, but it cost a
*ton* of money, more than most players ever saw in their careers.
Another one had "bodyparts" - you could increase a given stat (str, dex, con,
etc) by +1 if you bought a bodypart for it. You could buy up to nine new
bodyparts on a given character (legs, feet, hands, arms, torso). Each one
cost a HUGE amount of money, but obvious powerplayers want to "max" their
characters out and thus worked hard to get that money. This further
stimilated the economy, because high-levelers would sell really good items
to lower players (who couldn't get it themselves), but only for very large
sums (since them items were hard to get, and the high-levelers actually
cared about money for once).
> I dislike places that tie everything to levels. I say, if you want to build,
> submit your idea. Level is irrelevant. If your IDEA is good, then we'll
> talk, and I don't care if you haven't even logged in yet and only submitted
> the idea by email. If it sucks, I don't care what level you are, you ain't
> building it.
But it's important that they understand the mud from a player's perspective,
know what the theme and mood is, know what the relative toughness of monsters
and quality of equipment that they carry is, and so on. Otherwise your
mud will turn into a collection of unrelated areas with wildly different
risk vs. reward ratios. Of course you may notice that most muds fall into
this category.
> I mean, aren't we all basically agreed that level as a measure of player
> quality is pretty worthless? If not, why? What does having level X really
> say about the player behind the character? What do we expect it to say? What
> do we wish it would say?
It says that they've played the game long enough to progress to that level.
Now, there is that phenomenon known as "high-level newbies", that is, people
that got to their level without actually learning the game due to get
dragged around by someone high level for long enough to gain lots of
experience, so it's not an absolute yardstick. But it is a good first-pass
indicator.
> double-edged sword. Wouldn't it be more efficient to use two swords? Has
> anyone thought about having two levels -- player and character? Anyone done
> this? I know several folks here were talking about separating the player
> from the character on a basic level, i.e. login to a player and thence to a
> character.
Yeah there's a few muds that have done that (Lost Souls was the first place
I saw it). I don't know if anyone has actually made "player levels" or
any sort of way to gauge how "experienced" a given account is.
Adam W. - pet peeves Wes Connell
- pet peeves J C Lawrence
- pet peeves Matthew Mihaly
- pet peeves Ling
- pet peeves Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- pet peeves Matthew Mihaly
- pet peeves Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- pet peeves Matthew Mihaly
- pet peeves David Bennett
- pet peeves Robert Woods
- pet peeves Wes Connell
- pet peeves Travis S. Casey
- pet peeves Matthew Mihaly
- pet peeves Neerenberg, AaronX
- pet peeves greg
- pet peeves Richard Woolcock
- pet peeves J C Lawrence
- pet peeves Martin Keegan
- pet peeves Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- pet peeves J C Lawrence
- pet peeves Adam Wiggins
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Brandon A Downey
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Darren Henderson
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Darren Henderson
- pet peeves Steve Houchard
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Darren Henderson
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Steve Houchard
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Richard Woolcock
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Richard Woolcock
- pet peeves Apocalypse
- pet peeves Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Adam Wiggins
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Adam Wiggins
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Mik Clarke
- pet peeves Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- pet peeves Travis S. Casey
- pet peeves Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- pet peeves Benjamin D. Wiechel
- pet peeves Marc Bowden
- pet peeves Matthew Mihaly
- pet peeves Mik Clarke
- pet peeves Benjamin D. Wiechel
- pet peeves Matthew Mihaly
- pet peeves Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- pet peeves Marc Bowden
- pet peeves Matthew Mihaly
- pet peeves David Bennett
- pet peeves David Bennett
- pet peeves Petri Virkkula
- pet peeves J C Lawrence
- Horror Themed Muds [was CthulhuMud Driver 6] Christopher Allen
- Horror Themed Muds [was CthulhuMud Driver 6] Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Horror Themed Muds [was CthulhuMud Driver 6] Mik Clarke
- CthulhuMud Driver 6 Mik Clarke
- CthulhuMud Driver 6 J C Lawrence
- Mathengine Ling
- Mathengine Apocalypse
- Website update Koster, Raph
- Influential muds Koster, Raph
- Influential muds Dan Shiovitz
- Influential muds Adam Wiggins
- Influential muds Sunny Gulati
- Influential muds diablo@best.com
- Influential muds Juha Lindfors
- Influential muds Brandon J. Rickman
- Influential muds Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Influential muds Andy Cink
- Influential muds J C Lawrence
- Influential muds Dr. Cat
- Influential muds Jay Carlson
- Influential muds Mik Clarke
- Influential muds Richard Woolcock
- Influential muds Koster, Raph
- Influential muds Mik Clarke
- Influential muds Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Influential muds Dan Root
- Influential muds Benjamin D. Wiechel
- State of the art? Andy Cink
- State of the art? diablo@best.com
- State of the art? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- State of the art? ##Make Nylander
- State of the art? diablo@best.com
- State of the art? Martin Keegan
- State of the art? David Bennett
- State of the art? Martin Keegan
- State of the art? Andy Cink
- State of the art? J C Lawrence
- State of the art? David Bennett
- State of the art? Matthew Mihaly
- State of the art? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- State of the art? Matthew Mihaly
- State of the art? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- State of the art? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- State of the art? J C Lawrence
- State of the art? Matthew Mihaly
- State of the art? Mik Clarke
- State of the art? J C Lawrence
- The Terrorist Class Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- The Terrorist Class Mik Clarke
- Welcome To "MUD-Dev"! mud-dev-admin@kanga.nu
- IMPORTANT ADMIN: New list setup requires your attention J C Lawrence
- ADMIN: URL change J C Lawrence
- PermaDeath (was pet peeves) Marc Hernandez
- ScryMUD 1.8.7 released. Ben Greear
- PermaDeath Sayeed
- PermaDeath Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- PermaDeath Sayeed
- roleplaying and immersion (was: PermaDeath) Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Roleplaying and Immersion (was: PermaDeath) Sayeed
- Roleplaying and Immersion (was: PermaDeath) Adam Wiggins
- Roleplaying and Immersion (was: PermaDeath) J C Lawrence
- Roleplaying and Immersion (was: PermaDeath) Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- WEB: VR-stuff Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- WEB: VR-stuff J C Lawrence
- WEB: VR-stuff Mik Clarke
- WEB: VR-stuff Marian Griffith
- WEB: VR-stuff J C Lawrence
- ADMIN: The list archives are now online and fully searchable J C Lawrence
- Theories was pet peeves Wes Connell