Game Design

[Jaros]

Just a thought, is charging things up actually necessary?  We have so many skill/spells available we could just fix cost/damage ratios so that you effectively have scalable attacks available to you.  AGGRESSIVE gets all the high damage stuff but it costs them so much they have to wait for the mana/stamina to recharge afterwards.  And so forth.

The really difficult part is balancing all the attacks with buffs and debuffs and evasion etc so that for someone akin to a GM with a whole range of fighting styles to choose from, if they're using priestly buffing and healing then aggressive attack spells won't do them any good anyway.  I think this could be achieved with well balanced cost ratios and mana/stamina recharge rates.  Elemental associations could also help though.

[Jaros]

Okay, I think charging would be the best option if combined with elements.  So you effectively only need one attacking skill/spell per class with a damage/cost ratio to match the style's battle-pace.  EDIT: I don't know exactly what I'm saying there, but I'll think on it.

From there, you master one class and move into another style, which is associated with a different element.  The element influences its the damage/cost ratios of its associated spells/skills such that using something outside your element's sphere would be more costly for your mana/stamina than it would be worth.

If you want to change your styles regularly then, even in battle, you need an upgrade that lets you swap around your different elements on the fly--augment them, if you will.  Then if you want that kind of complexity and you want to be able to switch up your fighting styles efficiently whenever you please, you can learn to do so with your elements.

If that's not what you're into, you can still grind in cruise-control, or fight big things with the simplicity of your chosen style.

[Virisin]

Way to confuse everyone in your schizo brainstorm, weirdo.

[horus]

No no, dont be too harsh, I really want to hear him argue with himself.

[Jaros]

I wish I could remove posts.  Four in a row was too many. 

[Greg]

I'm a real life noob to 4D.  I've raised 1 character to level 47.

I'm not going to be around forever because that's just not how I play games.  It says good things about your fine MUD that it has held my attention this long and that I'm still very interested in it.

I have no idea if my feelings represent noobs to 4D in general, especially the ones who will eventually commit to the long haul.  Still, here they are.

I'm an explorer, always looking for something different.  A huge advantage of 4D is that I'm not stuck in an endless rehash of D&D.  Your focus on history, and on a variety of historical periods (including the wild future) gave me a reason to explore your world(s) when the other worlds out there were boring me to death.  Your MUD is unique and a MUD has to be unique to get and hold my attention.

What keeps me interested is new areas to explore and interesting skills and spells to play with.  New combat skills and spells are usually significantly less interesting than utility skills and spells, just because new combat skills and spells tend to do pretty much what the old combat skills and spells did.

Your wide variety of different areas to explore is splendid! 

I have two concrete suggestions for making your MUD more attractive for folk like me.

1.  Abolish the experience penalty for death.  I don't know any popular MMORPGs that still have an xp penalty for death.  When your character advances backwards, it is frustrating and is an inducement to give up.  Also, it discourages exploration, because the more you explore unfamiliar territory, the more you lose xp, and the less fit you are to go exploring because your leveling slows down.  Kicking people back to recall when they die is penalty enough, and is the sort of thing that modern MMORPGs do.  Instead of discouraging people from checking out your wonderful zones, let them enjoy entering and getting royally squished by some horrific mob, without the frustration of losing xp.  Being eaten by a dinosaur should be fun!

2.  Consider getting rid of the need to identify equipment to work out what it does.  Instead, the stats of the equipment could be obvious just by examining it.  Again, this is what the popular MMORPGs that I know of do.  For someone like me who is not a crunch-head, it is confusing enough to weigh the bonuses and penalties of different equipment already without having to search through your SCORE sheet to try to work out what the modifiers are.

Anyway, thanks for building and running this terrific MUD.  It really is excellent!

[Virisin]

Those are two great suggestions, and a good post.

[Greg]

Another suggestion: Don't let areas trap the player so that they can't recall out (or teleport back to their clan).  If someone is enjoying the puzzle, they can stay to try to solve it.  If someone isn't, let them go and enjoy something else in your MUD that might appeal to them more.  Importantly, modern MMORPGs don't do this sort of thing and there is a good reason for that - in order to keep players, they want to constantly tempt them with things they might enjoy rather than tempting them to quit and look for something to enjoy in another MMORPG.

Your splendid MUD has the advantage of offering a variety of things to enjoy.  If you like puzzles, there are puzzles.  If you like hack and slash, there is hack and slash.  If you like role-play, there are people doing role-play.  But the zones you can't leave take that variety off the table - you have to solve a puzzle, and a specific puzzle, before you can do anything else.  That's alright if you want to limit the MUD to a specific kind of player, and there is nothing wrong with that.  On the other hand, if you are happy for a wider variety of people to enjoy your mud, it would be good to give them the option of quitting on a puzzle in order to go do something else.

[Jaros]

I think that's fine for areas close to home.  Newbies shouldn't be getting stuck unexpectedly but there are a few faraway deserts and deliberately challenging areas that are meant to be intimidating.  I don't think they should lose their  NO RECALL.