4Dimensions Forum
General Category => Suggestions & Ideas => Topic started by: Kvetch on September 13, 2011, 09:40:35 am
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Molly suggested that maybe this deserves a topic of its own, so here it is along with her original post on whatever board it was under:
One of our main problems is, that the gap between new players and oldbies already is too big. It makes new players despair about ever catching up, and it also makes the game harder to balance.
And any additional 'remorting rewards' will just increase that gap.
We'll have to figure out something else, to keep oldbies interested enough to leave Recall.
Let's just all take a deep breath, take a step back and consider the subjects of Game Design and Balance, instead of constantly asking for new patches that, although they sound cool one by one, potentially might cause more problems than they solve.
Let's start out by asking ourself the following questions:
1. What kind of the game do we have presently?
2. What are the things that we specifically like and specifically dislike with our current game?
3. What kind of game is it that we want?
4. How do we get from step 1 to step 3 without disrupting any of the things that we like in the process?
So far I haven't seen anyone draw up the goals and frames for the design we should aim for. And by design I mean the total package, because everything hangs together - balance, races, classes, equipment, skills and spells, fight code, zones, quests, trading, code features...
And because everything is so convoluted, every change we do affects a lot of other things - usually a lot more than was expected from the start.
Understand me right;
- I'm not against changes, as long as they are not so totally fundamental that we lose our 12 year old identity.
- I think it's wonderful that we actually for the first time in 4D history have more than one competent coder.
- I think that changes usually are positive, because development in a mud is one of the things that keeps the player interest up.
- I think many of the ideas that are being tossed around or already implemented are promising.
I just want someone to present the full picture of what we are aiming for, before we start running in one direction or another.
Once we have defined the long term goals that we are striving for, all changes - even the small ones - should work together towards those goals.
And that means both Coders, Builders and Players.
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Pin this.
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It seems to me, this game has a few different aspects to consider when thinking about its overall design and purpose. And all of us players are fortunate enough right now to not only have a lot of interest in coming up with great ideas, but also have a number of coders willing to work on it.
So far, as I see it
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1. Newbies- Goal : Get them the help they need when they need it, and create a game that will allow them to advance quickly as to encourage their returning and becoming part of the 4D family, so to speak.
a. -There is talk of creating a toggle of some sort to allow older players/helpers to see when a newbie signs on.
b. -Suggestions have been made to create a list of easy leveling zones, good eq that is easy to get and where to find it, etc
c. -Updating the hint channel so that newbies get the information they need efficiently.
2. Oldbies- Goal: Keep the game interesting for those who have maxed out their character and have done the quests the want to do
a. Challenge system: Xeriuth and others are talking about creating a challenge system that would be mostly for the oldbies who have seen and experienced just about everything else.
b. -Revamping artifacts: By creating artifacts that re useful and interesting to olbies, Oldbies would be encouraged to continue roaming the realms and play the game. This is good for newbies because this provides the oldbies with continuing education about the set up of the Realms and the different quests, especially since things change from time to time. They can impart their knowledge onto the newbies as appropriate.
3. In-betweenies- Goal: Have a mud that provides the players with control over what happens to their character as it fits within the theme of time travel, so they can enjoy all that the Realms have to offer regardless of their specific interests
a. -The game already provides interesting zones and quests. Builders are constantly creating new zones and building upon the ones already created. We have a very unique mud that, imo, is the most fun to play out of all the other muds.
b. - Along with other ideas given by other players, Jaros has come up with an idea to allow players to switch around their eq slots and create a whole new Cyborg race. This can be as complicated or as simple as each player would like it. It give the player more control over what s/he wants for her character and, as Molly points out, fits within the theme of time travel.
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This is the way I see it now. There have been so many great ideas lately. I like how this mud provides a little something for each kind of player. We have a lot of different players, coders, builders and imms to thank for the success of our mud! And because of the teamwork, our mud seems to have a close-knit-community feel to it. I think as long as we keep this structure in mind, this is bound to create an atmosphere where newbies feel welcomed and encouraged to come back, oldbies hold interest in the game and enjoy helping newbies, and those in between find the adventures they are looking for.
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Hey guys,
Glad Molly got this topic rolling, and Kvetch thanks for giving it the attention it deserves. I think it's important as we build this system out that we do think about the Game Design as a whole, how things are architectured, and what the general purpose of each system is and how it works into a grand goal. These are all very good endeavors.
I think we also need to bring some planning and calculation into the picture for large scale changes like combat, and player skills such as the skilltree system that people have been talking about for a couple years. We had a skilltree system on my previous mud, and I can say although it's pretty nominal to change from Percents to Ranks in terms of the practice structure, the real difficulty is in coming up with ways to give each skill values based on rank when currently values are based on a percentage success rate. This is usually accomplished by having increasing power to the skill as your rank goes up, but leads us to the touchy topic of game balance as a whole.
Horus, I believe you had/have a lot of insight and research into this when you were working on the previous system. Would you be willing to post it here in another thread for us?
This sort of centralized planning is a worthy endeavor, and I support the idea. That said, my personal take on this is that 4d's central folly is that it's fallen into a state of persistent "Analysis Paralysis" throughout the years. There's a real resistance to change, and you need to have a very good balance between planning and implementation. What I mean by that is it's easy for things to get stalled in planning, for people not to be clear when it's time to act on a plan, etc. It's always safer to wait. That feeling of resting on the safety leads to a situation where things don't get done because there's always a little bit more planning you can do. I've seen this in my day job many many times, and I'd honestly say that analysis paralysis is often what causes a lot of once successful businesses to fail.
Another topic to bring up here is that I've never seen a planned system actually work out to be the best solution. Often times it may be what makes the stakeholders involved the happiest, but it's usually got some level of inferiority in some areas but someone's ego is invested by that point and it'd require a massive conversation and "new plan" to change things, which with analysis paralysis and the lag in creating a plan you're back to square one and the path of least resistance is to do nothing. I've seen this particular one happen time and time again as well. We need to be diligent in avoiding this, doubly so as this is actually entertainment/recreation for the coders involved and I don't think any of us want to actually work this as a day job. If that happens I wouldn't be surprised if the other programmers interests disappear, I'm sure mine would.
The way I've solved this in my own personal business, is to move with a more "agile" development model. Agile is a rather recent invention in software development methodology which essentially boils down to: Have a rough plan. Implement it quickly. Test it. Change it based on testing. Continue testing it. Continue changing it. Once you love it, it's done.
This is the model that I personally think we should adopt. Centralized planning is going to work about as well as it works for governments. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have an idea of how a piece fits into the bigger picture. We should. We also need to put our heads together on the real mathematical pieces like mob vs player balance and exp growth curves as that should just be an issue of math and more heads are better than one to identify any problems in the model. What we need to avoid though is detailed planning of every single feature because we will almost certainly miss something, something will sound better in writing, and we're going to create a slow moving development culture which is going to be onerous. We must find a happy medium in order to make this work.
That's my take on the issue. Would love to hear others. Let's work together towards improving this place, and let's make sure all that we're doing to improve it is adding value to the picture as a whole. At the other end let's avoid over-planning and excessive bureaucracy. I'm sure we'll find some way to make it work. ;)
-Once
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1. What kind of the game do we have presently?
Honestly, IMHO, one that isn't newbie friendly. Either xp from mobs need to be increased for the lower levels, or the first 5 remorts need to be reduced some. I know I have a GM, but also have alts which I tend to shy away from because of the xp tnl. And trying to find places to level and actually get gear to be able to go to harder mobs is lacking to. I try to help out newbies with a few decent pieces of gear, but it's like those few pieces for a newbie trying to get themselves would take so long or they'd get one shotted.
I think newbies need to be better educated about how to quest. Even with perhaps adding to the questing pamphlet 2 aliases that would help them out greatly in questing. At least they would have to read the pamphlet.
2. What are the things that we specifically like and specifically dislike with our current game?
I like the fact that the game never ends... ie you can remort forever. Love the Grand Master aspect. Love the quests though I despise them dearly.
What I dislike about the game? I don't like all the currencies that we have, gold and only 1 other type of currency for all the extra special stuff is needed. We already have gold, tokens, Trade Points, RP award Points. And if I had to chose 2 from all that I'd go with the Trade Points. Because if we still see people roleplaying we can still award them Trade Points instead of the RP Award Points. And it might actually encourage more people to RP, knowing that there is a chance that they will be able to get something more useful to them to use. Or they could just use the TP to purchase the login/logout message feature, or the other features currently with the RP rewards. But would still be nice to be able to trade the points like the tokens.
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I agree with Riley, tradepoints should be tradeable. They are a currency so why can't someone sell or give tradepoints they have to another player?
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I agree, we don't need award points. Trade points should be tradeable. Gold in the game should be all deleted so it can be used again normally.
I also agree that our experience curve isn't good enough atm, every time I try to restart as a newbie I give up relatively quickly. The first 10 levels are quite nice and you get good bonuses for them. But once you're past level 20 or so, it's slow, repetitive and boring. Newbie fights are some of the most boring things there are in this game. It's also a hassle not being able to go anywhere with 25 movement.
One thing I think would be nice for newbies is higher experience for quest rewards. Most experience rewards cap at about 50k, which is great for a level 2 newbie, but after about level 10 it's pittance for every other person in the game. If questing actually gave significant experience I think a lot more newbies would be encouraged to do it.
I will see about posting my own vision of 4d's future later, and people can rip into that as they please.
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It's hard to write about game design in this way, I guess all we can do is give our own general feelings on the way the game should be going.
I want to see 4d more enjoyable again, I picture a balanced mud in which someone can be any race or borg they like, any class they decide to try. Freedom should be essentially what we are going for. Text-based muds already appeal only to a small demographic, there's no need to pinhole ourselves to an even smaller demographic because we don't offer the choices some other muds do, it's all about CHOICES.
I want to go to shops and pay for things with a realistic amount of money, I want to be able to sell the things I find to shopkeepers for a reasonable amount of money.
I want to see Clan Wars actually happen because there are enough active players in each clan that are all willing to put it on the line.
I want to go trading or crafting and use experience gained from that as a slower but safer way of levelling.
Oh no maybe I want to go hunting, I want to be able to fight mobs without having to rely on skills or spells, spamming kick isn't fun, it's weird and just turns people off the mud. I would rather more weight be on the automated aspects of fighting with mobs and skills or spells allow for fun little tricks to slightly help yourself. No one should be able to kick 50 times in 10 seconds.
This brings me to stamina, stamina is a great stat it just needs to be used instead of movement every time. Movement is one of those pieces of 4d which provides nothing of value, but detracts from the experience a bit. Stamina is a far superior stat to use, I would love to see mana work the same way. Charge up a big fireball and it uses up all my mana, I'll probably only be able to cast that one spell for this fight, but my mana will have restored itself within the next minute or two, like stamina does if you just chill out for a second.
I want to be able to be a gunslinger, an archer, a swordsmith, a brewer or scriber, a tinkerer or woodsinger, a priest or dark mage, I want to be able to use psionic powers, I want to steal and pick locks, I want the choice to do anything, and the opportunities when I make my choice to be roughly even.
Experience gained from questing should match experience gained from levelling.
I basically just want to see diversity and freedom of choice available, with balanced but intriguing opportunities for whatever I decide to do.
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If Molly doesn't object I wouldn't mind doing those type of exchanges of tp since immortals have a command to do that. Not sure how I feel on mortals having that ability. Maybe if we cap how much you can give a day or something I might see it working a little better.
Prometheus
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If Molly doesn't object I wouldn't mind doing those type of exchanges of tp since immortals have a command to do that. Not sure how I feel on mortals having that ability. Maybe if we cap how much you can give a day or something I might see it working a little better.
Why? We can already exchange the others and it's not a problem, increases player interaction. With all due respect that kind of immortal micromanaging is exactly what we should be getting rid of.
I will post properly now.
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What I like/dislike about what we have now
I like that there are no limits. We have a theme that literally covers everything from the beginning of time to the most outrageous point in the future if we want it to. I can wield 'a cool dagger,' put an Intergalactic Diplomatic Translator in my ear, and pull on a pair of sandals stolen from the tomb of an ancient egyptian pharaoh which a god then transformed into a pair of Armani boots for me as a christmas present. It's great. :)
I used to like the fact that this was an "intelligent," game in that you had to solve quests to be the best instead of just killing. Now I'm not so sure. I think quests are great for telling stories and giving us unique problems to solve, but basing an entire game on info that can't be shared or talked about, and items that can't really be traded? I think that's a mistake. Quests have their place, but their rewards shouldn't be monopolizing the game like they do.
I don't like our fight code or skill/spell system.
I don't like things that narrow our options instead of expanding them, like race attributes and set classes.
I don't like how complicated and imbalanced everything is, with tiers and GMs and massive strength gaps and a hundred unnecessary numbers on my score all trying to hide the fact that our actual gameplay is shallow.
I don't like how hard it is for new players because of this ^^.
What to do.. what to do..
As far as skills and spells and fighting go, we need more to adjust to than: he hit me, better heal, then back to spamming my one sweet move. Likewise with defensive shit, we need more to think about than just: spell me up bro. I would like to see defensive skills/spells serving as tactical choices, wherein what you choose to cast on yourself depends on what your strengths are and what style of fighting you want to use in any given situation. A poor choice of preparatory skills/spells should actually make you more vulnerable. Aggressive skills/spells should likewise depend on how you've developed yourself, how you've prepared for this particular fight, and what kind of an opponent you're facing. As has been said, skills/spells need unique values that depend on one and other, not just how much charisma or something you've got.
Horus I've talked to you about this and I like what you have to say about it a lot, but I don't think anyone has any idea how close we are to achieving it, what actually needs to be done, etc.
Beyond that, we have two major problems: newbies and oldbies. How do we keep them playing? From the oldbie end: We tried GM. It made people bigger. It didn't solve the problem. The only way to solve it is to ask, what is genuinely worth earning that doesn't make you any bigger? I think that's probably the single most important design question in the game, and I kind of have an answer, and it also solves the newbie question and the whole problem with our learning curve, and ties into what I was just saying about skills/spells.
I'm going to explain it in a new post. I don't think it will take long. :o
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As far as fighting goes, I think there are a few things we can do that drastically improve fighting. Experience should be modded far more depending on mob - player level. If you're fighting something above your level, you should be getting a lot MORE experience for it, whereas if you're fighting something below your level you should be getting a lot LESS experience for it.
Grinding is never going to be all that fun, and it has to be relatively mindless. We should capitalize on this, fighting should by DEFAULT be easy for grinding. If you set yourself up and go kill things of the rough level you are - providing the base experience gain, without doing any skills or spells in battle you should be able to win the fights relatively easy just with your automated hits. Instead of making me type kick;kick;kick;kick and spamming it throughout battle, I should be able to achieve roughly the same thing just by typing 'kill mob' and watching myself fight it.
This means if I want to go through Punt with kill all on, and I am strong enough and of the same level as the mobs, I should be able to not think about it.
Now, as far as involvement in battle goes, it should be a way of altering the fight: eg, speeding it up, slowing it down.
If a Priest BUFFS themselves up and is ready to use HEAL, they should be able to fight stronger mobs, face a potentially longer fight duration, but be in for a larger bonus at the end for doing more than just fighting their own level.
A Mage can fight above their level by ending the fight much faster, they need to be able to supercharge spells to do huge DAMAGE and end the fights before they take too much damage, if any.
An Esper should be able to make it virtually impossible for the mob to know what to do, as well as making it very difficult to be hit.
The only way of making this work that I can think of is removing MOVEMENT and changing MANA. We can't have huge move and mana totals, and then just make everything cost a set amount of movement or mana, so that we can spam stuff in battle. We need to have STAMINA and MANA that deplete and restore very quickly, but prevent spamming.
A mage should be able to spend 100% of their mana on a fireball to do 10x the damage of a normal fireball. But that's all they can do, they'll have to wait 2 minutes before charging a spell like that again, and at least 10 seconds before casting another 10% fireball.
A priest should be able to put 100% of their mana into a heal to get a FULL HEAL, whereas 10% would only restore 100hp maybe, because 10% mana recovers in about 10 seconds.
This is already more well done with fighters and rogues because of stamina, we just need to make it fully dependent on stamina rather than movement, and we're away running.
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If Molly doesn't object I wouldn't mind doing those type of exchanges of tp since immortals have a command to do that. Not sure how I feel on mortals having that ability. Maybe if we cap how much you can give a day or something I might see it working a little better.
Why? We can already exchange the others and it's not a problem, increases player interaction. With all due respect that kind of immortal micromanaging is exactly what we should be getting rid of.
I will post properly now.
And I'm starting to get really tired of this immortal bashing. I already read once about immortals not knowing anything about what mortals do. And now we are being told not to micro manage. I'm offering a temporary solution till we can agree to these changes. Don't forget we have veto power on things as well. Not only the MORTAL players. We as immortal / mortals have input as well. So please stop bashing suggestions because they don't "fit" into what "you" want. *mutters*
Prometheus
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Here is my solution to easy to learn but everlasting gameplay:
You start the game one, maybe two skills waiting to grow into trees. A fighting one and a preparatory one. What they are depends on your class. As you grow, you climb your skill tree and your one or two skills branch out a little and get a lot more badass, so that by the time you reach the end of your first two trees you are as badass as they come, but only in a single style of fighting. So very early on a relative noob can prepare himself for his chosen fighting style, enter battle and use a skill as powerful as any available to me, even though I've been around for years.
The difference between me and this noob is that I have more options available to me, more styles I can use. So: Noob can run around slaughtering your basic mobs but only with his one style, IE whatever few moves have grown from the tree he began with. That keeps it simple for him, but if he takes on more distant zones or a powerful mobs they might be more unique and less susceptible to his style, or have a wider range of styles it attacks with, so his one style--badass though it is against standard mobs close to home--just will not be flexible enough to cope. From there, he gains more experience and invests it in new skill trees associated with other classes. Maybe he actually remorts into that class, maybe not, I don't know.
In this way he gradually expands the options available to him and the complexity of his gameplay can increase, without any extra raw power being available to him.
How to make the game last for oldbies? Make the cost of investing in these skills/spells increase exponentially, so that your first couple of trees are cheap and easy and you rip through them at a glorious rate, but by the end it's effectively impossible to master all possible styles. So you can keep killing etc forever, and you will always be gradually expanding your character and collecting more options to incorporate into your style and becoming less and less defined by any one class, but again, no more raw power will be available to you than you had all those years ago.
This would require a massive amount of work because it implies completely revamping skills/spells, finding a way to make each tree powerful and unique in its own right, and balancing them such that just throwing on the preparatory skills/spells available to you doesn't do you any good--only carefully selecting the relevant ones does. Also classes, levelling and pretty much our entire gameplay system would probably need a complete makeover.
I think that should be the direction we move in though. Customizable races, augments, and elements are all designed to gradually open up options and character flexibility in line with this, and a complete system would factor in all of them.
To me, that's the direction we move in. It does require thought and planning, which is what threads like this are for. On the other hand, I've been through massive code changes before and I've helped to test a lot of new features, and in the end you simply cannot get everything right on paper. No matter what it is and how much or how little has changed since it all began, such things take endless testing and tweaking ANYWAY before they can even get close to where they ultimately need to be. Claiming that changing this or rebalancing that might throw off something not even being tested yet is ridiculous.
Fortunately we have a small, understanding playerbase who have hung around even with a code as shit as ours is. We can't exactly go backwards. :D
This post has taken longer than expected. :P
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If Molly doesn't object I wouldn't mind doing those type of exchanges of tp since immortals have a command to do that. Not sure how I feel on mortals having that ability. Maybe if we cap how much you can give a day or something I might see it working a little better.
Why? We can already exchange the others and it's not a problem, increases player interaction. With all due respect that kind of immortal micromanaging is exactly what we should be getting rid of.
I will post properly now.
And I'm starting to get really tired of this immortal bashing. I already read once about immortals not knowing anything about what mortals do. And now we are being told not to micro manage. I'm offering a temporary solution till we can agree to these changes. Don't forget we have veto power on things as well. Not only the MORTAL players. We as immortal / mortals have input as well. So please stop bashing suggestions because they don't "fit" into what "you" want. *mutters*
Prometheus
Get over yourself Prom. I'm not bashing immortals, I'm asking why they need to be involved in something like this. All it achieves is an unnecessary intermediary.
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Now, as far as involvement in battle goes, it should be a way of altering the fight: eg, speeding it up, slowing it down.
If a Priest BUFFS themselves up and is ready to use HEAL, they should be able to fight stronger mobs, face a potentially longer fight duration, but be in for a larger bonus at the end for doing more than just fighting their own level.
A Mage can fight above their level by ending the fight much faster, they need to be able to supercharge spells to do huge DAMAGE and end the fights before they take too much damage, if any.
An Esper should be able to make it virtually impossible for the mob to know what to do, as well as making it very difficult to be hit.
I like this approach. You would just have to make sure that overall kill-rate across the board is the same. So a priest kills tough things by being defensive, which takes longer; a mage kills them by being aggressive, which is faster, but takes longer to recover from. So ultimately they should take the same amount of time to kill the same 10 mobs, all other things being equal.
From there you could still open up the barriers as players grow, so that if you feel like using a priestly style today you can, but you can still throw on some other spells and start using a mage style if you want to later, assuming you've expanded through both trees. What shouldn't help however, is just throwing on all your priest and all your mage spells and then trying to fight something bigger than you.
This means if I want to go through Punt with kill all on, and I am strong enough and of the same level as the mobs, I should be able to not think about it.
Yes. Cruise-control grinding! Hands on for the tricky bits.
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Exactly, grinding should be absolutely cruise-control. Involvement should only be when necessary.
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Buuuuuu! >:(
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Buuuuuu! >:(
k... to what?
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Also if we can work out what we want the basis of our core gameplay is to be, then we can work out what stats are actually necessary to that end and start stripping away the others. The simpler we can make SCORE, the easier the game will be for new players to pick up.
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Imagine if the Drow Necromancer was a badass mage. He had his fire mastery as good as it could get, and he super-charged all his spells (which would be facemelt, fireball, meteor shower, inferno, etc.) so they were doing so much damage it'd kill anyone one hit. The only way to fight him would be if you were a Priest spending all your mana on keeping your BUFFS going and on consistent HEALING. Or if you were a Thief and managed to sneak in unseen, and super-charge a back-stab good enough to kill him in one go.
Super strong, one-hit-kill, fire-mages would be difficult to kill. Beating their style of play would require either NEVER getting hit by them, or making yourself strong enough to withstand taking a hit from them, or beating them before they got a hit in. The only other option would be a group, a priest dedicating some of his mana to BUFFing a Warrior with good tanking capabilities, and a Hunter or Ranger or some kind of Mage to deal the damage to take out the mage.
For this to work, it would need to be necessary to have ELEMENTAL MASTERIES, which I envisage as very similar to WEAPON PROFICIENCIES. They are both types of fighting. You are good at fighting with short weapons, or you are good at magic with fire. They would have to be zero-sum equations so as you get better in a mastery to the detriment of other mastery's. Or you get better at weapons to the detriment of other types of weapons.
For this to work it would also be necessary to be able to determine the amount of EFFORT you wanted to put into a spell or a skill. It should be possible to super-charge a skill or spell by determing the percent of your STAMINA or MANA you want to dedicate to it. If you put 100% of your mana into one spell, it will do 10x the damage it would if you put 1% of your mana in it.
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Get over yourself Prom. I'm not bashing immortals, I'm asking why they need to be involved in something like this. All it achieves is an unnecessary intermediary.
Um because most Immortals also play as mortals and we do have an input on things. And it is the way you come off that gets on my nerves. We as Immortals and / or Mortals will be dealing with fallout and other things. So I am going to be involved so at least give us a little respect when we post or make suggestions. Don't dismiss us because we don't fall into your view on things. I'm trying to give my input and so are other Immortals who once again have mortals so we have a vested interest as well. So stop dismissing us. And don't tell me to get over myself. I'm pointing out you don't seem to like "Immortal" input even from Immortals who have mortals. So the sooner people stop bashing our input the sooner we can discuss these changes as a group and not us "Mortals" vs "Immortals"
*mutters*
Prometheus
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@ Virisin -> Been watching the clips for Elder Scrolls: Skyrim?
Supercharging a spell sounds interesting. But I think you also should lose a lot of your stamina after you cast the spell nor should you be able to vitalize yourself. So you get to do a super nasty fireball but you are tired after it so you couldn't keep casting it.
Just my 2 cents.
Prometheus
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You have completely misinterpreted me. I mean why would we need an imm making TP exchanges. Letting us pass them around would be much easier.
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^ ah okay I misunderstood. So much input and not enough output energy to process it :) I was talking about a stop gap measure till it can be coded in with limits :) Or discussed in detail :)
Prometheus
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Why should there be limits on how many tps can be traded? You can trade limitless gold and tokens, why not tradepoints. Trade is part of its name after all. By definition should they not be points that can be traded?
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@ Virisin -> Been watching the clips for Elder Scrolls: Skyrim?
Supercharging a spell sounds interesting. But I think you also should lose a lot of your stamina after you cast the spell nor should you be able to vitalize yourself. So you get to do a super nasty fireball but you are tired after it so you couldn't keep casting it.
Just my 2 cents.
Prometheus
Yeah for it to work we need mana to work like Stamina does.
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So I'll have to give up my limitless mana supply? Just about the only benefit from high remorts? Well if it's for the better of the game, why not. ;)
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I think allowing some spells and skills to be charged up and bringing mana into line with stamina would be a good option that could be worked on immediately.
From there it's a matter of dividing them up more appropriately between classes so that each class functions best at a different battle-pace. I don't think we need nearly as many spells (or skills to a lesser degree) as there are. Instead we should look at the groupings and styles they need to cover and then narrow down the selection to those that can actually serve a unique purpose.
Here's a suggestion for the skill/spell grouping:
AGGRESSIVE (high damage, fast kills, longer recharge on attacks)
Mage
Hunter
AGGRESIVE-EVASIVE
Thief
EVASIVE (high evasives, strong debuffs, medium recharge)
Esper
Gypsy
DEFENSIVE-EVASIVE
Ranger
DEFENSIVE (low damage, strong buffing, short/zero recharge)
Priest
Warrior
These would be the kinds of skills associated with a new player in that class. Over time I think those boundaries should vanish as you grow, so you can switch between styles and incorporate bits of each as you see fit.
I think crafty skills like tinker and woodsing should be acquirable by anyone, since we can't count on our economy being worth much.
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As Viri has said, cruise-control grinding should be like a default pace of battle that anyone can maintain without having to do much as long as they're fighting their own level or below.
That would only have to change when taking on bigger foes, like the Necromancer described above. In those cases a Mage or Hunter would put all of their energy into a fast kill, and then wait to recover afterwards. A Priest or Warrior would buff up and try to grind the thing down. They would end the battle and be ready for the next in the same time a Mage or Hunter would take to kill it and then recharge. An Esper or Gypsy would fight at the same pace, but would put their energy into avoiding hits and weakening/confusing the opponent, so their kill and recharge times would be somewhere between the other two groups. Then AGGRESSIVE/DEFENSIVE-EVASIVE--Thieves and Rangers respectively--I figure would fit into the remaining gaps. Pretty self-explanatory.
It could probably be thought of as a sliding scale with FAST-KILL/LONG-RECHARGE at one end and SLOW-KILL/NO-RECHARGE at the other.
I want to say a Priest should be able to charge up a potent heal just like a Hunter can charge a devastating behead, and there's no reason why not as long as the costs and recharge times are balanced such that in the end the same 10 mobs are going to take the same time to kill across all classes, all other things being equal.
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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.
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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.
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Way to confuse everyone in your schizo brainstorm, weirdo.
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No no, dont be too harsh, I really want to hear him argue with himself.
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I wish I could remove posts. Four in a row was too many. :(
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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!
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Those are two great suggestions, and a good post.
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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.
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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.