[Vesper]

But if there is only one "correct, mistake-free way"...why bother?

It's not unavoidable. Either they can customize to their liking, or not. If they customize a character more suited for roleplay, and they were looking for a character more for PK...then the "unavoidable consequence" is actually having to play the game and learn it like everyone else...I can see going maybe 10 levels and getting a chance to change stuff after newbie school, but after that, you'll have to explore, learn, ask questions, etc...like many games are designed to be played.


Which is very similiar to changing attributes when it suits you. If I'm fighting a warrior, I'll just change my attributes with a trigger/macro, whatever, everytime I encounter I warrior. I'll have one setup for every single class I meet. That's boring and repetitive, too. What isn't boring or repetitive is meeting a warrior one day who is purely a melee offensive fighter and has stats set that way...and the next day, finding a warrior who may have stats set purely for defense and my spells won't land at all. At least I know I'm not going up against a cookie-cutter warrior again and the combat can be somewhat interesting.


I'm not saying they were playing 5 years as a cleric. What I'm saying is an experienced player decides to make a cleric. They know the game better. At creation, they should make a better cleric then me. There should not be even ground between Joe Newbie First-Day-Ever-Playing-This-MUD and the player who's been there 5 years.


Yes, I said the numbers were the same. But it's entirely different aspect to your character, not a "distraction"...I have my base character, stats as they are. I, however, want to go hunting for equipment that makes up for the areas in which I lack. Equipment is a very important part of many, many, MUDs. Equipment is cherished by players! Quests are distractions, not equipment. There's a lot of meat n' potatoes in equipment.

Skills and stats are two different things and vary a lot depending on what kind of MUD you play. Equipment isn't an "ability" either...equipment simply gives better AC, improves attributes, adds HP, etc...
Skills are what is assigned to your class...if you are playing a class-based MUD, yeah, they're gonna be locked, with maybe a multiclassing system thrown in. *shrug* Don't see a problem here. Obviously, this is a none issue in classless MUDs.


I apologize for the 'unchallenging' comment. But what I'm gathering is...the big part of your MUD is PK. Well, if that's the case, the most important thing to me are attributes. So if I can just change them with a macro or trigger or something for when I'm fighting a certain class (Here comes a cleric, let me hit my cleric macro!)...that is kind of generic...


I don't know enough about your MUD to comment. Again, I only know what's important when it comes to PK and fighting MOB's...and that's attributes. And the extra push that EQ gives to those attributes! Which you can change however you'd like over at your MUD as the situation demands...so...what else could even be important to make it like a MtG deck?