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enigma@zebedee · 03-15-2003, 07:52 PM

That is a very good description of why its hard to retrofit a _good_ crafting system into the game.

We have over 5000 rooms coded over the space of more than 10 years with active players from before 1995. Trying to retrofit crafting into that is certainly possible...but it is a very very big job and someone would have to come up with a very good case why we should spend our time on that rather than upgrading old areas/creating new areas/improving classes/creating new secret classes/etc.

Balance in particular would be tricky. If a crafted item is stronger than existing items on the game then no-one would bother with the existing items. If the crafted item was not better then no-one would bother with crafting. If crafting was a way to improve existing items then that now upgrades all of our experienced players and makes the game easier for them. Or we could reduce all weapons and then allow crafting to upgrade them again - but that now penalises people who dont want to get into crafting and increases the advantage of experienced players over inexperienced ones.

None of this is unsolvable - but its far easier to solve when initially designing a mud than it is to solve 10 years down the line.

03-15-2003, 07:52 PM	#24
enigma@zebedee Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 70	That is a very good description of why its hard to retrofit a _good_ crafting system into the game. We have over 5000 rooms coded over the space of more than 10 years with active players from before 1995. Trying to retrofit crafting into that is certainly possible...but it is a very very big job and someone would have to come up with a very good case why we should spend our time on that rather than upgrading old areas/creating new areas/improving classes/creating new secret classes/etc. Balance in particular would be tricky. If a crafted item is stronger than existing items on the game then no-one would bother with the existing items. If the crafted item was not better then no-one would bother with crafting. If crafting was a way to improve existing items then that now upgrades all of our experienced players and makes the game easier for them. Or we could reduce all weapons and then allow crafting to upgrade them again - but that now penalises people who dont want to get into crafting and increases the advantage of experienced players over inexperienced ones. None of this is unsolvable - but its far easier to solve when initially designing a mud than it is to solve 10 years down the line.