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Old 06-10-2010, 09:07 PM   #19
KaVir
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Join Date: Apr 2002
Name: Richard
Home MUD: God Wars II
Posts: 2,052
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Re: Avoiding mistakes in char gen/early game

Because, as I said in my first post, "More choices mean more customisation, and many players love customisation".

They are an unavoidable consequence of allowing players to make choices and customise their characters. But what isn't unavoidable is making those mistakes irrevocable.

Being forced to replay the exact same content again and again every time you make a mistake is not "challenging". It's boring, it's repetitive, and in a long-term game like a mud it strongly suggests a flawed design.

No, I'm saying that that cleric who's been playing for 5 years should still be playing the same character he started out with, instead of having to delete and start again every time he made a mistake. That means he'll have spent those 5 years facing new challenges and improving his skills, instead of grinding over the easy stuff again and again.

You need to look past the cosmetic fluff at the mechanics underneath. Equipment, clothing, skills, spells, tattoos, implants, etc, these terms are just pretty wrapping used by game designers to distract the players. As I said before, when you look at them "from a pure number-crunching perspective" they are all much the same thing.

You want some abilities that people can switch around and trade? Let's call them "equipment"! You want some other abilities that are locked to the player and can't be changed? Let's call them "skills"! And players, please pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

My mud has quite a few hurdles for new players, but "unchallenging" certainly isn't one of them :P

Nope, it's nearly impossible to have two identical characters post-classing, and even similar characters are pretty unusual. Designing a character is a bit like trying to build a MtG deck.
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