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Old 07-23-2002, 05:49 AM   #1
Aloysius
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Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: USA
Home MUD: Dark Tower - farseek.com 4550
Posts: 3
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A common problem on many muds seems to be game balance, or lack thereof.  Particularly building mobs and objects at hero levels can get out of control, along the lines of this type of reasoning:

1. Hero gets his mitts on all the best equipment in the game, easily kills most things, gets bored with nothing better to do.

2. Builder invents more powerful mobs to keep it challenging.

3. Hero finds the mobs, kills them, gets their equipment which is disappointing, thinks items should be more powerful than what he has, otherwise what's the point of killing the mobs as tough as they are?

4. Builder enhances stats on items to make them worthwhile to acquire.

5. Hero gets this eventually, ends back up at square 1...

And so on.  Eventually this sort of circular reasoning can blow things way out of proportion, so you have heroes and mobs that hit for 1000+ damage and have stats like hitpoints in ridiculous numbers.  But is the solution to make things more and more powerful or keep them relatively balanced?  The range of possible items, mobs and statistics seems to be wide enough to allow for variation without continuing to inflate everything.  Usually item and mob stats are left to the judgment of the builder (though particularly when builders have seasoned mortal characters, this judgment can be rather hazy).

So I'm wondering how this is handled on other muds - particularly when the code is customized, levels increased, etc.  Do you set firm limits on how much damage mobs and weapons should do at certain levels or leave it up to the builders?  We have a "pricing" system for clan equipment that ensures it doesn't get out of proportion, but so far this hasn't been extended to the rest of the MUD.  Are there any resources out there for this sort of thing (beyond what standard codebases tend to provide)?

Aloysius
The Dark Tower

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