Top Mud Sites Forum Return to TopMudSites.com
Go Back   Top Mud Sites Forum > MUD Promotions and Events > Advertising for Players
Click here to Register

Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 12-29-2005, 10:26 AM   #1
Slanted
New Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 29
Slanted is on a distinguished road
Howdy everyone,

Well, I've gone through another batch of muds and found that I am still looking for something different than what they have to offer. Since my last few tries at this resulted in a bunch of people listing their mud regardless of whether or not it fit my criteria, I am going to keep it very simple for those who refuse to read my long ramblings. PLEASE do NOT submit your mud as a suggestion for me unless it fits ALL of these criteria. I will elaborate more on them afterwards for those who like to read:

1. Skill based advancement or Classes with a lot of different skill options within the classes
2. Non Repetitive activities to raise skills or gain exp.
3. Roleplay is the norm. Not necessarily required, but found far more often than OOC.
4. Crafting systems that are non-repetitive to gain skill and not tied to any class/guild.
5. Not designed around fighting the same kind of monster over and over again except in scripted invasions or other rare exceptions.

Alright, for those of you who are, like me, detail oriented, here is more elaboration on each of my topics:

1. I'd prefer a totally classless system, but I am not adverse to having classes so long as I can highly customize my character. This does not mean that as a mage I can choose between 3 whole skills and in the end pretty much all mages will have them maxxed but at any given point you will be slightly different. What I'd like instead, using the same sort of example, is a mage who can choose between something like 5 - 10 different kinds of magic and it would be almost inconceivable that near the end, or any other point, of their careers, they would have even remotely close to the same mix of spells as any other mage.
2. It boggles my mind that almost every mud in existence, with so much imagination to tap, requires you to endlessly repeat the same motion or kill the same type of monster over and over and over again to gain skill. I don't want to have to kill 400 ants or rats to gain a level. I don't want to build 75 broadswords to gain a skill point. I'd like a fresh take on gaining skill. Perhaps having to perform vastly different activities for each skill gain or even something I haven't even considered.
3. This is pretty self explanatory. I have played RP enforced and suggested. I am comfortable with either really, so long as I can get help as a newbie without jumping through a bunch of arbitrary hoops. At the same time, I don't like being ridiculed for being in character.
4. I like to craft. So stab me. I haven't found a single system I like yet. Either they take an absorbitant amount of time or you just crank out a bajillion of whatever item to gain skill. Either way, you usally end up doing the same boring activity over and over again. I'd like to be able to pick up any kind of craft, regardless of what kind of combatant I choose to become, and have some kind of dynamic system to become better at it.
5. Let me ask you this... Am I visiting the same hunting grounds over and over again and waiting for a respawn? If yes, please don't suggest. Also, let me ask you this: Can I expect to be killing the same type of monster for hours at a time to gain skill? If so, please don't suggest. Also, Can I be expected to gain skill by practicing 'thrust rapier' at my friends while they do the same for hours on end? If so, please don't suggest.

Anyway, lets see what you got for me. I know the requirements are kinda harsh, but I figure why settle for something I don't want for a leisure activity. If no muds fit the requirement I'll just take up another hobby.

Thanks,
Slanted
Slanted is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-10-2006, 05:56 PM   #2
Slanted
New Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 29
Slanted is on a distinguished road
It seems I must lower my standards, yet again (why do I feel like Gary Oldman all of a sudden?).

First off, let me say that I really do appreciate the PM's with suggestions for muds that don't exactly fit the criteria. They were all very tasteful and up front with the features their muds have to offer.

Now then, Let me succinctly ask for the following, which should be a bit easier to accomplish:

-A game with a crafting system that does not involve repetitive actions for skill increase.

Repetition is really what I am trying to avoid here. I can't think of a single mud that doesn't build it's entire advancement system on repeating the same actions over and over again. This is specially true for crafts, which don't even carry the illusion of risk for the most part.

Anyway, see what you can offer me.
Slanted is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-10-2006, 07:38 PM   #3
Kallekins
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 48
Kallekins is on a distinguished road
Kallekins is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-10-2006, 07:42 PM   #4
Kaleisha
New Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 18
Kaleisha is on a distinguished road
I don't want to look like a fool for suggesting our mud because you might have already tried it and discounted it as not being for you. But in general terms I think any mud is going to have repetitive actions purely because it is impossible to provide unlimited variety, even in real life we have to engage in mundane repetitive actions.

You can cook a pancake and use different ingredients and label it as something different each time, but it's still the same actions, adding ingredients, mixing, pouring them into a pan and frying. An area used for hunting might have 3 or 4 different creatures in it, each presents different challenges in order to slay, there might be a few quests, and you would possibly have a selection of skills to utilize while killing them, but it's still repetitive hunting once you have been through that area a few times

It might help if you could describe in more detail some of the things you found in the muds that you tried which you didn't like and was there anything that you did? Also I am curious, how long did you try the other muds out for? I'm guilty of logging into a new mud, giving it 30 minutes and leaving again because it really has not caught my atention, but I realise that many muds take more time to sink into, specially ones where there is quite a lot involved in character development.
Kaleisha is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-11-2006, 08:38 AM   #5
Slanted
New Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 29
Slanted is on a distinguished road
Slanted is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-11-2006, 08:52 AM   #6
Jarn
New Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 4
Jarn is on a distinguished road
Imperian meets a lot of your requirements, not all though. Advancement in levels can be done either by hunting, by questing, or by PvP. Advancement in all skill is done by earning and spending lessons, rather than by mindlessly repeating the same actions. Crafting mainly depends on the guild, but can take a while. You don't need to create X number of whatever to advance a level though, it's the same as skills. Skills are based on class, there are many classes with three main skills each, and general skills that are available to anyone. Attacking is different depending on which guild you are in - mostly each guild has one main hunting attack but some have a variety. No auto-attacking unless you write your own script to do it for you. Roleplay is encouraged and OOC-ness forbidden.
Jarn is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-11-2006, 09:16 AM   #7
Slanted
New Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 29
Slanted is on a distinguished road
Hmm, that's odd, I played Imperian for a week or two and I found myself killing oysters for the vast majority of that time. Also, I always used the exact same sequence of commands to do so. I never got high enough to gain a craft skill because I just didn't want to kill oysters anymore.

Still, the environment there was very pleasant. It is probably the only reason I stayed as long as I did. The help files were also very good... I just found the game engine to be lacking for my preferred playstyle.
Slanted is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-13-2006, 07:01 AM   #8
Fishy
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 42
Fishy is on a distinguished road
Unhappy

So far the only MUD posted here is Imperian which does not fit your quota.

So I wanted to ask you to post a list of Muds that you ended up thinking fit your requirements, if you found any. I'm most interested in non-repetitive complex crafting. (Not: chop, wait wait wait, chop, repeat 50x, then: carve canoe).
Fishy is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-13-2006, 07:51 AM   #9
Slanted
New Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 29
Slanted is on a distinguished road
I just tried Evarayn, which has a somewhat unique method of gaining skill. You can do guild assignments, which is basically little mini games (one was minesweeper with a different name, another was a matching game) and that gets you cash and exp. Exp also accrues over time and you can spend it on any skill within a given category. However, when I finally got down to crafting, I found it to be somewhat lacking. Also, some of the content that seems to be designed around crafting assumes that you also like to hunt, and as a rule I usually try to keep crafting characters and hunting characters seperate.

I remember trying Shadows of Isildur a year or two back and that game was just unbeleivably slow to get started on crafting. I followed someone around for like 2 - 3 hours just trying to RP out determining what commands and what steps to take, but I couldn't even get those. He hinted to me that the time investment was beyond comprehension, and I figured if this is the normal pacing of the game... well no thanks.

I have tried a lot of other games too, but thus far I haven't found one that had a non-repetitive crafting system. The end results sometimes vary a lot, but you always take the same commands and repeat them over and over again.
Slanted is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-13-2006, 09:38 AM   #10
Shao_Long
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: belfast, UK
Posts: 505
Shao_Long is on a distinguished road
Send a message via AIM to Shao_Long Send a message via MSN to Shao_Long
Shao_Long is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-13-2006, 12:19 PM   #11
Slanted
New Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 29
Slanted is on a distinguished road
It's only repetitive in real life if you look at a high level view of it. You have to get very specific to recognize the differences. For instance, I have watched glass blowers make a plethora of different sculptures, and every one of them had unique techniques applied to the piece. Sure, they were all blowing glass, but each item took a hundred different and unique turns to create the end result. It is the same with drawing or most art. I think a lot of crafing systems take the idea that humans should be like machines and crank out a thousand of item X instead of the traditional craftsman approach where you take every product individually and try to tailor it to the needs of the situation.

Basically what I am saying is when I draw, I don't consider it 'adding line 1' 'adding line 2' etc. I'd like a system that captures the artistic approach. I'd code it myself, but then I'd probably derive no joy out of using it , hehe.
Slanted is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-13-2006, 04:50 PM   #12
Amaranthe
New Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 13
Amaranthe is on a distinguished road
Amaranthe is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-13-2006, 06:12 PM   #13
Anitra
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 123
Anitra is on a distinguished road
There is of course a way to make crafting creative without unbalancing the game.

You can give the crafters limited access to OLC; that is allow them to write descriptions, or at least restring, without at the same time allowing them to influence the stats of the item. (Those should be set as a combination of the raw materials, the skill of the crafter, the time spent on refining the object and possibly an amount of luck). I am no coder, but I think the restring command could pretty easily be given to mortals without giving full OLC access.

There is of course an obvious risk with this concept. Not all players are good writers. By allowing them to write their own descriptions, you also risk that the mud gets flooded by crappy objects, with ill written descriptions full of typos and grammar errors. This would in turn make the mud look bad to any newcomers, who weren't aware of the crafting system, but just saw the crappy objects. The risk would be even greater because of the element of time/efficiency involved. The quicker you turn out the crafted items the more exp you get, and most players would probably not spend a lot of time on thinking out beautiful or poetic descs.

One of the muds I am playing is actually still discussing a system like the above. One of their ideas about how to keep a minimum of quality into the crafted items is to make a Crafters' Guild, where you would have to apply with examples of your writing skills to be accepted. Then, if you later turned out too many crappy items, you'd be kicked out of the Guild for incompetence and lose the crafting ability.

But even with an application and quality check system like this, I still suspect the majority of players would be less interested in creating good descriptions than creating as many items as possible in the shortest possible time.

Players often complain about repetitiveness, but when you look at what most of them are doing, they usually choose repetitive tasks before making any type of effort, like exploring or questing. It's a bit sad, really.
Anitra is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-13-2006, 09:17 PM   #14
the_logos
Legend
 
the_logos's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Mill Valley, California
Posts: 2,305
the_logos will become famous soon enough
Well, there's an easy solution to this: Require admin approval of all player-crafted objects that involve free-form writing. We do that and it works quite nicely.


Just make crafted items require some expense to make (clothing can require cloth and thread and leather, furniture can require wood and leather and cloth, etc etc). If nobody wants to buy their crafted items, they'll quickly go broke just churning out useless items.

All the systems on the IRE games work somewhat differently, and there are many types of of crafters (tailors, masons, cooks, etc), but here's how one crafting skill (tailoring) works in Achaea. I've included two full help files (one specific to tailoring and one about how Achaean crafting works generally), but I'll summarize:

1. Crafter gets craft-specific license (like a Tailors license). That gets the tailor, for instance, the mini-skill of Tailoring. As the tailor practices, he'll rise in that skill, gaining a couple new abilities (like embroidery) and increasing the durability of the things he makes (increases decay times basically).

2. Purchase a blank pattern. Patterns are for a very generic type of that item. For instance, the shirt pattern is for "a grey shirt." The trousers pattern is for "grey trousers." You can, at this point, create "grey trousers" with that pattern, but nobody does, as people obviously want to create custom clothing. So, read on.

3. Purchase a sketch, and copy the blank pattern onto that sketch.

4. Start altering your sketch (re-stringing it basically).

5. Set whatever other options are available for that type of pattern (for instance, clothing sketches that cover the midriff can be altered so as to not quite cover it and thus display belly button piercings.)

6. Submit your sketch to the Crafting Guild for approval. Essentially, you're submitting it to the admins in charge of that who will proof it for suitability, grammar, spelling, etc. The Crafting Guild will also assign a 'prestige' rating to it. Prestige takes into account things like the quality of material, detail level of the description, any expensive ornaments (gems, for instance) in the garment.

7. Once you are notified by in-game mail that your sketch has been approved and is now a pattern, you can go to the Crafting Guild and pick it up, for a fee that scales up geometrically with the prestige of the item. If it's been rejected, you'll have to re-write it to fix whatever is wrong with it.

8. Now that you have your own pattern, you may sew garments from it. Creating a garment will require cloth and/or leather, depending on the type of basic pattern (shirt, trousers, kilt, veil, whatever). It will also have a gold cost associated with it that scales geometrically with the prestige.

So, basically, what this tailoring system gives is the capability for players to have a HUGE range of completely customized clothing while requiring that they go through an admin approval process to keep the level of poorly written descriptions and inappropriate items at a minimum. It also creates and enforces a system whereby if you want unique clothing, especially unique clothing that reads as being really nice ("jeweled robes of a king") you are going to have to pay out the freaking nose for it. You could even have 'dress codes' whereby you can't enter certain places unless you're wearing no item below X prestige and have at least Y total clothing prestige worn, though Achaea doesn't currently do this to my knowledge.



------------------------------------------------

9.37.1 TAILORING

(See also: HELP DESIGN, HELP CRAFTING GUIDELINES)

The tailor's art is that of transforming regular cloth, leather, and thread into magnificent vestments fit for a sultan, fearsome uniforms of elite fighting units, or modest coverings to warm old bones on frigid nights.

To become a professional tailor, you must be trained by the craft guild of Delos. Go to the craft guild office and BUY TAILORING PERMIT. The craft guild assesses a fee of 200 credits for the permit, which does not expire. Once a licensed tailor, you will have basic ability in the Tailoring miniskill. The
more you train in this skill, the higher quality your products will be, in terms of durability.

Abilities Gained
----------------
At Novice: The ability to Sew from existing patterns.
At Adept: The ability to create new patterns.
At Transcendent: The ability to embroider clothing.


Basic Syntaxes
--------------
BUY TAILORING PERMIT
- Buy your license to become a tailor.

SEW <pattern>
- Construct a garment from your pattern.

DESIGN <sketch> COPY <pattern>
- Create a blank sketch from a pattern type.

DESIGN <sketch> UNCOVER|COVER NAVEL
- This will allow certain clothing types to show belly
piercings.

DESIGN <sketch> APPEARANCE <description>
- Sketch out the appearance description for your new design.
Note: Max of 50 characters.

DESIGN <sketch> DROPPED <description>
- Sketch out the dropped description for your new design.

DESIGN <sketch> EXAMINED
- Sketch out the examined description for your new design.
Note: This will take you into the Achaean editor for easier
editing.

DESIGN <sketch> SUBMIT
- Submit your sketch for approval by the Crafting Council.
Note: Must submit from the Tailoring office.

DESIGN REQUEST <pattern>
- Pay for and pick up your approved pattern.
Note: Must submit from the Tailoring office.


Detailed Syntax
---------------
To produce an item of clothing, simply purchase a clothing pattern and the components required to make the item as indicated by the pattern (usually cloth and/or leather plus some gold sovereigns.). Then SEW <pattern> to construct your garment. The higher the prestige of the item, the more it will cost to sew.

Once you achieve the level of Adept in the tailor's craft, you will gain the coveted ability to design clothing of your own. This process is a bit more involved:

1) Purchase a blank design sketch from the craft guild office in Delos.

2) Acquire a garment pattern of the same type as the garment you wish to design (hat, belt, pants, etc.), then DESIGN <sketch> COPY <pattern>. This will make a copy of the existing pattern on your blank sketch.

3) Customize your sketch's appearance when worn, when viewed in a room, and when examined closely:

DESIGN <sketch> APPEARANCE <description>
- This is the description you see when you type 'info inv'.
- Examples are: 'a pair of leather trousers' and 'a plush mink blanket'.
DESIGN <sketch> DROPPED <description>
- This is the description people see when an item is in a room.
- Example: A white shirt is crumpled on the floor here.
DESIGN <sketch> EXAMINED (this will take you into the Achaean editor).
- This is what people see when an item is examined.

Please read the guidelines for sketches at the end of this file. It will save you a lot of time and hassle.

4) Take your design sketch to a craft guild office and DESIGN <sketch> SUBMIT it for evaluation. The craft guild will review your sketch and make a garment pattern from it.

5) When the garment pattern is finished, you will be notified by mail that your pattern is ready to pick up. Return to the craft guild office and DESIGN REQUEST <pattern>, using the pattern number specified in the letter from the craft guild. The craft guild charges a fee for the creation of the pattern based on the complexity and opulence of your design.


Embroidery
----------
Finally, once you have reached Transcendent Tailoring, you will be able to embroider clothes for other people. Simply:

EMBROIDER <clothing> <message>
- The cost is 10 gold/letter.
EMBROIDER <clothing> REMOVE
- The cost is 1000 gold flat rate.

P.S. Try SHOWOFF <garment> to display your fabulous clothing to the rest of the world, you gorgeous thing you.

Guidelines for Crafting

1. Don't take liberties with the pattern.
This means that if you are using a shirt pattern, don't make your sketch a vest. The main noun in the "appearance" field of your sketch must match whatever the pattern is a pattern of.

2. "Appearance" format.
This is what people see when you look in your inventory or give an item to another person. Some rules:

a. Don't capitalise the first letter unless it's a proper noun.

b. Don't make a sentence out of it.

c. Don't make it too long or try to cram too much detail into it. That is what the examine description is for. More than one line is definitely out and even that is excessive.

d. Don't write about any actions or reactions the item is having. Something like "a cloak blowing in the wind" would not be accepted as it is not always going to be blowing in the wind.

The simplest way to see if you have set an appropriate description here is to put it in this sentence: You give <appearance description> to Sarapis. If your appearance description makes a proper sounding and looking sentence there then you're probably ok.

3. "Dropped" format.
This is what people see when an item is in a room and they type "look."
Some rules:

a. It must be a complete sentence, with a period on the end. No exclamation points, no question marks, no multiple periods.

b. The main noun in the sentence must be the same as the pattern name so that people know what to call it when they want to pick it up, without having to type "info here."

c. Keep this to one line or less.

d. Things like "A cloak is hanging from a peg here." is not acceptable if it were dropped on the highway there is no peg to hang from.

4. Format for examined desc.
This is what people see when they examine an item. Some rules:
a. Use full sentences. Multiple sentences are fine.

b. Be descriptive.

5. Suitability

We will only accept designs that are suitable for a tailor working in a medieval-ish environment to create. Some rules:

a. Nothing that a tailor could not reasonable create. For instance, a tailor could not create a baby in a baby blanket or a suit of chainmail. A tailor can't weave something out of the essence of darkness or create something that is lighter than air.

b. Use appropriate materials. You can't make a shirt out of living skin or pure gold. Achaea also does not have "modern" materials and clothing features like velcro, denim, polyester (or any synthetic fabric), zippers, sweatshirts, and so on. One metal that may not be used is mithril. The one exception we permit here are undergarments, particularly bras. Yes, they are a decidedly modern invention in the real world but in Achaea we are lucky to have a Creator who finds that support can often do wonders for a woman's bosom.

6. Affiliated items
Items claiming to be "official" representations of affiliation with an organisation or person will be rejected. No making "the official tunic of the Occultists" or "the tunic of Tu'eras."


COMMON MISTAKES
---------------
1) There should never be a period at the end of the appearance description. Doing this will make the item have a double period when seen in your inventory.

2) Watch English usage: putting in the dropped description "A pair of rugged leather boots lay here." This should be "lie here." Lay is an action. Be careful on spelling. A spell checker wouldn't hurt, though it doesn't catch things like their/there/they're or here/hear.

3) The examined descriptions should not contain reactions. Don't do:
"Visions of lollipops are evoked in you as you look at this cloak." or (much worse) "You gasp in awe as you gaze upon this dress." It's up to the viewer to react. If you tell them how to react, your designs will be rejected.

4) Remember you are crafters not enchanters. As crafters you have no way to do anything magical in a design. You cannot, for instance, magically embed diamonds into something or cause an item to have a magical glow.

5) Organisation names should be capitalised.
"tunic of a Runewarden novice"

6) The examined description is there to describe the clothing not the wearer. The examined should not contain words such as you, your, etc. Should be the wearer's.

7) The Appearance and Dropped descriptions must contain the name of the design. If you are crafting a hat it has to say it's a hat. Example: a beanie is not a hat, so use the same term in both descriptions.

8) An item can not be something that it is not. In other words a blanket is a blanket it is not a tapestry or a banner. Those would be separate items from a blanket.

9) Initials and insignia are fine to put in your examined description. Emoticons and other forms of random symbols are not considered an insignia. Such symbols spoil a good description.

10) When using numbers in your descriptions you should always spell it out. Reading through an examined description a 2 will draw the eye away from what is written where as two will blend in and not be a distraction.

11) There are children in Achaea. Keep your designs tasteful. It is possible to be sexy and tasteful, without being disgusting.

There are some other commands and help files as well, such as putting a passcode on your pattern to allow a friend to use it temporarily, but I'm sure you get the idea. Other crafting skills work quite a bit differently, though at least one other (jewelry) works a lot like clothing does.

--matt
the_logos is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-14-2006, 03:09 AM   #15
Kaleisha
New Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 18
Kaleisha is on a distinguished road
A quite note in answer to the comment about Evarayn I'm not quite sure where the idea that a crafter would need to like to hunt came from. It is true that while the majority of mundane commodities come rom trading posts, in order to create some of the rare weapons and items you might need commodities that can only come from hunting high level creatures. But only an full Artisann cann create rares and by the time they have reached this stage they usually have a decent circle of contacts. The rare coms are generally supplied to you by the person who is wishing you to create the item. They may also be found for sale as the only use for them is in the crafting process so there is not a requirement that you become a huntsman yourself.

We try to encourage players to turn to each other, to create groups with a wide variety of abilities to cater to the needs of all just as they would in any real life community.

But thank you for trying out Evarayn, I'm pleased that you decided to visit and am sorry I had missed you there as I was intending to give you a run through of the crafting system. Unfortunately we cannot offer a full blown preview of the entire crafting system to new players as it is something that needs to be uncovered and digested as you discover more. Help files will only show so much and other players are not always knowledgeable in those particular skills and can only pass on third party information. Perhaps you will find your ideal mud out there somewhere. I wish you luck in your search!
Kaleisha is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-14-2006, 03:17 AM   #16
Estarra
Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Home MUD: Lusternia
Posts: 191
Estarra is on a distinguished road
Estarra is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-14-2006, 03:28 AM   #17
Amaranthe
New Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 13
Amaranthe is on a distinguished road
Restringing items is fun, and our MUD has a highly limited subset of hand-picked characters that can do so with a limited scope of innocuous items (trash, clothing, food, miscellany) but I wouldn't truly consider that a "crafting system".

Also at least on our MUD, the ability to change items' appearance does in and of itself create a balance problem due to playerkilling issues. People assessing what other players are wearing is a factor in tactics, target-selection, choosing what to loot, and so forth. If people could change the descriptions of items wily nily it would have a definite impact on at least these aspects of the game.

If your MUD does not have playerkilling as an essential part of the game, then these concerns would be mitigated somewhat and a restringing system would be successful.

Though again I don't really consider that a "crafting system" so much as a "redecorating system". I think crafting involves aesthetics as well as aspects such as resource location and gathering, and designing the item's function.
Amaranthe is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-14-2006, 01:36 PM   #18
the_logos
Legend
 
the_logos's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Mill Valley, California
Posts: 2,305
the_logos will become famous soon enough
You're saying that the clothes someone is wearing is indicative of how good a fighter he or she is? Someone has to be wearing expensive clothes to be good at combat? It's quite easy to limit crafting systems that allow for redescribing to items that don't affect a player's power in PvP.



Well, in the system I described, one has to obtain the raw 'ingredients' for the clothing (leather, cloth, etc). It's hard to imagine what 'function' clothing is going to have besides "keeping me warm and making me look good" but you can specify limited functions like "show bellybutton" in tailoring. With something like furniture, you can choose things that allow you to sit on them, rock in them, and even cut you off from all communication from the outside (canopied beds for lovers, for instance).

--matt
the_logos is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-14-2006, 04:22 PM   #19
Valg
Senior Member
 
Valg's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Home MUD: Carrion Fields
Posts: 643
Valg will become famous soon enough
Yup, which is what we did.

However, when a player is looking for a crafting system, my general impression is that they are looking for one with effects that go beyond the cosmetic. In other words, if I "craft" chainmail, it helps keep swords off of me.

We have a few features that touch on that (a few shops that can prepare items to your specifications, etc.), but I wouldn't say we have a "crafting" system of the kind this player is seeking.
Valg is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-14-2006, 04:56 PM   #20
Amaranthe
New Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 13
Amaranthe is on a distinguished road
No, that's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying if someone is wearing the magical cloak that I know grants one resistance to fire, I might want to take that into consideration as to whether I cast fire spells or charge at them with my lance of flames. If someone re-tailored the item to look differently, that variable of tactic selection is removed.

I'm saying if I'm playing a greedy brigand that has a covetous desire to loot an item from an opponent yet also doesn't want to randomly alienate people, he's going to use his roguish glances to assess what a person is wearing. Are they a good mark for for a profitable conflict, or not? If I can't tell if that retailored cloak is made from an old cloak of patchwork rags or a regale cloak of glorious enchantment how am I supposed to know whether I want to bother with killing the character?

Of course, how much this affects logistics in your particular game will vary depend on the game's overall design.
Amaranthe is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

All times are GMT -4. The time now is 06:24 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Style based on a design by Essilor
Copyright Top Mud Sites.com 2022