On Tue, 9 Sep 1997, Rasmus Roenlev wrote:
-+What are peoples (and especially Jeremy Elsons) insight on this ?
I see two main faults in this system. The first is rather obvious,
but then, everything is after you think about it. Quite simply put,
neither spells nor skills should improve with a level. The players
are getting more mana, hitpoints, movements, practice points, etc.
and that should be pretty much the extent of benefits from
leveling. The skills/spells should get better with practice, and
because a player gets practice points for a level, it works out
regardless. Otherwise we are giving them practice points and the
chance to overuse single spells. Even further than that, there is
no reason why someone should be getting better at magic missile when
they haven't cast it in a long time. Yes, fireball is a more
complex spell (well, theoritically); but that doesn't mean that
because you can do hard stuff consistently, the easy stuff is always
easier. Hence, again, the power of the spell should be dependant
upon how much it is practiced.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, is that the emphasis on
statistics in CircleMUD is already too great. The amount of mana
used does not indicate whether something is "hard" or "easy" to
cast, because the player often doesn't know, or care, about how much
mana each spell uses until they are low on mana. The spell should
literally become more powerful as it is practiced, and the more
powerful the spell, the more mana used.
My suggestion for a revamp of the system is simple:
* Make spells take longer to practice to their fullest extent.
* Give benefits as the spell becomes better practiced (eg., in
power).
* Because levels bring practice points this helps give a player
the sense of growing stronger as they gain more experience, but
it doesn't automagically make them better in an incomprehensible
and invisible (to the players) way.
* If a person is out of practice on a spell/skill (eg., hasn't used
it in a long time), make them get worse at this spell/skill.
Note that this can help create a logical step-up in spell usage for
players, too. And it may also encourage use of old spells that they
are done with, because maybe for just a little while, the strongest
version of Magic Missile is stronger than the weaker versions of
Fireball, with a minimal mana cost. It is not necessarily an entirely
new system, but a system that supercedes the present (IMO).
--
Daniel Koepke -:- dkoepke@california.com -:- [Shadowlord/Nether]
Think.
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