[MUD-Dev] Alright... IF your gonan do DESIESE...

[Adam Wiggins]

[JK:]
> Hrm...  the assumptio nhere is that the "goal" is to reach high level.
> Thats soemthing I disagree with strongly. The "leveling" phenomenon is very
> very bad IMO, it comrpesses your game to a game of high-levels and people
> just burning time to GET to high levels.

Yeah.  It always amazes me how anxious people are to burn through the
levels, get the kick-ass gear, etc etc.  I always think that the *worst*
possible thing you can do to a newbie is give them a bunch of great eq.
Basically, you've just spoiled the game for them.  Now any other item
they strive to aquire is going to pale in comparisson to what you already
handed them.

> In my current projectw e are purposefully designing it so tehre are
> inetrsting things for ALL levels to do, and "maxing" will be EXTREMELY
> difficult.  Our goal is to encourage the expereinced character to have at
> least 3 characters at any time, one "high" one "moid" and one "low", so
> that they can particpate in teh entire game.

This is common, on good muds.  In fact, I usually tend to think that
the mid-levels are the funnest time on a level-based mud.  At low level
things are just too hard (you can't walk more than 10 ft without collapsing
from exhaustion, you're constantly droping your weapon in combat, you get
the hell beat out of you by squirrel and fidos).  At high level everything
gets competative; you've got everything to loose and very little to gain.
At mid-levels you can actually do things and be relaxed in the meantime.
I don't see any reason why *any* mud, level-based or not, would make
any part of the game not be fun.  As near as I can tell, the attitude is
that you have to 'work' for a while (low levels) before you get to 'enjoy'
the fun parts of the mud (mid and high levels).  Yeah, whatever.

Our goal is to make a mud where you can do whatever you like, and you'll
get exactly what's coming to you.  If you want to be an all-powerful mage,
you're going to have to work *hard* at it, people are probably going to
be constantly coming after you...etc etc.  If you want to socialize, explore
a bit, maybe even get into an occasional fight...you can do that too.
Sure you'll never be as powerful.  Likely you'll live longer, too.
I guess our whole philosophy is that we'll just design a world full of
interesting and engaging stuff to do and see and visist and be.  What you
as a player want to do with that is completely up to you - there's no
default "game", persay.