[MUD-Dev] Item Distribution in Areas

[Brian Hook]

At 12:54 PM 2/22/01 -0600, Jim S wrote:
>Now for the point(finally).  I'm of the opinion that always having
>items useable by the group trying the zone will lead to having
>everyone becoming 'loaded' much too easily.

It's a balancing act.  You want to reward your players in a fashion that 
makes them feel like the struggle was worth it, but at the same time you 
want to temper the rewards so that you can avoid "Diablo syndrome".

As long as the players feel they'll get something worthwhile -- maybe not 
for everyone, but at least for someone -- then they should be happy.  Pad 
the loot with generic items that are generally useful and/or can be 
bartered and/or can be sold to merchants.

Another alternative is to broker in an intermediate currency.  This is an 
extreme way of doing things, but it has its advantages.  For example, mobs 
almost never drop items, but drop gold/tokens that can be exchanged for 
high quality items at various merchants.  Balancing is easier, and the 
choice of reward is given to the player.  The downside is that there's no 
such thing as a story behind an item/encounter and you also lose the 
motivation behind certain encounters (e.g. why kill Nagafen for 100000 gold 
when it's easier to kill 100 fire giants with 1000 gold each).

I know if I was doing a small scale multiplayer RPG a la Diablo, BG or PSO 
that I would definitely aim for situational loot since there is usually an 
"end" to the game (although players can keep going) and thus item inflation 
isn't as large a concern.

>The coder is of a
>contrary opinion that the current state of affairs leads to a lot of
>items which are unusable by the group members piling up which in turn
>floods the economy and eventually devalues the items.

And I would concur with your coder, unless some kind of artificial barrier 
is put in place (e.g. NO DROP items), but that's only a bandaid to the 
situation.  If your world involves a lot of interaction between players 
that don't necessarily group together, i.e. trading and bartering, then 
unusable but valuable items are a good thing because they can foster 
interaction and player trade (all the way to the point of EBay abuse).  But 
if the game is essentially played by people that know each other already 
and always group together, then they'll just end up being frustrated.

In essence though, you're both right, because the greater issue is that 
items are dropping without being removed (presumably).  Irrespective of who 
ultimately keeps the item, SOMEONE is getting them.  So in either case 
you're simply refactoring the problem -- an inflationary economy -- instead 
of actually solving it.

So long as items come into the world without being removed the economy will 
eventually become flooded.  Arguing as to whether it's flooded directly or 
indirectly seems moot =)

-Hook


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