[MUD-Dev] Item Distribution in Areas

[rayzam]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim S" <dlur at chartermi.net>
To: "Mud-Dev (E-mail)" <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 1:54 PM
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Item Distribution in Areas

<SNIP>

> What our coder suggests is to delay the spawn of items in the zone
> until the zone is entered at which point items will load which are
> useable by the players who enter the zone.  For example let's say
> there is one Antipaladin player in the game named Bubba.  In the
> zone Bubba is wanting to go to with his companions to Boffo the
> dreadknight's castle.  Now regularly the NPC Boffo wields a Sword of
> Good-slaying which is only useable by dreadknights and antipaladins.
> Now if Bubba and his group successfully outwit Bubba and acquire his
> sword then this sword is in the game useable by Bubba.  The next
> time that a group goes to the zone there may not be an antipaladin
> in the group so the sword that Boffo would be wielding is useless to
> them.  Now if Boffo the dreadknight had a pair of steel gauntlets or
> iron greaves it would be much better for the players since none of
> them could wield an antipaladin only sword.  Basically the zone
> would 'sense' what type of group is coming at it and adjust the
> distribution of its items to fit that group so that there was always
> something useable by the group members.

> To some extent we do this already with rotating loads where Buffy
> the magister might have a wand one day and the next time she might
> have a silk robe.  But this is purely random for the most part.

> 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.  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.

> I'm curious if anyone has done anything like the proposed 'sensing'
> of the players to modify the rewards before and how it effected both
> the player economy and the overall happiness of the players.

The issue with this is the items/area ratio. I don't know how many
other places consider this in their design of areas, would be
interesting to find out.

Basically an 'area' [loosely defined.. a common themed area may have
multiple 'areas' in it, etc] has monsters of a certain difficulty
range, and these support the equipment of the region. That is, you
can't just make 1 monster with great eq in single rooms, in general,
mostly because of how that degenerates into a widget hunt/stamp
collecting. Requiring other monsters/rooms in the area is inherent in
coming up with a theme to the area. But in any case, the monsters, the
'boss monster', etc determine the amount of equipment and the quality
of the equipment.

Say that area allows the coder to produce 5 really good items. Now
Boffo is a deathknight, so the 5 items are deathknight-related items
[evil-aligned, bone armor, big sword, whatever].

Now allow the items to be tailored to the group that goes in: Now you
can make 25 items, and choose which 5 to drop based on the people who
load the area. 5 are the original really themed items for Boffo the
Deathknight.  The other 20 allow for some reward for anyone who comes
into the area. With the same support structure of other
monsters/rooms, you've given 5x the number of collected items. Boffo
will be farmed [once players determine the algorithm for choosing the
drops, and they will], for all 25 items. The players need to know less
areas. Other areas that had given themed items of equivalent strength
can be avoided because you can get nearly the same thing here with the
right people]. Or the differences in areas become more apparent. That
+5 strength ring is availabe from Boffo or from Scrappy.  Boffo & his
area is harder than Scrappy. Choose the right group to make it drop on
Scrappy, and kill there. No reason to go to Boffo.

The basic assumptions: a) the game has a basis on equipment. b) GoP.
Keeping, tracking, modifying an items/area ratio is useful for
creating variety in items and in areas, and keeping players more
entertained, defined loosely as keeping them going to multiple areas
and experiences. Though some players would be entertained by what I
like to call the Slot-Machine-Method, limited drops of items on the
same method. Stay there all day, pulling the one-armed bandit till you
get the 3 cherries armor of super-duper invulnerability.

    It becomes homogenation. You lose out on the variety of areas, you lose
out on the variety of parties to kill the monster. Most of all, you lose out
on the theme. Perhaps Deathknights kill each other. Then that's fine. But
say another monster Bob is a Paladin. If that monster drops a sword of
evil-slaying normally, but with this new paradigm won't when Bubba the
Deathknight goes after Bob. So to get the Sword of evil-slaying, you have to
be a good aligned character, killing another good-aligned character to gain
his sword? You could modify your algorithm so a Deathknight going after Bob
the Paladin will see Bob wielding the Sword of Evil-slayin, of course. But
then, why would he kill him?[one alternative is to have Bob have the sword
of good-slaying he just got from killing Boffo the Deathknight, and is
bringing back to an altar to destroy it for the glory of his god].

To cut the rambling which is afflicting me during a very busy day
today:

    Economy:

    1 monster with multiple drops:

        a) players will determine how to get the various drops they want.

            -a) if the drops are random, they'll just farm to get
            everything anyways.

        b) the easiest monsters for the equivalent items will be
        farmed.

        c) same items gotten from easiest monster available = more of
        the items in game.

        d) 'useless' items from a monster, that fit the theme of the
        monster but not usable by the party members may find their way
        out of the game [tossed, sold to npc shops, etc].

        e) if a coveted item occurs less often due to choosing from a
        larger pool of items or slanted percentages, then you'll see
        even more of the extra less-coveted items flooding the game,
        as the monster is farmed for the rarer drop.

I doubt this will solve any economy problems. The problem it does
solve is if a mud needs a larger variety of items, but does not have
enough areas [i.e. you can double the items/area ratio but keep the
time to gain items the same by having twice as many items, and
randomly choose half to show up on any clone of the monster]. It's
often easier and faster to code more items than more areas.

    rayzam
    www.retromud.org



_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev