[MUD-Dev] Experience System Differences

[Malcolm Tester]

-> -----Original Message-----
-> From: Alornen [mailto:alornen at uswest.net]
-> Sent: Monday, January 15, 2001 7:02 PM
-> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
-> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Experience System Differences
->
-> I've been working on the design for my MUD and I was wondering if
-> anybody could give some insight as to the differences between the two
-> types of systems I've been debating.
->

Seems to me either way you go, you have the same result.  Either way, the
player has to kill more monsters to get more experience to level.  The
traditional (and probably less intensive) way to do it is to keep the
experience the monsters give the same, but raise the amount needed for each
level.

What you could consider is an approach like this, but also throw in some
sort of record tracking on the player.  Record what monsters they kill, and
possibly how many times.  Then, the more times they kill a particular
monster, the less experience they get for it.  The only problem with this is
how you save that kind of data.  Keeping it in the player object is not a
good idea, as with a huge mud with lots of monsters, the data will grow
quite a bit.  Using another method like MySQL or some external database
could work, so long as you can have good throughput.

Another option is to split the methods for gaining experience.  For example,
A player gains experience for solving quests.  they gain experience for
combat.  Maybe they gain experience for exploring, or other things.  They
need a certain amount (invisible to them probably) of each type to gain a
level.  And that amount can increase with each level too.  I know several
muds that do some variation of this.

Personally, I hate going around and mindlessly hack 'n' slashing.  My
codebase focuses mostly on quests, with an (increasingly) bigger focus on
social economics.  Players can gain experience from killing, but they gain
more experience from solving quests, or from running shops, towns, etc.  The
more involved in the mud the player is, the more experience they gain.
(Still smoothing a lot of the edges, so no flaming :)

My main point though is that you can do so many other things than just give
experience for "kill goblin", "advance level".

Malc is Mindless

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