[MUD-Dev] Geometric content generation

Koster Koster
Fri Sep 28 16:17:53 CEST 2001


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com

>> From: Adam Martin [mailto:ya_hoo_com at yahoo.com]
 
>> For a good essay on the psychological side effects upon players
>> of using known levels, random skill increases, and semi-random
>> skill increases, have a look at this Gamasutra article:
 
>>   http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010427/hopson_01.htm
 
> Now I see quite how nefarious the UO designers were! I had assumed
> house refreshes were about limited space and urban sprawl, but no,
> its a mechanism to ensure people play forever.

Well, it's both, really. To this day, anecdotally, there's a lot of
players who only play to refresh their house.

We also used variable ratio for your skill advancement,
originally. Your chance of advancing in a skill was random, with a
roll each time you tried.  The result was, unfortunately, maybe too
much reinforcement--everyone macroed everything. ;)
 
It is good to see "infinite ladders" and "many ladders of
advancement" from the Laws validated by psychology. ;)

-Raph
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