'Stop and smell the roses' (was RE: [MUD-Dev] Winnable MMO)

[Damion Schubert]

From: lynx at lynx.purrsia.com

> One possibility: create some bookkeeping mechanism so you can tell
> if the player's farming the same area a lot.  If the player's
> treadmilling in the same area, decrease experience gained.  (how
> much more can the player learn from killing the same kobold pack
> for the 100th time?)  Then people are forced to rotate.  The
> length of that rotation may depend on how long your bookkeeping
> interval is.

I'm a big fan of any system which incentivizes people for 'breaking
patterns' - i.e. trying new stuff and exploring new places.  If you
don't, you'll end up with players finding the most efficient camp
for their level and never leaving until it ceases to be efficient.

I'm not even saying that camping is bad, necessarily - players will
gravitate towards finding a way to make their advancement
predictable.  However, if we make 2000+ monsters in a game (as
Shadowbane does, counting all variants) and players stick to only
killing the most profitable dozen, then you have a lot of wasted
content, as well as random D&D pundits coming into your mailing list
complaining that you don't have any content.

--d
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