[MUD-Dev] Re: A world without charity

[Eli Stevens]

David Loving wrote:

> I feel the same way; for me much of the enjoyment of being "rich"
> is the joy that I get from giving to others. I like to randomly
> give out semi-nice items for which I have little or no use just
> because it makes the other peoples experience enjoyable, and not
> enjoyable because they become more powerful, but because they get
> the feeling of warmth and of being part of a community and being
> cared about. This, to me, is much more important than eliminating
> twinks and ebayers.

I think that the heart of the matter here is that current systems do
not make a distinction between twinking and gifting (where I use
gifting to mean giving items of worth to someone you have personal
ties to, and twinking to mean giving worthless-to-the-giver items to
relative strangers).  As I see it, gifting is what forms
communities, twinking is what plays merry hell with advancement
(assuming a typical treadmill).  Of course, you can dump "junk" on
your friends (assuming that they can make use of it), but giving
items of real worth to a stranger is fairly rare (it isn't often
that you will just give away your best weapon, etc.).

It seems to me that the goal should be to devise an economy / item
system that doesn't have worthless items (both because an item has
no use to a player, or becase an item is worth so little that it
approximates to zero).  That should eliminate a lot of the twinking,
which is where the problem lies.

For example:

  Every sword in the game, from rusty broadwords to fine elven
  blades, are made from units of metal.  10 units for an average
  broadsword, 20 or more for fine elven steel.  Armor is 30 units,
  etc.  When a sword hits armor, they are both damaged by 1% of
  their total units of metal (so after one swing, an average sword
  would be at 9.9 units remaining).  Extend this out for criticals,
  shields, armor and weapon types, etc.  An item under 50% of the
  total is less effective, down to 0, when it is destroyed.  Any
  item not at 0 can be repaired by a blacksmith with enough metal.
  Blacksmiths can convert existing weapons into base metal at 50%,
  plus some for blacksmith skill, up to 75%.  Base metal can repair
  items point-for-point.

Run the game zero-sum.  A sword won't spawn when there are fewer
than 10 units of metal in the world-bank.  Every 0.1 chip, dent and
ding goes to the world-bank.  Every 50-25% lost when a blacksmith
melts down an existing item goes to the world-bank.  Every sword or
armor spawned comes out of the world-bank.  Of course, there are a
million ways to work the spawn-rate curves here, etc. etc.  Damage
to items could be accelerated when the bank is low, depressed when
the bank is full, etc.

To run the game lean, seed the world-bank with 40 units of metal per
active player character (with active meaning logged in during the
past week / month / billing cycle).  That would be enough for a
sword and suit of armor for every player, but they will always be a
little damaged, and when a spare sword does spawn, the owner will
likely convert it ASAP to repair whatever they are using that is
damaged most.

Equipment advancement could work in the typical EQ fashion, with
more powerful items having slightly more units of metal.  Trade
ratios would develop; an elven blade is only 15 units of metal, but
"trades down" for 22 units of scrap, etc.  At that point, units of
metal become a real currency; limiting gold pieces to 1000 in the
world-bank per active player might make them a real currency too.

Few people would just give away their scrap items, because doing so
would cut directly into the longevity of their existing items, and
would also limit their "trade up" ability.

Hoarding might still be a problem, but could be addressed with
further mechanics.

Just thinkin'
Eli
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