random thoughts on item repair and limited capital

[Valentine]

My post is drawing from my experience with other muds. I have never played major mud...it's just one of the forums I've lurked on since I was a wee child. If I ask a stupid question, please be kind.

Are there any thoughts on limiting the amount of capital available in the realm? In other games that I've played (major mud not being one of them), after a certain point the game becomes very "newbie unfriendly" as those who have been around seem to have every imaginable item available, plus millions of whatever the currency unit is in storage. What it boils down to is there are numerous ways to amass capital, and few ways left to spend it. Limiting capital is tricky, as the amount available would have to be somewhat adjustable according to the number of players in order to encourage new gamers. I'm rambling a bit here, because I really only have a couple of ideas on how this could work. I just really dislike the blatant disregard of the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy in most muds I've played.

I like the idea of items wearing out. I'm a big fan of realism, and having the players need to either replace worn out items or repair them would help with the capital issue. In my mind, lesser items would not be repairable (has anyone actually tried to fix a splintered wooden dagger? It ain't pretty). Better items would be able to be repaired multiple times. Taking this a step farther, perhaps repairing an item could only get the item up to 95% of its previous strength. This way, if you have the Supertastic Sword of Ultimate Power and Doom that cost 2 million gold pieces and does 3000 points of damage, you'll have to work to keep it up and eventually replace it.

Am I giving the programmers a headache yet? I have about 450 thoughts about item repair, but I don't want to wear out a post about it if it's something people hate.

[lumikant]

if greatermud is going to be like Majormud in terms of scripting, i'd prefer not to see weapons wearing down. It doesnt really click with the rest of the game play. (i.e. No sleeping, eating, shitting, resting) I just figure its what the character is doing in his downtime when I'm not watching him or having him move.

As for the capital, prestige money sinks are always a good call. Personal homes, personal vaults (both with contract and rental fees), a fast, yet expensive way to travel between cities. How many of you at later levels would drop like 3 runic to just go from silvermere to lost city in an instant. Or even a single runic to go to Rhudar.

[Valentine]

if greatermud is going to be like Majormud in terms of scripting, i'd prefer not to see weapons wearing down. It doesnt really click with the rest of the game play. (i.e. No sleeping, eating, shitting, resting) I just figure its what the character is doing in his downtime when I'm not watching him or having him move.

I also think there should be sleeping, eating, and drinking, for the record.

[DeathCow]

Repairing items is something that is somewhat popular in various rpgs. ?As a system it is only funtional because in those games items become damaged due to certain events. ?In some games monster have special attack that either simply target your items or damage the items as a side effect, like curse spells and the such. ?Wear and tear by use isnt by itself a bad plan, however it does tend to mutilate players who spend the majority of there time scripting. ?Majormud is a very script friendly game. ?After years of evolution majormud was ment to keep players online all day everyday burning their bbs credits, and thus making the sysop money. ?

In order to create a system in which items can become damaged we'd need certain cases in which the items can become damaged. ?Over time accumulation of damage doesnt seem like a good plan for greatermud, unless that was over a long period of time. ?In greatermud a combat round will last 5 seconds, and combat swings will go off at the begining of each combat round. ?If we were to assume that the average player will be involved in combat 30 seconds per minute then they will have 6 combat rounds. ?Damage would be done to a weapon only on a hit so we'd have to make some more assumptions. ?We'd have to figure weapon damage for the best combatant, so they arent getting screwed over because they are more accurate. ?As such we will have to use about a 90% accuracy in our calculations. ?Maximum combat swings will be 5(at least for now) so in a day of scripting with 36 swings per minute 46656 connected swings per day. ?So we can figure around 50,000 points of damage(1 damage per connected swing) to the average weapon will make it 'damaged'. ?A damaged weapon could operate at 90% of standard damage. ?We could also make it so a weapon can become more damaged over time. 100,000 damage=80% effective and so on. ?More than likely we'd have to make a cap on the damage a weapon can recieve. ?150,000 damage and 70% effective seems like a good start.

We could also create an item ability, we'll call it quality, ?This ability will reduce the damage taken by a weapon. ?Or rather for the simplcity of coding increase the standard damage value by x percent. ?So if an item had the ability quality:100 it would then increase the HP of the item by 100%. ?So at 100,000 damage the item would become 90% effective, 200,000 80%..etc.

In majormud the most powerful and most sought after items and Limited in numbers and come from special quests and monster kills. ?These items should have high quality abilities. ?In majormud, as well as greater mud the weapon ability Magical is the most common and most useful ability an item can have. ?A weapon the is Magical 1 or greater is required to hit any monster with the ability Magical 1. ?As a monsters Magical ability increases, the ability on the weapon also needs to increased. ?This ability should also effect a weapons durability. ?That way not every magical item will need a quality ability. ?I'd say +10% durability per level of magical. ?That way when you get to the more powerful magical items (+5 ish) you're at about 50% increased durability.

The cost of repair should be based mostly on the level of the weapon and the amount of damage its taken. ?As I've yet to really look at the currency in the realm I don't know exactly how much would be a reasonable amount to charge.

I do like the the idea of repairing items, but it needs to not be annoying. ?There should be many convient ways to repair items. ?As for giving the programer a headache, this shouldnt be too complicated to program, it would of course be a pain to go back and add new fields to every single item. :p ?But I do like ideas that create a use for cash throughout all the levels in the game.

Prestige money sinks is also an excellent idea. ?There will of course be homes and such for gangs and guildes. ?Maybe even player housing. ?I've already decided on a carriage system for quick travel between different parts of the realm but its not going to be prohibitively expensive for low level players. ?As I've said I will make anything I add to the game as tolerable as it can be. ?Item repair also makes for interesting player abilities.

Sleeping/eating/drinking is right out the door when it comes to a scripting heavy game however.

[Reece]

As far as item durability goes i tink it would be awesome. You could always make it something you do once a week so it really doesnt affect scripting. and if you want to make the numbers smaller you could lose a point of durability every 10 swings ?

[lumikant]

you could just make it a value that can be set by the sysop/implimentor

[DeathCow]

you could just make it a value that can be set by the sysop/implimentor

We've been talking alot about sysop definable keys.  The more i think about it the more I want to avoid them all together.  Standardization is what makes majormud what it is.

[Vitoc]

As you guessed, Major MUD suffers from the same problem other MUDs do in the economics department.? Money becomes nothing more than a bragging right later on.?

"I've got 200 runic saved up."?
"Oh yeah, well I've got 1000!!!"?
"Sweet!!! Uhh.... what do we spend it on?"

There's nothing worth that much in the realm.? Training got kind of expensive if you went the easy way after level 65, but that's ridiculous to charge a player an arm and a leg after they've already earned the right to gain that level.? I would love to find some way of creating a real working economy in the realm, where prices rise and fall with the buying and selling of items.? If someone walks into a store with 20 fine broadswords and expects to get full price for selling each one of them when the shop hasn't ever sold a fine broadsword in it's history, that's just stupid.?

With mobs dropping cash it's a little different.? For one thing, in Major MUD money weighs a lot in bulk.? I don't remember exactly how much somebody could carry in gold, but I think it was only like 1 runic worth or so before they became overencumbered.? I think this is actually a good thing, since it prevents people from scripting for a month non-stop and then cashing in all in one shot.? Another idea I liked was to have roaming gypsies and nomads picking up piles of cash and any items that have been abandoned for a specified length of time.? It could serve as GreaterMUD's cleanup which runs 24/7, and would help keep the realm less junky.? Perhaps these garbage collectors could have "swap meets" and sell the items they've found for a discounted (or inflated) price depending on availability.? Ok... maybe I'm getting carried away... or maybe not, I don't know.?

Anyway, I like the idea of creating a realistic economy where people will actually have to save up for items they desire.? I also like the idea of items wearing down as well as the idea of quality items that don't wear down quite as quickly.? Now the question becomes, how far should we stray from Major MUD and should we start implementing major changes like this now or later?

[DeathCow]

As you guessed, Major MUD suffers from the same problem other MUDs do in the economics department.  Money becomes nothing more than a bragging right later on. 

"I've got 200 runic saved up." 
"Oh yeah, well I've got 1000!!!" 
"Sweet!!! Uhh.... what do we spend it on?"

There's nothing worth that much in the realm.  Training got kind of expensive if you went the easy way after level 65, but that's ridiculous to charge a player an arm and a leg after they've already earned the right to gain that level.  I would love to find some way of creating a real working economy in the realm, where prices rise and fall with the buying and selling of items.  If someone walks into a store with 20 fine broadswords and expects to get full price for selling each one of them when the shop hasn't ever sold a fine broadsword in it's history, that's just stupid. 

With mobs dropping cash it's a little different.  For one thing, in Major MUD money weighs a lot in bulk.  I don't remember exactly how much somebody could carry in gold, but I think it was only like 1 runic worth or so before they became overencumbered.  I think this is actually a good thing, since it prevents people from scripting for a month non-stop and then cashing in all in one shot.  Another idea I liked was to have roaming gypsies and nomads picking up piles of cash and any items that have been abandoned for a specified length of time.  It could serve as GreaterMUD's cleanup which runs 24/7, and would help keep the realm less junky.  Perhaps these garbage collectors could have "swap meets" and sell the items they've found for a discounted (or inflated) price depending on availability.  Ok... maybe I'm getting carried away... or maybe not, I don't know. 

Anyway, I like the idea of creating a realistic economy where people will actually have to save up for items they desire.  I also like the idea of items wearing down as well as the idea of quality items that don't wear down quite as quickly.  Now the question becomes, how far should we stray from Major MUD and should we start implementing major changes like this now or later?

I don't see any reason to make the changes now.  So far in this forum we've had several good ideas for creating a better realm, but each of these ideas will take alot of development and testing to get right.  We know what we want for a decent starting realm, so lets go for that first and then make these upgrades overtime.  That way players don't have to get used to every change we make all at once.

Also that way I don't have to plan for millions of new features in the content all at one time.  I'm overwhelmed as is.

[ghaleon]

real easy .. no monster drop should have a value greater than 25 gold. problem solved, even the high lvl ppl will have to SAVE UP for the item they want to get.

[The Crazy Animal]

We could have monsters just drop items like, bag of gold dust, raw gold, gold nugget or silver ore... This would then need to be sold for coinage or used for creating items. The raw items while not available for direct deposit could be stored using a safe deposit box at a bank. The safe deposit boxes would of course be charged a fee to the users bank account. If the players bank account runs out then the items in the deposit box would be seize by the bank.

When sold for coinage different areas could have differing exchange rates and taxes that limit the amount of profit made on it. Secondly you could have differing standards of coinage from area to area so for example you might have to exchange the coins you had made in one kingdom before you can use it in another. Of course there would be a need to have a fluctuating exchange rate for this so sometimes it would work out in the players favor but more then often it would reduce a small amount of the total value. This could be done at depost to keep gameplay simple.

[DeathCow]

Each town could have its own currency :P

[The Crazy Animal]

Each town could have its own currency :P

Well it would be more like each group of towns... :p