Thievery ability (and some stuff about game economics)

[The Crazy Animal]

Bong
The bone amulet bit is funny but it really depicts basically the exact opposite problem that happens in mmuds economy over the course of the game and is something that direly needs to be fixed as cash currency should never be worthless or so easily attainable that it becomes detrimental to play.

While the item thing can partially be done in mud now it is not a dynamic system as I?m talking about. The closest you can get it to do now in mmud is a rather large text block that takes a long time to write which slows down content production immensely. The idea of doing it dynamically would allow content to be entered in and the scripts to be generated automatically greatly increasing the speed that new materials or item types could be added into the game. From a designer/editor developing content on this level is beneficial since it takes less time and energy and that normal translates to players as more content in a shorter amount of time.

Secondly from a game play perspective having multiple smiths that are usage dependant makes it so that each board while having exact default content will end up slightly different states of being as the game progresses. So when a player goes to a new board he still has a new experience on the replay factor unlike mmud currently does. So on one board you might go to smith A and can get x,y,z made on a different board at the same smith you might be able to get y, m, q no default copy of mmud?s game engine can do that dynamically through game progression alone.

DC
I thought you might like the leveling up of npcs. Personally, I would suggest that shops should be able to be leveled up too by the amount they sell or some such factor of use.

By all means get the game running and the major bugs out before adding extra features that?s defiantly the way to go. In the mean time I?ll fill your brain with tumors of ideas. If you want help mapping any of the data fields out to get the custom weapons, working let me know as I have a rough idea of the field that would be needed.

As for figuring out what the material properties are start with figuring out what scale you want the weight units in. To do that I would put the scale in context with max human strength. Once you figure out how many units a max human can carry, you have an ideal starting point. After that figure out what the densest to least dense material are going to be in the game this will give you your basic scale for materials for weight. From there you?ll need to figure out some of the item stats before you can really continue. Or you could just guess on them all :)

Here?s a few recourses that might help you out with the materials:
http://fitz.jsr.com/roleplay/weight_chart.html
http://www.ugr.es/~azzaro/pesospec.htm
http://www.themeter.net/pesi-spec_e.htm

These might help figuring out some of the item specs:
http://www.museumreplicas.com/webstore/home.aspx
http://www.artisanarmours.co.uk/bodyt.htm
http://www.lords-armory.com/index.html
http://www.firesidearmoury.com/
http://www.armadilloarmory.com/publish/vindex.htm
http://theringlord.com/
http://www.christianfletcher.com/
http://www.dcwireworks.com/index.html

TCA

[Jigga]

Possibly have certain items that can ONLY be stolen off a monster/boss.

Yeah it's a little unrealistic that if it's carrying the item it should drop it when it dies, but then every monster would drop a full suit of gear, and that would create a mess.

You know how in the final fantasy games there are some items you have to steal off bosses.

Have it like that in mud, and make it hard to steal, so while you're fighting you have to break combat inbetween rounds and try to rob the boss without it killing you, and get the item before you kill the boss.