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Messages - Aeterus

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« on: July 11, 2004, 02:28:27 pm »

I tried writing basic outlines for character development, while you are totally right that an rpg can exist even without any actuall substance (such as an online star wars game which has no system, no nothing, but players who are involved as storytellers - this is still a roleplaying game, and a darn good one), i didn\'t refer to roles concerning the role playing element, but rather the blunt character development. (things you can \"improve\" - and different aspects about them)

Anyhow, i have started writing a lot of points concerning your post, but i have decided to delete all of them now and say this.
You have wrote a lot of good points, and by far it seems you are one of the few people here who view and analyse these elements at my level (+/-) of extent.
I tried to make a dry seperation when i wrote these things, so an economy evaluation won\'t be effected by the role-playing aspect of the game. (the real one, the thing which barely exists in today rpg\'s).
I believe that if i would force myself to become a bit less hardheaded (as you have noticed, i am ^^) it could lead to quite a well thought of system based on both of our views and deep analyses. (while looking at this thread now i see just too many mistakes, and a lot of things left out)

However with that said, i bitterly decided to stop associating myself with mmorpg\'s. having some experience with rpg development (from graphics to programming and designing) i see no future for them, the systems are too terrible made, the economy systems are a sham, the players are digusting and the role-playing level is ridiculous (i am too tired of the \"powergaming\" roleplaying, as well as the lack of innovation i see).
mmorpg\'s are made to the masses, and i\'m too arrogant to be part of them.

Thanks again for the insights Krissanasli, farewell.

Wish list /

« on: July 10, 2004, 01:52:38 pm »

Screw JK2, just make a combat system like gothic 2

Realisticly speaking, real-time combat in mmorpg\'s is tricky due to server strains, different connections etc ... so i think the system they are working on right now is as good as i can think of.

Wish list /

« on: July 09, 2004, 08:57:30 pm »

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Originally posted by Krissanasli
I should mention that an unbridled capitalist economy naturally degenerates into state planning - just look at all the mergers that have been taking place in the last fifty years. If this trend goes on for long enough, the number of corporations will grow smaller and smaller... In the end, there can only be one. Nobody wants that to happen in the game world, where the individual player is supposed to have full economic freedom. Most attempts to imitate a capitalist or free-market economy have led deep into disaster - for good reason, as it has been pointed out. First, they were unsuited to the kinds of economy they were trying to emulate, and second, these kinds of economy shouldn\'t have been fully emulated in the first place.

duh.

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Originally posted by Krissanasli
The solution is to make an economic system that doesn\'t crash *because* of the way the gameworld is built, not *in spite* of it. For that, the whole economic process we encountered needs to be analyzed as well as changed.

Let\'s look at the typical ORPG: you get out of town, pick up a few rocks from the quarry of infinite supplies (getting skill points for it) and sell it to a stonecrafter. That stonecrafter builds a dashing stone club out of it, gets skill points and sells the club to an adventurer. That adventurer goes out and (to gain skillpoints) kills stuff, whose furs he then sells to the tanner, who makes a pretty leather armor, all for the adventurer. This way, even if no money were involved, the whole economy would rely on the poor adventurer, who has to get bigger and bigger clubs, tougher and tougher armor to justify the work of everyone else. Meanwhile, the quarryman is mass-producing rocks because it gives him skillpoints; the stonecarver is crafting clubs because it gives him skillpoints, and the tanner accepts furs because - you guessed it - it gives him skillpoints. Some products get through the system, but not all of them, and once they used up, they become part of the waste.

You miss the point that every crafter = adventurer in most mmorpg\'s including PS in the future, which kinda makes that paragraph pointless.
I judge you\'re not talking about environmental waste ...

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Originally posted by Krissanasli
If nobody needs the end result of a process, but that process is useful for some reason, waste results are going to pile up. At this point, you might as well add a junkyarder profession, which can magically convert any sort of item into skillpoints... Throw in currency and an NPC market, however, and you get a convenient way for players to dump their extra resources and further destabilize the economy.

If you haven\'t read my \"Basic Rules of Character Development\" thread, it points out a rule which links with the economy rules, players should never use a skill only in order to improve it.
If this rule breaks (like in all games), you\'ll get waste products, because people aren\'t crafting (for example) for the products/money, it means they don\'t need it.
hence there should be a need for money, always something better to buy for everyone, and/or daily expenses.

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Originally posted by Krissanasli
Problems in this setting:
-there\'s infinite supply, finite demand for goods. When every adventurer has a stone club and leather armor, that\'s it for sales. Suppose, though, that the player later wants to buy a stone club of stoning, as he\'s gone up ...
...profoundly unbalanced, but even if a repertoire of items were designed for crafters to own, the mounds of gold wouldn\'t stop growing - in fact, they would probably grow even faster.

Well, sooner or later people become rich, you can\'t escape it, and it\'s not all that bad if it happens after a year or two. that\'s why i would personally prefere to live in that kind of world than play in it - we have no reason to turn off the hyperspeed these games move by, because it\'s not the only thing we\'re doing in our life.
so a developer can control the time it will take to finally get the best equipment in the game (for your class), so with proper planning this can be changed from 2 weeks to half a year or so, and that\'s one of the purposes of a well-thought of economy.

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Originally posted by Krissanasli
Proper Division - It takes four or five years, at most, for people to become decent at a complicated craft. For some, it only takes two years. The reason there was no homo universalis in the typical medieval village is because no one had the time to learn new skills. You had to work all day at your craft, and the harder you worked, the more prosperous (i.e. less starving) you were. In Planeshift, though, the characters\' lifestyle is leisurely enough for them to afford to take time off and enjoy themselves.

Your point is ??
I did not write these rules to make the game more realistic, i wrote them concerning economical stability.
The rule of proper division helps to ensure players relay on each other, and work flow accours.

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Originally posted by Krissanasli
Minimizing mass production - by this, you mean *slowing down* mass production. It\'s still not quite effective... If you want to take away the player\'s ability to make 500 swords every day, just set a cap to the effort he can make, or make the production process viciously long. A crude shortsword might take an in-game day or so to make, while an elaborate one would need a week. One method I suggested in another thread is the use of \"labor\" points, determined by the character\'s endurance: for 10 labor points, you might pull a chunk of rock out of a wall. For 200, you might make a sword. Suppose that you only gained 50 a day... You would have to wait four days, or work in a team of four people, to make that sword.

(note: this system would also encourage people to hire workers of inferior skill... Throw in a rule that you need a skill level equal to the number of labor points left to be able to invest labor points yourself. So if you have 200 skill points, you can spend your fifty labor points in the sword, dropping the number to 150 - at this point, your buddy with a skill of 162 can pick up and lower it to 90, so his buddy... Well... You get the point. This system can really help out new players and spread money around, but doesn\'t truly solve the overall problem of mass-production.)

You\'re also not taking the players\' needs into account - if you want them to stop making so many swords, make it pointless for them to do so. Keep smiths from gaining skillpoints whe they\'re crafting something they already crafted before, or take away their option to sell to NPC merchants.

no, i meant minimizing as in scale.
It doesn\'t matter what method you take, the end result is the same, the *better* the item is, the more time it will take to make it.
In proper division i have broken the steps of crafting into several actions, in your system these people do not really work together (but rather pick up the working after each person cannot work farther), so it\'s sorta plastic workflow, in my system each person works on another element in the making therefore it emulates how a real workshop would look like.
Farther more i did not really tried \"solving\" mass-production, because if a guild wishes to mass produce an item, i think it\'s part of the game, the rule is it won\'t be as easy as in most of today games, but will require a lot of players, time, materials, etc ...

Read my other post regarding skills, where a player need to produce something which is close to his skill level in order to improve it. (therefore a good blacksmith making a lot of daggers won\'t get any skillpoints)

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Originally posted by Krissanasli
forcing market rates - this still means the golden chain keeps getting pulled out of the NPC economy. Sooner or later, people end up with too much gold on their hands. The only difference is that the whole thing\'s regulated, so that *everybody* ends up with the same ammount of too much gold.

large value difference between better items - again, this might only slow down the process to a certain degree. It certainly doesn\'t eliminate it.

Did you read the other posts here before posting your own, because it certainly seems you didn\'t.
NPC rates help ensure borders in items prices, therefore making sure item prices don\'t drop below a certain value (thus collapsing the market for a certain item), and don\'t get an uber value (items which are very hard to make, skill and time wise, can be exploited by the crafter to sell them at ridiculous prices, even if it\'s realistic it will still make him too rich)

Yes large value difference between items slows down the process instead of eliminating it. than again if you eliminate it, it means you\'ll never get the good items. (and that\'s what you want right ? a game with good items, where nobody can get them ...

)

Quote

Originally posted by Krissanasli
While it might be pointless to discuss here, let me show you an interesting economic model: the githzerai economy. Basically, you have a certain number of \"materialization points\", which get higher every level and which you can use to create items - from shortswords to healing potions - based on your level. Once you\'ve devoted mat. points to building an item, they\'re gone for as long as that item remains in existence. You can destroy any item you hold in your inventory to reimburse its owner with the item\'s full cost... However, you cannot destroy your own items if they\'ve been dropped or placed in other players\' inventories. This makes trading a political affair: you want to give because it will somehow help you, or because you are coerced, or because you believe it will serve a greater cause (arming your champion and sending him off to battle, for instance). It\'s a remarkably simple and robust system that does away with most of the problems found in an ORPG, simply because it avoids the trappings of a real-world economy. There is only one resource - yourself.

The only two problem I can forsee with this system are players leaving with an item and never returning - in this case, a decay system that resets whenever the holder logs in would work most of the time.

You know, an economy can stay alive without making it so extremely artificial ...

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Originally posted by Krissanasli
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Since we\'re playing the RPG to escape real life, I think it would be counter productive to deal with all the headaches of real life.

Who says everyone\'s playing it that way? If I want to escape real life, I\'ll just jump off the nearest bridge. A far more noble purpose for online games would be to *enhance* real life - provide experiences that we could later draw upon or give us something to ponder. Anyone who\'s playing games just to forget himself is missing out on a lot of good stuff.

Actually, I\'m almost tempted to start a new thread... \"Why do we play games, and why should we?\"

Everyone has its own reason to play a game, you are misintepetrating the word escaping to its physical meaning.

you are contradicting yourself by saying that we aren\'t playing games to escape into a setting we enjoy but rather enrich our own lives with this experience. (which is basically the same thing, they both bring joy to the person, so the only difference is the point of view of the person to what he does)

If a game would be exactly the same as real life, nobody would have a reason to play it, therefore we play games to achieve things we cannot in real life (be it through things which don\'t exist, are forbidden, immorall etc etc ...), and to have a environment which doesn\'t have things we hate (taxes, criminals, abusers, etc etc ...).
While some people would like to play a very realistic game which only has a different world (be it fantasy), some would like to play without worrying about deseases, taxes, crappy work pays, annoying people, disgusting behaviours, etc ...
And going back to the main subject, this means the majority of people (in a game where economy is stable, and getting rich is a matter of a year and not a few weeks) wouldn\'t like to spend tax money if the \"government\" isn\'t actually using it.

Wish list /

« on: July 07, 2004, 07:18:51 pm »

You miss the whole point, noobie land doesn\'t encourage being a noob, quite the opposite, it\'s a trial like \"you won\'t leave this place until you\'ll stop being a noob\", the idea is that without other players to bug, noobies have to learn for themselves (rtfm) how to play.

So basically by not having a noobie land, you are only condemning your life to be infested with noobies, hf.

Wish list /

« on: July 07, 2004, 02:19:23 pm »

I think noob worlds are a good idea, even if it\'s one city, or island, which has only a one way ticket out.
Farther more you mentioned crafting and learning the game\'s interface, so for example the ticket out costs some money and say a simple monster trophy, so people have to learn how to make money and the basics of combat - and once they learn enough it\'s represented in enough money for the one-way ticket :]

I personally hate how people treat noobs in most games. face it, we were all noobs at some point, and i hate to break it to you, we are still all bloody noobs who think they aren\'t ones

If the game doesn\'t have a noob world, there will *always* be new noobs, and there will be a constant question chatter, which, as much as i don\'t mind helping here and there, i think it substracts from everyone\'s roleplaying atmosphere.

Thumbs up Covetski =]

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That poses some problems... say you invite a friend to planeshift and need him to join and get to your guild HQ so he can get a position before someone else fills it, like guild artist which doesn\'t have as much bearing on their in-game stats. The other person will be at an obvious advantage, making your friend lose the position to a presumably inferior candidate.

Also, imagine what would happen if all the annoying \"spoon-feed me info! Now!\" type newbies were locked up in one world... when/if you get the desire to create a second character you will have to wade thru a sea of those types of people to get through and out of the world. Not a very elegant solution from that standpoint....

As much as i hate to start flame wars, i just want to share with everyone how much i feel sick after reading this thing.
So noob world aren\'t ok, because they don\'t allow your noobish friend to get to your 1337 guild and get a headstart on other noobs.
And i really shed a tear that you\'ll have to play a few hours in a noob world, must be a traumatic experience.
Of course you wouldn\'t think of the bright side where veteran players could help beginners a bit while they are doing their chores to get back to the mainland.

Wish list /

« on: July 07, 2004, 01:58:16 pm »

Quote

Originally posted by rifft
At this point I have to say MOO! Well ok, not really, but we are all I think talking past each other. Everyone would like to see a stable economy where uber item X is not worth 1 penny, and we wouldn\'t want to see the oposite where shitty item Y is worth 3 million.

Though I think fluctuation in the economy is good, hyper inflation, or price crashing is not.

So for the sake of argument, if we allow trade only between npc\'s and pc\'s and not between pc\'s and pc\'s, in a game where players can craft items, that mechanism achieves nothing. Player can still trade outside the system by trading cash for items or services. However, if instead of burring our head in the sand we introduce some sort of control mechanism (with border prices maybe). I think we could contol such things.

When I mean player run economy, I mean player influenced, items vary in price depending on availability, but not above or below the roof and ceiling prices.

Anyway, I haven\'t really had time to think it through, just some ideas I picked up and put together. In essence we all agree that we want price variation but not crashing or hyper inflation. So what we have to achieve is system that would enforce such guidelines.

Ye it really seems we talk past each other ^^
Well i totally agree with what you said here, i just thought people here meant a completly player run economy. (aka no npc\'s)
i hope there will be proper division in the game, so people will depend on each other - i just hate to see powercrafters who do all the different phases of crafting, from fetching/creating materials up to the final product.

Wish list /

« on: July 07, 2004, 01:52:19 pm »

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Originally posted by rifft
I\'d have to disagree with what you said. Big surprise huh, I\'m becoming a regular s***disturber.

No problem, me too. (/me puts poison in rifft\'s drink)

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Originally posted by rifft
I for one saw the size of a katana and the size of a claymore (the two handed sword you keep reffering to) It\'s 6 feet long, around my height. It\'s massive and is used mostly as a club. However, not all weapons demand great strength to wield. A person who is quick and skilled with a dagger (or hell even a pencil, skin isn\'t that tough) could stab the strong guy with the giant sword and avoid all the clumsy powerful blows.

Good because i have seen them too. (and guess what, i have them too ^^)
I wasn\'t reffering to a claymore by the way, i was reffering to a viking two handed broadsword, which was about 9 feet long (yes, i still don\'t believe vikings used it, but on the other hand what i\'ve seen was certainly not used for house decoration ^^).
Unfortunatly for me, you missed the point i was making (thanks to my low english skills) - i didn\'t say damage comes only from strength, but in a 1/3 ratio of skill/strength/weapon.
What this means is that if the thief you mentioned was skilled, he could probably kill a man an ordinary man, and if he was very strong as well as highly skilled, he could make an incision cut from the toes to the man\'s head in a fight :]
Farther more lighter weapons are easier to use for critical strikes, which creates a nice balance between the various weapons.

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Originally posted by rifft
In addition a person who has trained with long swords, or even a rapier, or a foil, which is what you\'re probably thinking of, usually grows much much stronger after ages of practice. And though he may not have much brute strength he still knows _how_ to wield a sword and what to do with it. Granted, you can\'t fence with a claymore, but if you know how to fight with one, you also know a thing or two about swords in general.

This only strenghen what i was saying, since as i have said in my post (\"A skilled swordsman isn\'t made only of pure skill, he has to have some strength which fits his choice of weapons\" ) which means that with skill always comes strength, and it\'s not the skill which makes the sword wielding easier (though skill makes striking more percise), but rather the strength which increased with constant weapon use.
A nice system a friend of mine made, included a division in combat skills to the different weapons while adding a general combat lore, this lore advanced alongside of the weapons, and had some impact to the combat rolls.
It helped ensure that a fighter with a certain knowledge in combat would have advantages over a guy with no knowledge - although they both are at the same level (if any) with this perticular weapon.

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Originally posted by rifft
So here is the point. I think it\'s stupid to make a player unable to equip certain swords simply because he isn\'t strong enough to use it optimally, I mean it still may be better than nothing. I do agree that not being strong enough to use a sword would give you penalities, some weight to strength ratio. So if you are much stronger and can use the sword as if it was a light twig, you are more effective with it, however, someone with a lighter sword who is highly skilled with that particular sword will kick your little ass back to the stoneage. Anyway point is this, don\'t restrict, implement some sort of penalty system.

My point exactly.

Wish list / Basic Rules of Character Development

« on: July 07, 2004, 12:52:05 am »

*Warning Long Thread*
*English isn\'t my primary language so excuse me for typos and mistakes i just hope i will get the main ideas clear.*

Introduction
I haven\'t thought that i would actually open a thread about this element, since it is ussually the player who adjusts herself/himself to the rpg mechanics rather than vice visa, allowing for an utterly insane set of rules to appear fair after some time of getting used to them.
Then i started replaying a few games i regarded as stable, and just noticed so many flaws.

Character development, is one of the 4 elements which form the atmosphere of an rpg , the other 3 being the economy (both personally and between players), the environment (graphics and sound) and the general in-character roleplaying level.
For most players character-development is the way they \"role-play\" their character, the way they shape it to their will is one of the reasons they play rpg\'s and not first person shooters.

Wether true in-character roleplaying exists in a game or not, does not mean the game shouldn\'t have a good character development system, because for some reason this seems to be the case...

Skill Levels/effects
There are two methods for skill levels, either a number from 0-100 (0 is no knowledge in this skill, and 100 is grandmastery), or a level which has a direct effect and can raise potentially to infinite (while of course that isn\'t possible, it\'s just its mechanic, which means 50 point can make a great iron maker for example but 100 in say some other skill can be nothing considering its use).
For the sake of it\'s simplicity and popularity i\'ll use the first for the examples.

The effects of skill level should be balanced and well laid out, this is quite important to give the player a solid idea of how powerful his character is, rather than have a sort of dozzy number which doesn\'t mean much than \"if it\'s higher it\'s better\". (sadly, i have seen this in so many games)
This doesn\'t mean a player can guess his chances of success accuretly (unless he can assess his chances, but that too is ussually not too accurate), it just shows him his level regarding to the skilless bum, or the grandmaster himself.

The difference between 40% to 20% is therefore much higher than between 100% and 80%, which somehow makes sense : a 20% skilled fighter is sort of a beginner which struggles to put a meat on his table by hunting, a 40% skilled fighter is one who can use his blade quite well, he can hold and defeat the common creatures which walk the earth, and even make profit by hunting exotic animals.
If those two would fight between themselves the 40% skilled fighter won\'t have much difficulty in defeating the other.
While on the other hand a 80% skilled fighter is a master, he can parry a mighty axe as if it was made of wood, and is known and feared as a mighty swordsman - while a 100% is a grandmaster, whose moves are simply flawless.
If these two would meet in combat, it will be a long and mighty battle, the grandmaster will likely take the lead as the skills suggest (although on rare occassions may not), but it will be a very much closer fight then the other one.

Skill Restrictions (powerclasses prevention)
Every game restricts (or doesn\'t) skills in a different way, they can be categorised as followed :
*. Avatar (no) restriction : While playing an avatar seems to be appealing for a lot of players who want to be good in everything and taste all the game has to offer, this is an immature aspect and does nothing but harm the role playing atmosphere of the game.
This seems to be quite a popular style of mmorpg\'s , though anyone who played that kind of games must have seen the boredom which rises with the similiarity of players.
*. Premade class restriction : originated from classic rpg\'s, this is the known fight/wizard/thief/etc idea which is made to prevent power classes, unfortunatly this ussually prevented classes based on individual tastes (thus leading to the next system)
*. Custom class restriction : a popular system, which allows every player to curve his character as he see fit, while the system enpowers restrictions to prevent power players.
This system either set restrictions at character creation (by decided special skills and/or forbidden ones), or as the player plays the game. (for example if the game\'s system allows only one skill above 50%, when the player raises a certain skill above 50% it will be set as the master skill and all skills will be capped until this master skill will go below 50% again)

Skills aren\'t all of the same nature, therefore there has to be a certain devision in the restriction to allow class flexibility of characters and to restrict power classes, i\'ll explain them as follows :
1. Combat skills : skills regarding styles of fighting
(which are broken down to subskills, offense and defense - for example parrying with a knife, has nothing to do with parrying with a two handed axe, thus it\'s part of the knife skill), and styles of magic.
so a character which uses both magic and fighting skills won\'t be very good in both. (though it will be possible), farther more a game system can limit magic skills to only one school (forcing magicians to act as elementalists), prevent people who pick magic skills from picking blade weapon skills and so on. (depending on the amount of restrictions wished to be enforced)
In my point of view, magic helps making life easier, therefore people who have access to magic must be very limited in other aspects, or an element of the game\'s balance gets damaged ...
2. Craft skills : It seems that in most games players pick a craft to color up their playing, however when a player has access to a few craft skills which relay upon each other, he becomes a powercrafter, such things have negative effects on the workflow of a player\'s economy.
Therefore, the only option to prevent the undesired side effects, is allow a very few craft skills (one or two depending on how complex they are, one is enough if the skills are complex enough to satisfy basic sanity ^^) to be picked up, and have all the other skills severly capped. (i think 10% from max skill level is a good cap for craft skills, any higher just misses the whole point)
3. Misc skills : non combat/craft skills, such as stealth, swimming, lockpicking, weapon handling (keeping a weapon in good shape), arcane knowledge, herb knowledge, athletics, dodging, etc ...
a player should be able to profficient in several of those, but again not all, therefore there will be an assassin which possess knowledge in herbs to poison her weapons, is stealthy etc but doesn\'t know how to handle her weapons very well for example.
4. Attributes : everyone wants to be perfect, but that wouldn\'t make sense in a decent roleplaying environment.
Therefore there has to be capping to ensure a mighty genius magician will also be physically weak, and so on.
5. Perks : negative perks should be as serious as their positive counterparts, and shouldn\'t be able to be bypassed by veteran players no matter what (or it would be exploited).
Farther more there shouldn\'t exist permanent and non-permanent perks together, because then no veteran player will ever pick the non permanent ones.

To farther reduce the number of masters and enrich a gameplay at the same time, a game can allow (for example) instead of having 2 skills which can be mastered in a category (which means the others are seriously capped in that category) - have 1 skill which can be mastered and 2 middle skilled which are capped at around 50-75%.
(of course this helpful idea shouldn\'t be included for the craft category ...)

Skill/Attributes development
Old games had the \"experience\" system (still present in most of today hack n\' slash games), where a player would kill a lot of monsters gain levels and improve stuff upon leveling up to his choice.
With the coming of dynamic (combat and mostly non-combat) skills, games developed a learning curve system, where the more a player used a skill, the more it leveled up, (thus eliminating experience system) and the higher the skill was, the harder (actually longer) it was to advance it.
Of course nothing\'s perfect, and in most modern games we see this system is quite flawed, to level up people repeat the same action thousands of time ussually leading to the use of utilities known as \"macros\".

Therefore game developers who use the learning curve system, have two option - either continue using the basic method (and have people macro their way to heaven in order to stay sane, or just repeat tasks in a silly way such as walking all day long in stealth mode, etc ...), or modify a few aspects.
A rule i can draw for skill/attribute development, is that people should never repeatedly use a skill in order to improve it, they should use the skills to earn money, fight monsters to seek rare items. i will try to point ways to follow this rule :
* Instead of making tasks such as stealth, or swimming require more usage in order to level up, minimize this requirement and create gaps in which the skill doesn\'t improve (the gap may enlarge as the skill gets higher) - this gap means that using stealth all day long won\'t have any different effect then using it for an hour at this day, thus to get to high levels one would simply need to do what he ussually do, but only for a longer period of time. (this way developers also have more power to govern skill advances).
so if a player with zero skill in stealth for example, uses it all day long, he can learn a lot, however as he starts to get used to this skill his learning curve shifts from minutes to hours, and finally days, thus a veteran would improve based on daily usage instead of per-click usage.
* The slower stats improve, the less people are focused on improving them - so at some point they should increase tremendously slow.
in my humble point of view, must players should be around the 50-60% on their profficient skills, after monthes of playing that is, it just seems wrong to me, that in most mmorpg\'s people rich mastery (75%-100%) of skills after a mare month of playing, ussually less ...
* Attributes ussually raise faster than skills in games, it actually makes sense to be the other way around.
Actions shouldn\'t be linked with one attribute only, but rather several, so they would each slightly increase upon each action.
In classic rpg\'s stats were fixed, and as much as it wasn\'t realistic it\'s still closer to reality than most game\'s mechanics.
Attributes can increase, but only at a very slow pace.
* If the economy is stable, and people have a serious need for money (like in real life, either through daily expenses, or things to buy), they use crafting skills to earn their bread, and on the opposite combat and such should never be convenient, never easy (against creatures which can raise the combat skills, creatures who are easy pray shouldn\'t increase skills) and death should have some negative impact that would favor people in avoiding it as much as possible.
This will minimize the fruitless practicing of skills. (of course someone who uses a skill knows it will increase, but he wouldn\'t use it only to imrpove it - as seen in a lot of games were 85% of their time people practice their skills to increase them more and more)

Conclusion
Both mmorpg players and developers should think why a good mmorpg is played for - is it to improve a character and make it the strongest it can be ?? or is it to roleplay a character, based on its weaknesses and strengthes which make it unique, on its everyday life, without regards to its levels ??

Myself, play games for the latter reason, it seems i am from the minority and not the majority.
It seems for me that unless true power is rare and hard to gain, there is no value to it ... and if a game is only played to improve the character so it means the game itself isn\'t that fun, so why play it in the first place ?

All i hope is that PS will be a roleplaying game and not yet another rollplaying game.

I know this thread isn\'t very complete, and i probably forgot about important rules of development outlines. (i just stopped playing rpg\'s so i
Therefore, unlike my stubborness in my economy thread, any ideas will be welcome and i\'ll try to edit the original post in respect to point will agree upon.

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« on: July 07, 2004, 12:36:33 am »

Skill has nothing to do with what you mentioned, even if someone is a skilled swordsman he may barely be able to lift a big sword.
Lil\' john trained with long sword from the age of 9 to 25, he\'s very skilled, and he is quite strong, but if you give him a broad two handed massive sword, he\'ll barely be able to swing it.
Big jack, is strong, and very big. he always was a dumb guy so he never really practiced in anything. however when he got the broad two handed massive sword, he could swing it like it was a wooden stick.

A skilled swordsman isn\'t made only of pure skill, he has to have some strength which fits his choice of weapons, people seem to associate a skillful man with powerful blows, there is nothing in common between the two, it doesn\'t matter how much you know about swinging swords, if you\'re weak you\'ll never do much harm with them, unless your opponent is stupid enough to stand while you wack him.

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« on: July 06, 2004, 10:00:00 pm »

Ahhhhhh

I see what you mean now, i thought you meant heavier weapons, but it seems you just meant \"better\" weapons. (as in magical ussually)
Well obviously this never really made any sense, magical weapons, or better weapons of the same weight class should be held by everyone, the only thing that prevents it from being possesed by every noob is making them extra rare. (a good system makes finite magical weapons, though it\'s troublesome if new players constantly join the game).
In my opinion magical weapons shouldn\'t be like in d&d +1/+2/+3/+X ... this always seemed stupid to me, as it only encouraged magical weapons to be weak and common.
Therefore if good weapons are rare and expensive, players who favor damage will go to the heavier weapons, double battle axes, massive broad swords, etc ...
I see the point that every character should use every weapon, it\'s cool and makes sense, but with this respect of realism, they should be seriously limited, and not just substracting a few damage points, but rather cutting them in a serious percentage, slowing them, and making parrying with them a lot harder.

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« on: July 06, 2004, 12:59:32 pm »

Ye sure, a fible magician can pick up a two handed sword.
Have you ever seen a two handed sword in real life ?? the ones barbarians used ? (multiply the size you\'re thinking by 2)

Weapon requirements aren\'t made to make sense, they are made for the sake of sanity.
Better weapons don\'t require better skill, they require better attributes, there\'s a difference.
You don\'t have to be skilled to use a huge battle axe, you have to be strong, if you\'re not strong enough you won\'t be able to make proper swings.
Therefore if there is no strength requirement there has to be a passive strength requirement, which symbolise the border between negative and positive strength effects (lower strength results in lower power then original weapon power, higher results in higher power)
Farther more i think that while positive strength from this border would increase the attack (power/speed) in linear relations, a negative strength would decrease attack (power/speed) in a non-linear relations (such as the square of the strength gap to the border)

From my point of view, a weapon skill is both the attack (precise blows - chances to hit/critical strikes) and defense level (parrying), strength helps for more powerful blows, therefore the player is responsible for 2/3 of the attack power, whereas the weapon itself governs 1/3 of the attack power.
therefore better weapons can really powerful, a fighter with X skill and a Y powerful weapon, will have half the power of a fighter with the same skill but four times (4Y) powerful weapon.
Therefore i see no reason not to have the uber weapons of death, as long as they are heavy enough, it makes sense. (such as gattz Dragonslicer from the manga \"berserk\")
Part of the appeal to play fighters, is the equipment, no reason to take that away, and make the game mostly skill based ...

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« on: July 06, 2004, 12:12:44 pm »

You brought up a lot of good points rifft. (and you didn\'t go off topic

)

You have said money has to be in constant circulation - circulation obviously being the whole purpose of a stable economy. (therefore i have pointed rule number one, which forces crafters to depend on each other, even if it\'s depending upon npc crafters, the point is it avoids a powercrafter which craft goods from scratch thus resulting in obvious negative economy effects). however it seems you have talked about circulation in a player-run economy.
The question is why should the economy be completly player run in any point ?? this is nice to view, but it serves no purpose other then rendering it instable.
Forcing border prices doesn\'t force the prices themselves, it\'s only a safety mechanism to keep the economy standing.

The reason i\'m repeating this, is because i have played in numerous games where the economy was half or completly player ran, and the results were always disasterous, if it was a real world it might have been nice to have the best weapon in a game dropped to 2% of the original price, but being a game there has to be ranges or people become too powerful which makes the whole thing lose purpose.

I\'m sure you all seen games like runecrap or such, where very low characters ran around with plate+ armor, if the crafting system would be more demanding (making the plate crafting long, requiring large number of ingots, and having each ingot requiring a lot of ore to make) it wouldn\'t happen.
And since in player run economy there is no one to sell the extra wares to, the items drop to ridiculous prices.
Sooner or later, everyone get surplass wares, the demand is never enough.

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« on: July 05, 2004, 05:39:33 pm »

It seems you are quite aware of how economy works in reallife (which is good

) however a game\'s economy is very controllable especially with npc\'s which govern final and base (material) product cost.

What you have mentioned is a case of mass production and monopoly this is a serious problem, thus i have wrote 3 sub roles of how to counter them, in my original post. i will include examples to clarify things for it seems not to be so ...
1. minimizing mass production : crafting takes time.
the better the item, the more time it takes.
Therefore making 1k daggers by a single blacksmith would be determined like this,
let\'s say each dagger takes 5 minutes to make, that\'s 12 daggers per hour, if he works 8 hours a day only on daggers that\'s around 100 daggers a day.
Therefore 1k daggers would take 10 days to make, considering he has someone who delivers the ingrediants, and virtually he doesn\'t move from his blacksmithy.
1k daggers in 10 days, isn\'t crazy - we aren\'t talking about swords, or axes, we\'re talking of something which is equivelant to making ceramic pots.
if it\'s a clan which makes them, it doesn\'t matter, since each blacksmith is supposed to get his cut, and quite the opposite, the more weapons they make, the less they have reason to sell it to players.
2.forcing market rates : the thing with 1k daggers, is that nobody is going to buy them. (unless he has some kind of contract with someone, which still doesn\'t make sense).
He can either spend time and try selling those to players, or use his time more efficiently to make more daggers and sell the current ones to NPC\'s.
This gets the market rid of those homoungous piles of daggers.
3.large value difference between better items : ok so the blacksmith/s just made 1k daggers, since each blacksmith gets his cut, we\'ll persume each blacksmith made a 1k dagger worth of profit for 10 days.
now let\'s substract material consumption, let\'s say the material cost is at around 0.75% from the item worth, which means he has made the money worth of 250 daggers in 10 days. (for the sake of this example let\'s say a dagger is worth 100 tria)
Now the 3rd sub-rule comes into play, if there would be a small price difference between weapons, making 25000 tria is a lot and he could probably buy a seriously good sword after just 10 days of, guess what, making the easiest to make weapon.
Therefore as i have mentioned in my original post, the prices of the weapons in the alpha of PS don\'t follow this rule and would cause an economy problem.
The prices need to be multiplied, where a dagger would cost 100gold, a better dagger would cost 500 gold, a rapier would cost 5000 gold, and the better rapier would cost 25000 gold, therefore after 10 days of work, the blacksmith can buy a decent sword, which makes sense.

Why should there be inflation in games ?? if prices have safety borders how can the dagger selling economy \"crash\" from an overflow of dagger production ??
and if prices are kept cheap, what would be the challange in playing the game (this is not real life, where people wanna get everything, this is a game where slow development is more pleasurable)

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« on: July 05, 2004, 01:30:10 pm »

Just wanted to clear something up for those who may have misunderstood, the NPC effect on economy in my rules, doesn\'t replace player economy, it helps sets standards so the economy stay stable.

for example (random numbers used here) let\'s say materials of a steel dagger cost 50 tria on avarage, the price an NPC buys them at is 100tria, therefore a player will lose potential profit if he\'ll sell them for less then 100tria (to players).
Now let\'s say buying that dagger from an NPC costs 150 tria, therefore the player will lose money if he\'ll buy it from a player blacksmith for higher than this price.
Therefore based on demand, the price for the steel daggers market ranges between 100-150, these values are important to keep the economy from collapsing.
However There is another safety mechanism, which is the cost of materials for the craftable item, the price for materials has a range too, since players can provide the materials (thus leading to cheap prices) and NPC can (thus leading to expensive prices), as i have mentioned in the rules, the way it can be administered is checking the avarage profit between the maximum and minimum profit :
[maximum item price - minimum material price] and [minimum item price - maximum material cost ]
and set npc rates accodingly so players make decent profit and not too much money like most games.

As for food, i think it\'s a cool idea, not only does it add to the atmosphere in the game, it helps adding expenses so players don\'t become too spoiled.
Just wanted to mention that unlike taxes its effect on rich people would be irrelevant while it will have some effect on beginners, on the other hand a nice example of converting taxes to food i\'ve seen in EL, where the higher the craftable item is the more food it required for each unit, thus making a sort of surrealist work taxes, which don\'t look too bad in the form of food

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« on: July 04, 2004, 01:54:00 pm »

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Expenisve weapons dont work out in the long run it is necceray to make Super weapons as rare and just as hidden as iraq\'s biological weapons Most will be fabled legends and any one who can get his grubby hands on one will earn alot of respect.

I hate to repeat things, but as i have said, super weapons cost a lot, but also take a lot of time to make, therefore they won\'t flood the market (not to mention the rarety and price of the weapons themselves).
It works well in the long run since not everyone can put his hands on a sword which costs 40k (let\'s say a dagger costs 50gold pieces ^^),
Farther more i was talking about normal weapons, magical weapons cannot be made, and they have nothing to do with the stability of the economy as long as they aren\'t common. (of course you are right here, they should be rare as hell, and in my point of view - unique and very powerful)

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besides The idea is to Keep the Bling Bling moving form person to person even if they keep it in the bank the bank can charge service tax for keeping your money safe (even if you turn off your comp)

Nice thought, but i fail to see how this has anything to do with the economy, taxes aren\'t needed for a stable economy - taxes are a way to take little from a group of people in order to supply this group with expensive services.

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to keep the Cash flowing taxes for services like useing a sucure high way or entering a town or Level. this way more money circulates. also basic goods like teleport scrolls and land tax can be used to keep the game\'s economy incheck

Circulates where ? isn\'t that the whole idea of a good economy, i don\'t see your point ...
Read the first rule \"proper division\", the more skills are divided the more circulation thus occours.

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so lets say there can be a FINE system which subtracts a certain ammount of Bling Bling form your Bank account and Exp points every time you type F*** , N00b ect ect ect
not to mention theres also a program to censor the words it just makes it less cuss-easy in game

That\'s just a way to take gold that people have earned, this is useful if the economy system is built terribly, but following the above rules this won\'t be needed.

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Also by makeing the game more guild/town based players will have to mine to support thier closed community so you can have a miner who is working for a smith
the smith can only work on non-magical stuff unless he has a spell-caster under his pay roll to imbune the weapons

so you can have communities which become industrial power houses and to ship weapons of large quanties ,shipping Taxes will be chared thus riseing the cost of weapons and makeing the gap even futher

so you can have communites made out for warriors or mages or farming communities which can hire Npcs to do some dirty work

my above idea sounds nice but the only draw back is that it needs alot of space to make it work i say at least 500 square clicks

There is no reason to put taxes on clans, since they are an independent form of government, what they do between themselves (be it daily taxes, or work taxes) is completely their own decision and has nothing to do with the 3 rules of a stable economy.

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