The primary reason to limit twinking is to maintain game balence and thus ''playibility'' for new players. It is (I should say was, it''s been a long time since I last played) fairly common for ''newbie'' twink characters to only want to group with other twinks. It you''re not twinked, you do not effectively contribute to a group of twinks.

You need to build something into the equipment that makes it less effective for a low-level character to use than a higher-level one. For example, have high-status equipment drain stamina to wear it, and increase the rate of stamina regeneration as characters level. Now it''s a balence issue that player has to make decisions about. It doesn''t absolutely prevent a newbie from wearing uber gear, but it makes it more effective for them to use appro. gear for thier level.

I would personally prefer a system that allows you to do whatever you want and gradually varies in effectiveness, rather then have stuff turn on & off. Magically abilities of equipement could increase with the players level, or even drain thier psyche. This would give fighter-types a reason to have magical ability, and provide another counter-balence for magic users. Do I put on more magical equipment, or save that mana for casting my own spells?

don't make the gear's abilitys and such so important. in other words instead of the gear making the character, the gear that does nothing more then add that little extra something to the character. example: Dungeons & Dragons. a short sword(1d6) in the hands of a 20th level fighter is going to do one hell of alot more damange than a +3 long sword(1d8+3) in the hands of a 1st level fighter.

also instead of give the player 20ep for killing that goblin, give him 20*(damange inflicted by char/goblin's total hit points). so back to the 20th fighter & the 1st level fighter. 20th lvl fighter hits goblin for 9 points of damage leaving 1hp left. 1st lvl fighter hits goblin and kills him.
the 20th level fighter gets 18ep (20*(9/10)) and the first level fighter gets 2ep (20*(1/10)).

edit: a few type-o's

[edited by - Great Milenko on December 4, 2002 6:29:56 PM]

I was staggered to update my quake 3 the other weak are suddenly find out about all this punkbuster stuff etc.

I am amazed completely that people are so desperate to win in a computer game they go to these lengths.

This ruins my own and others fun totally.

I dont really have an constructive arguements to add however I read this thread with great interest.

I guess we could take heart in the fact that quite likely, these people in their real lives are probably:

* spoilt kids who cry because they dropped their ice cream
* teenagers with severe social interaction problems
* people who only know the negative in life
* people who wonder why other "normal" people think they suck
* with or without a loosers job
* wondering why they get such bad Karma

many other reasons spring to mind, but that is taking away the idea of the thread. I guess unless perhaps someone physically monitors the game world, or perhaps a "stats program" or something collects data on new characters created, player movements, etc etc and reports on any strange discrepancies?
This is akin to scheduling systems used in major business, however more on par with grabbing the data, comparing and reporting back what is not "normal".

well, hope that helps fuel your ideas.

Thanks

EDIT: Personally I feel this would be easier to implement then weapons restrictions etc etc. Also where i said akin to sheduling systems, these systems gather data and do a whole lot of sorting to plan out where companies can schedule internal jobs etc.
Though on a game server it would not come close to as much data, but its a similar principle. Get, sort, gather, produce information.

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http://on.to/oni

[edited by - fatherjohn666 on December 4, 2002 6:32:36 PM]

Good points Magmai...

quote:

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Original post by tanikaze
although it might not be the intend of the anti-twinkers, but every and all measures that are designed to prevent twinking will also effectively decimate player based economy.

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It does not need to, it can encourage such an economy if done right. In current MMOGs every item is ignored in favor of the Platinum Uber-Sword of Doom or some such. A newbie character will not even be able to find a plain old long sword from another player. Imagine a non-twink economy where someone could make regular old long swords and actually have some one interested in buying them.

A friend of mine suggested a rather cool way of doing it last night. Rather than have weapons do a range of damage, just give them a percentage value that is figured with thier skill level.

Example: The Platinum Uber-Sword of Doom has a damage modifier of 150%. A character with a combat level of 2 would do 3 points of damage, whereas a combat level 10 would do 15.

Of course the beauty of computers is that you could make the equation much more complex in order to fit it within a certain range of damage...

quote:

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Original post by Great Milenko
also instead of give the player 20ep for killing that goblin, give him 20*(damange inflicted by char/goblin''s total hit points). so back to the 20th fighter & the 1st level fighter. 20th lvl fighter hits goblin for 9 points of damage leaving 1hp left. 1st lvl fighter hits goblin and kills him.
the 20th level fighter gets 18ep (20*(9/10)) and the first level fighter gets 2ep (20*(1/10)).

---

That is a really good way of dividing experience, as it gets rid of level restrictions on groups, and prevents the old "experiance leecher" style of play. Thanks, that idea will be incorporated...

Of course exceptions will have to be made for non-combat types, but that should be easy to work around...

Another way to get rid of that style leeching is to do away with levels and use a skillbased exp system. The more you fight with your sword the better you get with it. Same with trade skills etc.

debaser,

I know you said that one character per player is not a solution you want to pursue, but one player per character is a solution, and I wouldn''t mind that policy myself as in the few MMOGs I''ve played I''ve only ever wanted to play one character at a time.

If you really want to allow people to run multiple characters from the same account, you could create a system in which in order to switch characters, you must have all your characters except the one you want to play in "retirement". A character in "retirement" cannot be played again for at least a week real time. This will make twinking quite a bit harder.

Another approach would be to devalue items in and of themselves, but make items powerful in conjunction with specific characters through a sort of "bonding" process. As a character uses a particular piece of equipment through many adventures, it gains its own heroic properties in association with that character. If another person were to use it, however, it would only be an ordinary item of its type.

I''m an anti-powergamer, so all this talk of exponential progression of character and item levels is giving me a headache. I''m sure I''ll be pelted with ripe fruit for daring to suggest it, but how about flattening the power progression? If there aren''t any items worth twinking over, nobody will twink.

But back to my fruity "social games" for me...

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-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

How are players giving their items to each other?
Can''t you just have one character per account allowed online at once?

From another angle, similar to what SpittingTrashcan and others have said, does your game need to be item based in power? Maybe items should just have different properties rather than more power.

For example, Leather armor provides less protection than plate mail, but it allows much more manuverability and stealth. Where as plate mail is very heavy, noisy and limits a player''s speed in combat.

Similarily, a sword is good at hacking people from a reasonable distance (2-4 steps distance), whereas a knife is much better for close up and is much faster to swing.

This can be expanded on, if you deisre weapons with special properties, by simply balancing each item''s advantages with an appropriate disadvantage: A flaming sword of death, might do more damage when used, but it could also have a chance to burn up a body, preventing it from being looted.

This makes character advancement based more on either skill and level rather than equipment. Idealy a player''s power would come from knowledge and experience within the game world. So there would really be no such thing as a newbie character, only newbie players. This could remove twinking entirely.

I personaly love the idea of one character per server as it also solves alot of hardware problems server-side, but every player I have spoken with hated the idea. The issue is that if they get bored with a character or want to just fool around with a new one they want to be with thier friends, who are all on server X...

People LOVE numbers, people LOVE camping for items and monsters, people LOVE everquest. Thats why you have to attempt to make a clone. Thats why nothing should change.