To answer your question, Mr.Fish, static attributes will not end minmaxing. I remember in one of the AD&D campaigns I used to play in, there was this one guy who did just that. As you know, AD&D has static attributes (unless your DM is really nice). He still had to have the best weapons, the best armor, the best horse.... you see my point. He didn''t care that the DM thought that his swashbuckler shouldn''t use a two-handed sword, it did the most damage, and that''s all he cared about.

Real role-playing is the only way to truly prevent people from minmaxing. There is no DM in CRPGs, so you have to hardcode all these things in and hope they work.

The Senshi is totally on track here. If someone makes a hero character, they should be penalized for attacking helpless/innocent beings. Evil characters should be punished for not doing these things. If heroes let the evil people do these things, they should be penalized again......

However, allowing charachters to grow will make heroes band together to fight the more powerful villian, and vice versa. There are tons of ways of MAKING people role play, why try to change something that aint broke. Sure, *urp* leveling is abused sometimes, but done right, it is rewarding and fun.

On another note, Landfish, I really hate hit points. They are so stupid, they make no sense, and they piss me off. I''ve always tried to avoid them, but I still don''t have a good system on paper (that isn''t too much like another game''s system ). I was just saying that player stats, weapon stats, etc. don''t have to be non-numerical to be effective.

I''m interested in everyone''s thoughts on this (3rd and 4th par).

/*initiates shouldn't have signatures*/

Myst wasn''t an RPG. It was a visually stunning puzzle game. It''s roleplaying elements were really no greater then the roleplaying elements of games in any other genre. After all, in almost any game you buy, you do assume a role that is not equivalent to a person sitting at a computer playing a game.

It would be easy to look for text like R u a kewl dood? But how easy would it be to look for text like Did you hear about that nasty accident that happened yesterday? Not only is it not so easy to write code that accurately finds good or bad roleplaying, or people acting in a good or bad way, but it''s also highly subjective to one''s definition of those very things. I''m not saying it''s impossible, but it''s certainly improbable, and would indeed be a difficult task to do well.

I see what your saying Raskell, but the point is not to make a perfect system, but rather to make one which encourages roleplaying and rewards it for the most part.

Heck, no system IS perfect. Even human ops wouldn''t work perfectly. The idea is just to make an incentive to keep players in their roles, not to make a police system .

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"Don't worry about it sir, it's an eye-dee-ten-tee error -- takes too long to explain -- have a nice day."
I d 10 t

quote: Original post by The Senshi

I see what your saying Raskell, but the point is not to make a perfect system, but rather to make one which encourages roleplaying and rewards it for the most part.

Heck, no system IS perfect. Even human ops wouldn''t work perfectly. The idea is just to make an incentive to keep players in their roles, not to make a police system .

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"Don''t worry about it sir, it''s an eye-dee-ten-tee error -- takes too long to explain -- have a nice day."
I d 10 t

Yeah, again, I totally agree. What would be ideal is if the system would govern itself. If the actual players can possibly ifluence others to Role Play and not ruin the atmosphere. As long as the majority of the players understand what is trying to be accomplished and they Role Play, then new players will see that is the way they''re supposed to act. What seems to happen in MMORPGs is that the majority of the players speak OOC all of the time and it just perpetuates itself. New players mimic that behavior, and a vicious cycle is born.

Senshi: I have to reiterate, I have no interst in preserving the kind of gameplay which powermaxers consider to be fun. Yes, I know I will lose most of the MMORPG audience, but those who remain will be pretty cool.

quote:
Senshi: I have to reiterate, I have no interst in preserving the kind of gameplay which powermaxers consider to be fun. Yes, I know I will lose most of the MMORPG audience, but those who remain will be pretty cool.

...And the point I''m trying to make is that you don''t neccasarily *have* to lose that audience. Besides, you need someone to argue with, anyway. Victory is always best when you have critics, right?

Anyway, at risk of sounding like a tape recording, I''ll reiterate my point: stats aren''t inherintly evil. They can be good. The problem is that they''ve been abused horribly.

I realize that your trying to make something different, so feel free to completly ignore this post . I''m full of crap anyway .

Just realize that what you make might not appeal to many people other than yourself .



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"Don't worry about it sir, it's an eye-dee-ten-tee error -- takes too long to explain -- have a nice day."
I d 10 t

Playing Everquest myself, I''ve long ago discovered what exactly it is that makes me play...friends in my group.

It is NOT gaining a next level (my last ''level-up'' last week didn''t even register until someone asked me an hour later out of the blue -stranger..yuck!- what my level was) it is NOT gaining items (I''m still running around with empty spots all over my body), it is NOT doing quests (give item to person whoever...give ''m more...and more...keep on giving).

I have to admit that I DO enjoy close fights (usually I hunt at about 30% health just to make fights more dangerous).

What does this have to do with the topic?

Well...I would be one of the players that WOULD play a no-advancement or low-advancement game. Why? Because I play a character...yup, I actually bond to my character. And my character bonds to me. Thus, usually my characters don''t care about material things, don''t care about power. They do care about friendships though...

And friendships is what a non/low-advancement game will thrive on. Social interactions will become more important. Certain players will not join in games like this...others will. And I think that when the game is good enough, those few that start it will quickly gain a larger following as other players start to catch on that there is a game out there that will give them something else, a relief from hack''n''slash.

Then, because the game is NOT based upon visible progress (levels) but on interaction, character development in a mental way more than in a physical way, you just might be able to keep gathering small numbers of gatherers while maintaining the ones you have.

A real virtual world might be a possibility (which actually sounds somewhat creepy, as people will more and more be able to ''escape'' real life, which isn''t necessarily a good thing), a world where characters really come alive, where fighting comes with a great risk, where death is not just ''respawn and lose some experience'' and where your reputation is worth more than your power. Politics might pop up and players might actually want to take part in it. A real history of the world might develop as player''s decisions and actions decide the course of events...

Dreaming isn''t bad is it?

Silvermyst

quote: Original post by Jeranon

Go play Betrayal at Krondor. Oh look, a no level RPG, although there are still stats.

I''ve played it. Nice game but it had other issues that got to me, mainly the person playing it at the time. Same powergamer who could bring the most well designed game to it''s knees in his quest to create the ultimate god character. That and if I remember correctly(much like daggerfall which was in interesting level based system) it gave you numbers to play with and it allowed you to improve yourself from doing some of the dumbest, most inane things in the world like jumping in place for several hours on end(daggerfall). I''m just ranting and I believe I''ve forgotten whatever point I was trying to make, if I was even trying to make one at all.

A.

I was posed with a fiarly similar problem with a persistant actiojn quake liek game we were designing.

My solution was to make skills equal in importance at their highest level and to allow everyone to have a basic skill in everything. Then the idea was to have a sliding scale(imagine knots on a spline).

So,if you used your submachine gun skill very often your other skills say medic would suffer due to neglect. The skill allocation wasn''t linear either. The more you specialised the more skill you sucked from your other skills. A player with maximum skill in say sniping would be pretty useless at everything else.

I was planning on doing the same thing with attributes (running speed, pushing\kicking strength, jumping height).

All of this was calculated at runtime, so a player who spends most of his time running will become faster but will bulk down.


On futher thought I suppose I could have allowed some kind of training mode that will help accellerate the changing process.

The whole idea was to stop my players from becomming walking tanks with every conceivable item and max skills in everything. A ''good'' player just joining should have an equal opportunity of killing a llama who had been on for a while.

gimp

Ok here''s another one for the record.

As in a lot of RPG''s your able to kill the little enemies over and over in order to gain XP easily. This was your not really risking anything in the meantime. I think this is a "weapon" that game designers have not considered balancing in a game. I''ll call it XP vulturing for the sake of argument.

I think XP vulturing is probably a kick starter to players powermaxing. It teaches them to powermax from the start. They them start to think that this is what the game is all about.

There''s one idea i''ve had to control XP vulturing. XP must have temporary caps place on them. taking Diablo for explaination, in dungeon level one you should only be allowed to power up to level 2 XP. To get your character up to Level 3 you have to kill level 2 monsters, and the trend continues throughout the game.

Or if you attack a Level 6 monster with a level 2 character you should get 3x the xp. 6 / 2 = 3x. A simple equation that i think would work.

Another idea i had is about gaining skills. It''s an idea that i wish i''d used in my DM''ing days. In order to gain skills you must travel. There''s no one place that can teach you all the skills. You could even hang plot''s and subplots off this idea. Instead of searching for the Holy Avenger you want to learn Blind fighting. You must travel to find someone to teach you forien/exotic skills. Which are essential to game completion.

You bastards :-) i''m more interested in strategy but these damn rpg posts cloud every second of my thinking time. Arrh. I can''t help myself. Must.... come..... up.... with..... crazy..... ideas. must.... yes.... good.... yes.... good.... Hmmmmmm

Can someone give me a pointer to a thread or explain more clearly what you mean by attrition.

How about being able to turn skills on and off like a switch. The more skills you turn on the easier the killing. But when you kill something the xp gets spread amongst the skill that were turned on. Thus slowing down the levelling speed.

Or some skills are advantageous at one time and others are not. So it becomes more of an issue of which skills to use and when rather than the height of ones level.

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