If you don't know what a MUD is: Wiki

So I'm going for making an up-to-date MUD and one of the ease-of-use features I'm going for is a Battle Window where the player is on the bottom of the window (along with any party members) and their enemies will be at the top of the window. The player can focus a target by clicking on their avatar/icon and then can perform actions against them.

My question is should there be a limit to how many characters can be in a single room?

• I would like to have grinding be easier by grabbing multiple mobs, like in WoW, and then being able to AoE them to death.
• I would like there to be World PvP, but what happens when say a guild of 40 or 50 people are running around in a party?

If I limit the amount of characters in a room then it would be terrible for other players wanting to pass through a room. They would have to wait or find another route around.

Should I limit combat to a certain amount of characters? If I do that then we can't have the WoW-like gathering of mobs and being able to dispatch them quickly and efficiently.

Then there's the problem of the window being too clogged up with players and mobs.

I'm pretty stuck on this, been like 3-4 days now -_- Help senpai

I wouldn't limit the number of characters in a room, unless you were doing some kind of instancing where once the capacity is full on an instance of the room a new instance is created for the next n players.

Maybe for combat, you could view the combat as a separate room.. the players in combat would be in two rooms at the same time, the combat room and the room from which the combat started.... the enemies being fought would only exist in the combat room... so player A walks into a room and starts fighting create x,y and z. Then player B walks into the room... he is able to see player A, but not creatures x,y or z.

why is there a seperate battle view? Is it needed? Cant you achieve the same by fighting in the normal rooms? Or will that be too tight?

If a guild of 50 is moving as a single group (a single dot on the map I assume?) wouldnt it be kinda boring for the 49 people not controlling the movement? Or did i misunderstand you?

I think limiting where units can move (which includes how many will fit in a room/corridor) is an interesting and important feature. If you wonder why, watch the movie "300" tonight (or do it in any case if you will... it's fun watching it anyway).

A guild of 50 moving around in a group and doing PvP, but only 4-5 of them are ever able to enter a particular room at a given time makes that room strategically valuable. If the smaller group realizes this, that is. Which is... just the interesting part of the game. Instead of many units and spam-clicking the "attack" button, use terrain to your advantage.People use boulders as corridor plugs or other things to a similar effect in NetHack/Rogue, too. Even in "pulp" RPGs delaying powerful NPC units is a well-known strategy.

make grinding easier by AoE killing

That opens a couple of different questions: Why require people to do so much grind at all? What about people who don't have AoE effects, do they have no chance in this game?