Posted by Proud Blade(VIP) on August 20, 2000 at 17:38:38:
(Some of this has been posted before, but posts from Tracker and Arcane convinced me to take a fresh look at it.) I think the problem is not that you are penalized XP when you die, but that gaining XP is tedious, as many others have pointed out. I think the "fix" lies in how experience is gained, not taken away. I sent something to Pico as a tangent to a Forum thread a while ago, and I got the impression that people know that the XP system isn't great (it isn't terrible, either), but that they've had trouble implementing a better system that isn't vulnerable to exploitation. The following is largely a rehash of that, but I'd love to hear comments: The centerpiece of the system was the creation of more quests with XP as a reward. A certain newer area has what I'd consider an optimal example of the kind of quests I'm talking about- it's a basic "Go and fetch item X" quest, with a small (~500 xp) reward. I'd love to see lots of little quests like this coded for four reasons. Pros of the system: The first is variety- you can do quite a bit even with simple things. "Fetch A", "Kill Mob B", "Find Secret Room C", "Bring D to place E", and the like are all reasonably easy to set up, and can lead to a lot of clever things. The second is roleplaying: there are a lot of roles (including many Masters, paladins, healers, Dawnies, etc.) for whom running about bludgeoning monsters with large heavy things is just not an appropriate way to gain power and prestige. The third is being able to rank solo, which is not practical for many classes at certain ranks. Sure, some quests would best be solved via teamwork, but a lot of them would require more brains then brawn. The fourth is the "shiny aura" factor. It would be a way to make CF continue to stand out as different and unique. Some cons of the system: - Coding-heavy. This would require a restructuring of resources from the IMMs for some time. Perhaps instead of writing new areas, some heroimms could be tasked with an equivalent workload of writing mini-quests for existing areas. An emphasis would be towards making quests that are completely self-sufficient, and do not require active IMM supervision to function and be completed. If ideas become the limiting reagent, the IMMs could put a "suggestion box" as a command in the game, and filter through it as needed. However, my impression is that the staff generates ideas much faster than it is practical to implement them. - Spoilers. This is the biggest flaw- that some clown will just email his buddies every time they figure anything out. This would have to be countering by clever coding, such as semi-random quest targets (The guildmaster sends you to bring him one object, but it is chosen from a predetermined list of twelve...), quests where it doesn't matter so much if you know the answer (killing The Bad, Bad Dragon solo is still tough, even if someone tells you where he lives or sanctuaries you), or quests with 'cheat-busters' built right in. An example of a cheat-buster would be one where a thief asks you confidentially to find a secret password to enter a castle. The secret password would be written on some scrap of paper in a nearby hidden room. Your pfile would be marked twice- once when you look at the paper in the hidden room, and once when you complete the quest. Players whose pfile reveals that they completed the quest without ever looking at the paper will likely have to answer some questions. (Maybe an IC friend helped them. Maybe not. But you'd never know if and how your pfile has been altered, so your alibi might not match the facts.) Another, more insidious, limit is that the size of the reward is affected by how many people completed the quest in the last week. (Now how many people do you want to tell?) - Abuse: Quests would have to be designed with the question "If I knew everything about this quest, how could I abuse it?" in mind. Most quests should only be able to be completed (for a reward) once. And the reward would have to match the difficulty, assuming that it's the questor's second time around. - Broad appeal: Quests would be most practical if a wide variety of characters could complete them. While a quest given out by the paladin guildmaster might be cool, it would also be a quest that 90% of the playerbase would have no use for. Thoughts? Comments?