stats, a newbie's observation...

[Guest]

One lesson I've learned from that other place is that having stats profoundly affect success makes for a lot of grief - for players and admin alike. I don't know what folk think of this, but personally I think that rather than say a 19 stat being 19/18 times more effective than an 18 stat, imo it'd be a far better solution to have a 19 stat be say 69/68 (ie 19 PLUS 50) times more effective than an 18 stat. Ie a much smaller range of difference, more in tune with pracs than a stat point being equivalent to a ton of pracs. It means just as much diversity really, since that's one of the arguments for stats.

Admittedly I'm clueless about this mud, so maybe stat differences don't matter that much and the view is "you should stat better in the first place", but as a new person here and looking through the forums, the perception I'm getting is that they do. Which isn't so awful either, it does mean that people will stay and play here longer and have more characters (ie looking for those 'perfect' stats), but does make for frustration and endless talk of "are these stats ok?"... unless of course you guys imp some way for all folk to be able to better their stats at some point with some predefined ceilings per class .

Just a thought, ignore if it's nonsense

[Guest]

hmm, just some more nonsense to add to my earlier nonsense.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that one key difference that both huge successful muds and MMORPGs have with muds like this and-that-other-place is that they don't rely upon stats at all (personally I'd say that the whole stat issue always held back that-other-place some). I mean, it's a no-brainer that places where stats are so important it's inevitable that people spend a lot of time statting to get "uberstats". So that's a large part of a person's 'playtime'. And you have to ask yourself if that's actually really all that interesting.

Where the other places have it right, imo, is that stats don't actually matter there BUT diversity is actually ensured through choices. Ie choices of 100s of skills to prac & try before a guy gets bored. And what's better about that sort of setup is twofold - first of all it's easier to balance (ie you just have to balance skills & weapons, not skills, weapons AND stats). And, at the end of the day, it's also good because it means players won't get blame the system (because the system makes it so that if you make one poor choice as a lowbie, ie your stat, you're screwed for life), but instead can only blame themselves for their own poor "choices" of skills. Now, agreed, there are plenty of flaws with this whole line of reasoning, not limited to the reality of limited coder time etc. But I couldn't resist.

I think I'll shut up now

[Guest]

Interesting ideas.

I like the statting system, and you really can get one character ( a ranger or warrior for example) and you can play every type of skill/weapon possible. (not all at once of course.)

This game has huge amounts of diversity, and still the imms are working on making it even more fun.

Statting can be a pain, but once you get the good stats, you can just relax and play that one character if you want to, or you can move on and get multiple alts.

I suggest you play around more with it, it's quite interesting how rolls go and stats and the likes.

[Guest]

i agree with bradash. statting isnt terribly difficult on this mud, and also i think the system doesn't rely heavily on certain stats.