Author Topic: Are professions interesting enough to add to a MUD?  (Read 2073 times)

Chalgyr

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We've likely all seen how professions work on most MMO's like Everquest, WoW or Guild Wars 2. A few of us have seen them done in much more limited fashion on MUDs.

There's several components that generally go into them:

- resource gathering
- learning a profession
- gaining rare recipes to augment what you normally learn

Then you create items, weapons, armor, pieces of gear that can be used in making other items (Leatherworker creates padding that later gets used by a blacksmith to make plate armor).

Do you like these kinds of systems?

If so, which professions do you think you'd want to see?

The general approach I hve seen is you make mostly basic gear that's only semi-useful at best, but later on you can make slightly better gear than what you find on most critters, but not quite as good as you might get from a rare drop. Where should these profession-made items fall in the 'power' scale? All over the place, from junk to near custom-level?
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Algorgon

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Re: Are professions interesting enough to add to a MUD?
« Reply #1 on: 03/12/13, 19:07 »
it would be interesting to have the ability to make stuff. I would want them to be somewhat useful. Not saying custom / rare level, but it would be pointless if they didn't do something useful

Tylon

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Re: Are professions interesting enough to add to a MUD?
« Reply #2 on: 03/13/13, 16:34 »
Kind of a loaded question there! I was a huge fan of Ultima Online's crafting system... and I think they are still up and running if you wanted to take a peek at it. Here are some basic things that every crafting system needs:

1) Decay of items. You need crafters to have a continual need, and to facilitate that you need whatever they are making to fall apart so people need more of them.

2) Resource gathering. It needs to be painful enough to perform where some players may spend most of their time gathering, others most of their time crafting.

3) Interlinking. There should be items that require bits and pieces from other professions. The more interlinking, the more powerful the item.

4) Randomization. Say someone wishes to make an iron helm. It may break 3 times, then the fourth try an average piece, fifth exceptional or whatnot.

Now, do I think KoTL has a system where this type of thing could work? Not especially, unless you guys want to retool how items work in general. Something that may be worth considering is permanent modifications to items that already exist through professions. Or character modification.

Thalia

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Re: Are professions interesting enough to add to a MUD?
« Reply #3 on: 03/15/13, 13:02 »
How do people feel about decay of items? 

About needing to take a dent out of armor? hone the edge of a weapon?  sew a patch on a cloak?

About risking losing something you spent a lot of time acquiring because you didn't spend time maintaining it?

I've played/supported game that had that feature and I'm OK with it, but I've also seen people completely freak out/melt down about it.

Daklore

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Re: Are professions interesting enough to add to a MUD?
« Reply #4 on: 03/15/13, 13:18 »
A long time ago, I hated decay... to a certain point I hate decay on Achaea, but I don't -mind- decay or the need to repair gear/armour/etc.

On Achaea, almost everything decays. Weapons, armour, clothes, enchantments... and unfortunately vials. Vials are the necessity for curing in Achaea. Those are where I hate decay, because it costs me on average 25000 gold every few (real) months to replace them.

You'd need to have a well balanced system to make sure you're not overspending resources and time to get back what you lose to decay. This can happen in Achaea with weapons and armour, since forging them gives variable stats, and people want the best you can muster out of them... which also drives up the cost of the finished good, on top of the cost of resources required to make them.

Namely steel in Achaea, which until recently was very limited and easy to buy out and deny other people. There was actually one player who kept buying all the available steel whenever it was repopulated, which caused a massive steel shortage and caused people to be unable to forge anything. This was fixed by increasing the amount of steel available in game ... and also shrubbing(essentially jailing them) the player involved, because they were bot-forging.
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Jadyss

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Re: Are professions interesting enough to add to a MUD?
« Reply #5 on: 01/27/15, 11:56 »
Professions are good. The mud seems to be lacking a strong economy.
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Chalgyr

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Re: Are professions interesting enough to add to a MUD?
« Reply #6 on: 02/04/15, 11:05 »
I know professions have come up a lot over the years. I personally enjoy them a great deal - I spend a lot of time and money on them in MMOs such as WoW or FFXIV for example. That being said, they do require a fair number of active players to fully flesh them out and they would also impact some of our are design, so there is significant overhead here.

When Thalia and I talked about starting another MUD in the past (Scattered Ashes), it was one of those things we figured we would include, but it feels like something easier to implement from the ground floor than to add in later, since it impacts area design, skills and even how/what kinds of gear you offer throughout the game.
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