Jess Heinig writes:
> You mean "game balance," I presume. This is not something easily computed
> with a formula, since what's balanced for one MUD isn't necessarily balanced
> for another. Also, you might think that you could just build a certain range,
> but the tolerance will differ depending on the MUD. That is, a low-money,
> low-power game would see tolerances of three or four points as a viable
> range, while a high-power, high-money game might see three or four *hundred*
> point variations as reasonable tolerances. You really need to do your
> balancing by hand. Only you, the implementor, can decide what's appropriate
> to your game and what's not.
However, to actually balance your mobs I'd reccomend running statistics
on your mob files. In unix, AWK is your friend for making a nice comma
delimited file to import into a statistics package.
For instance, do some math on things like number of attacks * likelyhood
to hit a specific AC * average damage and then compare that to experience.
Somewhere I've got a formula that figures out how much damage a mob dishes
out vs how much it can take (thaco * attacks * damage / AC * hp) Plot that
and look for outriders. You'll probably fall into a few ranges...
Also, it's hard to formulate the value of items. They often are worth much
more then their "store" price, especially the good ones that are so
sought after. I'd look for "exceptional" items on average mobs.
Also, keep tabs on how often things are killed. Anything that's killed
frequently is an XP cow, a cash cow, or just has a rare item. The latter is
ignorable, the first two are balance problems.
Anything that dosn't get hit much at all? Graph kill frequency over power,
find out if there's entire zones that are so hard and unrewarding that nobody
goes there.
--Dan
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