> -----Start Quote-----
> These are all the sorts of things that would make an invaluable
> tool to the person who was worried about balancing their world out. I
> know someone previously was talking about doing this...did that ever pan
> out?
> -----End Quote-----
> Well, not exactly. As you well know, balancing will always be a major
> issue, no matter how long a MUD has been around. What I was actually
> trying to do was take the guess work out for the Builders. Instead of
> them breaking out a calculator to determine the hitroll, damroll and
> other stats, I just wanted to have them set the MOB's level and class
> and then after editing everything else, exit medit and mobroll it.
> I've run into a few problems from some old code that I out in a few
> weeks ago, and I've been bug hunting since I posted that message.
>
I was thinking more along the lines of whole-mud balancing. For
example; i have some statistics. Somewhere along the way, I realize that
88% of my players are warriors, and that 100% of those warriors are
wielding "The Green Tomahawk" and wearing a "red leather vest". Now, I'm
a strong proponent of diversity; I put effort into mages, and clerics and
thieves, and my builders put effort into other weapons and armor - why are
they only using these?
Well, most players will end up finding the most powerful eq, and
the quickest way to level/etc. If nearly everyone is doing the same
thing, it's probably because they're benfiting more from doing it than
being different. It's a good indication that either other weapons, eq,
classes are too weak, or those classes/eq/etc are too strong. Our problem
component has been found.
Then, you have things like comparisons on area usage. Why aren't
players playing in the new zone? It's identical to another zone statwise,
but only 3% of your players ever go there, and they rarely stay more than
5 minutes.
In a nutshell, I believe that some sort of statistic gathering
system would allow people to easily focus on the areas that have problems,
instead of just having a 'general idea'. Normalizing long term trends is
really much easier than spot-checking on a component by component basis
and assuming that will scale in the way you want.
PjD
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