Coding 'Challenge' into Armageddon

[Armaddict]

Via the sandstorm thread, it got me thinking:  We basically don't have a lot of ways of -coding- challenge into the game.  I'd like to receive player and staff input on things that are favored or not favored, and what we'd prefer in any coding innovations or geography modifications in the future.

Essentially, the way that I see it, we really only have 2 methods of creating challenge for players via code.
1)  Direct danger:  This is long falls, npc dangers, and traps.  NPC dangers is the go-to here, it seems.
2)  Strong Inconvenience:  This is meant to deter, blockade, or hamper via modifications to the weather, movement, or temperature.

What I'd like to hear...what do we prefer as far as fostering content while still creating and maintaining a harsh and challenging atmosphere.  How should coders look at future coding innovations as far as fostering these things?  Do we want combat-rich wastes?  More climb checks?  More variance in movement speeds and movement costs?  What other ways can we code challenge or danger into the game?

This isn't looking to make any particular changes.  Only to hear what different people prefer and like and dislike.

[mansa]

When I want a challenge, I want:

• To know there is something dangerous ahead.
• To know the rough level of difficulty of that dangerous thing.
• To be able to overcome it if I was prepared enough.

So, let's expand on the first one.
I don't want to encounter something dangerous in an area I thought was safe.
I want to know that the area is getting dangerous, either by the room description, or by the difficulty of the mobs I am fighting, or the increase in movement cost to go from room to room.
I want to know if there is a cliff that I can fall down from ahead, or some sort of 'death trap' type mechanic, and I don't want to be surprised at it.


Next, I want to know the relative dangerousness of the task I am doing or going to encounter.
I don't want to be in a safe place, and have some incredibly dangerous mob spawn on me.  I want the dangerousness of the task to be relative to the area I am in. 
I don't want to fall down 5 rooms without the description of the room before it mentioning to me that it is a long, deadly fall.
I don't want to have super deadly poison be found 2 rooms from the city.
I want the idea of progressing from relative safety into more and more deadly territory that most RPG games have.

Finally, when approaching some dangerousness, I want to be able to have the time to judge whether I can do this or not.
If I can >look east and see a gigantic beast, I want that gigantic beasts's description to give me some idea whether I can kill it or not.
If I look over the edge of a cliff, I want it to tell me -this is a dangerous climb- or -this climb is easy-
If I try and poison something, I want the poison to tell me how dangerous it might be if I slip up and cut myself.



Now, a lot of these things are from the prospective of a single player roleplaying game.   ArmageddonMUD isn't that, but it does have some tendencies of RPG games in terms of design philosophy.  I could go on, but primarily my 'challenge' is "I don't want to be disappointed when I attempted to do something that the game told me was easy, and it ended up killing me."

[lostinspace]

I want more dynamically placed things. I know that's part of the herb code coming up, so ideally that system should be made generic enough it can put anything, anywhere in the game based on triggers/timers.

Marked path between two places? The markers should still lead from one place to another, but follow different paths based on the weather / level of silt / time of year / whatever. Rooms near cliff walls that are shaded only during the hours the cliff wall blocks the sun, etc.

Something that changes the approach from 'Just go east 5 south 7 and you're there' to 'Follow the markers until you find the one with the head mounted on top'.

The moving tribal camps come to mind as excellent examples of this.

[Armaddict]

stuff

Uhh, this is all good as far as...well.  Making challenges as not-dangerous as possible.  But I meant more along the lines of 'how to incorporate challenge into the game', because these 2 methods seem to polarize people pretty hard.

'Oh, this is stupid, all it does is make the game a pain to play' for the inconvenience addition (granted, sometimes it's true, but for me that means tweaking, whereas in some cases there seems to be an all out aversion to inconvenience, or even just lack of facilitation).
'Why would I enjoy this random mob killing me' for the direct danger of npcs.
'Climb checks are so stupid, why can't every class just have master climb already' for direct danger of climb checks.

What I'm looking here is not a direct solution, but kind of a brainstorm of whether or not we can come up with other ways of keeping the game harsh and challenging, without depending on the same constructs that greatly annoy one type of player or another.  Someone will always be annoyed at challenges, but the more we can mix it, the better it is, I think?

Something that changes the approach from 'Just go east 5 south 7 and you're there' to 'Follow the markers until you find the one with the head mounted on top'.

Like that's a great example.  Something that mixes map knowledge up, so that even veterans don't just get to 'know things'.  It throws an element of the unknown into travel, and invites both mistakes and misfortune for the non-cautious.

ETA:  To elaborate, imagine if you were a builder for Armageddon, or someone in charge of revamping a zone or something.  You're putting a secret in that zone, or a precious resource, or a cool place to go.  In an era where the push of the playerbase is for skills to not lock you out of content, or where everyone is more capable of overcoming the 'normal' obstacles of yesterday than ever before, how you do challenge the players so that they can't just go farm that resource, or veterans who learn a location can't just use that cool place to go over and over, or keeping that secret to some sort of limited access?  How do you keep armageddon challenging in new ways that do not rely on the traditional challenges that can be repetitive or easily overcome?

[Dresan]

I have a hard time answering the question because for me there are few reasons to be outside a city.

I don't like to explore because there is nothing to really practical to find.  The strongest poisons have been made tedious or group efforts by the staff. Its often easier to buy them when these groups pop up since I mostly use the poisons as deterants against people who want to kill me. Not to mention, its more likely you find death or staff that thinks your a twink then anything cool.

I don't like to hunt anymore since there are just easier ways to make coins. The offense/defense requirement changes made hunting for training purposes rather questionable. You really are better off joining the byn for a IC year or two in my opinion. Since joining clans often lead me to store, my character are often only as strong as the rinth and redstorm alleys can make them. 

Now there are people who would disagree with me, who went on adventures with their clan mates and staff made the experience fun and challenging and they got to come back with a cool story to tell. But ultimately, my point is that if you are going to make challenges then you need to reward people for meeting those challenges. Risk vs reward.  And that is not something I often see the game doing well outside of staff intervention.

[Brokkr]

I am not sure getting a reward or being able to overcome something is always the mindset.  Sometimes it should simply be survival.  Ideally with smart reactions helping you live and dumb reactions helping you towards the mantis head.

Maybe a bit of a tangent, but since environment and the dangers there were brought up, as of about a week ago I have the DEATH flags on rooms down to two rooms.  Not that you are not going to potentially die if you seek out erstwhile DEATH flagged rooms.  But that mechanic is for the most part just not fun.

[Lotion]

I think Angks should be removed from the tablelands.

[Armaddict]

I am not sure getting a reward or being able to overcome something is always the mindset.  Sometimes it should simply be survival.  Ideally with smart reactions helping you live and dumb reactions helping you towards the mantis head.

Oh, I understand.  I was more just putting it that way in that example to explain the 'mechanic' I'm looking for.  Honestly, my brain has a hard time thinking outside of those 2 zones, direct danger and inconvenience...because those are what's always been used.  So I was hoping that newer players, or players with much less code-oriented brains, could get some ideas flowing as far as more options to keep the game as harsh as possible.

[Dresan]

Sometimes it should simply be survival.

Interesting, lets explore this logic in terms of risk vs reward.

Remember salting? Before we continue I am assuming some key points that people may or may not agree with:

• Money in of itself is the least effective and inefficient way to ensure survival, in comparison to RP and skills
• You get enough money at the beginning to allow you to get to a point where you can either rely on RP or skills to survive.
• Money continues to become a less and less effective way to survive as your character gets older, established and more skilled

When salting was a thing it was one of the main ways to make money. Because of salting I experienced:

• Character death of a special app at 4 hours because someone was camping the road
• Became a raider hunting salt grebbers at 0 days played before crimson wind was even formed or threaten skill was even a thing
• Got to meet and chat with a bunch of other people out at the same spot working to make coins
• After performing such dangerous work, returned to the significantly safer tavern to rest my character feet for the night and chat with others about the risky but profitable job

I won't argue that salting at the time too good of a way to make money, so good it was worth the risk of being out there with no armor, skills or weapons trying to make a coin. When the risk was increased beyond the reward, people just moved on to other ways of 'surviving' that were less risk adverse. And there are still plenty of good ways to make coins and to survive without too much risk around the city. And definately better ways to make coins other than salting if you are going be travelling that far away from the city anyways.

I won't argue that salting too good at the time nor am i saying it should come back, but even in its time it brought dangers and interesting RP and it would have been much more dangerous to do today with the addition of certain elf and raider clans and skills. In my opinion it is a good example of overcompensation, where risk does not match reward, especially since the root of the problem is that coins in general become fairly useless after a certain point in the character's lifecycle.

Lets not forget that our time and effort is the most valuable thing many of us are putting into the game.  So again outside of staff intervention I don't really see the game doing the risk vs reward that well. You can make any sort of challenge for players to overcome but if there are no real purpose or benefit it feels twinkish to attempt it because its going against game's survival theme.

[Armaddict]

stuff

I'm not even sure what the point of all this is.  Salting was awesome, so everyone played around it, but coin is worthless, but people did it anyway, got raided for their coins that raiders with higher skills needed because money is valuable, but money is less valuable than skills so when it became less profitable people decided to do other stuff for money that they didn't need until they got skills to use to get money.  Like...you're simultaneously downgrading money, then continuing to use it for what it is, which is a primary motivator for much of the game's activity.

Lets not forget that our time and effort is the most valuable thing many of us are putting into the game.  So again outside of staff intervention I don't really see the game doing the risk vs reward that well. You can make any sort of challenge for players to overcome but if there are no real purpose or benefit it feels twinkish to attempt it because its going against game's survival theme.

So this is the only part that isn't just...selective logic.  This part is true.  Our time and effort needs to be invested wisely.  Which is why more and more, I'm not certain what exactly you expect out of Armageddon, because just about every discussion is based on making it so that whenever you want things done, they just happen.  You don't like inconvenience, you don't like permadeath unless it happens in a way you decide, you don't like time investment, you don't like risk, and you think the majority of players here suck and kill out of boredom.  You'd rather ditch any semblance of realism in exchange for safety, you don't want characters to have to depend on each other, but you want to be able to find other players at the drop of a hat without effort involved because you get bored without them.  Like...that's just stuff from posts in the last few days.

You were, originally, why I even thought to put up this thread.  I'd like to hear -creative- challenge ideas that staff -could- use to prevent them from using the traditional methods of challenge.  Instead, you've basically come up and said that you will not endure challenge or hardship unless they put a reward at the end of it for you, instead of the traditional reward which is 'you accomplish whatever you came through this challenge for'.  You don't just -charge into a sandstorm- hoping there's treasure in it.  Why would any RP game do that?  You endure a sandstorm because you have some other goal you're working on, and it becomes a natural obstacle; that's how your goal becomes even more rewarding, or you suffer hardships or even death from circumstances of pursuing that goal.

I think you got sidetracked; you're thinking of them implanting a system first, or a reward first, then a challenge to coincide (i.e. Salting or methods of making money).  I'm asking about challenges themselves, absent a system.  Absent a reward.  Absent anything else.  What are alternatives to inconvenience and threat of death.  Lostinspace talked about negating map knowledge via changing areas.  That is challenge that is not based in inconvenience of play, or threat of death, but rather an increase in effort/attention/constant learning.

[Dresan]

stuff.

Sorry, you seem to be making a number of assumptions, but I'll make it simple for you.

The rewards that used to be in place for leaving the city have slowly been removed to the point that it does not feel like its worth it anymore.

Certainly not worth risking character death in a game where survival should be king.

Thus before you discuss challenges, you should take a look at the rewards for those challenges, it'll help plan/create the challenges more appropriately.

I know it was not the original intent of the thread, so apologies for the derail.

[Armaddict]

The rewards the used to be in place for leaving the city have slowly been removed to the point that it does not feel like its worth it anymore. Certainly not worth risking character death in a game where survival should be king.

Before you discuss challenges, you should take a look at the rewards for those challenges, it'll help plan them more appropriately.

But yet we still have people going for rewards outside the city, and those are not rewards that were specifically put in place FOR leaving the city.  You wanted to be able to move from city to city freely; that's because there is a reward -that you set- as the goal.  Just like everyone else.  That's...pretty much the entire game, is us deciding what we want to do, and there being obstacles in the way of it that we have to overcome.

So in this case, I'm asking you specifically:  You do not like sandstorms.  I don't mind them, but I think they can be improved.  You liked that improvement, but only insofar as it did not impede your ability to do what you wanted.  You do not like murder setups in areas that you want to think of as safe.  I do not mind them, but agreed that one facet of how it could be done would be unrealistic.  You didn't care about realism, because you didn't want the thing to be done at all.  So, absent the idea of reward, because those come from YOU deciding what your reward and staff does not (whether that be coin, reaching a destination, finding a resource, or using an area to get a skill), HOW would you like challenge and hardship in the theme of the game to be implemented?

What you were saying is not a derail, Dresan, it's just very confusing because in trying to improve the game for as many players as possible, all I'm getting in return in various threads is that the game needs to change a large part of its very premise; a harsh, unforgiving world that wants to take your boots.  What are some interesting ideas on how we could implement harsh, unforgiving things in a way that does NOT make you decide to stop pursuing rewards?

[Dresan]

So in this case, I'm asking you specifically:  You do not like sandstorms.  I don't mind them, but I think they can be improved.  You liked that improvement, but only insofar as it did not impede your ability to do what you wanted.  You do not like murder setups in areas that you want to think of as safe. 

You are cherry picking at my old discussions and making a lot of assumptions.

To be clear I don't like storms on beaten paths, because they prevent more RP between players then they create.  For me at least, RP and interaction between players is the selling point of the game. After all these years, its not really a fun solo game for me anymore. And just to further clarify, this is nothing against anyone that wants to on remote wilderness solo adventures, by all means get off the beaten path and have fun if that is your thing.

Heck, from my point of view, leaving redstorm during a blinding storm is safer as long as you have high enough direction sense. Its hardly a challenge, just puts more importance on certain skills reducing the about of variety in the game. This is because again time is important to people, hoping X or Y logs in to take you to A or B is fustrating if you are just looking to find more people to play with.

If you want to disuade me from travelling or investing in the skills to travel by myself just put in a command thats tells me how many players are in the taverns and streets at any given location and if the number is less then where I am then I won't bother to move. 

All that is different to the discussion in this thread, survival is king in this game as part of its theme, to the point that even roaming the wastland looking for combat challenges to improve combat skills seems twinkish in my books. Due to that theme, before you discuss challenges you should have a discussion on rewards.

Because the challenge part is rather simple in a permadeath game, the risk of death just needs to increase depending on what it is you are trying to achieve. It doesn't really matter too much what factors you use to increase risk of death part. Mansa seems to have the right idea how how to make those risky experiences more enjoyable for those that are willing to take on any challenge.   

[Armaddict]

Alright.  Deny it, then...prove it in the same post.  That works.

Moving on.  Anyone -else- have cool ideas about how to implement challenges in the game?

[Dresan]

Alright.  Deny it, then...prove it in the same post.  That works.

Moving on.  Anyone -else- have cool ideas about how to implement challenges in the game?

If you say so, seems like you have a better view up there from your high horse.

As small consideration to the purpose of your thread though, how about if sandstorms or whatever you were facing had good chance to permanently ruin(crumbled to the point of disappear) a piece or two of gear or weapon you had on?  Or imagine traps that just left you completely naked with no chances of retrieving your loot and mount.

I know these mechanics exists in some ways in the game but it seems to be pretty rare occurance in comparison to just dying. People do seem to love their virtual stuff in the game.

In fact if heading outside and encountering windy weather caused your stats, gear or health status to slowly deteriorate, putting you in an increasinly dangerous situation for any amount of time, that would pose a much more interesting challenge. I am not sure why you would put your survival at risk but hey, it would be a more interesting challenge then blinding weather that hinders RP, which you just need to bypass with the right skill selection at creation. 

[Brytta Léofa]

Puzzles: there's something you can do here, but you'll have to figure out how. (Guessing crafting recipes, spell symbols before we had the 'symbol' command.)

Rare objects: you have to obtain X to do Y. (Magick components, herbs for brewing, poisons for poisoning. Picks.)

Tradeoffs: you can have benefit X or benefit Y, but not both at once.

[Halcyon]

I would like places where resources spawn that can be contended.   The clan that controls that resource point on some irregular interval receives those resources.   Sandsilk was a very good start on this idea.

This idea can also be extended to npc resources for clan leads.   If pcs dig rocks for a road, labor slaves can be freed uo for another project.  If a randomly generated raider camp is put down, that clan that did so gets some extra spawned mount feed objects in their stables.   If a small fortification is cleared and held, a clan gets extra staff provided rumor intel on the nearby region.

I know alot of this can be done via reports, but why not place goals out into the world and let us have at, instead?

[Hauwke]

I think Angks should be removed from the tablelands.

They aren't even in the Tablelands, they are in the Red Desert.

[Lotion]

I think Angks should be removed from the tablelands.

They aren't even in the Tablelands, they are in the Red Desert.

Angks have been added to the Tablelands.

[Hauwke]

That sounds like the Tablelands problem then. If you run out in the desert and get bit by a snake and die to poison, well, you should have been more prepared.

That's a very basic survival thing. Snakes are dangerous.

[Lotion]

That sounds like the Tablelands problem then. If you run out in the desert and get bit by a snake and die to poison, well, you should have been more prepared.

That's a very basic survival thing. Snakes are dangerous.

What should the day0 indie human tribal PCs who live in the Tablelands reasonably do?

[ShaiHulud]

That sounds like the Tablelands problem then. If you run out in the desert and get bit by a snake and die to poison, well, you should have been more prepared.

That's a very basic survival thing. Snakes are dangerous.

What should the day0 indie human tribal PCs who live in the Tablelands reasonably do?

Die, or speak to their indie tribal peers or elders.

[Hauwke]

That sounds like the Tablelands problem then. If you run out in the desert and get bit by a snake and die to poison, well, you should have been more prepared.

That's a very basic survival thing. Snakes are dangerous.

What should the day0 indie human tribal PCs who live in the Tablelands reasonably do?

Die, or speak to their indie tribal peers or elders.

Yep.

Tell tribamos You got got cures tribe bro? I need cures before I venture into the area I know poisonous animals reside.