The Mana World - User contributions [en]

Help:Wiki Guidelines

2006-09-19T00:55:10Z

Aharrison: /* Using status templates */

{{Status_red}}
This article is to bring a little bit more order into the wiki.

==The purpose of the wiki==
The wiki is meant to publish:
*Ideas about various aspects of the game
*Design documents and roadmaps
*Design guidelines
*References for current and potential developers
*Help documents for players

==Commenting articles==
Discussion pages are usually meant for discussing articles, but the nature of our project makes this rather unfeasible. Putting comments right on the article page where they are much more prominent is much more productive for the development of a topic. But the habit of some people to write comments '''directly''' into the text is not a very good method because it harms the readability of the article a lot.

So comments about articles should not be written into the article itself but collected as another subsection labled <nowiki>==Comments==</nowiki> at the end of the article.

Every comment '''has''' to be signed and dated. You can automatically add your username and the present time and date by typing <nowiki>--~~~~</nowiki>.

Comment on comments should be identated so that the discussion structure is visible. You can identate a paragraph by adding ':' in front of it.

Example for a discussion
<pre><nowiki>
I like the color blue
:I don't like blue. I would prefer red.
::Red? No, that is too agressive.
:How about green?
::Green would be an alternative.
:::No, green sucks. Blue is the only alternative.
</nowiki></pre>

results in:

I like the color blue
:I don't like blue. I would prefer red.
::Red? No, that is too agressive.
:How about green?
::Green would be an alternative.
:::No, green sucks. Blue is the only alternative.

==Internal links==
Internal links are important for the easy navigation of the wiki. Whenever you reference another article you should link to it.

When you create an article that is a counter proposal to another article, you should create a link to the article you are opposing and also put a link on the linked article back to your article at an appropiate place.

When you create a proposal that is based on another proposal (like an article about a [[Races|race]] that fits into the [[backstory]]) you should also link back to the article you are based on and also create a link in the base article itself.

Also feel free to create links to [[Female hairset development|articles, that do not exist yet, but should exist in your opinion]], to encourage someone to create them.

==Using status templates==
Status templates show how serious the article is treated by the development team. Every article should start with one of the following templates:

===Red===
The <nowiki>{{Status_red}}</nowiki> indicates that the contents of the article are a proposal made by someone and that the development hasn't discussed about using the proposal yet.

It should be added to every new article you write. The only cases in which you may start an article with another template are:
*You document something that is a consensus in the whole development time for a long time.
*You document something that has already been implemented without writing a wiki article about it.

===Yellow===
The <nowiki>{{Status_yellow}}</nowiki> indicates that the developer that is in charge of the mentioned aspect of the game as decided that the proposal mentioned will be done in the game as described. The template should only be placed by the developer in charge or after getting his/her permission to place it in the article.

===Green===
The <nowiki>{{Status_green}}</nowiki> indicates that the aspects mentioned in the article are already in the game. Articles that explain how different aspects of the game work, style guidelines (when they are ratified) or tutorials fall into this category, too.

===Outdated===
The <nowiki>{{Status_outdated}}</nowiki> article indicates that the article is either a status green article that is no longer correct or a status red or yellow article that has been rendered depreciated by a contradicting developers decision.

===Under Construction===
The <nowiki>{{Status_construction|*}}</nowiki> template explains that the current article is in development. It has to contain a notice how to take part in the development of the article. Replace the asterix in the example above with a description how to contact the developers.

Examples:
<pre><nowiki>
{{Status_construction|come to the IRC channel #tmwart on irc.freenode.net}}
{{Status_construction|visit the following forum thread [link]}}
{{Status_construction|Add your opinion to the comment section}}
</nowiki></pre>

Archive:Skill system 2

2006-09-16T11:29:59Z

Aharrison: Fixed a bunch of typos and changed some grammar to make the proposal more fluid.

{{Status_red}}
This Article has been written as a counter proposal to the system currently described under [[Stat system]]. Although I support the idea of a learning by doing system because it can be much more plausible than a statpoint based system I think that the system described in that article is not well thought out and makes a lot of errors common for learning by doing systems. A detailed description can be found in this thread on the forum were also most of the content of this article has been designed.
http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?t=1305

I modified this article to fit into the [[Attributes]] system.

==Preamble==

This system has been designed as a levelless Learning by Doing System for a real time action combat system. The main goals were:

* '''Intuitivity''' The Players should be able to fully understand the system after a few hours of playing and should be able to create effective characters without having to study guides on the internet. Ruining a character beyond recovery by making errors in the character development should be impossible.
* '''Control''' Despite the above principle the player should still be able to influence the development of his character by changing his playing style.
* '''Customization''' Every character should be individual. There shouldn't be uber character stereotypes that excel all other characters. A premise for this goal is a well thought out balance between the different skills.
* '''Encourage Team-play''' Players should be motivated to play together and help each other. To reach this it has to be impossible to create characters that are good at everything at the same time so that everyone needs party members with different character types to counterbalance the weaknesses of his character. Pushing up low characters quickly with the help of high level characters should not be too easy.
* '''Negligibility''' Raising the skills of the character should be an important part of every RPG but it shouldn't be the main concern of the player. He should focus on the parts of the game that are fun like exploring and questing while his character becomes stronger and more adapted to his playing style along the way. Repeating the same task over and over again should not be the most effective way to raise a character quickly like it is in most online roleplaying games nowadays.

== Overview ==

The character has a wide variety of skills that represent the competence of the character at performing different tasks. Each skill has its own level and experience count (exp). Whenever the player accomplishes a task by using his skills the used skills gain exp. The amount of exp depends on the difficulty of the task. When the exp reaches a fixed amount the skill gains a level making it more efficient. The amount of exp needed for a levelup increases exponentially with every levelup of the skill.

The player has the following skills:

*'''Weapon Skills''' The characters have a wide range of skills that represent his abilities with various types of weapons like axes, swords, knives, bows, pole arms and so on. Increasing these skills increases the hit rate, the parry rate and the palette of active combat moves the character can use with that weapon. These are the formulas i would suggest:
**Hit Rate = <code>Agility * (1 + 0.1 * skill)</code>
**Evade Rate = <code>Dexterity * (1 + 0.1 * skill)</code>
The weapon damage is based on the strength attribute of the character. Every weapon type should represent a unique fighting style and should be useful in different situations to encourage players to specialize in different weapons.
*'''Crafting Skills''' These skills cover a wide range of tasks from creating consumable and equip-able items over repairing of damaged equipment to service skills like healing wounds or status conditions.
*'''Offensive Magic''' Because the magic is separated into 8 different elements i thought that it would just be logical to do the same with the skills necessary to use them. Increasing these skills allows to cast more advanced spells, makes offensive spells inflict more damage and allows to cast less advanced spells more frequently.
**Damage = <code>spell_damage * (1 + 0.1 * skill)</code>
**Cast Time = <code>spell_casttime * skill_required / skill</code>
*'''Defensive Magic''' I decided to separate the magical skill levels of the skills that target friendly characters from those that target enemies for reasons of balancing the exp gain. The reasons will be explained later in the section "Indirect Combat Skills".

== Exp Gain ==

=== Crafting Skills ===

The most boring part of most learning by doing systems is the crafting part. We have to create a crafting system that does not force the player to repeat the same mouse clicks over and over again for hours to level up quickly like many crafting systems do. We have to challenge the player on an intellectual level. I would suggest to discuss the topic in another article. See [[Item_creation_system]]

=== Direct Combat Skills ===

This chapter addresses the exp gain rules for offensive magic skills and the weapon skills.

The only way to increase these skills is by using them in combat to kill monsters. Every monster is worth a fixed amount of exp and has a challenge rating. The challenge rating represents the average level of the main skills the character should have when he wants to face the monster while the exp amount should represent how long it takes to kill the monster. When a monster is defeated, the following things happen:
#the experience is divided up between all characters that took part in the fight.
#then the exp each player gets is divided up equally on all skills that the character used enough in that combat to reward exp for them. To reward exp for weapon or magic skills the character has to inflict at least 10% of the total damage by using weapons/spells from that skill category.
#when the challenge rating of the monster is higher than the level of the skill the exp that skill receives is divided by <code>Challenge Rating / Skill Level</code>. The reason for this is that it would otherwise be too easy to train low skills at high monsters by using a high skill to inflict the needed 90% damage (even another character could do that) and then finish the last 10% with the low skill.

To prevent killstealing only the character who attacked a monster first and those who are in the same party should be able to gain exp from a monster. Other characters should subtract a share of exp when calculating how much exp every character gets but the skills of the killstealer don't receive the exp. This is another procedure to make it difficult to push up low chars with the help of high chars.

=== Indirect Combat Skills ===

Indirect combat skill that do not weaken the enemy but strengthen the allies like heal or buff spells are difficult to implement into the above concept. First it is difficult to rate their importance for the outcome of the fight. Second, healing spells might be cast not during but after a fight. For those reasons I would suggest to treat them more like crafting skills than combat skills. In the end it is not that different if you cure a wound or repair an armor or if you forge a shield of metal with your hammer or if you enchant a shield of magic with your wand.

The amount of exp gained by healing spells should depend on the number of Hit Points healed. So healing people who already are at full health does not give any exp. How many exp points for how many hit points is a question of balance that should be solved during the alpha test.

The exp for curing status ailments should depend on the type of ailment and how hard it is to cure it. Stronger monsters should have much nastier poisons and curses that are much harder to cure and are worth more exp points for the healer than weak ones. For that reason every status alignment should have a level. When a character attempts to heal an ailment a random number between 0 and his skill level is rolled. When the outcome is higher than the level of the ailment the ailment is healed. To make it a little bit more tricky some ailments like diseases or certain curses could be infectious. That means that when the healer fails at curing he has to do a second test and when he fails again he is infected, too.

Buff spells that increase the strength of other characters should give a fixed amount of exp. To prevent the players from casting those spells on everything that moves instead of reserving their use to combat in which they are needed I would suggest to make ingredients necessary to cast those spells. Those should be easy enough to obtain to use them when the skills are necessary but hard enough to prevent people from wasting them just to gain exp.

=== "Forgetting" of unused skills ===

The above system contains one major drawback. We want the players to specialize on single skills so that they have to work together to be successful. But the system described here would make it possible to learn every important skill so that the character can play completely alone and doesn't have to interact with other people. So we have to make it difficult to train and maintain a large palette of different skills.

I had a long discussion with different people to find a solution for this problem and we came to the conclusion that the following method is the best:

Whenever a skill receives exp half of the gained exp are deducted from a random other skill making it possible to lose levels in it. This won't be a problem for characters with a very small palette of skills because it would almost always hit skills that are on level 0 anyway. But the more different skills the character tries to master the more difficult will it be to keep them all on a constant level. The players that try anyway will eventually give up and concentrate on the skills they really want while letting the other skills degenerate slowly.

Archive:PVP proposal from Andrew Harrison

2006-09-15T19:31:42Z

Aharrison: /* Black areas */

In my opinion Player vs. Player (PvP) is one of the most enjoyable parts of playing an MMORPG. Massive battles between warring player-factions lead to intense intrigue and some of the most vicious power-leveling ever witnessed by man. Implementations of PvP vary amazingly, from not-without-permission to "after you get out of the first city, if you die start a new character." Variations on PvP implementations abound, but I have found in my gaming career one system which seems to give the most choice to the player, and a reward for the daring.

==White, grey and black areas==
All maps (or more preferably tiles, but take your pick) are designated one of the levels of pvp. To differentiate from the implementation that I have seen, I will call them white, grey, and black.

===White areas===
In a white area, no PvP is allowed without consent. White areas are not necessarily confined to cities; approximately 1/2 to 2/3's of the world should consist of white area, adjusted to taste.

===Grey areas===
In grey areas, PvP is allowed, but with the following modification: if you die as the result of a player-inficted attack, you are simply transported to the beginning of the area with 1/10th (or whatever) health. PvP in grey areas gives you the ability to assert dominance over a given zone, and allows for fun matches between players with a relatively low chance of losing anything (although dying to aggressive monsters because a player brought you to the brink of the abyss is not unheard of or even that uncommon). Grey areas award players 1.5x the amount of experience that players would generally receive for a monster of given strength in a white area, and equipment drops from killing monsters should be adjusted to give a slight reward as well. That being said, a player should be able to play and enjoy the game without ever entering grey/black areas.

===Black areas===
Black areas require a players confirmation before entering, in the form of a dialog box explaining the risks and asking if the player is sure if they would like to enter. Once within black PvP areas, the character is open to attack from any player (although it would make sense to do something like party-lock players so that they could not be attacked by their friends, nor backstabbed. Depends on how you want PvP to go). When a player dies in black areas, all or some equipment is discarded and available for looting, and a level (or levels, depending on experience scales and such) are lost. That player is put somewhere distinct (nearest town, perhaps?) and left to lick his/her wounds. Black PvP is not for the faint of heart. For those that choose to brave black PvP, a 2.0x modifier is applied to experience (against the white PvP equivalent) and the highest power equipment should be concentrated in black PvP areas (not overwhelmingly powerful, but say a good 5-10% on top of the white/grey's best equipment.

==Short QA:==

;Doesn't that system lead itself to abuse of black PvP?: Possibly, but that is the risk you take when you click "I will enter black PvP." Black PvP is a choice, and should not create any landlocked areas that aren't in direct correlation with improved gains. To the brave go the biggest prizes, and such.

;What if I don't want to go to grey PvP to level up, but all my friends are leveling up faster than me? I like to power-level, not PvP: Refer to previous question in regards to being brave and biggest prizes.

;Why don't you lose things in grey PvP?: Grey PvP should generally consist of goodnatured fun, or territorial harassment. No lasting effect should come from grey PvP, to maintain balance and promote player competition.

;Why can players move easily from black PvP to grey/white PvP? Doesn't that let them get away after killing me?:Yes, yes it does. You lost the fight, and they got the spoils. Maybe one day you will catch them in black PvP unprotected.