MUME VII: Summary of Changes

After more than one year of development, when many thought it was just but a myth, the 7th version of MUME has finally been released!

Designing a new game system can be hard. Designing a new system that is compatible with an existing world and the habits of an existing player base is even harder… So, we changed some basic concepts of MUME, straying even more away from the “Dungeons & Dragons” approach inherited from our DIKU base, but tried at the same time to lessen the re-learning curve of the game. It is too early to say if we have completely succeeded, but the first reactions of the players are really encouraging.

What are the most important changes from MUME VI to MUME VII?

Chosen Statistics

Although it has merit in pen-and-paper RPGs, random statistics are one of the greatest annoyances of ORPGs. Even if the stats are rerolled at a certain level (like in MUME VI), you will still have players able to spend countless hours “stat hunting” chars. Not only does this completely defeat the purpose of random stats (since eventually all will have max-stat chars), but also it gives an unfair advantage to the “power” players over the “casual” ones. Last, but not least, it deteriorates the role playing atmosphere of the game (xxx narrates 'can someone help me to stat this char?' and, later, xxx narrates 'bleh, I try a new one')…

Thus, stats are not random anymore: they are choosen while creating the character. Raising a stat from 17 to 18 costs much more than raising it from 8 to 9 — so, to have three exceptional stats the other four will be quite bad.

Stats also have been rebalanced (e.g. to avoid that everyone takes “Dexterity” since it is important for many skills). Willpower and perception are much more important than in MUME VI. Willpower influences total mana and mana regen rate, and affects more spells; perception affects several warrior and thief skills.

Inexperienced Players

Designing a complex game system can leave the inexperienced player (“newbie”) completely lost. That is why during the character generation process, the inexperienced player is asked questions about his character, and his answers select an “easy to play” set of stats.

New “easy” stat sets are simple to add: if you find some particularly good statsets you wish to share, put them on idea.

who newbie shows the characters who said they are not expert.

Dynamic Classes

This is the fundamental change of MUME VII. Characters do not choose a class at level one, either. Instead, classes efficiency is determined by what characters practice. If they concentrate on weapon skills, combat skill and endurance will increase. If they instead concentrate on spells, they will become able to learn and use difficult incantations. And lastly, if they try to become a jack of all trades, they will not be able to master any of them.

Changing Class

At any time, the player can type change class and see a list of titles that match the skills, race, alignment, history, etc, of his character. change class X to choose a new class. This choice only affects where to appear on who warrior, who cleric..., and whois display.

Skills & Spells

Practicing and spellcasting have undergone several important changes. The important thing to remember is that the efficiency in a skill/spell depends not only on the direct knowledge in the skill/spell (learned %) but also on the proficiency in related skills/spells.

Hit points and Offensive Bonus depend on skills — they improve by learning warrior skills, they worsen when learning spells.

A new warrior skill, endurance, improves hit/move total and hit/move regen.

Casting level (determined by level, efficiency in the spell and casting success) detemines mana usage and spell effect.

Spells don’t fail anymore but can sometimes backfire when the casting level is not high enough.

Spells can be cast at different speeds, which affects their mana usage and their efficiency.

It is possible to choose what skills to refresh and what skills to forget via the train command.

Some spells have undergone changes (shield, armour, sanctuary...).

Legends

MUME has 100 mortal levels, the progression in power in levels [1..25] is linear, but, after level 25 (Legendhood) in order to avoid a too great advantage to the old players, the effective level slowly increases even for legends, but at a rate of 1 effective level per 10 levels.

This affects the casting level of spells, Offensive Bonus, and so on.

Alertness

Spamming look doesn’t detect sneakers anymore.

The command change alertness sets the awareness level of the character. High alertness levels improve the chance of automatically detecting sneakers and backstabbers, at the cost of slowing down regen.

The spell sense life is now a boost to awareness.

Subraces

Subraces have been introduced. For now, they only affect the knowledge of languages, but some other small effects will be added in a foreseeable future.

Continuous Regeneration

End of the “tick counters”. Characters will no more gain a certain amount of hp, mana and moves once every rl minute. Instead, they will recover health, concentration and stamina at a more or less steady rate — say, one point of mana every few seconds.

Delayed Actions

Delayed actions will now (hopefully) stop as soon as the end condition that is necessary for the action to complete is no longer valid. For example, if a character casts a spell at someone and he walks out of the room, the casting will be interrupted. Trying to backstab someone who starts to fight back will stop the backstab attempt, etc.

More Info?

See the posts 1286 and following on the News Board.

The MUME 7 Hack^H^H^H^H Development Team.