Channeling Mother Teresa and Machievelli

Achieving game balance is not simple. Each adjustment must be weighed in terms of its own impact, the trickle-down impact on its peer abilities, the resultant impact on its counter skills, and the unpredictable impact on long term game play.

Say I wake up in the morning and decide: 'All swords shall do a minimum of 10 damage, no matter who wields them and no matter their lack of training in these arcane slicing devices.' This represents a modest though not overwhelming boost to the new player, gives a small cushion of safety to the higher level non-sword-wielding player, and makes sword wielding less of a daunting effort when faced with its incremental costs.

I make the change and sit back, waiting for someone to step into the minefield.

Ahh HAH. Here comes one now.. an unsuspecting player comes online, suits up and heads out looking for a few enemies to slay. In his hands is a sabre of steel, ash hilted and leather wrapped. It's relatively new so it's in good shape. Unsuspecting player goes out, finds orc, slays orc. All is well (except for the orc). Player experiences no change, as he has trained his sword skills well (185 degrees).

I say nothing.. I require more substantiation before I commit this to permanent game play. I sit in my office, waiting with the patience of a trapdoor spider.

Minutes pass.. the web undisturbed. I feign a yawn and toss up the AFK flag to go gather up some coffee (a bit of my Christmas present - Trader Joes Shade, coarse ground, a hint of mocha powder). I bring it back to my desk and kick back with the balance spreadsheets and the online CNN website, after flicking off the AFK flag and slipping off my slippers. The cat has done enough damage to the leather laces on the left that it won't tie, so slipping it off entails lifting my foot a few inches from the floor and letting the slipper plop, to be kicked gently to one side of my desk where it shall be chewed on s'more.

Sure enough, a new player creates. I check, hoping. YES, he's chosen the swordsman starting kit. A true and unbiased test of my nefarious deed! *cackles gleefully*

The innocent proceeds through the starting process, makes his way through the corridors of the training house, finds a sword and some beginning armor and proceeds to merrily hack away at the nearest foe. The combat is quick. Quicker than I'd expected and much faster than reasonable - I frown and check his skills package and abilities. Hmm. Nothing extraordinary; he's trained nothing so far. Wups...

I frown and check my modification to swords in general, and blush. Dagnabit... instead of setting damage to 10 minimum, I, unarmed with morning caffeine and common sense, have set it to 100 damage. What luck to have caught it when I did, I mutter as I make the correction swiftly and execute a save before too many folks.. er.. ummm.

I hear a bellow from the public channel below. "wtf's wrong with my sword!?!?" Our poor new entrant to the world has gone on to attack his second victim, wielding the sword which I silently replaced for him after I'd corrected my correction. I hold my breath, gulping with nervous shame.

Me: Sorry. I made an error in a balance setting and just corrected the mistake... my apologies.

NewPerson: wtf man. This place sux

Mere seconds later: NewPerson has left Karinth.

Meanwhile I sit in my office, impaled firmly on the horns of the dilemma. By admitting my error and humbling myself to his wrath, I have messed up the game for one person.

I could have remained silent and left the blame squarely on the shoulders of his newness to the game, thus leading him to speculate that perhaps he had hallucinated the first go-round and that the second far-less-powerful encounter was the norm.

Our experienced players overhear this and nod wisely. They know, bless their souls, that we are in the midst of massive change and that some change hurts. I'd rather be honest with them as things progress than have them surprised brutally by an avalanche of modifications which nerf their game play.

Some changes are bound to trigger a collective hiss from the madding crowd. 'For the glory of Karinth!' I bravely cry, whilst fending off the barrage of pitchforks and launched iPods as I dash through Portsmouth Town Square.

Ok, well, no iPods. Out of theme, ya know. Besides, if someone launches an iPod at me, I'll durn well pause in my tracks and scoop it up, cradling it possessively.. always wanted one of those!

Newperson, if you're out there and reading this in between forays into new MUDs, again .. mea culpa. We're all humans on this bus, and all volunteers, and I made a stupid typo. I'd say it won't happen again, but the odds are that, somehow, some way, it will - and with my luck, it will be something equally as dumb. So consider this my apology for that one and the next four, and I'll write another one later when the time comes.