A different type of gauntlet

[Jericho]

Why not instead of the traditional gauntlets have a completely different type? It would level out the playing field a little for the ones that want to run them but cant because of some that run them with years and years of experience.
I burned a few brain cells and came up with the following:
1. Why not have a class specific gauntlet? Each of these would be modified to fit each class. Mobs, Items, etc. A twist though would be that each person is allow only to run 1 gauntlet. This can be monitored by their IP. This way it gives everyone a chance to run their favorite class, not just ones built for gauntlets. Also trying it this way canned magic and calling of pets are allowed which means harder mobs for some classes. Items won would be class specific as well
2. Another thing that could be considered would be to have gauntlets based on the player behind the keyboard not the character they possess.

These are just some thoughts from me. I'm sure someone somewhere have thought of them, hell they might have even tried before but Ive never heard of such a thing.

Jericho

[Antessima]

1. I like the idea of a class-specific solo gauntlet series. It would be difficult to balance it properly without some trials, but having all the keys held in bags for the thief's corridor, or having lots of resist-physical mobs in a ranger corridor. Hard to balance, but a nice idea. However, I think the prizes should remain unrestricted.

2. I don't think a gauntlet based on individual player capabilities and styles would be appropriate. The idea of the gauntlet is setting a standard for being a top mudder, and making that standard relative to your capabilities makes it enormously unfair for those involved. It makes it possible for a truly great mudder to get beat by someone with less skill simply because the latter had a much smaller hurdle to clear than the former. Interesting idea, though.

3. What I think would be nice to see would be a gauntlet corridor that had !locate keys and where each room was coded so as to make it impossible to find out the mobs in each corridor using the where command. This makes everything about as unexpected as possible.

Just my thoughts.

[Tarbal]

on the topic of making scaled down gauntlets for less experienced mudders......wouldn't that be like making a 50 meter dash for slower runners to compete against world class runners in the olympic 100 meter dash? to me, the gauntlet is there to show who is the best of the best....it is not meant to be won by anyone....it is meant to be a goal...if you want to win a gauntlet....get good enough to win it...the gauntlet should NOT come to you...YOU go to the gauntlet....now....if we wanted to do a handicap gauntlet...limit eq that can be used in someway and maybe even character level....and have a scaled back prize.....that might work....

[siolfir]

There have been different types of gaunlets, for varying levels of skill, already on the MUD. They've had prizes other than the monthly "Official" Gauntlets, as well, since they aren't part of the series that Ching came up with and runs.

So far, everyone has pretty much agreed that the varying gauntlets ("dumbing down" is the term I used when I started doing it) is a bad idea, so in the interests of furthering discourse rather than just saying "that's a dumb idea", here's a suggestion based on how my gauntlets are organized: define different rooms, based on ease of killing, for certain classes. Mix them up a bit, so that no one class has an easy road. There are classes that have general advantages in these types of gauntlets based on the concept of the class (*cough*cleric*cough*) but if you don't want a class to win, you can shut down any one class.

It's simple. Don't want a mage, a cleric, or a bard to win? Put a shopkeeper in the first room with a key. They can't even start a fight! Don't like how the rangers are using pets? Kick in a mob that purges them and make the ranger fight their own battles. Want to stop anyone except a mage or evil jedi (and maybe sohei, but probably not)? Throw in an air guardian...the entropy every two rounds will probably do them in unless they brought in enough canned to kill it before they get hit with one. How to stop a thief? Make a couple of mobs hold the keys, this makes them have to *gasp* actually kill mobs!

Now, about the problems involved in scaling the quests down for the common mudder, instead of the extraordinary one...here's why I don't weaken things: what's to stop the extraordinary mudder from entering the easier quests and waltzing through it without any challenge? Telling them that they can't, because "you're too good"? That hardly seems like a good answer to me.

Now, something else that was also brought up by Antessima: setting up gauntlets so that you can't find out what's in them by the where command: I've set up a dummy corridor before, so that people doing wheres saw mobs that weren't in the quest, in corridors that weren't being used ;D. This has it's limits, though, and doesn't really work effectively unless you have plenty of time to set up.

A better solution, but one that involves changing the gauntlet zone, would be to set up each room as a different zone - this would keep people from using where to find mobs, but would also mean that you couldn't check the status of how far everyone is the same way.

Oh, and for the no-locate keys? If they're held (or in held bags) it really doesn't matter. If they're not, a thief just breezes through, and locate doesn't mean anything since a thief doesn't have it anyway.