An avatar to call my own

How can you create for a player a completely unique avatar? Or at least, more unique than exists at present? And then ensuring that these unique qualities are balanced? I think it's time I stop asking rhetorical abstract questions and actually try answering some of these...

So here's some ideas.

The game Second Life (yes, the game) does this in an interesting way. The developers have created their own scripting language, enabling players to create their own custom... everything. You can upload custom clothes, custom textures, and even custom planes (that vigilante ITB010 students can come and make vanish). While it is a bit hard to do, and the quality of the gameplay in Second Life leaves some to be desired, it has proven quite successful, and allows players to fully customise their avatar.

But Second Life is not a combat-based RPG. The clothes and items do not influence how you play the game. But if this sort of scripting was ported over to World of Warcraft, say, then the results would be more felt.

Then there's the issue of ensuring balance. If players are allowed to write their own weapon scripts, what's to stop them giving it an attack radius of half of... whatever planet WOW is on... and doing 500000 damage a second to anything in its way?

Well, this is where I had an idea. Perhaps players could have a preset amount of "balance points" that a particular item must be under. For example, players could spend them all on attack power of a weapon and make it ridiculously strong, but wouldn't be able to put any points on its speed, range or required level. Or perhaps the "required level" attribute would be determined by how many points were spent on the item. For example, if 100 out of 1000 points were spent, perhaps you could equip it when you are on Level 15, but if you spend 1000 points, you would have to be Level 70 or 80.

Logarithmic mathematics is the friend here, with the amount of points being spent per attribute increasing as you buy more and more of that attribute; vis-a-vis, if you spend 50 points on one level of speed, it may cost 60 points for the next level.



Log maths seems to be quite useful for any sort of progression in a game. I think it'll be my loyal companion in years to come, where I may get an opportunity to implement some of these ideas.