How can you realistically explain that Leonic can see and enter a
ruin, but the second I swear him over to another faction, the ruin
disappears in front of his eyes ? What if the exploration party
consists out of units of several factions ? How do you explain that
when Merlinium enters a ruin he sees dragons to fight, but when
Melpomene the first leveler does, she sees a single Orc ? What if the
two of them enter the ruins together ?
No, IMHO ruins should be objects just like cities or towers. They are
either in existance or not for everyone, though possibly only some
people may know about them. Each ruin is inhabited by the same kinds
of monsters for everyone. The Orc Hut "ruin" is inhabited by a few
Orcs and when Merlinium enters, he is going to get bored, but then
nobody forces him to go there. And the Dragons Cave "ruin" is
inhabited by a dragon or two. When Melpomene enters it, she is going
to get fried, but then she should have been cleverer.
So how do we prevent Oleg from just distributing the maps of all the
ruins ? Maybe we can all just get together and kill him. :-) (No, I
am not being serious).
Seriously, I think that unrealistic randomization is a hack solution
to the problem of too wide-spread availability of information. If I
by my effort acquire some knowledge, then I _should_ be able to tell
everyone about it. After all the knowledge belongs to me. The
solution is that I shouldn't _want_ to. Information ought to be the
most valueable property and unless I receive something very
substantial in return, it should be unwise for me to share
information.
So how does this apply to the ruins ? My suggestion is that each ruin
should only have a limited capacity. Only so many monsters live in a
certain ruin and only so much treasure is to be found. If I want to
tell other people about the ruin - fine. But that means that I will
only receive a much smaller share of the treasures. So if I want to
maximize my profit I will keep the secret of a ruin very well.
Carl Edman