[Crossfire-wiki] [Crossfire DokuWiki] page changed: user:saru:balance

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Date        : 2014/10/08 08:37
User        : saru
Edit Summary: Item drop probability mechanism that factors in iLevel and MonsterLevel

@@ -182,15 +182,66 @@
  |<del>Counterspell</del> | Counterspell  | Stops a spell effect | Once again, this is an effect, can get removed. |
  
  Internal: This continues to exist, but should never be visible to players - this is really just used when a convenient way to do damage to the character is done (eg, ceiling collapsing, crushing you, character is dead) - it probably should be used sparingly.
  
- ==== itemisation ====
- Currently items are split largely into 3 piles, general items, items with magical enhancement (+1, +2, of mostrai etc.), artifacts. Whilst this creates a large array of items to choose from, it is very difficult to know without a lot of pocking around, where a suitable level of balance for a new item is. e.g.
+ ==== Equipment====
+ Equipment refers to items players use such as weapons and armour.
  
- ===armour===
- general body armour sits around +1 - +5 AC
- magical armour can get up to +9 AC
- artifact armour is generally around +5 AC
+ ===Method of finding equipment===
+ Items of value can be found in 5 ways:
+ ==Generic==
+   - generic monster loot
+   - generic Random Treasure
+   - treasure chests
+   - map placement
+ ==Skill granted==
+   - crafted items
+   - god granted items
+ ==Map specific==
+   - specific map based items
+   - specific monster drop
+ 
+ Generic items exist in the archetypes are get handed out via monster loot, treasure chests, or placed by random loot generators. Currently these loot tables specify individual items that are included in the drop chance such as broad_sword or buckler. In the case of chests this is a very large loot table.
+ 
+ Skill granted items are obtainable only by meeting specific requirements of the skill such as maximum number of grace points or particular materials to craft from. This equipment should usually be 'god granted' items to avoid farming items out.
+ 
+ Map specific items are items that have been modified inside a map to grant new features (both positive and negative) to greatly enhance the speed and diversity of map making. These items present the biggest challenge in balance as they are more difficult to track. Some of these items should probably be 'god granted'.
+ 
+ Each of these mechanics needs to provide useful items whilst not making highly powerful items easily accessible. 
+ 
+ Items can appear quite similar but provide vastly different levels of power. One important aspect of crossfire is the diversity in equipment value. Players should be forced to make decisions about equipment based on strengths and weaknesses as they perceive them. For example the use of negative resistances on items is a fantastic way to make that uber item still have situations where an alternate item is a better choice. The down side to this is that analyzing item value is extremely difficult for anything other than basic or simple items (e.g. a weapon with 10 damage is better than a weapon with 5 damage, when damage is the only attribute).
+ 
+ To enable developers to provide consistency, items should use the level value to inform other developers of where the creator intended on allowing players access to their weapon (obviously, trading between players can overcome this). Items should also flag what the means of access is to avoid accidentally including items in random treasure when it is only intended to be offered upon completion of a specific challenge. A similar system to attacktype could be used to implement this such that:
+ 
+ ^ Method of acquisition ^ Flag ^
+ | generic equipment | 1 |
+ | skill granted equipment | 2 |
+ | specific map based items | 4 |
+ 
+ ===Generic monster & random treasure loot===
+ The current treasurelist system allows for interesting diversity in what items players may encounter. However the requirement to list every possible item that a particular treasure list may drop is very time consuming and would be extremely difficult to update. Secondly it doesn't work at all for modified creatures so map makers must instead either create whole new archetypes (and the associated even longer treasurelist) Instead generic treasure lists for classes of items should probably be maintained (such as what currently exist inside the chests treasurelist). If we factor in a method of acquisition flag to avoid handing over specific items, then this list is probably just the item type. Now we can simply say that orcs should drop axes, maces, shields, body armour, and occasionally food and the treasurelists can automatically include any items from within those set. We can also set each set of items with different probabilities for example orcs might have a 5% chance to drop (95% chance not to drop) each type of equipment, a 10% chance to drop food, and a 50% chance to drop body parts.
+ 
+ The problem with this would be that far more consistency in what dropped would occur (boring) and that players are likely to be exposed to more items sooner meaning they will quickly determine the better items (boring). To avoid this, we could consider the item level against the level of the drop mechanism (monster, chest etc) and determined a likelihood. For example when a level 8 orc is killed, the first roll occurs and determines that the orc has successfully dropped an axe type item. The new system would then roll to determine which axe from within the treasurelist of axes it drops. For example the axe treasurelist might have 3 axes in it; a stone axe might be level 5, an axe might be level 8 but a Battle Axe might be level 15. Using a normal distribution, we can use standard deviation to set how much variation from the monster level there is. This limits orcs from dropping too many very low or very high level items. For example with a SD of 4, the likelihoods would be:
+ 
+ ^ item type ^ item level ^ likelihood ^
+ | stone axe | 5 | 22.7% |
+ | axe | 8 | 73.3% |
+ | battle axe | 15 | 4% |
+ 
+ if we wanted less variability we could set the SD to 1, such that:
+ 
+ ^ item type ^ item level ^ likelihood ^
+ | stone axe | 5 | 0.0135% |
+ | axe | 8 | 98.6% |
+ | battle axe | 15 | 0.0003% |
+ 
+ A similar process can then be applied to determine if it is a magical item (+1, +2, of mostrai etc.).
+ 
+ ===generic armour===
+ Currently:
+   * generic body armour sits around +1 - +5 AC - (chainmail, platemail, leather armour etc)
+   * magical armour can get up to +9 AC - platemail +4 etc
+   * artifact armour is generally around +5 AC - (dragonmail, mithril chainmail etc)
  
  By pulling out the .arcs the following table the general armour can be documented as:
  ^Name	^robe	^armour	^chain mail	^ring mail	^hauberk	^scale mail	^scale mail	^plate mail	^plate mail^
  |last_sp 	|12	|13	|10	|11	|10	|9	|9	|7	|7|
@@ -202,9 +253,8 @@
  
  If we create an arbitrary formula to model how 'good' each item is it might look something like this:
  
  {{user:saru:image.png|}}
- 
  
  we can see that the items appear to progress fairly linearly with the exception of one of the types of platemail which is clearly a lot worse. This item is the bronze variant of platemail listed last on the above table. One approach might be to move it back into line, however, items will all start to feel the same. Instead I intend on creating different 'tiers' of armour balanced on the level of the user. This would result in poorier quality items being readily available at low levels whilst much more powerful types of armour only available at higher levels. A formula for generating items out of treasure classes should be created. This would result in a table of general armour more like this:
  
  ^Armour group^	light - casters^	scales - thief^	Composite - barbarian^	full plate - warriors^


IP-Address  : 59.167.121.117
Old Revision: http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/user:saru:balance?rev=1410737278
New Revision: http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/user:saru:balance

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