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

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Date        : 2014/10/08 09:24
User        : saru
Edit Summary: 

@@ -183,13 +183,17 @@
  
  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.
  
  
- ==== Equipment====
- Equipment refers to items players use such as weapons and armour.
  
- ===Method of finding equipment===
- The current Items of value can be classified in 3 ways:
+ ===== Equipment=====
+ Equipment refers to items players use such as weapons and armour. Balance should occur around two main fields, how easy items are to find (method of finding equipment) and how powerful items are (based on the properties of the item).
+ 
+ ====Method of finding equipment====
+ This section unpacks the current ways in which players can gain access to equipment and proposes an additional process to automate the probability of finding 'generic' equipment.
+ 
+ ===Vectors for generating equipment===
+ The current systems for generating equipment can be classified in 3 ways:
  ==Generic==
  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. These items can have random enhancement modifiers added to them such as +1 or of Mostrai.
    - generic monster loot
    - generic Random Treasure
@@ -203,15 +207,13 @@
  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'. These items only vary by how map makers design them (no random variation)
    - specific map based items
    - specific monster drop
  
- 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).
+ One important aspect of crossfire is the diversity in equipment value. Items can appear quite similar but provide vastly different levels of power. Each of the mechanics for giving players access to equipment needs to provide useful items whilst not making highly powerful items too easy to find. 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).
  
  Items should flag what the means of access is intended to avoid including items in random treasure when it is only intended to be offered upon completion of a specific challenge. It is probably simply whether the item is 'generic' and can be included in standard systems or is considered an 'artifact' and should only be used for specific applications such as completing a map or completing a complex crafted item. Artifacts should probably generally be 'god-given' and could be donated with a different background colour (like blessed items).
  
- ===Generic monster & random treasure loot===
+ ====Generic monster & random treasure loot====
  Currently the game offers a specific set of items with various likelihoods for each to drop based on the treasurelist of that monster (or chest etc). This approach does allow for interesting diversity in what items players may encounter for some examples but also means that:
    - collecting particular items can be very simple, bonecrushers off Titans for example. 
    - some monsters are completely uninteresting to kill due to lack of reward.
    - some monsters extremely profitable to kill. 
@@ -222,9 +224,9 @@
  I propose that generic treasurelists for classes/groups/types of items should probably be maintained (such as what currently exists in treasurelist for chests). If we factor in a 'is_artifact' flag to avoid handing over specific items, then the most obvious generic treasure list would probably be each item type. With generic treasurelists, instead of listing each possible item, we can now simply list axes, maces, shields, body armour, food, body parts and money. We can set each generic treasurelist for the orc to have different probabilities (e.g. 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). This makes it far easier for developers to add new generic items to the game without requiring extensive time adding them to each monster treasurelists.
  
  The potential downside to this is that without knowing which items within a generic treasurelist are more or less valuable, generic treasure would be far more consistent in what dropped (boring) and players would be exposed to a wider quality of items from smaller variety of monsters making powerful items less valuable. To overcome this, I propose that we start using the level attribute of equipment to denote what the target audience (player level) should be. If we use the item archetypes to provide a target level, crossfire can then use the ratio between the item level and the level of the drop mechanism (monster, chest etc) to determine a sensible probability for the player to receive that item. This probability can be based off of a distribution (normal or poisson) with the standard deviation used to set how much variation from the monster level there is (And +luck could influence the standard deviation). We might consider adding an upper bound value such that items higher than monster level + upperbound are disregarded to avoid players getting too lucky.
  
- ==Example==
+ ===Example===
  A player kills an orc. The first item roll for treasure determines that the orc has successfully dropped an axe type item from the generic axe treasurelist. The new system would then roll to determine which type of axe from within the treasurelist it drops. The axe treasurelist might have 3 axes in it; a stone axe might be level 5, an axe might be level 8 and a Battle Axe might be level 15.  With a normal distribution and a standard deviation (SD) of 4, the likelihoods would be:
  
  ^ item type ^ item level ^ likelihood ^
  | stone axe | 5 | 22.7% |
@@ -239,9 +241,12 @@
  | 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.) and which magic property it gets (levels are added to magical properties along with the existing probability rates (Really good items are very rare)).
  
- ===generic armour===
+ ====Adding and Re-balancing Generic Equipment====
+ The following is thoughts on ways to identify items that are significant out of balance without solely relying on 'gut feel' and also be able to add more generic armour without disrupting existing balance too much.
+ 
+ ===body 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)


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Old Revision: http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/user:saru:balance?rev=1412777781
New Revision: http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/user:saru:balance

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