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

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Date        : 2014/10/11 20:42
User        : saru
Edit Summary: Tidy up

@@ -205,26 +205,41 @@
    - god granted items treasurelist
  ===Map specific===
  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 modifiers are used. Map specific items can be accessed by players through:
    - specific map based items placed into maps (including added to monster drops or inside chests).
+ 
  
  ====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. 
- To add to this, the requirement to list every possible item that a particular treasurelist 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)
+ Currently the game offers a specific set of items with various likelihoods for each specific item to drop based on a treasurelist. This limits the diversity of items dropped by generic or archetypal monsters and means that:
+   - collecting particular items can be very simple once you know which monsters have small treasurelists, bonecrushers off Titans for example. 
+   - some monsters are not interesting to kill due there being no chance of a valuable reward. This is slightly offset by the random modifiers.
+   - some monsters extremely profitable to kill. Once you find a monster with a very powerful drop list, you will keep coming back to that monster (e.g. dragons, wizards, balrogs). Maps become a question of specific densities of valuable monsters, Brest, being an example of where high densities of high value targets make earning platinum very simple.
+ Because the current system requires that every individual item and that items drop chance is included in the treasurelist, updating and tweaking the drop chances to adjust to improvements and changes in balance, very, very, time consuming. Secondly, a monster can't be 'tweaked' up or down in power easily (such as weak hillgiant in pupland raffle) because map makers need to not only adjust the power of the monster, but its entire item drop table as well.
  
- While each of these problems could be addressed individually, I want to propose a more general approach to fixing this effect that should be more tune-able, more easily.
+ Whilst it is true that each specific example I have listed can be addressed individually, a generalised approach to fixing this problem would result in a much faster and sustainable way to tune balance. It is important to note that the improvements to the generic treasurelist are built upon the existing system and archetype creators and map makers can still use the existing approach to treasurelists by specifying generic items in their treasurelist.
  
  === Generic treasurelists ===
- A generic treasurelists for classes/groups/types of items should probably be maintained (such as what currently exists in treasurelist for chests). Items that are not generic should be flagged to avoid being accidentally included in these treasure lists via something like an 'is_artifact' flag. The most basic/important generic treasure list would probably be each item type. With a generic treasurelists, instead of listing each possible item for a monster treasure list, we can now simply create these treasurelists on compile based on type such as axes, maces, shields, body armour, food, body parts and money. Each generic treasurelist can be customized inside a specific item dropping object. 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). By automating the inclusion of new generic items, it should be far easier for developers to add new generic items to the game without requiring extensive time additional to creating generic items in adding these items into each monster's treasurelists.
+ A 'generic treasurelists' differs from the current treasurelists as it is automatically generated on compile. To create a generic treasurelist, item type is used to group existing archetypal items. Items that are not to be included in a generic treasure should be flagged to avoid being accidentally included in these treasure lists via something like an 'is_artifact' flag. Examples of generic treasurelists would be axes, swords, shields etc. Generic treasureslists then get added to monsters in exactly the same way as the current system but when a generic treasurelist is succuessfuly rolled, rather than create a specific item, the system would then do a second roll to determine which item from this list is used automatically. 
+ 
+ Without knowing which items within a generic treasurelist are more or less valuable (e.g. is a broadsword better than a long sword?), generic treasure would be far more consistent in what dropped from a variety of monsters (boring). As there is no currently no way to put these existing items on a hierarchy, a new variable must be created to indicate to the system which items are more valuable.
  
  === Item Level ===
- 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.
+ I propose that we start using the level object attribute for all equipment to denote what the target audience (player level) should be (e.g. a broadsword is targetted towards level 10 players whilst a long sword is for level 20 players). 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 normal distribution (or poisson) with the standard deviation used to set how much variation from the monster level there is (+luck could influence the standard deviation or the mean!). We might consider adding an upper bound value such that items higher than monster level + upper-bound are disregarded to avoid players getting too lucky.
  
- === Combining a generic treasurelist with item level ===
- If we add a process to calculate the drop table during compile by creating generic treasurelists per item type and distributing each item within a generic treasurelist based item level from 1 - 110. For example, for armour we might see something like:
+ 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)). This same approach could also be used to make monster generators generate more than just a single type of monster, so a level 6 orc generates could create generic orcs at level 6 with a rare chance of champions but a level 10 orc generator might create orc champions with a low chance of regular orcs and orcish beserkers (level 15). This could even be extended to placing generic monsters so instead of placing specific archetypal monsters, map makers use 'generic monsterlists' that automatically create a diversity of monsters when a player enters the map.
+ 
+ === The result ===
+ Using a normal distribution to calculate the probability for a specific item dropping, might look something like:
+ 
+ {{user:saru:drop_distribution.gif|}}
+ 
+ In this chart:
+   - **The height of the distribution**- represents the likelihood of an item dropping, this is set by the existing monster treasurelists.
+   - **The width of the distribution** - is the standard deviation, in this example Orcs drop less variability of items than Goblins. This needs to be created.
+   - **The centre of the distribution** - is the mean and represents the most common items to drop, for orcs a rusty sword while skeletons will drop a lot more steel swords. This needs to be created.
+   - **The items distributed along "item level"** - represent increasing quality. Item level needs to be added to items that are to be included in the generic treasurelist, items with no level will be ignored.
+ 
+ Generic treasurelists using item level, in the case of body armour, might result in something like:
  
  ^Name ^ Item Level ^ range of rolls which drop this item ^ Probability if a successful roll ^
  |robe | 1 | 1< = robe <3 | 100% |
  |armour	| 4 | 4< = armour <6 | 50% |
@@ -235,19 +250,9 @@
  |full scale mail | 8 | 8< = full scale mail<10 | 100% |
  |plate mail | 10 | 10< = plate mail<15 | 100% |
  |hauberk | 15 | 15< = hauberk <110 | 100% |
  
- We can now use a loaded (normal distribution) dice roll to calculate the probability for a specific item dropping. This for swords this might look something like:
- 
- {{user:saru:drop_distribution.gif|}}
- 
-   - **The height of the distribution**- represents the likelihood of an item dropping, this is set by the existing monster treasurelists.
-   - **The width of the distribution** - is the standard deviation, in this example Orcs drop less variability of items than Goblins. This needs to be created.
-   - **The centre of the distribution** - is the mean and represents the most common items to drop, for orcs a rusty sword while skeletons will drop a lot more steel swords. This needs to be created.
-   - **The items distributed along "item level"** - represent increasing quality. Item level needs to be added to items that are to be included in the generic treasurelist, items with no level will be ignored.
- 
- 
- ===Example===
+ ===Worked Example===
  A player kills a level 6 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.  Using a normal distribution, the mean is the level of the object dropping the item, in this case a level 6 orc. The standard deviation (SD) is the variability of item drops. So for a SD of 4 the likelihoods would be:
  
  ^ item type ^ item level ^ likelihood ^
  | stone axe | 5 | 22.7% |
@@ -271,9 +276,8 @@
  To offset really boring tables low it might be worth adding +1 to this equation:
    SD = (k * (level of mechanism/110)) + 1
  
  
- 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)). This same approach could also be used to make monster generators generate more than 1 single type of monster, so orc generates could create generic orcs at level 6 with a rare chance of champions but a level 10 orc generator might create orc champions with a low chance of regular orcs and a low chance of orcish beserkers. This could even be extended to placing generic monsters so instead of placing specific archetypal monsters, map makers use 'monsterlists' which are similar to treasurelists.
  
  ====Map specific items and skill based items====
  Non-generic items can be added to crossfire by directly modifying the stats of an archetypal (generic) item. In part perhaps due to the complexity in adding new archetypes to crossfire a large array of unique equipment exists embedded within maps. This variety is one of the strengths of crossfire but it does make changing balance within the game by adding new items or simplifying existing systems very difficult. This is because 
  


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