[CF-Devel] poisoning & demonologic tower

[Andreas Vogl]

Mark wrote:

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      > Poison resistance affects both likelihood of getting sick and
     
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      > the poison damage. I think high level poison hurting that much
     
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      > has three reasons: First, most players don't wear any poison-resist
     
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      > usually.
     
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      If you put on poison resist items after your infected, does it help at
     
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      all, or is it really needed when you are actually getting poisoned?
     
     
I suspect the resistance only takes effect if it is worn at the moment
of "infection". Can't tell it for sure though.

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      > I definitly don't like the idea of draining resistance 90%. It's
     
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      > similar to the issue with acid corrosion. The main problem is that
     
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      > a player has no way to determine a monster's attacktypes. You would
     
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      > be surprised to know how many special monsters have draining attacks.
     
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      Note that draining resistance actually reduces effect.  90% resistance
     
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      means you lose only 10% the amount of experience you would if you had
     
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      no protection.
     
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      This is a little different than acid, where either an item gets corroded
     
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      or not - there is no 'its slightly corroded' - either it has gotten an
     
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      additional minus or not.
     
     
This will be true when draining is adjusted to be fairly harmless
with 90% resistance. As things are now, it definitly is not.

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      Just brainstorming here, but it seems to me that if draining is so nasty
     
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      that any experienced character wants drain resistance 100, then draining
     
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      seems to be a too powerful attacktype.  It also means that drain attacks
     
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      on monsters pretty much become meaningless (if all the characters its
     
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      going to attack are immune to drain, then that attacktype has no effect.
     
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      And this may be what leads to more monsters having drain developer/
     
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      tester sees it as not  big deal because the player will be immune).
     
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      But I think some of this is also good map design [...]
     
     
*Good* map design?
What you described above is what I call:
"the revenge of the mapmakers". =)

Sometimes developers create things that are real ugly/horrific in the
players' eyes. Like the irreversible acid corrosion or the
"worse-than-dying" draining attack.
Since players don't like these but also don't like to war with us
developers, people start to create artifacts with immunities to that
stuff. Then *every* player gets these artifacts - And soon mapmakers
design maps in the assurance that players are always immune.
What is the outcome in the end? - Pretty much like the original hazard
(acid/draining) would have been removed in the first place.

I'm not trying to judge on anything here. But maybe we should listen
more to the players' preferences in such cases.
Either we remove the whole thing, we do nothing and stick with the
immunities, or we tone down the hazard till players can accept it.

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      > About resistance potions for paralyze, confusion and slow:
     
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      > The problem is that these resistance don't really work. Since these
     
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      > attacktypes inflict "effects" rather than damage, there's no true
     
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      > partial resistance. The effect can be ON and OFF, similar: A player
     
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      > can be immune or not, basically.
     
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      > That's the reason why 100% resist. on equipment exists for these
     
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      > attacktypes. And while these exist, potions don't make a lot of sense.
     
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      Incorrect.  For the attacks above, duration is reduced accordingly.
     
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      if you have 90% resistance, then you won't get stuck for very long.
     
     
No, it is correct. Unless either the offending monster gets killed
or the player hides, the player will be "infected" again and again.
Duration has no effect. As I said, if the player *can* be infected
he will be -> the effect is ON. If the player is immune, he goes
unharmed -> the effect is OFF. Partial resistance is an illusion here.

I don't say it can't be done, but it isn't easy. I've played around
with that a while ago - I know what I'm talking about.
I got this to "almost work" for confusion (that was my changes to
the confusion function a few months ago.)
But it is a lot harder for paralyze and slow, I didn't manage to
improve them yet.


Andreas V.