[CF-Devel] Future crossfire changes/projects

[Mark Wedel]

On Thu, 17 May 2001, Mike Ponicki wrote:
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      >  I've addressed music in another mail - I'm not really big on it.  I also have a
     
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      > feeling that if we are telling people 'download this 300 megs to get some
     
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      > music', not a lot of people are going to bother downloading that 300 megs.
     
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      Not if we use mods. Mods are relatively small file size (bigger than midi,
     
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      since the samples are actually in the .mod file), but much smaller than
     
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      mp3's or some other digital format.
     
     
 Yeah - I guess if we want to do music, those that don't want it
can always turn it off (or not download the music file or whatever).  So
not a big deal there.

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      This is totally a taste thing. Personally, I like the speed of crossfire,
     
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      and how it doesn't take a month to gain a level like it did in Everquest
     
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      and in a lot of MUD's. But then again, I tried to get one of my friends
     
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      hooked on Crossfire (he's a big MUD guy) and he hated the combat system in
     
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      Crossfire, because of the fact it's so fast, and you just plow through
     
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      monsters to kill them. We should probably have some sort of debate/vote on
     
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      this, but I think this is a low-priority issue compared to the technical
     
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      aspects of the game.
     
     
 I think this points to a bigger issue -

 You can't please everyone.

 We have to be careful on that - just because one person likes some
method of playing certainly doesn't mean everyone else likes it (as your
paragraph above states).

 Now some things may become more 'optional' features - you have the option of
using it, but if you don't, its not a big deal.  However, that then basically
means the feature doesn't do anything useful.  If advanced combat techniques
allow you to kill the monster quicker, then people would really need
to use it (as otherwise what happens is the map designers see that
player can use combat technique Z to kill the monster really quickly, so
they make the monster tougher, and if you don't use that technique, you
may get hosed).

 So while different ideas are always good to hear, we have to know that not
everything is going to get done.  Some people would probably be against a
change if it changes the gameplay a lot from the old style.  For example, if
the advanced combat techniques had to be used, and you just couldn't run into
monsters to kill them, old time players may get annoyed pretty
quickly with that.