[CF-Devel] new quetzal (dragon) race

[Andreas Vogl]

in reply to garbled:

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      So.. if I get this right, you are taking away the ability to 
     
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      wear rings, amulets, and weapons, and giving the ability to
     
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      very slowly gain resistances?
     
     
Yes, indeed. But unlike the old quetzal, you have the
chance to get real high resistances in the end.
A Quetzal will no longer have a desire for weapons or armour,
it would hunt monsters for their flesh.

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      As a player.. that doesn't seem very fun to me.  I can run 
     
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      around at level 20, and buy a bunch of rings, and get some
     
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      decent protection. I can grab a sword and get a little more.
     
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      Chances are, with a slow moving resistance chart, you
     
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      will be much less resistant by eating things than you would 
     
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      be just collecting objects and money.
     
     
In an ideal CF-world, hunting flesh would be as hard as
hunting artifacts - with similar reward.
Of course that's not easy to achieve, but I'll try.

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      Why not make a better prize at the end?  Like this:
     
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      You "are" what you eat.  [...]
     
     
This is pretty much how it works. You can control your
character development by choosing your meals.

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      If you eat a cold resistance thing, you gain cold, but lose fire.
     
     
Yes, it works just like that. Except you don't loose anything,
because that proved frustrating and a lot more difficult to balance.

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      If you get really high in something like fire, as you 
     
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      progress, you gain innate abilities, like dragon breath,
     
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      or other dragon-like abilities.  You essentially become
     
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      more dragon-like.
     
     
Yes, you will get lots of special abilities by focusing
on a certain attacktype.
If you focus on fire for a while, you will indeed get
dragonbreath, added fire attack on your claws, and more.
The longer you specialize, the more powerful stuff you can expect.
Switching around bears other advantages, like getting more
different attacktypes for example.

(I've got all of this already working btw!)

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      My idea is, that the Q starts out as a lowly snake, and has 
     
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      the ability to shape his destiny, coming up with all sorts of
     
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      variations of what he could become in the end. This gives the
     
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      player a reason to play the race.
     
     
Yes, I've also planned face and title changes as the quetzal
evolves and gains levels.
You could start as "fire hatchling", become a "fire wyrm"
later, and finally reach the state of an "ancient fire dragon".
You could also switch to become an acid dragon or whatever.

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      Gaining resistances is neat, but it sounds a little boring.
     
     
IMO, having 11 races which all act identical -
*that* is *REALLY* boring! :-)
If someone doesn't want to play dragon - fine, there are
still going to be 10 other races to choose.

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      If this is what you intended.. then I didn't get that from 
     
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      your original message. Either way.. making it not suck for
     
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      the player is going to be difficult.
     
     
I can't and don't want to make a race which is better than
anything ever seen. I just want to make a true alternative which
is at least as much fun to play. 


Andreas