[CF List] New experience system on metalforge

[Mark Wedel]

Todd Mitchell wrote:
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      I wonder how much of the dislike of cooperative questing comes from the fact
     
     >
     
      that the combat system and much map design sort of discourages this style of
     
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      play. 
     
     
  The crossfire design probably isn't great for multiplay for the various reasons:

1) Many dungeons have narrow passages, so you really can't get two people side 
by side bashing on that monster.

2) Monsters vs player hp is a large disparity - this basically means that most 
attacks players do will kill (or seriously harm) other players - thus, it 
becomes very dangerous to get in the way of another players attack (be it weapon 
or spell).

3) There isn't any way right now to cast spells over/around a player in front of 
you.  You can't use the tactic of big tough fighter stands in the corrider while 
  mage sits back and helps with offensive spells like many live RPG's allow (if 
this was possible, point #1 wouldn't be as much an issue).

4) most combats are over _very_ quickly - either you kill the opposing monster 
in a few seconds, or you don't have much hope.  There are very few combats which 
go on for any amount of time - this also makes cooperation harder - if for 
example you have someone that backs you up and casts healing spells, by the time 
you can tell that other person 'I need healing', your probably dead.  So all 
that person could really do is just cast a spell on you every second or two and 
hope that pacing is correct.

Point #4 can be corrected pretty easily - easy enough to just add some 
multiplier that is applied to all damage (eg, 0.50) - that would double the 
length of combats for example.  However, for fairness, everything else that 
adjusts hp also needs to get hit by this multiplier (regeneration, curing 
spells, etc).  Could be just as easy to change that multiplier for number of HP 
the characters/monsters have (if you double everyones hit points, combats shoudl 
also take twice as long, and don't need to much with regen/healing spell logic).