[CF-Devel] Item Damage idea

[Kevin R. Bulgrien]

On Monday 02 September 2002 02:42, you wrote:

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      pstolarc at theperlguru.com
      
       wrote:
     
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      > On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, Todd Mitchell wrote:
     
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      >>would you limit damage to weapons and armour?  I don't see much
     
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      >> need/sense for amulets and rings getting damaged.
     
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        I was personally thinking to cover all items that are equipped.  Now, the
     
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      damage could should probably try to be clever and weigh the likelihoods of
     
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      different items - if you got hit by a lightning bolt, certainly can be
     
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      argued that anything you were could get damaged to some extent.
     
     
Well, not to criticize the creativity, because it is cool to see new
ideas being formed, but here is something that occurs to me...

(I have to say that at the moment, the sentiment expressed against
equipment damage struck a chord.)

All this sounds like an awful lot of work if it is being done to drain
money.  I suspect, instead, that it is feature creep...   We started out
talking about weapons, armor dragged in, and now "everything"...

The game modelling being described here is very complex.  Complexity is
not always a good thing...  Sometimes its nice for the player to actually
be able to intuitively understand what is going on.  If an idea has merit,
I'd suggest starting with a simple implementation instead of going all out.

This may be a bad example, but take a simple item like "bracers".  I don't
know how many games I've played where the docs have to do some
verbal dance around why bracers sometimes seem to help AC and
sometimes not.  The explanation,  I understand, has to do with a complex
D&D rule that is kept around for whatever reasons.  I'm not a rabid D&D
type person who wants to know all the rules, and that's why I play games
like Crossfire...  If I was a complexity freak, I'd probably not do games like
Crossfire.  So, back to the point... bracers bug the crap out of me.  I don't
always want to take the time to research how things work.  I'd like it to
basically make sense and be somewhat obvious what is going on...

Bracer complexity is nothing compared to zone damage rules and other
ideas being discussed here.  I see a scenario developing that results in
a game I may not want to play... a reality simulation and not a fantasy.

I would rather trust my ability to decide whether my cool magical stuff
will give me reasonable odds for surviving a challenging fight as-is, 
and not realize that all my protection will rot away under my feet 
according to some rocket-science that will be hard to simulate
in the heat of gaming.

>
     
      > Siphon money from high level chars: They have enough money that they
     
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      > won't even notice it.  This is better solved by having some really
     
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      > expensive items.  Something like in-game dungeon design, where real
     
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      > estate costs lots of money, and so do tiles that the player can place.
     
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        The real-estate has of course been talked about.  That is really the only
     
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      other way to get rid of money - other high valued items don't do anything,
     
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      because no one ever buys them.
     
     
I say this is bologna...  but then I don't have any characters over level
thirty something...  I buy cool stuff whether I use it regularly or not, just
because it is something special/unique.  For me the game is experiencing
a lot of variety.  It's not all about cranking up levels for leveling's sake.
I save the money so that I can buy whatever I have an opportunity to
buy.

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      > Gift Equipment : Players will then "gift repair" equipment.  And with the
     
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      > ideas I've seen floated around, these gift repairs don't have to be all
     
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      > that common.  High level equipment on a low level character will last a
     
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      > long time.
     
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        Gift equipment should last a bit longer on lower level characters, but
     
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      hard to really say how much longer - low level characters would have their
     
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      stuff damaged at a slower rate, but not necessarily a lot slower.  The main
     
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      difference is that low level players won't have to spend nearly as much for
     
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      repairs.
     
     
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        but yeah, I think the gift item is not solvable except by getting the
     
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      item_power stuff properly tuned, such that low level characters wouldn't be
     
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      able to use high level stuff (or they would have to use it to the
     
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      exclusivity of any other magical equipment, which may not be worth while if
     
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      the item is highly specialized).
     
     
Folks, this isn't a deathmatch... If a group of players like gifting, what is
the real problem with that?  People are going to bend the reality to suit
their particular mood...

Ok, I like both.  On my own server, I appreciate doing stuff myself,
but on metalforge, you won't see me not using things that somebody
I know gave me...  but I don't go around asking either.  Some people
"give" things that aren't affected by damage... the password to some
quest or another...  Are you going to control that too?  That happened
to me with the Tower of Stars.  I chose to find the password myself
before playing the levels beyond the passworded gate.  I like that
ability to choose.

In fact, it is very believable that some true hero would be going for
the common good of battling evil - and thus shares equipment and
knowledge to people he trusts will use it for the goal he seeks of 
destroying evil.  So there, you can model a legitimate reason to 
leave things the way they are...

Are rules being made to force people to conform to a particular
version of gaming that may reduce the ability of the player to 
customize his play to his mood?

This isn't to say that I have not found merit in the discussion, but
the longer it goes on,  the more skeptical I get since there seems
to be snowball effect going on...

>
     
      > Anyway, this is my opinion.  I don't know how other players feel about
     
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      > this.  Gros was asking around at some point.
     
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      >
     
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      > mids, maybe you could have a poll on your website?
     
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        May not be a bad idea - no reason to do something if no one wants to use
     
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      of.
     
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        Poles can of course be tricky - some number of players seem to think that
     
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      gift equipment is in fact a good thing, but I doubt there are many server
     
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      admins that would agree with that.
     
     
So what does it matter what a server admin thinks anyway.  Is a game not 
supposed to be what players enjoy the most?  I don't get it...

Why not make damaging items a configurable option... like some of the
other things that are configurable.