[CF-Devel] Issues I'de like to bring up
crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com
crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com
Sat Apr 26 17:55:20 CDT 2003
Justin Zaun wrote:
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Game Design
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Overall its a fun game to play. There are a lot of things to learn and
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do, feature wise there are a ton. my biggest concern with this is the XP
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you loose when you die compared to the XP you gain when you kill a
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monster. From what I understand you loose 20% or 3 levels when you die,
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which ever is less. So if a small piddly monster kills me say I loose 3
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levels, but if I kill it I get maybe 1000 XP. Not quite even. If I kill
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a dragon I get so 100K XP but if it kills me I loose 3 level, not quite
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even as well. Now when I loose the 3 levels, it might no sound so bad, 3
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overall levels isn't *that* big a deal, but in the process I also loose
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(most times more than 3) specific levels. Regaining the levels lost can
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take days, just to be able to retry and kill the monster that killed me
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in the first place.
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I understand that there should be a bigger penalty for dieing than for
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killing the monster, its a reason to just die all the time. I think
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there is a fairer way to do this though that is more proportional to
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each monsters strength - if killing a monster gives you N XP points,
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then being killed by the monster takes N*5 XP away from you. That being
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said, if I was using a magic skill when I die, they should all come out
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of magic, etc. just like when I kill it they would all goto magic.
In practice, you should never lose more than 3 specific levels of skill, but
that might be broken. It should hopefully get fixed up in the new skill code
I'm working on (one big difference is skill exp no longer has to match your
total exp like it does now).
That said, I think trying to tie death penalty to what killed you is
difficult. If you kill yourself with a fireball, what should you lose? Suppose
for an example, you wander into a room, the titan there lighting bolt zaps you,
so you quickly get out of that room, but due to being weakened, get killed by
some other monster? In a sense, it is the titan that killed you.
Also, in an even simpler case, maybe you get killed by something you had no
chance defeating. One could make the case that your exp loss being at all
related to that is excessive.
Note that I'm not saying the players here will somehow manipulate how they die
(as if you can do that, you can probably save yourself). Its just basing exp
loss on what actually killed you may not be a lot better.
the problem is that the experience table is not consistent. At low levels, it
is exponential - if your level 8 and have 250,000 exp, you need 500,000 (total)
for next level. Worse case is you lose 20%, or about half a level.
However, the gap from level 20->21 is 8400000 to 9300000 (900,000 gap, but 20%
of 930,000 is 1.86 mil, so about 2 levels). And as more levels pass, the higher
ratio, which is why there is a 3 level cap. At level 60, that 3 level cap means
you only really lose 6% of your exp.
One thought I immediately have to to extend the logic some, like least of the
three:
20% of your exp
3 levels
10% of your levels (round down, min of 1).
Thus at level 19, you'd lose at most one level (really, 1.99999 if your 1 exp
from your next level - maybe this should also be fixed). In the low 20's level
range, your caught in that portion of 3 levels and 20% is about the same thing,
and both are quite harsh.
OTOH, death is meant to be somewhat harsh. If it became 'oh I died. Lost 15
minutes of play', that is also sort of pointless.
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Map Design
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Generally speaking the game allows for a lot of unique things to be done
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in the maps, most of which have been done already, I'm sure. My issue is
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with the current maps I've seen. There is no real progression threw
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"easy" "medium" and "hard" types of maps. By this I mean: I'm a level 19
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overall player, most in magic. I can complete most maps in Scorn rather
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easily, I can also defeat raffle 1, but once I venture out most of the
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other maps I die in about 30 sec. of entering. An idea I've been tossing
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around in my head that I think would solve the problem requires a
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complete world re-design. Its basically as follows:
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1) Have 4 major cities
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a) levels 0-10
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b) levels 11-20
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c) levels 20-50
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d) levels 51+
The bigworld stuff sort of does this, and to some extent even the small world
stuff. My personal gripe would perhaps be that in the 15-25 range, the number
of maps that are challenging yet not really deadly are few and far beween. This
is why death is so painful - you can go backto killing the easier stuff, or your
can fight the really tough stuff and perhaps die again.
IMO, this might be more a problem with the monsters - there isn't a lot of
monsters in that range.
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2) City one (the city all players start in - like Scorn) you can leave
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this city, just like now, when you buy a pass, but to enter any of the
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other 3 major cities you would need the pass + be within or above the
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level range for that city.
I think out and out level checks are a bad thing. You can do some things like
the tower of demonology, which requires a hefty entrance fee, which will
obviously keep out low level players. You can also post signs. But a 'you have
to be level 30 to enter this town' seems a bit odd to me.
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3) Any levels (caves, mountains, forest, towers, runes, other cities,
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etc.) outside the 4 major cities should have a sign explaining what
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level the map/area is. This could be a sign saying "Levels 10+" or
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"Powerful beings only" etc. but as they are out of the 4 major cities,
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any level player should be aloud to go into then regardless.
Well, one of the map guidelines is to have some clue as to the level of a
dungeon. presuming the entrance space is safe, I'd rather have it there than
signs all over the world.
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4) Anytime that there is a quest, riddle, etc. to solve, PLEASE make
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sure that any idiot can figure it out. A prefect example of what not to
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do is Red Islands (or what ever it is called). Myself and 2 other
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players were there for 4 days - in real life - trying to figure it out.
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The only reason we got threw is someone else told us the passwords.
One 'problem' is that so few of the maps actually require much in the way of
NPC play, and the npc communication interface isn't that great. But at the same
time, I really don't want things to be too obvious - if allthe answers are just
presented to you, that doesn't seem that interesting either.
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The last thing I want to mention is a very specific point. Every now and
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again one player just pisses you off, beyond all. It would be nice if
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players had the option to turn off the safeties in the arena.
What's the point of that? If you really want to kill them, do it in the town
square our someplace. The arena is purely meant as a place to safely combat
someone else - if you can end up luring other people in there, turning off the
safeties, and then killing them, who would ever enter the arena again?
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Client Design
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I use the GTK client - and like its functionality. There really isn't
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anything wrong with it. Though I think look and feel wise you may get
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more players if it was a fully graphical, full screen, client. This
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would be a major coding project and probably not be something a single
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person could do.
Can you clarify what you mean by 'fully graphical, full screen'? One can
maximize the window right now, but that probably isn't what you mean. there is
a finite number of tiles the client can show to the player - 25x25 is the max
size right now.
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