[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
Sun Apr 27 23:23:47 CDT 2003
Justin Zaun wrote:
>>
>
>
Overall levels, yes only 3 max, but 3 overall levels might be 2 Magic
>
and 3 Agility levels so I really lost 5 not 3.
Matter of semantics.
The 'problem' is that if you count skill levels, this will only get worse.
what I'm working on now will have each skill have its own exp total, and thus
you will have a level in 30 different things. Suppose with that, you die and
happen to lose a level if half of the skills you know. Do you now say you've
lost 10 levels, even though your over all level might have only gone down by one?
I'm willing to look for a solution for this. Maybe under the revised skill
system, we only ding your over all level (which gives you your hp and ability to
use enchanted weapons?) Or maybe 20% (or some other mechanism) on your your
overall exp, but 5% for skills? I don't think loss should be based on number of
skills - then you'd get people saying 'I should learn more skills just so I
don't lose as much exp' - somehow, that doesn't seem right.
One problem is that some skills are harder to advance than others. wizardry,
combat, eg, the skills that kill thing, are pretty easy to get exp in. Things
like literacy, sense magic, etc, are a lot harder.
OTOH, I've not heard of any characters being killed by reading a book
(although the idea of cursed books/scrolls is interesting). but for that
matter, the identification skills are quite safe, and I can't really envision a
way to make that dangerous.
>
>
Technically it the other monster that makes the killing blow, but it
>
might be wise to keep track of what monsters did what damage to what %
>
of your HP and base the loss on that information.
well, that isn't really feasible to do, and get very complicated. You now
have to track when people did damage - so you know that 'player has healed 20
points, so that 20 points done back ... is no longer relevant'.
Arguably, getting killed by something wimpy should cost you more. Eg, an orc
killed you? You deserve to lose a lot of exp.
In any case, I'm really not sold on adjust penalty on death based on how you
die. I'm certainly willing to come up with a fairer system however.
>
One way to do this would be to remove the % idea as a whole, and deal
>
with it on a per level/group of levels basis. ie if your a level 1
>
player loose 50% of your XP, level 2-3 loose 55%, level 4-5 loose 45%
>
ect. so you loose approperate amounts based on what level you currently
>
are, ading in a random 1 or 2%.
Yeah, I was thinking about it. The 'problem' is that the exp table is a
modifiable settings, it just seems having people that may want to modify it also
adjust loss percentages makes things relatively unfriendly.
However, I'd personally like more input. Low level exp loss seems fine
(doesn't take too long to get it back'). The 15-25 range seems tought for
various reasons. I'd be curious what people who are level 40+ think about the
current loss. IS it too much, too weak, just right?
>
>
>
How hard is it to add mew monsters, data files or source code changes?
Tyically not very. new monsters are easy. source code is a little trickier
more in the sense that as a new developer, one needs to submit a few things
before they would be given write access to CVS (someone else would review the
submissions and apply them into CVS, if appropriate, on the submitters behalf).
>
>
I think if a person really wants into a high level area when they are at
>
a low level, they should be able to get in, but at the same time you
>
want to protect them from stepping into a situation they have no chance
>
of winning. One solution - what I mentioned above would work for an
>
outright blocking, but a more lenient way might be something like this:
>
A level 10 player tries to enter a 20+ city, the guard says somthing
>
along the lines "Only the strong and very strong should enter here. If
>
you really want to die I've been know to take bribes of 20 plat". the
>
player drops 20 plat and the gate opens.
I guess I disagree. I don't see a reason to protect people from their own
stupidity. If there are signs saying this map is a high level area, and every
other bit of info poitns to that, yet some new player wanders in and gets
killed, I have no sympathy for them.
That said, those various clues should be present. For example, there is a
sign on the road to brest which says it is a high level area. If people ignore
it, wander in, and get killed, that is there problem. But more to the point,
the town itself is not dangerous - the shops are safe, the inn is safe, etc.
Only if they go into a dungeon are they at risk of being killed.
>>
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.
>
>
>
I agree and this is what I ment :-) I guess the guidelines arn't being
>
followed everywhere. Though if a city is for level 20+ players any maps
>
withing that city wouldn't need a sign at all.
there are lots of maps that predate the creation of the guidelines. And no
one has really gone and bothered to update everything - its a lot of work, and
not especially interesting work.
>
I guess my point was that making a player have to guess the correct
>
answer isn't the best idea in the world. Not everyone has seen the same
>
movies or have the same cultural information. IMHO quests, riddles, etc.
>
would be better if they were "go here do this come back", "talk to John
>
to get information that I need and I'll tell you what you want to know".
I agree that not everyone has the same cultural references. The problem is it
gets tricky to know what people do and do not know. The dialogues do make the
presumption that the players have at least some English comprehension. But what
level of comprehension do you presume?
I also agree the the answers should be available in the game. I disagree that
we should always point to where the answers are. Take the scorn town gate. You
can get a password to get out. However, if the guards told you where the
password was, it would be pretty pointless (and from a role playing perspective,
not make a lot of sense). However, this is also an example of another good
point - more than one way to get the info that is needed.
Meaning, if the information is rare, but not unique, sprinkle it in a few
places. Maybe even unrelated to where the information is needed - I personally
think this adds to the game - it makes it appear less linear and larger. For
example, if you foudn some useful piece of info in navar city related to some
question in santo dominion, you might tuck it away, not knowing what it is for.
But later in the game, maybe you remember that point. Maybe you don't, and
find the same piece of info in santo dominion, and you now remember you found
that a while ago. Either way, it makes it seem that the game is more 'global'.
But there are certainly some issues with NPC's. In some maps, you need to
talk to most everyone to get information. But at the same time, the
converstation model isn't very good (hard to know what to say to continue the
conversation), and in some other cases, there are loads of people around with
nothing to say.
I'd not like to remove all the boring poeple - then it really comes to 'this
person is here - he must have something important to say'. I would like to see
the npc converstation code improved.
>
>
heh, didn't mean that one person could turn off the safeties without the
>
other knowing. Just meant to have a place to duke it out that others
>
could watch safely and I would gain/he would loose XP.
Ok. I imagine someone could design that pretty easily - it is basically the
same as the existing arena, but with no battleground tiles.
_______________________________________________
crossfire-devel mailing list
crossfire-devel at lists.real-time.com
https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel
More information about the crossfire
mailing list