[crossfire] Proposal to fix experience inflation due to random maps

[Alex Schultz]

Andreas Kirschbaum wrote:

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     clearing the warrior tower takes quite some time, too. And
     
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     a big difference is that the warrior tower gets harder and harder the
     
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     more you advance. If you are not good enough yet, you simply cannot
     
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     complete it. The result is that your exp is proportional (or maybe a
     
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     little more than linear) to your skill level.
     
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     On the other hand, you can clear Heaven completely if you can clear a
     
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     certain depth. Therefore Heaven is quite different: initially the exp is
     
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     proportional to your skill level, but as soon as you reach the maximum
     
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     difficulty you gain a huge amount of exp in one fell swoop.
     
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     Very true, which reminds me of something that has always annoyed me 
about the random maps like heaven, hell, dragon tc, etc. which is that 
once you get to the hardest type of monster is has, you still have 
another 25 or so levels to go with just tons of those never getting any 
harder. Perhaps random maps should get more things that are more 
difficult after that stage, which wouldn't eliminate the problem, but 
would help.

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     I certainly agree that random maps need to be toned down (the few
     
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     dungeons that use 5 or less random levels are fine as they are
     
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     though).
     
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     That probably calls for the 'exp_multiplier' field Mark Wedel suggested
     
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     in a previous mail. In my initial mail I just intended to equally tone
     
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     down all random maps. But I did not think of the many low-level random
     
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     maps that are just fine.
     
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     Indeed, and even if there is a better solution than lowering the exp, 
adding exp_multiplier capability wouldn't be a bad thing nor should it 
be difficult to code.

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     It's just that I think that there's another problem. I find that the
     
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     maps made for those lvl 85 to 100 seem to give no more exp than those
     
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     made for a lvl 50, which tends to drive people to go to the TCs and/or
     
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     other random maps once they get to about level 50. I feel that this
     
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     problem could be partially fixed by toning the random maps down
     
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     significantly, however I feel that maps made for lvl 85-100 need to
     
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     have a reasonable amount more exp than maps that a lvl 50 can
     
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     complete. Though one may say that traps and puzzles are much more fun
     
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     at those levels, which is quite true, a solution to that would be
     
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     making the "bosses" (i.e. evil masters) and possibly some puzzles
     
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     themselves give notably more exp.
     
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     Which maps do you consider level 50 and which 85-100?
     
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     85-100 is something like the evil masters/gothwote maps, whereas lvl 50 
is something like the dragon cave.

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     One character used a rod of banishment to clear Heaven. The other one
     
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     burned down Heaven with meteor swarm. But I did not disable item power.
     
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     If fact, item power did not matter much: banishment and meteor swarm
     
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     killed the monsters very fast. Therefore I died a few times only (one
     
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     time with banishment, four or five times with meteor swarm) until I had
     
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     enough exp to wear all my protective gear.
     
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     Ah, makes sense, though I've tried MSing in heaven before, and the arch 
angles resist it pretty well.

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     Which leads to another interesting point about repetition of maps,
     
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     I do not have any problems with players clearing some maps over and over
     
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     again. If they have fun doing so, let them do it... They just should not
     
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     be able to gain incredible amounts of exp by doing so.
     
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     Which is why it might be useful to do something of making it possible 
for maps (on a per map basis) to give normal exp upon the first clear, 
and give slightly lessened exp upon further tries. I don't think this 
should be too widely used, but I think it would be good to at least make 
it possible for a map maker to do that.

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     Yes, many non-random maps neither give you much exp nor any decent
     
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     item(s) at the end. Therefore a player normally does not bother to clear
     
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     such a map again. Besides that, I do not have any problem with tuning up
     
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     some maps if the ratio reward (exp+items) per work (necessary
     
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     time+danger) is reasonable.
     
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     Indeed, as I have mentioned somewhere here before, this issue, 
especially in high level maps, is what inspired me to begin one map I'm 
currently making.

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     To summarize my points, I feel this is almost as much of a problem
     
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     with the non-random maps as it is a problem of the random maps.
     
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     I agree. But fixing the random maps is much easier than fixing the
     
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     non-random ones. Therefore we should start with the random ones...
     
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     Very true, though I think that people making non-random maps should try 
to be aware of this.

Alex Schultz