[crossfire] race/class lacks distinctions

[Wim Villerius]

Although I fully agree that races and classes should be more important, I
feel a bit concerned about the current proposals to distinguish certain
classes some more.

On Fri, 2006-06-30 at 20:29 -0700, Mark Wedel wrote:
> Alex Schultz wrote:
> > Mark Wedel wrote:
> >>   For example, there may be 4 different skills of sorcery - basic, expert, 
> >> advanced, mastery.  However, these all tie in with the same skill.
> >>
> >>   The sorcery class starts with the mastery skill.  Some of the other classes 
> >> (if they get several casting skills) maybe get those at advanced.  Skill scrolls 
> >> would give you basic skill, and perhaps quests or other harder to do things give 
> >> you expert.
>   yes - getting advanced skills should not really be possible.
> >>   What exactly these differences mean would have to be worked out.  At a most 
> >> basic level, it could determine the rate of exp you gain in the skill (basic 
> >> gets 25% of normal or something). There could also be level caps - mastery caps 
> >> at 110, advanced 75, expert 50, basic 25
> > This seems like a good idea to me.
Well, this certainly makes sense for magic skills. Restricting a warrior
to lvl 25 magic skills doesn't hurt much - he wont use them often.
On the other hand, restricting a mage to use at most lvl 25 one/two
handed is a BIG pain and an unfair restriction. 
I have no clue how long ago you tried to kill certain powerfull
monsters, but being a mage it is literally impossible to kill
Lorkas/Gothwolthe/...
Magic is fine for normal critter - even up to grand titans and cyclops -
but it is simply _impossible_ to kill the bosses with that (granted,
Lorkas can easily be killed with diseases, but Gothwolte cannot - he's
an undead force)
In summary: this proposal makes it impossible for a mage to do really
interesting things for that requires weaponery at lvl 100+ (need a good
wc)
(note that this does not YET apply to charm monster)

> >> (however, the fact there really aren't 
> >> many spells above level 20, this may not mean a lot).
> > This I believe is a separate problem, personally I think that both more
> > spells are needed, and the level on many of them needs to be increased
> > very significantly (i.e. meteor swarm I would put at level 50 to 60 or
> > perhaps even higher, and would put comet around 30 or 40). Also, I think
> > this is a rather important problem to deal with, though being a separate
> > one from the rest of this post.
> 
> Yes, and also one that sort of breaks compatibility - you almost need to do a 
> fresh server start.
> 
>   However, this reshuffling is still a little tricky.  IIRC, the quest for the 
> comet spell is a level 15 quest.  If the comet becomes a level 30 spell, that is 
> sort annoying - you do the quest, get a new spell, but can't use it for a really 
> long time.
That quest is ok for lvl 8-10 players.
Putting Meteor Swarm at lv 60 or even higher is - from the perspective
of the player - insane. It is very hard to become lvl 60 pyromancy. 
Using burning hands or even dragon breath just doesnt bring you at lvl
60.

> > Also, I personally believe, that the skills need to be rebalanced such
> > that there is not such a desire to want every skill. I believe these
> > things would make classes actually matter, however I believe that too
> > many maps and monsters, are vastly easier to do by spellcasting, or in
> > some cases, vastly easier to do by melee. I believe there should be some
> > variation, however I believe the variation currently would be too
> > extreme once classes were made to matter.
As I wrote above, only low lvl monsters are easily killed with magic. If
someone believes that a lot of maps&monsters are much easier to do
complete with magic, I'd love to suggest them to start a new character
and to try it.
It's just the opposite. You're always running out of mana way too fast
and once all mana is used, you're an easy prey.
 (And I'm not even talking about treasure that's usualy destroyed by
magic.)

> Some of this could probably be fixed by balancing the resistances of the 
> monsters more - there are some monsters virtually impervious to melee because it 
> can only be hit by one attacktype (you may be luck to have that attacktype in a 
> weapon).  However, spellcasters can almost have every attacktype, so it is just 
> a matter of choosing the right spell.  Monsters should get balanced better so 
> sure, it may be easier to kill them via spells or weapon, but shouldn't be 
> impossible to do so by the other method.
Au contraire! Usually the best attack types against monsters are
weaponmagic, chaos and death (the last works only against low lvl
monsters)
Now chaos and weaponmagic are almost not available to spellcasters.
Comets do weaponmagic damage, but only 5 to 10 hp each comet... Now that
makes it almost inpossible to kill anything with it.
A high lvl player can do 200 weaponmagic damage each hit with
weaponspeed > 10
That same high lvl player will have weaponmagic, fire and electricity
attack by equipent and a few others, depending on his gods blessing.

Given these numbers the only reason one would use spells are diseases.
They slow monsters down a several magnitudes and a combination of
several diseases is almost always extremely lethal.


> But a lot is also the speed of combat.  IMO, combat is often so fast that it 
> is difficult to have much strategy.
Now that is indeed a big problem. Take for example Zorn (Brest
scrollshops) He can kill any player in less than a second, no matter
what the player does. (he is much faster and does 5 times more damage
than Gothwolte, to put him in perspective) So it's inpossible to run
away once he's angry.


>   If we say stats go up to 100, then a couple point swing at first level isn't 
> likely to make much difference.
> 
>   You now need to make the differences for race/class like ±5.  But even then, 
> presumably the bonuses tend to get flattened out, so a +5 is like a +1 right 
> now.  It may mean a character has a 45 vs 40 strength based on race, but that 
> may not mean a whole much.
Why can't these differences be much bigger? A trained man might even be
four times stronger than me ;-)