[crossfire] race/class lacks distinctions

[Mark Wedel]

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.
> One little note, is personally I don't think any such quests should
> allow one to go beyond expert. Perhaps make one *extremely* high level
> quest that could only be done once per player, that would allow one
> skill of the player's choice to be put to advanced, but I think that
> nothing should ever allow one not in a class native to the skill, to
> advance to mastery, and advancing to advanced should be something that
> should be so rare, that a given character could only do once for one
> skill ever IMHO.

  yes - getting advanced skills should not really be possible.

  I'm not sure a mechanism to prevent a player from only getting one master 
level skill.  I suppose scripts could be used to store a value in the player 
denoting they have gotten it, and if so, then they can't get an expert skill 
(this would have to be tied to an NPC).

  But like everything in the maps, this sort of falls to the map developers. 
Just like it is up to standards that a good map shouldn't have über items in it, 
etc.


>>   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.
>> (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.

> 
> 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.

  That is also a different problem - balance of monsters.

  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.

  But a lot is also the speed of combat.  IMO, combat is often so fast that it 
is difficult to have much strategy.

> 
>>   I don't really have any good solution to the stat problem - I don't think that 
>> is really solvable.
> Well, adjusting or removing the stat limit of 30 would allow those base
> stat differences to matter more at higher levels, however doing that may
> cause more problems than it solves. Also, something I've saw some muds
> do, that might deal with that, is when one gains a level, randomly, some
> stats will increase depending on the class. Of course, those muds did
> have their stats on a different scale (starting stats ranged from 7 to
> 30 or so depending on race and class, with stats of the very very very
> high level players getting to like 500 even).

  But there is always some issue.

  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.

  However, the idea of stat increases as you gain level is interesting.  If we 
say stats go to 100, you could have some logic that each race has a difference 
balance on what stat will increase.  Eg, for a troll, might be 75% that str, 
con, dex get increased (one of those), and 25% for the rest of the stats.  Thus, 
a high level troll would have a high natural str, dex, and con, and still pretty 
crummy pow, wis, cha, int.

  If such a redoing of stats was done, would have to figure out how to deal with 
stat potions (maybe make it so that drinking one only has some % of increasing 
that stat or just do nothing, so same thing happy - if you play a fighter 
class/race, you will have good stats).  Or maybe just make generic 'improve stat 
potions', which sort of act like what happens when you gain a level