[crossfire] Rebalancing, difficulty curve -- simple ideas

[Mark Wedel]

Wim Villerius wrote:

> The main problem i've observed when playing was that once you can kill a
> certain mob, you can continue killing it until you 'die' out of boredom.
> That means: hit - say - lvl 40 and start killing demon lords until
> you're lvl 110. A method that works perfectly. (and in case you get
> bored on demons, go dragons or angels, they work more or less the same)
> 
> My suggestion is to adjust the amount of exp gained by killing a certain
> mob by at least hte following factors:
> 1) the number of that mob you have already killed
> 2) mob lvl / player lvl in that skill

  One problem here is that at higher levels specifically, the number of 
reasonable monsters go down.

  How many monsters are there really for characters at level 50+ to fight?  If 
there are not a lot, you're effectively limiting exp gain because there is 
nothing left to kill.  I'm not sure if that is a really good approach.

  There used to be code that would adjust exp based on creature level and player 
level.  But that had several problems and was removed - notably it becomes 
really difficult to try to find correct exp values when you have many variables 
(exp table increases at some rate, amount you get for killing it at a different 
rate, etc).  And then you start getting abuses, like I'll weaken it with my 
highest level skill, then kill it with a lower level skill to get more exp, etc.

  IMO, there are basically 2 ways to do this:
1) Make the exp table harder at higher levels - in this way, at level 60, you 
need to kill more of the creatures than at level 40 to gain a level.  We don't 
need to further adjust that by level comparison - the exp table itself should be 
adjusted.

2) Make the exp table linear, make most monsters the same exp, but adjust reward 
based on level difference.  The problem is that if a character, especially at 
lower levels, is able to kill a higher level creature, they get lots more exp 
(15/10 = 1.5 reward, where as 70/60 = 1.17 reward).  With certain items/spells 
that are really effective against certain creatures, this means fast exp gain.

  It seems like the goal here is to make it so you have to kill more monsters at 
higher level.  That is currently the case with the exp table, but it sounds like 
the exp table needs to be re-adjusted.


> This 
> 1) stops players reaching demigod status fast - it will take them long,
> and a lot of different mobs as well. No more efficient TC-training
> 2) doesn't necessarily recuire a new exp curve
> 3) most important: makes sense. killing ants at lvl 110 should not give
> exp. that's rediculous :)

  Point #3 isn't much a point.  Sure, the player gets some exp when killing an 
ant, but at level 100, probably needs to kill a million ants to gain a level - 
if he wants to do so, fine.

  I think one of the general problems is things like the training center and 
random dungeons (and even non random dungeons) where monsters are just stacked 
high.  The fact players can basically find monsters to fight as fast as they can 
reasonable fight them is a bit of an issue.

  In the vast majority of games, that really isn't the case - there is some 
amount of exploring to do, etc.  Even in nethack, which hack and slash, most 
rooms only had a single monster and only half a dozen rooms per level - you 
probably are spending as much time moving room to room as you are fighting.

  Recording number of kills of each monster the player does is interesting, if 
nothing else than for record keeping purposes.  I think it was ularn which would 
provide stats of what you kill, as well as more info about the monster itself 
the more times you kill it.

  But as said, I'm not sure that adjusting exp is really the way to go.

  And the problem with all formulas is finding the right one.  The current exp 
tables were not designed to be bad tables - the best table at the time was done.

  The same is true with formulas - while putting them out here sounds good, it 
may be after months of testing, we find the formula in fact isn't good (too 
easy/too hard).  I'm most inclined to do exp table adjustments, because that is 
the easiest thing to adjust.

  If during play testing you find 'I got to level 28 way too easily - it should 
take 3 times longer', it is pretty clear that the exp table gets adjusted 
upwards accordingly by a factor of 3.