[crossfire] Priority feature list

[Juha Jäykkä]

>   There is a very long TODO list at 
> http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/dev_todo_new which may give some
> people starting point.  There is
> http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/dev_todo which has some overlap.

Everyone, who follows irc, knows I'm really concerned about character
balance. There are several aspects to it and I'm not quite sure which
point in http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/dev_todo:game_balance is the
correct place to put them, so I thought to advance my ideas here first.

First, most quest-reward and artefact items are weapons. This makes
completing quests somewhat unrewarding for monks, fireborns and dragons
(I forget is someone else has no weapons and no armour). This could
easily be fixed simply by changing a few items in a few maps, but I think
there is a nicer solution as well. Why keep quest-rewards static? There
could be a small python script picking an appropriate reward from a
treasurelist - I'm not saying never reward a monk with a sword, but make
it much less likely than rewarding a fighter with a sword. Of course,
this does not apply to such quests where the reward-item is an integral
part, consider the following. There can be a quest with a story of the
evil X, who stole King Arthur's Excalibur and keeps it in his Luggage -
it's pretty obvious one's going to find an excalibur and a luggage on
this quest.

Second, the race- and class-specific distinctions are all but lost at
levels around 30 and higher. The racial differences generally affect at
high levels as well, but there are exceptions: fireborn mana regen bonus,
most stat-score bonuses and dark vision (this is "negated" the instant
one finds a torch, i.e. very quickly).[1] I'm not saying all these are
necessarily bad things, but it would be nicer if they affected the game
more even at high levels. I do not know which would be the best solution
to this, but I personally like the idea of making more race-specific
items; add body parts like "dragon tail" and "fireborn tentacle" to the
races and create objects that consume these. Class specific distinctions
tend to be initial skills and stats; except for the meditation skill, all
class-skills can be acquired from scrolls. There have been several ideas
as to how to change this. No matter how this is solved, I think the goal
must be that if a character has an initial stat/mana regen bonus/skill
better than "baseline", it must be ensured that given the same amount of
playing, that initial difference sticks: If I have a character Str +2
with respect to "baseline" and I go kill 10000 goblins, I should still
have an Str score 2 above the baseline character who killed 10000
goblins. (Of course it may be the baseline guy found Strength potion and
I did not, but I'm talking about statistics here - let's go kill a few
more goblins so that I find a Str potion as well while the other guy does
not and check the scores again. We must consider the equipment as well,
but let's assume that doing the same amount of adventuring amounts to
comparable equipment.) For the record: I dislike race- or class-based
fixed stat or level limits. I've hated them ever since D&D first
edition... =)

Third, the maximum level limit has had some critique - this might be The
Time to remove it. Just figure out a nice little formula for the required
experience as a function of level and that's it. Of course this means
Zorn and friends must either be bumped up a zillion levels or the some
spells must cease being affected by level difference or, what's wrong if
someone suddenly is able to charm Zorn?

Fourth, the spell system needs rebalancing. First, meteor swarm and frost
nova kill almost anything (if you can make the meteors or asteroids
directly hit your opponent, even fire or cold immune creatures will die).
(By the way, names comet and asteroid should be swapped: comets are cold,
asteroids less so. =) ) Also, some god-speciality spells kill anything,
like divine shock or red death. Now that there is frost nova, things are
a little better: fire-denied characters can gain a kill-all -spell as
well, but I think that either we need to reduce the effectiveness of
these all-too-powerful spells OR we need to add similar spells to each
category: evocation and pyromancy already have, as does praying for two
gods, we're still missing one for summoning, sorcery and most gods. What
I think would be the best solution is simply bump up the level required
for these kill-all -spells. Make meteor swarm level 100 spell, for
example, and it won't be nearly as bad any more. Same goes for the others
as well. Charm monsters and Peace are a story of their own: they are
balanced by the fact that they do not affect creatures of level higher
than the caster, but other than that, they are deadly.

Fifth, at high levels, spells are useless. It's almost always easier and
more effective to simply karate chop or weapon slash everything you bump
into. This ought to change. At the moment, if I had to advise someone in
creating a new character, I'd probably suggest troll figther or such.
Easiest to stay alive at low levels and at high levels it makes no
difference - everyone just runs into monsters anyway.

There probably are other things not mentioned on the wiki as well, but I
don't recall any at the moment.

[1] It's easy to increase mana regen bonus with good weapons, arnour etc
and while there are rings and amulets for fireborns to increase theirs,
it very quickly occurs that those who can use good armour and weapons,
surpass fireborns' mana regeneration ability. While the bonus is still
there, it is more than balanced by the no weapons and no armour
hindrance. Same goes to most stat scores with respect to anyone who
cannot use weapons or armour.

-Juha

-- 
		 -----------------------------------------------
		| Juha Jäykkä, juolja at utu.fi			|
		| home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/		|
		 -----------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20070717/7dca1cd5/attachment.pgp