[crossfire] Priority feature list

[Juergen Kahnert]

Sorry to mix up the topic a little bit, but I add a summary at the
bottom, like Juha did.  Nice idea, should become standard. ;)

On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 10:31:15PM -0700, Mark Wedel wrote:
> Juergen Kahnert wrote:
> > No, why should I ever start / solve a quest if the payment is
> > worthless for me? I don't want to get useless rubbish as a "reward".
> 
>   But you can never completely fix that.  It may not be rubbish, but
> could still be something of no real value - for example, the girdle
> you have is better than the one you just got.

Sure, but that's why I prefer the "reorganization of the entire world".
As long as the characters aren't able to visit maps with powerful items,
quest items can't be surpassed by random items.

As long as you follow the storyline, you'll get better and better
equipment due to quests.  And xp in random dungeons suited for your
level.


> I think characters should be able to find really nice equipment in
> random treasure now and again.  This also helps give some incentive
> for players to do things like random dungeons, etc.

Sure, but the quest items of this region should be always more powerful
than the random treasure of the same region.  This will only work after
the reogranization of the world.  Sorry, big deal, but in my opinion,
this is the most effective way to make CF more attractive for newbies.


> > But Excalibur won't be the quest reward! King Arthur just wants it back.
> > So you have give it to King Arthur to receive your quest reward. And
> > this won't be Excalibur, isn't it?
> 
>   It certainly makes more sense that someone in town may want that
> creature killed, and once you kill it and return, will give you
> something in return for that task.  And that could even be something
> like 'You have a choice of 1 of these 3 items...', so the player can
> choose the item they want.

That's a nice idea, having the choice.  This doesn't needs to be the
rule, but a good option. :)


>   This also works well in the "can't repeat a quest" type of thing

Which isn't a big deal, but would make the world more consistent and
gives other players the chance to do the quest, too.

If someone likes the quest reward and always repeats this quest, no
other player gets the chance to solve this quest.  And in the
"reorganized world" this will prevent other players to reach the next
region, because of the storyline...

So getting a quest reward only once will solve this problem in most of
the cases, too.


>   And this method also works good for parties - it is unclear if a
> party should get more reward than a single character doing a quest.

To be honest, I've no idea how to make CF work well with parties.  Maybe
party support could be the topic for CF3, and for CF2 the topic is
gameplay / balance.

How much parties do you see on servers which will do something else than
leveling up lower level character(s) with a high level character?

Step one (CF2), increase gameplay.  Make CF more attractive and allure
more players.  More active players will offer a better base for parties.
Step two (CF3), increase party support.


Maybe we can have quests for parties, only solvable with a party.  And
for such a quest every member of the party will get a reward.  Otherwise
it's a quest for a single hero; the reward won't change regardless of
the number of characters.

For example, the king offers 1000 platinum for the head of the goblin
chief.  The one who brings the head to the king will get 1000 platinum,
that's it.  If this dude required 5 mates to get the head, fine, but the
king won't pay more.  He don't care how they split the bounty.  But he
would never ever pay 6 * 1000 platinum.


> > > 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.
> > 
> > I like that idea, too. :)
> 
>   It's an implementation detail, but I'd rather there be some certain
> tags in objects for race/class/god allowability than to use the body
> part stuff.

Even better. :)


>   And it goes beyond that - taking from other games, you often have
> things like armor or swords that can only be used by certain races -
> adding things like 'dwarf_arm' to use a weapon gets weird, or
> 'elven_body'.  And that can lead to more complication, like people
> wearing two suits of armor, etc.

And more complications for having e.g. a large club one handed for a
troll, but two handed for humans and unusable for dwarves.


>   Just a note - looking at metalfore, only 2 characters have reached
> the high score/level limit.  And I suspect even without retuning the
> exp table, if we re-adjust other factors (and fix bugs) it may not be
> possible to do that again with CF2.

Yes, that may be right.  And yes, not technically important.  Anyways,
it's just about the feeling.  I don't like to encounter monsters with a
higher level than I have without the theoretically chance to reach this
level.  And... if someone ever managed to reach the max xp, what's next?
Those two with level 115 stopped playing or playing different characters,
right?

And, I personally don't like the extreme xp gap between the last few
levels.  What about a xp table which makes level 100 as hard to reach as
now level 115, but calculate the table up to level 150 or 200?  And
don't give monsters a higher level then this maximum.

Again, just for the feeling and motivation, not that I expect to see
people reaching level 100 (in CF2) or even higher...


>   So yes, you have a cap, but if it no one ever gets to it, is it
> really a cap?

No, it's not.  But don't make monsters getting a higher level than the
maximum of the xp table.


>   Some new spells are certainly needed, and a redistribution of
> existing spells (more to cover the broader level range) is also
> needed.  There are very few spells above level 20 right now, dating
> back to when there were not that many levels.  If we say that 100
> levels is the range we aim for, then there should be a few level 90
> and 100 spells.

If we reorganize the entire world to make regions for certain levels, we
just add the ones necessary to survive this region.

This also leaves room for extensions than spreading all the spells to
100 levels.


> >> 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.
> > 
> > Not only on high levels, especially for low levels.
> 
>   I'd disagree with that - I've found spells very useful at high
> levels.  If you have the mana, and a large room full of monsters,
> blasting the room with spells is often a safer and faster method of
> killing them all than running about with a weapon.

I disagree with you.  High level spells are useful against a room full
with low level monsters, yes.  But spells are totally useless against
lot of high level monsters.

Having a hard start as a mage turns up into an impossible mission on
higher levels.  That's not fair.  If it's hard in the beginning, it
should become easier later on, not harder or impossible...


> A lot of monsters have really high protection to magic and other
> attacks - basically they were designed in a sense so that the only way
> to kill them was with melee.  That isn't the correct approach - if
> players are clever and can hit monsters with spells from a distance,
> that shouldn't be punished.

That has nothing to do with being clever or not.  If we enforce more
class like playing, our magic classes will be stuck if this won't be
fixed.


> > If you rebalance the combat / spells / speed system, you need to
> > check every single map if it still works.  If not you have to change
> > the map.  And if this backfitting starts, I would like to remind to
> > the "reorganizing the entire world" thread:
> 
>   I see no basis on that assertion - that is almost like saying that
> if I add a new weapon,  I need to check every map to make sure they
> still work.

You can't heavily change the system and hope everything will work fine.
Changing the combat / spells / speed system is totally different than
adding a new weapon.

For example, you like to remove generators, but you don't like to see if
old maps still work?

Reorganizing the entire world will fix that issue, too.


>   Some maps may become considerably harder - probably not a bad thing.
> I'd also say that the proper check would be to play every map and see
> how it plays - you probably would learn virtually nothing looking at
> the maps in an editor - you'd have to play it to see how hard it is
> now.

I would like to have "standard character archetypes" for testing the
maps.  For example, logging in as "human_warrior_level10_Siegfried" will
create a human warrior on level 10 named 'Siegfried' with typical
equipment for this kind of character.  Such a character won't gain xp,
it's just for testing maps on servers with STD_CHAR_ARCHETYPES set.

Something like that.


And I would like to see something similar for monsters.  It should be
enough if a map designer adds a goblin level 10, to get a much stronger
goblin; same for every other monster.

This method could also be used for random maps, where the monster level
is inreased for every new dungeon level.


>   I think I've stated it previously, but IMO, the effort needed to
> redo the entire world could better be spent elsewhere.

And I think, the time can't be spent any better.


> I'd like to see a lot more new maps/quests/etc, and those should be
> arranged so that it makes sense (put the tough maps in areas that
> already have tough maps,etc)

That will be part of the reorganization, yes.


> > Quest rewards should be deterministic, but race / class specific.
> 
>   Problem then is how many combos do you get if you do race * class

Yes, doing that right is could be hard.  But you don't need to permute
race with class.  Just avoid obvious combos like armour for fireborns,
weapon for monks, boots for serpentman, ...

Ok, still hard to manage, because followers of gaea, ruggilli, ... and
any other restriction (no fire spells for wraith, ...) needs to be
checked as well.

But it doesn't needs to be checked for every quest reward.  I think rods
should be really rare random treasure, and than they're a nice payments
for the quest heros.

And having more (not all!) quest given out by the guild masters, you
don't have to care much about the class, just the race.


> But the idea of there being some number of deterministic rewards that
> you can choose from works really well IMO.  Sure, it may not be
> especially realstic that people would end up having 4 different things
> they could give you.

Why should it be unrealistic?  I think this is a usual trade.  If you
give me A, what do you like in exchange for it out of B, C, D, E?  I
don't have a problem with that.

And having guild masters giving out class specific stuff, using more
generic things like rods, horns, ... as a quest reward and NPC offering
different items will work well in combination.


> But you get into the general problem of how do you explain things in a
> world where a map resets?

I don't need to explain it.  It's a multi player computer game.  We need
such things, see:

http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/2007-June/011535.html


> > >   IMO, pretty much every generator could be removed from the game and
> > > it would probably make things better.
> > 
> > Yes, or make them run out of monsters.  And hidden.  Or how do you
> > explain a "monster generator" in the real world? ;-)
> 
>   of course, crossfire isn't the real world.

See, you don't need to explain some things, either. ;-p

And for the generators, see above, we need to check the maps and fix it.
I see this as a part of the reorganization (sorry for repeating me that
often, but I really think this is a very important part).


>   If you want the room full of monsters, start the dungeon with the
> room full of monsters - don't rely on generators to fill it up.

What about charm monsters?  You enter a room, charm all monsters, and
it's over.  Monsters "inside" of generators don't become charmed.  I
think, generators aren't bad at all, just needs to be handled different.
But especially not that often as right now.


On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 12:53:19PM +0300, Juha Jäykkä wrote:
> > But Excalibur won't be the quest reward! King Arthur just wants it
> > back.  So you have give it to King Arthur to receive your quest
> > reward. And this won't be Excalibur, isn't it?
> 
> What if King Arthur has been dead for little over a millennium? He
> won't be giving out the quest nor the reward; the evil lich (all
> powerful villains always seem to be lichs or wizards...) has simply
> kept Excalibur as a trophy over his fireplace (or, his being a lich,
> should that be an ice-cube pool?). In that case Excalibur would be the
> reward, *every* time, even for the monk. I do not see this as a bad
> thing - at least not when it is known beforehand that the reward will
> be useless *and* when this type of quest is a vanishing minority.

If the choice is, not having a quest or having a quest with an uninspired
story, ok, than I'll take this quest with a sword as a reward even for
monks.

But I think it's always possible to create a quest with a better story
to avoid such situations.

I really don't like to get a sword as a reward if I'm playing monk,
dragon, fireborn, gaea priest or whatever.


Re: race specific items

> Second, it helps balance things: consider a fireborn, who can wear 7
> items (4 rings, 2 amulets and a cloak)

Your fireborn is able to wear a cloak?  The fireborn definition is this
one:

    body_range   1
    body_neck    2
    body_skill   1
    body_finger  4

That's it, nothing else than four rings and two amulets.


> and a human, who can wear 11 items

12, you've forgotten "legs". But so far there are no items using this
slot.


> To keep things balanced, the 7 items a fireborn can wear *and* its
> race-abilities must equal in power the 11 items a human can wear.

6 items vs. 12 items; not 7 vs. 11.  Having a single fireborn race-slot
for an item which needs to be as powerful as 6 human body part items
makes this item very powerful, too much.  But it's a good start.


> > http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/2007-July/011596.html
> 
> Your idea seems good, but perhaps a little confusing to beginners

The beginner don't need to know how the computer calculates stuff.  It's
not a pen & paper RPG, the players don't even know the rules of how
things are calculated.

> (and we need to be attractive to beginners to get more players).

That's the main reason why I want to reorganize the entire world...


> I'm sure, though, that it can be refined to a non-confusing system.

What's confusing.  Skills keeps their levels as right now.  Everyone
playing RPGs realized how this works.  And the "capability value" of the
skill is just used by the server.  The player only sees the grade of the
skill as something of this: "Unskilled", "Novice", "Apprentice", "Amateur",
"Adept", "Expert", "Master" or "Grand Master".  Only "perceive self"
will give the player detailed informations about the skills.

And that a skill with a grade of "Expert" is better than one with
"Novice" can't be called confusing, right?


> I particularly like the idea of guild memberships as a requirement of
> high capability level of skill X ,though I never figured out why the
> "skill level" exists in your system at all.

The "skill level" is just used as right now.  For example, you need to
be level 5 in sorcery to learn steambolt.  And [new] as a measurement
for the guild membership.


> One point of stat-caps needs to be made here: I did not mean I am
> against fixed *natural* stat limits, they are ok. I'd say they are
> adamant. With natural stat limits, the absolute stat limit follows
> from the amount of bonuses you can equip simultaneously. I do not feel
> there is a need to separately limit this magically adjusted maximum.

Same for me, see:

http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/2007-July/011612.html


> That said, I *do* favour the idea of fixing limits on the maximum
> bonuses items can bring about.

There was also a discussion about setting levels to items.  For example
for the high enchanted sword you need at least level 30 in one handed
weapons to equip it.
    
> Sword with Str +10 is too powerful, unless it has item power ~100.

Item power in combination with a level on items could do the job.  Maybe
even without item power.

But a maximum bonus is still reasonable.  Don't make it obvious, but
improvements exorbitant expensive and a rampant item power.


And we need a review for new maps.  Something like

    That is girdle of Valriel of the Crusade (Str+3)(Dex+3)(Con+3)(Wis+5)(Cha+2)(ac+2)(item_power +1)(grace+3)

shouldn't be allowed, especially not with IP 1. :-O

Things like that should be fixed during the reorganization of the world.


> At this point, I'll advance another idea I have, which is a major
> change: alchemy.

Alchemy is very funny, but needs lot of changes, too.  If we like to
keep an alchemist as a class, we need to make sure that an alchemist is
playable as an alchemist.  For example, an alchemist likes to make some
potions of fire (firebolt) to kill hill giants.  Hill giants takes more
than one firebolt before they die.  Besides that potions are really
heavy if carried on mass, our alchemist needs to find for each potion of
fire a fire para-elemental's residue and has to pay 3 rubies for the
water of ruby.  In fact, an alchemist is unplayable.


Same for all the other creation skills.  The formulas needs reviews,
too.  Very common things like firebolt shouldn't be made out of very
rare parts.


I would like to see a formula for almost every item in CF.  Who made
those stuff if it can't be made? ;)

Your idea is nice and we should keep that in mind.  But it's not on my
priority list.  Highest priority is to make this game more attractive
for newbies.  After that we can tune expert skills like alchemy and the
corresponding class alchemist.  Until that I would remove this class and
keep alchemy as is.


> > That's why I've no idea why "fireborns with meteor swarm" is an
> > issue for game balance...
> 
> I do not either, but it is probably because anyone else carelessly
> using meteor swarm will die of the *fire* damage *themselves*,
> fireborns won't.

As I said, meteor swarm is doing weapon magic damage, not fire damage.
And no character race / class is immune to weapon magic nor get the
chance to increase the resistance against weapon magic.  Visit hanuk
as a fireborn and see what happens...


> Low level fireballs are effective against orcs etc.

As long as there aren't to much of them and you've enough place to run
away, yes.  Still there is a problem with the loot (burns away).  But
ok, the orcs are gone.

If there are some more, you won't be able to blast them away, because
your sp runs out and you won't regenerate fast enough.  Try to clear
beginners with a lvl 1 fireborn sorcerer (magic only, no melee, not as a
monk - no meditation) and the same with a troll warrior (melee only, no
magic).


> At low level, orcs are still able to kill you, so you'd better watch
> it - blasting fireballs from way off is a good way to be careful.

If you have luck and you got small fireball with pyromancy skill.  If
not, you may start with detect magic or slow.  And now?  How to play a
sorcerer unwilling / unable to do melee?


> At ~60th level, my fireborn monk is unable to kill a greater daemon
> with spells (there are situations and tactics which make the statement
> untrue, but karate is still faster), but he can easily karate chop it.

That's what I say.  Hard beginning as a mage, no reward on higher
levels; just harder to impossible...


> > Ever tried to play a sorcerer without using physical attack skills? You
> > won't be able to kill some monsters because they regenerate their hp
> > faster than you sp.  A dragon player just run through them like they're
> 
> Fireborn sorcerer, no problem, thanks to Attuned: fire and burning hands.

Prove it.  Try it out, feel the difference.  Again, not playing a monk,
playing a sorcerer!


> Non-fireborns, however, *do* have the sp regen problem.

Also fireborns (without meditation).  Try it.


> But even a 108th level spellcaster, who regenerates 1 sp *each* *tick*
> cannot kill certain monsters with spells - and this is where the real
> problem lies.

Yes, hard beginning, harder to impossible later on.


> > "reorganizing the entire world" thread:
> > http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/2007-June/011532.html
> 
> I have read that and I dislike the idea of segregating players of
> different levels. Much better would be warning signs immediately after
> entering a dungeon - or the "magic mouth" -kind of warning someone
> suggested: "You get the feeling this dungeon is extremely dangerous/very
> easy".

What about a skill "sixth sense"?

http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/2007-June/011536.html


> Of course, high level players repeatedly cleansing low-level
> dungeons for various reasons is a problem.

This won't happen with the reorganization of the world, segregating maps
(not players, but will be more or less the same) of different levels.


I know Mark don't like this idea, because it's lots of work.  But you
just said, you disklike it.  What are your reasons?

Having regions for the same level will increase the fun for the players.
I saw so much newbies unable to find suitable dungeons.  Some got their
fun spoiled by high level characters boosting them ten or more levels by
a short party at a high level map.  I think xp sharing in a party is
very bad and should be disabled.

Anyway, having a storyline quest in a region best suited for the level
of a character, leading through the maps of this region and increasing
their xp step by step without overextending their abilities and without
underchallenge them, will be (from my point of view) a great improvement.

What's the problem of that, except of the work?


> That should be pointless. If you can go kill dragons with impunity and
> get 100000 gold from each one's hoard, there is no point harvesting
> the few dozen silver you get from newbie tower.

If you can kill dragons with impunity, you're to strong for this kind of
maps.  Move on to the next region and leave this maps to lower level
characters!

And did you never saw a character above level 100 harvesting in raffle1?
Zebulon for example cleared all the generators at raffle1 over and over
again.  Or other high level characters, not being a bot?

They're all wrong there, move them to regions where they can find items
for their level, not disturbing newbies on low level maps.


> Also, gearing towards D&D 3rd edition -type XP system might help. In
> the mentioned system, a 20th level fighter killing a kobold gets no XP
> what so ever.

This may help, I thought about it, too.  Won't be hard to implement it
into a computer based role playing game.

So far I thought it's enough to have bigger xp gaps the higher the level
gets.  But that's wrong.  As I said above, high level characters are
still clearing low level maps.  Why?  Because the skill level counts,
not the overall level.  Giving xp relative to the overall level
regardless of the skill, will help a lot.

The more I think about it, the more I like that. :)

This also forces more class like role playing.  If a warrior trains
magic skills, this warrior won't get as much xp in melee skills any more
because of the higher overall level.  Keep your role and you won't be
punished. ;-P


> Ok, now the summary

As I said above, nice one.  Should be standard. :)

=========================================================================

Everyone agrees to have a high priority improving gameplay / balance. I
would make this as _the_ main priority for CF2.  Here's my preliminary
priority list:


1) Reorganization of the world will do most of the gameplay improvement
   especially for newbies but also for veterans. But so far no majority
   for this idea.

   Changing rewards of quests is accepted.  Also some less drastic
   changes like adding a newbie island.

   Changing maps with generators, maybe even remove all generator, was
   discussed, too.

   I would coordinate this reorganization, write quest stories, test the
   maps with different characters, bring in lots of ideas...  I would
   even start the map editor to modify existing maps, but I won't create
   new maps.  I have other skills than making nice looking maps.  So we
   need some more map makers willing to help at this task.  Teamwork is
   the key.  There are people being able to make nice looking maps but
   they may lack on ideas.  Others having ideas, but no skill for map
   making.  Others neither of both, but likes to test the maps with all
   kind of race / class combinations, ...


2) Rebalance races is widely accepted.  Adding more race specific items.
   Also having the attributes more distinctive between different races.


3) Using class guilds instead of the class system right now is approved
   by most of the panelists.  Making classes distinctive and enforce
   more class role playing.

   Rebalance classes, spells, etc.


4) Maximum level should be something around level 100.  Maybe as a hard
   cap or make higher levels theoretically reachable, but practically
   not.  The maximum level shouldn't be reached by any player at any
   time.


5) Skills should get different "versions".  Some discussants prefer some
   kind of "bad" or "good" versions of a skill.  For example "Novice",
   "Expert", "Master", ... grade.


Priority is set on newbies, on a coherent system and on a logical world.

    Jürgen