[crossfire] Priority feature list

[Mark Wedel]

Juergen Kahnert wrote:

>>   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.

  I consider this sort of a chicken and egg party - people may not use parties 
often because there is not much reason to form parties.  There are probably 
several reasons why parties are not heavily used - lack of race/class 
distinction means everyone is a spell caster or fighter or whatever, so you 
don't have to worry about trying to balance out the party.  Combat happens so 
fast right now that it is difficult to really coordinate anything.  I'm sure 
there are others.

  At least on the two specific points I mention, there have already been 
discussions about changing those about.

  So I'm very reluctant to say we don't need to worry about party support - I'd 
be really bad to not think about that at all, and then after we make other 
changes, be in a situation where lots of players want party support which has 
been removed, or at least not improved upon.

  I'd also think that while some things perhaps get deferred to later releases, 
we should at least keep those features in mind, and not make changes that are 
counter to those longer term goals.  It would be counter productive to not do 
any sort of party support for CF2, and then when we do CF3, have to redo all the 
maps/quests because of that.

  We should at least have some sort of idea of how parties should work and how 
they work with quests.  It may very well be that it is too complicated to do for 
CF2.  It may also very well be that it isn't very complicated, and thus could be 
done.  But before saying it won't be done, we should at least have an understanding.


Max levels of monsters:
The problem here is feature (or monster toughness) creep.  It is easy enough to 
say 'max level for any monster should be 100'.  The problem is that if you have 
characters that are level 150, they will start saying 'where is the challenge, 
what is left to do - I can kill any monster easily, etc'.  So someone decides to 
fix this and make level 150 monsters, etc.  This is what has happened before, 
and this is why a level limit is needed.  As said before, it may be that the 
limit is purely practical - there is in fact no limit, but the exp gains are 
such that levels are effectively limited.  If players say 'The exp gain above 
level 100 is way too high', simple response would be you either do that, or we 
put in a hard level cap - take your choice.

High level players doing low level maps:
Is this really a problem?  I never do it because it isn't worth while - the exp 
gain isn't there, nor are there good items.

  the only exception I can really think here is the dragon character - the 
number of maps that have suitable creatures to generate proper flesh for dragons 
is limited - as such, they are much more likely to repeat certain dungeons.

I personally don't think the exp system (as far as killing monstes go) really 
needs a major redo - at one time in the past, difference in level was taken into 
account, but that caused other problems - if a low level character was able to 
kill a tough monster, they got lots more exp.  With various special items and 
specific race/class attributes, this became more likely.

  Also, the crossfire exp table is almost an exponential system, where as AD&Dv3 
is more linear (the exp needed for level 20 is 10 times that of level 2).  So 
adding this extra adjustment really just amounts to extra penalty/bonus.

  The other reason this adjustment of exp was removed is that it actually makes 
it more difficult to set up exp rewards.  You can basically say 'this dungeon is 
worth 80,000 exp, no matter what the level.'  Maybe for the level you designed 
it for, that amounts to half a level.  If a lower level character is able to 
complete it, maybe it is a full level, but more power to them