[crossfire] Party Support

[Juergen Kahnert]

On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 09:58:01PM -0700, Mark Wedel wrote:
> Juergen Kahnert wrote:
> > The only reason I know for a CF party is, to level up a lower level
> > character.  And regardless of the party support of CF, I would
> > remove the xp sharing for killing monsters.
>
>   Some other advantage is that there are the chat party chat commands,
> so can be easier to communicate with other people if in a party.

Sure, it's a party feature which should stay.  But that's not the main
feature for creating parties, isn't it? ;)


>   But how parties should work out is something to be thought about.
> Server level support (being able to form parties, exp sharing, etc)
> may not be strictly needed.

How do you handle informations (health and things like that) about your
party members?  This needs server support.


> So it may be more a thing that players should be able to cooperate on
> a single map, and somehow share the rewards.

Yes, real multiplayer maps / quests would be nice to have.  I just lack
on ideas how to create some with the current system.  Some characters
are able to clear a map before any other member of the party has a
chance to talk about the tactics...


>   OTOH, if classes have more distinction, some classes may need party
> assistance in order to advance.  If you want to play a pure healer,
> you can't expect that character to be going out and killing monsters.

I wouldn't like CF if I need a party to play.  If I'd time for playing
this way, I would choose WoW...


> But could be very valuable as part of a party,

So, and you remove the ability to heal from each other class?  No longer
rods of heal or restoration scrolls, potion of healing, etc. for everybody?

The focus is still single player maps.  Don't destroy that just for a
rudimentary party support.


> so so want some way for the character to get exp.

Make the "healer" getting xp from healing.  No xp sharing, please.  Let
it make more xp the higher the healed character is, or whatever.  But
make sure that xp comes out of the skill you use.


>   The other more general problem is that if you don't have exp
> sharing, players can to some extent do it unofficially - the fighters
> weaken the monster, take the damage, etc, so that the healer can
> finish it off.

Doesn't matter.  Count the damage each character made and divide the xp
pro-rata.  If not, won't hurt.  But I won't like to play a healer if I
need a warrior which weakens the monster that I get the chance to gain a
little bit xp...

Make the xp comes out of the skill will solve that problem.


> > 1) Slow down combat speed.  Some player just won't like that,
> >    especially no slower movement.  So the only chance for that is to
> >    reduce weapon speed.  May work.
> >
> >    But on a 2D tiled map with fast moving monsters you could quickly
> >    run out of escape routes.  Slower movement will help, too.  But I
> >    think no majority for a general slowdown.
>
>   I don't think there are enough details on that.  In my thought,
> movement would really only be slowed down for high level characters,
> and in fact sped up for lower level characters - in a sense, reduce
> the speed variance that currently exists, so that high level
> characters don't move 5 times faster than low level characters.

Sounds good for me.  But long travels around the world will probably be
fatigueing.

It's a good start for better party support.  But traveling around the
world shouldn't be boring.  Don't forget that not every race is able to
wear speedboots...


> > 2) There are simply no spells for party support.  Most support spells
> >    are self directed or combat spells.  Nothing special for the party.
> >    Protection spells, bless, healing, ... all of them needs a "party
> >    version".
>
>   I also think that even if combat isn't slowed down, many of these
> spells should have longer durations - at least in minutes in real
> time, so you could help out the party before they head to the next
> level, etc.

Yes, a longer duration for some spells is nice.  But you need to take
away the ability to cast such spells for all but a few classes...  And
don't forget to let casting such spells increase the xp for that skill.

At the moment such assistant spells are less useful because of the minor
effect and / or the short duration.


> > 3) If you have spells as pointed out at 2), you have to know to cast
> >    which spell on whom.
>
>   so it may be that when part of a party, more information is shared
> with party members - you can see all your party members resistances,
> which are currently boosted by spells, current hp, sp, grace, if party
> member is under effect of any spells (confusion, paralyzation, slow,
> etc).

We also need spells to cure paralyzation, slow, etc.  Some of them, like
paralyzation, only makes sense for party playing.


>   As said, this would probably have to be done in another window/pane,
> but would give a way to quickly see who is in trouble.
>
>   Perhaps as part of that is tie in the party spells with that - that
> window has some way to make it easy to cast 'heal other' on different
> party members - drag and drop, pull down menus, something.  And as
> long as the caster and recipient are on the same map or close enough,
> the spell works - don't need to be next to the character.

Sounds good.  Maybe a little bit tricky to make it work well.  I don't
like to fiddle around with the mouse in a fast battle.  That may produce
situations like the chat-key in combat.  Hit the wrong key and become
overrun by the enemy.


>   In this way, the spell caster could hang back a bit and help out
> party members.

May work, need some more details, for example do you need at least
1600x1280 resolution to find a layout which offers you to see the party
members in an extra window?


> > 4) What about characters in the second row like archers or spellcasters?
>
>   It has been suggested that there should be a way to target creatures
> not in the front row

But how?  Do you need the mouse to click on the monster?  Than move
around with the keys to switch back to the mouse because the monster
also moved?

You have to find a way to make the game fully playable with the mouse or
this won't work.

Or find a way to make it work only with keys.  Or both.  But a combination
out of both won't work.


> likewise, monsters should have the same advantage, so a bunch of orc
> archers behind orcs with swords would be pretty deadly.

Monsters will have no problem to aim, but the players...  And such a
feature will boost the level of goblins.  No newbie will survive the
encounter with a bunch of goblin archers using this feature.


>   Movement itself is a problem - acting lik pet move sort of works,
> unless both people are trying to move the same direction and end up
> swapping places with each other and not actually attacking the
> monster.

May be fun to see for a short time, but won't help to kill the monster.


> Don't have a great solution there.

Neither I do.


> > After you solved all this problems without changing the game that
> > much that most of the current players still likes to play CF, you
> > can work on point:
> >
> > 5) Create party quests.
>
>   But that isn't really the point - just because points 1-4 do not
> currently exist, or are not currently used, doesn't mean we
> can't/shouldn't be able to think about how parties/quests would work
> if those points did exist.

I don't have your imaginativeness to create maps which works well with
features nobody knows how they look like...

I always thought you need to know how the system looks like to create
well working addons for this system.  How do you develop addons without
knowing about the system?


>   It may be like several features - not used by many people.  But it
> seems to me that the above points really don't have anything to do
> whatsoever about how you give rewards - they are completely separate.

Sure, giving out rewards is more independent from the given points.  But
creating multiplayer quest maps is not.  Why thinking about the finish
of a multiplayer quest if you have no system to create multiplayer maps?

And adding multiplayer rewards into single player maps is not necessary.


>   We could certainly say that CF is a single player RPG game and that
> there is no party support,

No, I don't mean "no party support", but "limited party support" as long
as we don't know how to offer a "full featured party support".


> and so yo really shouldn't work with any other players on dungeons or
> quests, because simply put, you'd be disappointed/upset when you find
> you don't get a reward.

Did you never solved a quest to find out that the quest reward is
useless for you?  Will this cancel your xp gain / the fun you had?


> That is certainly an option, but I haven't seen a lot of people saying
> that is what should be done.

An option is to keep the party support as is (but remove xp sharing) and
collect some more ideas of how to improve the party system.  As long as
we don't have a working party system, no need to create party quests.

    Jürgen