[crossfire] map design guideline (was: Summary)

[Mark Wedel]

  There is already a map guide document that more or less describes good vs bad 
maps.  However, a lot of maps predate that.

  Not trapping big monsters is difficult - unless you have a completely empty 
room, it is hard for something like a big demon not to be 'trapped' in some way. 
  and if you have a big empty room that the entrance leads to, you now get the 
problem you come down the exit on top of a monster which doesn't work very well 
(yes, the monster may not be there initially, but say you go down, blast the 
monster a bit, then pop back up to heal/whatever - it is possible that at that 
time, the monster is on top of the exit next time you go down.

  I also don't have too big an issue with a group of monsters without a big plot 
behind them.  Seems perfectly reasonable for me for a tribe of orcs to being 
living in a cave.  Or for that matter, the dragon cave makes a similar amount of 
sense - dragons have to live someplace.

  I don't think that every map also has to be part of a quest or have 
special/good completion items - having some maps just be places to go and kill 
things, get random loot and some exp seems perfectly fine.

  I agree that there probably is not enough different difficulty monsters.  I 
don't necessarily think we need more monsters, but rather variations on what we 
have.  If we follow from other games, monsters can get more difficult - just as 
a human character is more difficult as it gains level, there isn't anything to 
say we couldn't have level 10 orc barbarians around in dungeons - orcs should be 
able to gain exp also.

  I suspect some maps are really popular not as much because of the treasure 
(you do it once you're probably not going to see much different treasure - and 
in fact, if you want diverse treasure, random maps can be pretty good as quality 
of treasure goes up as you get deeper), but rather players are looking for 
specific monsters.  If you're at the right level, hill giants provide good exp 
for killing them.  Likewise, if you're a dragon, you're looking for creatures 
that drop the right flesh, and in many cases, your choices are limited - turns 
out being a cannibal is a pretty good approach.

  While perhaps not really a way to make better maps, a way to offload this may 
be more random dungeons with specific types of monsters - one could imagine a 
hill giant cave, say 10 levels deep - a good place to go kill hill giants 
instead of raffle.  Likewise, an alternative dragon cave, etc.  I'm wary of 
limiting players from only doing a quest map once - a few reasons.  First - it 
can limit play options to the point where a player doesn't have a lot of places 
to go.  Second, it can be hard to enforce - how do you really note they 
completed the quest?   This could lead to a case where the player wants to go to 
the dungeon for exp/whatever, so just skips the last phase that marks the quest 
as being completed (doesn't turn the item in, kills everything but the boss, 
etc).  So in that regard, doesn't really help things out.