[crossfire] reorganizing the entire world

[Juergen Kahnert]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2007 at 09:46:16PM -0700, Mark Wedel wrote:
> > Or a sorcerer using physical combat skills may become for example a
> > wizard.
>
> With what you're saying there, are you equating class=guild, or is
> their a distinction?

Good question, I don't know how to handle it best.  But yes, maybe we
just abandon the class thingy and replace it by a membership of a guild.


> For example, right now, the only meaning a characters class has is
> what skills they start out with, and some stat bonuses.

Yes, and for my understanding of a role playing class, this is far to
less.


> So changing class isn't really necessary, as it doesn't mean a whole
> bunch after first level.

Correct, so choosing a class is pointless.

Those small grey dressed wight (called sorcerer) could be played as a
muscular fighter which is able to strangle a troll. This won't fit into
the class description: "[...] Barbarians used to push you around on the
street [...]"

The classes have effectivly no impact for the role. That's bad. This way
they're just used for the dressing. But this could be done by a dressing
room as well. ;)


> However, there has been talk about making classes have more distinction.

And having such guilds will offer a way to make them more distinctive.
I don't say it has to be right this, just it could be made like this.


> For example, a fighter gets exp in the fighter skills faster, and
> harder to gain in magic skills, etc.  If you're talking about changing
> the characters class as it relates to that, it gets much trickier.

Maybe we could have both of it. The initial class will stay. If you
choose to be a fighter you will gain xp in fighting skills much easier
than in spell casting skills. And if this fighter prefers to cast
spells, fine, it's just harder to gain xp there AND will lose the
membership of the fighter guild.


> But its unclear to me if it is really the right thing to limit all
> characters to one guild.

I never said that they should be limited to one guild. It's just a point
to discuss how to handle it best, if ever.


> Right now, we have something like a dozen classes - it strikes me that
> a dozen guilds would be overkill.

Maybe the dozen classes are overkill if there aren't any real distiction
between them.


> You could generalize them to some degree - combat guild, cleric guild,
> mage guild, thief guild, maybe a few more.

Same for the classes, don't you think so?


> Some classes are basically hybrids between a couple of those - paladin
> being a fighter/cleric for example.

I think it's ok having hybrid classes. But it has to be clear what it
means and how to play such a class.


> In that case, one would think those two guilds wouldn't care much, and
> it also simplifies the number of guilds.

If you could become a member of more than one of those guilds, why
should someone play anything else than a wizard:

    You're the generalist of the spellcasters.  You've emphasized the
    use of magic and studied all its areas equally.  You've learned
    something about the gods and religious devotion as well.  To a much
    lesser extent, you've studied weaponry, but you've not had much
    physical training: you're mostly sedentary, and so you're not nearly
    so strong and healthy as you could be.

This means, this dude will be in every guild. No limitations at all.


I think it's better to reduce the amount of classes and have a guild for
every class of them, if you don't like to have so much guilds in the
beginning.


> A more complex thing is that there really shouldn't be a cleric
> (praying) guild - or at least not one, but really one for each god.
> But that also adds lot of guilds.

Yes, in fact, to make it real role playing like, you need a "guild" for
each cult. But I would call them "abbey" or something like that instead
of "guild" in that case.


That's one of the reason why I said the guilds needs to share some maps
to reduce the map making work.


>   I also like the idea more where the quests should be more related to
> the characters skills.  For example, perhaps the fighter guild won't
> send you on some quest until your fighting skill is at least level 10
> - this is good in the sense it won't send characters where they might
> get killed, but also effectively bars non fighters from that quest -
> or at least not until they have a good amount of experience.  If one
> envisions quests requiring skill level 90, that could effectively bar
> other classes from those quests

Having more class based quests is definitely benefit. Maybe the location
where you get the quest should be more neutral than a guild.

Why should the guild master of the fighter guild give a quest to someone
not being part of this guild? Maybe the lord of the town or something
like that would make it more consistent.


Re: Visiting every single map by following the storyline

>   do you literally mean every map in the game?

Yes, but not in a way that the player has to visit them all. For
example, you have a storyline with chained quests to visit maps A, C, E,
H, ...

In map A the player is able to find a hint for a side quest B, in map C
a tip for a random map D, in map E for F pointing to G, and so on.


> If so, I don't really like that idea.

Basically it's just a discussion about how to offer the players an
ingame solution to find all the maps without using the spoiler pages.


> First, that is a huge number of maps, and thus a huge number of
> quests.

Having a lot of maps and quests is good, not bad. :)


> For repeat players, it would seem pretty pointless (fighter guild and
> mage guild having the same maps you quest to?).

As long as there are no specialized maps for a guild, yes, why not? It
doesn't matter how you rescue the princess, the result counts, that she
will be rescued. ;-)

And just because I started a new character doesn't mean that I will skip
for example the dragon quest.  It's just a new way to solve it.


> It also gets tricky adding new maps - have to update all those quests,
> and at some point, you'd probably get the case of too many maps for a
> certain level (eg, you might have 30 maps for level 5-10, where as it
> might only take 10 maps to go from 5 to 10).

If you leave a note in an older (already connected) map for that level
pointing to the new one, it's fine for me.


>   I don't have any issue with a set of maps, perhaps a fairly large
> set, being used for these guild quests.  And different guilds may send
> players to different maps.  But at some point, I think the players
> should be out talking to NPCs, finding out about dungeons that way,
> exploring, etc.

Sure, that's what I called a side quest.  But I don't like to talk to
NPC at the moment.  Doing this is really annoying because of the lack of
intelligent talk control.

And talking to every NPC around there is much more unedifying.  Place
the hint for a side quest in a treasure box of a key quest as long as
talking to NPC is nothing else than wasted time.


> I can understand the desire for some players to perhaps see every map.
> But for those players, which I think would be a minority, I'd rather
> point them at a web page that is the map page walkthrough, listing all
> the maps, suggested level, etc, vs trying to put that in game.

It's something completely different to be able to explore every map in
the game because of hints and notes I got while following the storyline
or if I have to read spoilers to find new maps...

I prefer the first option.

    Jürgen