[crossfire] reorganizing the entire world

[Mark Wedel]

Juergen Kahnert wrote:

>> 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.

  Yes - that may be doable.  Have to be careful however - if I can start as a 
fighter, and thus get my melee skills up easily, and then switch to wizardry and 
get my spell casting skills up easily, classes once again loose some meaning. 
some of the point about a revamp was that classes would have real distinction, 
and that distinction last the entire lifetime of that character (some of it may 
be in form of level caps - if you're a fighter, fighting type skills have no 
cap, but spellcasting skills have a cap at level 50 or something).  A lot of 
what different classes mean, and effects, would still need to be sorted out. 
But it would probably be bad for players to be able to switch classes at some point.


>> 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.

  Yes - there are probably too many classes right now.

  However, even if it is redone, I could still see a 6-8 different classes. 
Lets take the main spellcasting ones - sorcery, evocation, pyromancy, summoning. 
  I could certainly see a class for each of those, and if we take the idea 
above, the appropriate class has unlimited level for the skill that matches the 
class, but maybe 75 in a couple of the other magic skills, and 50 for the 4th. 
So each of those effectively becomes a different class, but in terms of playing, 
are largely the same (summoning a bit different, but evocation and pyromancy 
share a lot of spell characteristics in common, what differs is the specific 
spells (burning hands vs cone of cold, etc).

> 
> 
>> 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?

  See note above.


>> 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.

  Because if the classes are redone, not being a fighter has real limitations - 
max level in fighting is level 50 (or maybe even lower), etc.

  A lot of this does depend on how changes are made to classes and skills.  If 
things remain as they are now, then yes, what class you start with makes no 
difference.  But if your starting class determines your skills, how fast they 
advance, and max level, then your class is important.

  If that guy wants to join the fighter guild, I don't see a real problem with 
it.  Now there may be fighter guild quests that are not given out if your combat 
skill isn't level 60, so there may be quests unavailable to him.

  That said, prohibiting some classes/combos from guilds is OK.  But this can 
also get tricky - there are perhaps way players can try and get around things 
like this (player friend in a guild uses town portal so other characters can 
bypass the entrance checks, etc)


> 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.

  Just to throw more complexity in the mix, in the suggestions about redoing 
skills/classes, it has been suggested that for advanced players, they basically 
be able to make their own class (choose what skills they want, stat adjustments, 
etc - there would of course be certain limits and checks, as some skills are 
more valuable then others).  But how do you handle those cases where a character 
doesn't have any predefined class?

  This is another reason why I'm suggesting that specific classes shouldn't be 
what counts, but rather the characters skills, proficiency in those skills, and 
perhaps difference in levels.

  For example, a character with level 50 in evocation and level 5 in 1 handed 
weapons (that being his best fighter type skill) could get rejected from the 
fighters guild with something like "you've already decided your path in life is 
a wizard, and the fighters won't let you join".

  but if a character has level 5 evocation and level 5 1 handed weapons, then 
they should probably let him join.  Now it may be that membership is reviewed, 
so if he then goes off and becomes a pure wizard, at some point the fighters 
reject him, saying they haven't met his ideals, etc.

>
>>   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.

  I certainly don't mind some guild masters handing out some quests.  I'm just 
not sure they should be handing out all the quests.  And some quests/maps could 
be used for different guilds.  For example, there could be animosity between the 
cleric and wizards guild.  The cleric guild wants an item retrieved because it 
is powerful relic that is useful in their religion.  The wizard guild wants it 
retrieved so the cleric can't get it.


> 
>>   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'd saying fixing the NPC conversation is one of those things to do.  There 
are lots of ways it could be made better (the current way really does leave a 
lot to be desired).

  I'd really like it so that talking to NPC's would be rewarding and something 
players want to do.

> 
> 
>> 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.

  I suppose this is really a matter of personal taste, with no right or wrong 
answer.

  Me personally, I'd get the feeling that if I'm finding clues to all the 
different maps that I'm really being led by the nose - I'd much rather go out 
and find some of those things on my own (or by talking to npcs, whatever) than 
just being pointed at everything.

  but there are certainly some maps which really don't have any clues, and 
should have some.  A few thoughts on this to make things better, but not go 
quite as far as you are saying:

1) Include information about various maps (side quests as you put it, but I'd 
not really call them quests) in random messages, and have those show up more in 
treasure.  So you go into a dungeon, and may find a scroll that talks about 
goblins near town.  Another time you do that dungeon, may not find that, but 
find info about some other dungeon, etc.  And you could of course get some 
duplicate information on this (may find information about those goblins in 
several different maps/locations).  This isn't that hard - basically need some 
way to more easily gather the data, and increase the frequency of it showing up. 
  Ideally it should be tied by region, so scorn area would contain information 
about other scorn maps, etc.

2) Improve NPC conversation so it is worth it to talk to them.

3) Like point #1 for scrolls in maps, also extend it to NPCs.   So the various 
NPCs in scorn could also talk about the goblins around the area, and perhaps 
other things.