No subject

.

Gameplay / balance is a topic which was neglected in the past.  But this
will improve the fun of the game much more than those "fix for A", "patch
for B" or "new feature C" thingy.

$0.02


On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 12:25:24PM +0300, Juha J=E4ykk=E4 wrote:
> First, most quest-reward and artefact items are weapons. This makes
> completing quests somewhat unrewarding for monks, fireborns and dragons

Not just weapons, getting e.g. a girdle as a fireborn, or boots as a
serpentman, or anything which won't be usable in any way is not really a
quest-reward but a joke.


> I'm not saying never reward a monk with a sword, but make it much less
> likely than rewarding a fighter with a sword.

No, why should I ever start / solve a quest if the payment is worthless
for me? I don't want to get useless rubbish as a "reward".


> There can be a quest with a story of the evil X, who stole King
> Arthur's Excalibur and keeps it in his Luggage - it's pretty obvious
> one's going to find an excalibur and a luggage on this quest.

But Excalibur won't be the quest reward! King Arthur just wants it back.
So you have give it to King Arthur to receive your quest reward. And
this won't be Excalibur, isn't it?


> Second, the race- and class-specific distinctions are all but lost at
> levels around 30 and higher.

see http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/2007-July/011596.ht=
ml

And the entire discussion about it.


> but I personally like the idea of making more race-specific items; add
> body parts like "dragon tail" and "fireborn tentacle" to the races and
> create objects that consume these.

I like that idea, too. :)


> If I have a character Str +2 with respect to "baseline" and I go kill
> 10000 goblins, I should still have an Str score 2 above the baseline
> character who killed 10000 goblins. (Of course it may be the baseline
> guy found Strength potion and I did not,

See above link, maybe you like the idea of stat handling.


> For the record: I dislike race- or class-based fixed stat or level
> limits. I've hated them ever since D&D first edition... =3D)

I've nothing against race based fixed stat limits.  It prevents e.g.
that a halfling would be able to win against a troll in arm wrestling...


But I dislike level limits, I can't see any reasons for it.


On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 08:07:36PM +0200, Nicolas Weeger wrote:
> There will always be a maximum level. It can be 112, it can be 200, it
> can be 1000000. But there will always be a maximum :)
> My opinion: let's keep things as they are for level, but rebalance how
> you gain experience, maybe.

Sure, but you're able to make the limit unreachable as long as the
player isn't immortal. ;-)

Make level 100 very hard to reach (like 115 now), but don't set a hard
cap.  Make it all but impossible to reach.


> Fourth, the spell system needs rebalancing.

Indeed, needs big changes...


> First, meteor swarm and frost nova kill almost anything (if you can
> make the meteors or asteroids directly hit your opponent, even fire or
> cold immune creatures will die).

Sure, both do weapon magic damage, not fire or cold.

That's why I've no idea why "fireborns with meteor swarm" is an issue
for game balance...


> Also, some god-speciality spells kill anything, like divine shock or
> red death.

Also for lower levels. Ever tried to level up praying as a level 1
Ruggilli priest?

Can't be the rule to be forced to change the cult just to get some
starting levels in praying.


> Fifth, at high levels, spells are useless. It's almost always easier
> and more effective to simply karate chop or weapon slash everything
> you bump into.

Not only on high levels, especially for low levels.

Ever tried to play a sorcerer without using physical attack skills? You
won't be able to kill some monsters because they regenerate their hp
faster than you sp.  A dragon player just run through them like they're
out of air...


If something is very hard in the beginning, you should get a reward for
the hard start on higher levels.  So magic is always hard on low levels
but you get the chance to become a very powerful mage on high levels.
Not so for CF.  Being a high level mage won't give you enough power to
kills some of the high level monsters where others just need to run into
them.  This is really annoying.


> [1] It's easy to increase mana regen bonus with good weapons, arnour et=
c
> and while there are rings and amulets for fireborns to increase theirs,
> it very quickly occurs that those who can use good armour and weapons,
> surpass fireborns' mana regeneration ability.

see http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/2007-July/011613.ht=
ml


On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 08:07:36PM +0200, Nicolas Weeger wrote:
> My opinion is to totally rebalance combat / spells / speed. Reduce
> speed, add more "strategic" elements to the game. Make it so you can
> actually use rune/trap writing to lure monsters, and so on.

If you rebalance the combat / spells / speed system, you need to check
every single map if it still works.  If not you have to change the map.
And if this backfitting starts, I would like to remind to the
"reorganizing the entire world" thread:

http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/2007-June/011532.html


On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 09:51:49PM +0300, Juha J=E4ykk=E4 wrote:
> > My opinion: let's keep things as they are for level, but rebalance
> > how you gain experience, maybe.
>
> That's otherwise ok, but what about old characters at 110th level?

Don't make CF2 compatibel with CF1.x and everybody has to start with
level 1.  This is necessary after big changes in the system.


On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 10:57:22PM -0700, Mark Wedel wrote:
>   I'm sort of mixed on the idea of having random quest rewards.

Same for me.  Quest rewards should be deterministic, but race / class
specific.


>   And from the flip side, if you're a monk, looking for the good monk
> item that quest gives out 10% of the time, it could be really
> frustrating to do that quest 10 times to get that item (or more if
> unlikely).

I'm still a friend of having quests only solvable once for each
character.  No rerun possible.  How often will King Arthurs Excalibur be
stolen by the same crowd?


>   If we rebalance everything else (which includes have spells that go
> all the way up to level 110 or so), and a server set max level to
> 1000, once characters started getting to some point, they'd probably
> start saying the game is too easy, that there is nothing more to do -
> I've learned all the spells, etc

And what do the player say after hitting the limit:  "Great! So much new
things to discover and the ability to form the character."? ;-)

See "reorganizing the entire world" and add new regions for higher level
characters.  Extensions, it's all about extensions...  You said it once
yourself, what the commercial role playing games do to keep the game
interesting.

But don't mix up the regions.  So you don't have to care about rebalance
the system again, because you have well balanced lower level regions.
If player with powerful items from high level regions are able to
harvest on lower level regions the balance is gone...


>   When 2.0 is released, IMO characters from the 1.x series will not be
> compatible, so characters will need to be started anew.  This is
> probably a good thing for many reasons.

Yes! Thank you. :)


>   IMO, pretty much every generator could be removed from the game and
> it would probably make things better.

Yes, or make them run out of monsters.  And hidden.  Or how do you
explain a "monster generator" in the real world? ;-)

You could for example use the face of a cave entrance as a goblin
generator (with limited amount of goblins inside).  If the generator is
destroyed before it runs out, don't make it disappear, but change the
face to a collapsed cave entrance.  Like weak walls, they also don't
disappear.

    J=FCrgen