[crossfire] combat, spell & monster balance

[Mark Wedel]

Juha Jäykkä wrote:

>>   My personal thought is there should be very few/no monsters that are 100%
>> immune to magic.  I know in some cases this is because you have groups of
> 
> While I tend to agree, things will change dramatically if high-level magic 
> becomes "non-magic" (as in attack type does not include magic) as was 
> discussed earlier. That would remove the problem of (high level monsters) 
> having 100% magic resistance. It would still leave room for difficult 
> monsters at high levels.

  Yes - it changes things.  Note that currently, there are some high level 
spells that don't have magic in them - IIRC, that was the main point of 
dragonbreath.

  IMO, the high levels spells that only do elemental damage should probably be 
less powerful than same spells that do magic + elemental.  The main difference 
being is pure elemental spells are usable against magic immune (or highly 
resistant creatures) - normally, you'd want to use the magic + elemental if the 
creature doesn't have special protections.  And for balance, that probably makes 
sense - if the pure elemental spell was always the best choice, that is probably 
an unbalanced spell.  However, if it is a choice the caster has among many 
spells, sometimes being better, sometimes worse, that is a better balance.

> 
>> fairly common.  And I think some of the changes that are being made as part
>> of these balances will result in it becoming much more difficult for mages
>> to fall back to melee attacks.
> 
> This is fine, although I do not understand your reference here. Falling back 
> to melee has always been difficult at least for fireborns. Fireborns get 
> killed quite easily by beholders even as is. (Unless you are high level in 
> karate, but that is extremely tedious work as a fireborn.)

  Right now, a mage can pretty easily choose to be a fighter -they can use all 
the same weapons and armor (but using that gear while casting is difficult). 
But the point being is that the mage could carry that suit of armor & weapons 
about, and when they meet something they can't kill with magic, gear up and beat 
it physically.  There is still the issue that a mage probably doesn't have 
especially good combat skills, but I'm thinking of changing things so that the 
choice of weapons the mage can use is more limited, so falling back to melee is 
even more difficult.

  Most mages I've played have had a pretty respectable combat skill because of 
the above.  Some is also based on maps - I'm not going to waste my sp on the 
wimpy monsters on the level, and thus will kill them with melee instead, etc.

> 
>>   What this means is that a map with beholders (if 100% immune to magic)
>> may be virtually impossible for magic users, but those beholders may only
>> make up 10% of the map - that is sort of a waste of a map now.
> 
> This is a multiplayer game. I think having maps that are virtually impossible 
> (or even impossible) for a single character of a given profession, is quite 
> ok. Of course those maps should be relatively rare and give better than usual 
> rewards to encourage teamplay. Almos impossible, however, is not as bad as it 
> sounds. It just means you need to use your wits. =) I can kill the beholders 
> with a fireborn without using melee or spells with magic attacktype: animate 
> weapon, summon <something> and such come to mind. (At high levels, 
> dragonbreath does not have attacktype magic, so it works nicely. Also, Gaea's 
> banishment works.)

  Pretty much agree.  But in a sense, there are several types of multiplayer 
maps.  Most of what are considered multiplayer right now are not related to 
monsters, but instead have to do with lever interactions, etc (different levers 
need to be pulled at the same time).  Those maps tend to be well documented, 
with a message pretty much at the start saying so (it is otherwise frustating to 
get half way through the map to find you can't complete it).

  However, that same frustration can apply for monsters.  If you're a mage and 
have spent quite a while working on a map, only to get to a room full of 
monsters you can't damage, that is pretty annoying  (and same can be said for 
fighters for that matter).  It may be realistic, but the game is meant to be 
fun, not necessarily realistic.


> 
>>   Note that there is also other tuning going on here - the actual cost in
>> spell points adjust things.
> 
> Those were just attack-spells, there would probably be others, too. I really 
> liked the idea of earthquake and world-modifying spells at very high levels.

  World modifying to the extent they last until the map resets or the like.  But 
I think such spells would make things more interesting for the players.

> 
>>   But in order to prevent player killing, none of these spells should
>> probably do more than 25% of a players total HP damage in one hit.  This
>> means if players at the level have 100hp, and monsters also have 100hp, it
>> would take 4 spells to kill those monsters (about).  Now as noted above,
> 
> Apart from attacktype death spells, this is fine. Single spell to kill is 
> probably too powerful, but the mage will need to be able to cast several 
> spells within relatively short period of time lest the mages will never be 
> able to go around alone.

  Right, and nothing is preventing casting of multiple spells.  The perhaps 
trickier part relative to mages is having the spells keep up in damage but also 
keep the spell point cost under control.

> 
> As what comes to attacktype death... at least single-target spells with such 
> attacktype should exist in my opinion. But probably not at any low levels.

  death attack is a somewhat tricky one.  First question is where do put it in 
the elemental magics.  But the other problem is that it tends to be level based, 
with the caster level being higher than monster level.  Thus, it often isn't 
effective when you want it to be.

  This can probably be balanced - very high mana cost, very short ranges, etc. 
resistance to death attacks should likely act as a level modifier.

  But I'm likely to basically remove all spells, and then re-add them as I 
balance them - that's easier than trying to balance them all at once.

> 
>>   Right - but I think the thinking was that even at really high level with
>> single boss monsters, a battle may take 30 seconds - a lot longer than now,
>> but not so long as to be tiring, especially for boss monsters.
> 
> 30 seconds is a blink of an eye. I was talking of about order of 30 *hours* to 
> get a bunch of cyclops out of the way. That was too much. But on the other 
> hand, 30 seconds is too generous, I think. I would say spending even 30 
> minutes battling a single "final" battle of a quest would be fine - IF there 
> is some signs of progress along the way. Like killing 25 cyclops one per 
> minute and then the final boss in 5 minutes. That would be fine with me. Even 
> longer, if players need to heal in the middle, but what is most important is 
> to make sure players know they make some progress! Probe is a good spell in 
> that regard, but a) not everyone has access to it and b) thinking of cyclops 
> again, you almost never get any real info out of those (because they heal so 
> fast that by the time you've backed off and cast probe, they're at maximum hp 
> again). The easisest way of showing players they're making progress is by 
> having more than one monster and letting the cannon fodder die relatively 
> easily, but still wearing the players down for the boss to finish off (or die 
> trying =) ).

  I was talking a single combat, not how long it takes to slog ones way through 
the dungeon.  But in the case of working your way through a dungeon, you do know 
you are making progress.

  You are correct that for some monsters, it can be very difficult to know if 
one is making progress.

  I do have a feeling that with slower combat, the regeneration rate of many 
monsters will need adjusting, because the player will not be able to deal damage 
as fast as they could before.


>>   Likewise, a level 5 character could attempt to take on higher level
>> monsters, with it being appropriately more difficult, but they also get a
>> greater reward.
> 
> This reminds me of the problem with a team of 50th and 5th level character... 
> How to handle the exp so that the 5th level character does not jump to 25th 
> level in a couple of minutes?

  There isn't a great way.  You could perhaps put limits in on how much exp a 
character can gain relative to what they need for any killed monster (for 
example, no matter what, it takes at least 10 monsters to be killed to gain a 
level).  But that just means that the high level party has to kill 200 monsters 
to get a level 5 person to level 25 - that just means going into a random map 
most likely.

  At the same time, you don't want to make things too hard - I remember one time 
playing a character and finding some arrows of assassinating trolls - it was 
relatively cool to get a lot of exp by using the arrows on the troll (the 
character wasn't very high level, so the exp from a troll was significant).


> I think players were too fast relative to everything else. While traveling the 
> big worldmap would be very boring if players were too slow, I also think it 
> is very stupid for characters to be able to outrun magic bullets, speedballs, 
> magic missiles and such, which currently is almost trivial. Since monsters 
> are slow, spells are slow and we want to make battles longer (or at least 
> slower-paced), I think slowing down players is really the right way to go - 
> like you already have done.

  That is one change that was made - players are not quite so fast.  And I 
likely will speed up many of the spells so they get to the target faster (and 
harder to outrun).  You really shouldn't be able to outrun a lightning bolt.