[crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?

[Mark Wedel]

Nicolas Weeger wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> Here are some propositions to make CF a different but hopefully funnier 
> game :)

  I'm thinking that was funner, not funnier - but more humor in the game 
wouldn't hurt :)

> 
> 1) Don't give out stats to players. Don't give HP/SP/GR/ whatever. Only give 
> hints about the health ("you feel very bad", "you bleed a lot") and such 
> things ("with great effort you take the armor, but fall on the ground trying 
> to put it on")
> Rationale: we're doing a game, not some financial computation. Also, players 
> should feel whether they are ready to tackle dragons or are doing damage to 
> an opponent, not merely check stats.
> Of course, internally, the game could (should) still use numbers/stats.

  I generally like being able to quickly glance at my stats and see how I'm 
doing.  If I need to carefully look through messages to know if I'm about to 
die, that probably makes things less fun for me, not more.

  If the human players were spending bunch of time doing calculations (like in 
live action games), then simplifying such things may make more sense.

  Likewise, if the game was much more an adventure game, then maybe not having 
stats would make more sense (by adventure game, I mean games where the focus is 
on exploration and solving puzzles, like say myst, and not killing things).

  I'm also not sure if removing stats would help out in your dragon example - 
the real problem in many cases when you first go to fight something is no idea 
how powerful it is.  In many cases tough monsters can be found in areas with 
much weaker monsters.

> 
> 2) Make attack/defense and other things just numbers with the rule "the higher 
> the better". Attack 50 vs defense 50 => 50% chance to hit (or something like 
> that). No "is it wc which is better lower, or ac?"). In the same way, make 
> weapons +1 just give some attack bonus, that's all.

  I think WC is the only thing that violates that rule, correct?  And the reason 
it does so is because it was based on the old AD&Dv1 version of THACO/AC (or so 
I believe).  I'll note that AD&Dv3 actually fixed that - higher the AC, the 
better.  Likewise, the idea of WC basically went away - instead, you just have a 
bonus to hit.  Ends up being very simple - if d20 + to hit >= AC, you hit.

  Making that change in crossfire is IMO a good idea and would be really easy to 
do - one could easily enough write a script to go through and replace wc X with 
hit_bonus 20-X (with the script doing the calculation).  Likewise, a similar 
change for AC could be done (new_ac = 20-X)

> 
> 3) Don't give so many powerful items. Have players actually create such items, 
> with difficulty, so they need to take time (or buy it from other players). 
> Makes a "craftmanship" or even alchemy skill much more interesting.
> Want a sword with fire damage? Go find a rare stone of fire or harness the 
> power of a volcano to make such weapon.

  Agree.  Too often in maps/quests, the final reward is some artifact type 
weapon.  It would be more interesting if these were components or pieces to make 
up really good weapons.  And ideally give out very few static rewards (meaning 
that you always get item X from some quest - make it a treasure list of maybe 10 
different items, etc)

> 
> 4) Reduce loot a lot. Don't put chests everywhere just waiting to be opened. 
> Have stuff randomly grow on trees or plants, fish from sea, mine ore to build 
> items, find stones to build buildings, whatever.

  I don't know if the problem is so much the amount of loot, or more the lack to 
spend it on anything.

  I know there are some exceptions - guild houses go up for auction, and you can 
spend lots of money if you want your apartment a big bigger or quick exits to 
different maps.  But even many of those are one time upfront costs.

  At some point in my adventuring, I just don't find anything in the shops to 
buy very often - I've gotten all the spells, the likelihood of actually finding 
any decent items in the shops is low.  So that money just piles up.

  I think that is really the problem - unless there are more useful ways to 
spend money (needed for adventuring gear) it just accumulates.

> 
> 5) Remove map reset. A player destroyed a map? Well, another needs to rebuild 
> it ingame - or let an NPC do it. That costs money and time, that's fine. And 
> no need to rebuild it the same way :)

  How do you handle dungeons?  Once someone does the goblin quest map, no one 
can ever do it again (who is going to repopulate it with monsters, etc)

  One could perhaps make more of the maps persistent on a per player basis 
(basically store them as per unique maps).  So each player could only complete 
certain maps once.

  What I don't know how to do in that cases is parties where someone has done a 
map and other folks haven't (or suppose it is a big party, and several folks 
have explored a map to some degree).  Clearly parties should be able to explore 
the same map if they wanted to.