[crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?

[Mark Wedel]

Andrew Fuchs wrote:
> 2008/12/14 Nicolas Weeger <nicolas.weeger at laposte.net>
>> 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.
> 
> Possibly use visual indicators either in-game or on the player's hud.
> An example for slowed movement would be a limping animation.

  Yep - many games also use small icons to denote effects (both good and bad) 
with some form a pseudo stat bar to denote duration.  Putting that type of logic 
in probably wouldn't be that hard.

  For most all effects, once the effect starts, the duration is constant, so it 
would only need to be communicated to the client once.  There are ways to end 
the effect prematurely, but in that case, just need some way to say 'this effect 
is now ended'


>> 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 :)
> 
> If a player has already completed the dungeon and enters it alone,
> alter the later parts of it to show that it has already been
> completed. If they enter with a party and leave the dungeon with
> artifacts they already have (we would need to implement some type of
> item tracking system) add 'defects' to the newly obtained artifacts.
> These defects would make the artifacts break and become less
> effective.

  This starts to get pretty tricky, as I can quickly think of various ways this 
can be circumvented (if in a party and one of the other party members picks up 
those artifacts and then gives them to another player later on).  There are 
probably ways to try and prevent that, but I'd be cautious of adding anything 
that may reduce player interaction (trades in this case)

  I think the problem that is trying to be solved needs to be identified, if 
there is a problem - there may be simpler ways to fix it.  One could pretty 
simply put in certain force objects into the character to denote they've 
completed that dungeon (or maybe even just how many times they have been in it), 
and also prevent characters from entering if they've done it too often, etc.


> 2008/12/15 Mark Wedel <mwedel at sonic.net>
>>   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.
> 
> An automated system that would allow a server administrator to charge
> a rent or tax on guild houses would be nice. Possibly allowing
> granular, per region, configuration. Rent for apartments could be
> charged, but we would need to implement a system that would allow
> players to recover items (except for built customizations) left in
> their inaccessible apartments.

  Guild house rent makes a lot of sense, since the guilds are supposed to be 
active, and if they are not, they should default on the rent and someone else 
buy the guild house.

  Apartments are perhaps trickier - do you base rent on amount of time the 
character is played, or real world earth time?   And the rent has to be such 
that characters don't create secondary bank characters, etc because the rent is 
too high, and if it is too low, doesn't have much affect on getting money out of 
the game.

> 
> Another idea is if a player's items occasionally need to be repaired.
> Requiring that powerful artifacts be maintained after some use or
> time, potentially by very skilled and expensive craftsmen, would give
> higher level players a use for their money. Consideration should be
> taken for lower level players, who might come to depend on artifacts
> which where donated to them. Done possibly by weakening the artifact
> to a point where it is of little use to higher level players, but
> still valuable to players at lower levels.

  This has been discussed many times.  I've played some games that have such a 
system - in many cases, it can just end up being more annoying than anything else.

  That said, coming up with such a system may not be hard.  Off the top of my 
head, each item could have some type of quality rating (100 means perfect 
condition, 0 means broken).  All high quality items start at 100.  As an item is 
damaged, it quality rating goes down, maybe leveling off at 50 (half damage)

  The effect of the item could be similarly reduced (stat modifiers, damage, 
armor, etc).  So a good artifact given to a low level player may still be quite 
good even at 50% damage, and that low level character could go around with a 
beat up item.  In fact, in this example, the most likely scenario is that the 
low level character was given an item with 50% damage from a high level 
character who didn't consider it that useful anymore.

  At higher levels, having your items 50% as effective would be a huge drop in 
power - probably difference between life and death.

  Repair cost of items is based on value of item.  So likewise, that low level 
character could repair their +1 armor for little cost (since it is fairly low 
cost item), but those higher level folks with +3 dragon scale are spending a 
fair amount of money on repairs.