[crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?

[Juha Jäykkä]

> focused more on the H&S - someone would find out some way to circumvent a
> monster, and it was like 'We can't have that' and things were changed.  At

I think this is wrong. If a player outsmarts the map maker, it's the map 
maker's shame and nothing should be changed (unless the map becomes trivial 
and everyone just keeps going there and pick up the reward). If there is a 
bug in the code, it's different.

> some level, if players are clever, it shouldn't be a requirement that they
> kill everything in sight.

Which is what I basically mean above.

>   I think the entire alchemy/item creation probably needs to be revamped. 
> - Most all common raw materials (wood, water, rock, etc) should be
> something that can easily be found/harvested
> - Success rate for most items should be greatly increased, with the
> flipside that for powerful items, the ingredients should be quite rare (so
> you're luck to find the component to make something really good)

Agreed on all accounts.

> items in town, etc).  So for skills, if it takes a player 30 minutes to
> make enough item to gain a level, that would be about right in balance.

Yep.

> - Recipes/instructions should really be a character attributed, not a
> player attribute.  I realize there are some special recipes right now where
> only a character that has learned it can make it, but for a large number,
> it is really the player knowing the recipe (either through looking at the
> file, or just acquiring tidbits among multiple characters)

Nice point. Perhaps the recipies should be force-objects on the character?

>   My general philosophy on RPG worlds is that going out adventuring and
> killing things should be the fastest way to get money.

Yes, but I rather like the idea that it is not the ONLy way to get money and 
xp.

>   But related to your comment above, maybe mix different parts together. 
> Maybe that item still can hold 10 different bonuses.  Maybe 1 beholder eye
> can be used to give a 1% magic resistance bonus, and if the player wants,
> could put 10 beholder eyes on that item for a 10% resistance.  But maybe
> also he can take those beholder eyes, do some alchemy type stuff and get a
> single item that gives him 3% magic resistance but only use one slot, etc.

Sounds good. The current alchemy involves mixing magic (or alchemy produced) 
stuff in "better" recipies, so why not keep doing that? To get +10% magic 
resistance using only one slot, one might need either a more powerful monster 
part or something created from beholder eyes, like 10 rings of +1% magic 
resistance. That way we'd have a kind of chain of items, starting with 
beholder eyes used to create potions of magic resistance, next being these 
potions used to create rings, rings used to create amulets and finally 
amulets can be used to create rings where +10% resistance only consumes one 
slot. Up to some limit, of course - otherwise we hit the ulta-powerful stuff 
again.

All of this naturally needs much tweaking to get the balance right. I think 
linear growth on the number of beholder eyes is too easy.

> have a lot of money, while other folks would say they do have lot - depends
> where you go.

Looks like I don't know the right places. =)

>   But even at low levels, orcs can be a good source - sure, most of the
> stuff is crap, but if you get 500 items dropped, a few will probably be +2
> in nature or have some artifact bonus and be worth 50 platinum or
> something.  And at low level, that is a really nice chunk of change.

50 platinum? I just sold a Ruggilli's Whisker for 23 platinum... Amulet of the 
Magi was the most expensive piece of equipment I had and I was offered 35 for 
it. Where are all those items orcs drop that sell for 50 platinum?-o

>   That's sort of a different issue - rarity or certain items vs
> accumulation of wealth.  One could have lots of money but still not found
> certain items.

I lied about the rings earlier, I *do* have a Ring of Mithrandir after all. 
But that is still the only one of the ones I mentioned. But you also 
explained quite clearly what was the problem with it. There's obviously 
something that must be rebalanced there.

Like everywhere where it comes to balancing different race/profession combos. 
I do not think a troll sorcerer should be as powerful as a fireborn sorcerer, 
but I certainly do think that the current situation where anyone or anything 
using weapons and armour quickly becomes way more powerful than those who do 
not use them - simply because there are so exceedingly powerful 
weapons/armour, and only those, around. Of course, adding a superior ring, 
for example, will not change things: the fighter will simply use it as well. 
What would be needed is some way prevent that. And it needs to be "natural". 
The only thing I can think of is somehow related to the skill levels. Perhaps 
item powers should look at skill levels instead of the total? Something along 
the lines of rings need evocation, amulets sorcery, daggers 
one-handed-weapons etc. And after that we need to prevent fighters from 
reaching high evocation levels... Anyone any ideas? Or is the whole thing 
totally unnecessary?

>   I was thinking about this.  Items below some condition could be worth 0
[...]
>   A quick thought could be that most of that stuff has 'condition 0' 
> denoting it is broken crap (useful for materials and repair), and another
> else has 'condition 100'.  At least that one, on that initial pass, we'd

Perhaps everything dropped by an orc should either be 50% or 0% condition? It 
would be natural for the weapons to NOT be at 100% and something should also 
be totally crap. I think 0% should be irreparable: perhaps those items should 
just vanish like some arrows?

>   For the forks, most likely we could take much of changes they've made to
> the server code and use it ourselves, because that work would also likely
> be under GPL (GPL license says derivations must also be under GPL)

Why don't we do that, then?

-Juha

-- 
		 -----------------------------------------------
		| Juha Jäykkä, juolja at utu.fi			|
		| home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/		|
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