[crossfire] Platform statement

[Lalo Martins]

quoth Mark Wedel as of Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:55:33 -0800:
> Lalo Martins wrote:
> (various bits snipped here and there)
>> Gameplay
>> ========
>>
>> (use attacktypes more, add more attacktypes)
>
>   Like so many things done in crossfire, the discrete damage
> changes is something that was never followed up to fruition.
> (...)
>   I'd make a strong case that every 'attacktype' line get
> removed and replaced with appropriate discrete damage name.
> The complication here is that if we do use AND logic, automatic
> conversion isn't as easy (but for items with only 1 attacktype,
> still would be).

Since I'm proposing going manually through every single arch anyway for
other reasons, I don't think adding this to the task list would be a
problem.

Or here's a crazy one.  How about doing away with the
percentage-based resistances, and making resistances an absolute
value?  That would allow items to keep improving more or less
indefinitely, and would greatly help making higher-level
characters more powerful.  (Dragon logic would probably need
adjustments, I guess.)

To me it makes sense that someone with a super-duper Mostrai
armor takes no damage at all from an Orc's club but takes some
from a Holy Avenger or whatever.

>   The entire magic attacktype is also odd, because for lots of
> things it is used to denote a magical affect (thus magic
> resistant creatures take less damage). Maybe we just do away
> with that logic?

Yeah magic is different... have to think about that.

>   As far as new attacktypes - are you talking physical types,
> or other ones?

Both I guess.  I have a list somewhere that I compiled for a
different game... I wouldn't be able to use it directly

> For physical, the mix of slashing/blunt/piercing is popular.

Yes, I like that idea.  Maybe replace physical with these three new
types, reusing the physical code for blunt.

>> An important point that was raised in the list is that when you meet
>> something way above your level, it should hurt you badly but not kill
>> you instantly, so you can run away.  Of course if the monster is TOO
>> MUCH above your level (let's say 4x to keep consistent with the
>> definition of extra), then it's reasonable that you die without ever
>> knowing what hit you.
>
>   That's reasonable.  I'd make a strong case that in general,
> it should be difficult for characters to wander into places in
> which the enemy is 4x your level (low level dungeons are sort
> of an exception - if you're level 2, 4x is level 8 - not as
> unreasonable, as level 10 vs 40)

Agreed.  Again, since every map will be edited for the reboot, that's not
unreasonable to ask.

Although I'd argue there are cases where an exception is part of the
story.... look at my Valk temple for a good example :-) (the excessively
hard monster is used to mark "hey, this is the wrong way, and the
seemingly easy path is not the one Valkyrie approves of").

>   I think the slower combat has helped this out already -
> monsters generally do less damage per hit, so less likely one
> hit will take a character out, unless there is a real high
> level difference.

Yes, I think the slower combat made things a lot better in this aspect.

>> What I think the gameplay lacks most in 1.x is goals.  (...)
>
>   I agree that more goals are needed, and this can also help
> change the H&S focus - some goals may not be kill everything in
> a dungeon, but rather get some item, transport and item, etc.

Yes but that's not what I meant :-) I'm thinking higher level.  Why are
you doing that dungeon?  In Pupland, for every dungeon you finish, you're
presented with the next thing to do for one quest.  For every quest you
finish, you're given the next quest in the meta-quest.  So you have fun
and you know what's next.  Sometimes what's next is beyond your
abilities, but you know what you need to improve in order to continue, so
you go find a way to do that.  This way you have more fun and before you
know it, 40, 60 levels have gone by.

>> Generally I tend to go with Nicolas' idea of making the world truly
>> dynamic and persistent.
>
>   I'm not completely adverse to this idea, but I think it needs
> to be fleshed out more.  How do you deal with those
> goals/quests when the dungeon(s) related to them might have
> been cleared out.  How fast does stuff repopulate, etc.  As
> said before, my biggest concern is that the various maps are
> cleared out and haven't been repopulated.

True, and that's a decision to be made now before the rebootworld starts
being built, because it results in a radically different world.  It's a
wholly different game design.

Bear in mind also... with a persistent world, different servers
would "evolve" differently.  A fresh server would still have all
the initial quests and dungeons around.

There's a big question of how to integrate updates with this...
I guess I need to catch Nicolas online one of these days
(weekend?) and brainstorm, anyone else interested is invited.

>> Another important point: I want to make level progression a lot slower.
>> Not the actual gaining of levels, but what that means; how fast your
>> SP pool, HP pool, etc increase, things like wc (or whatever Nicolas
>> replaces it with); and also, make permanent stat increases a lot
>> harder, so that you only reach "perfection" typically at level 100 or
>> so.
>
>   I don't really see much problem with that.  Note that the
> balance work I've already done with melee combat presumes a
> certain level of WC, AC, and HP progression - if those are
> drastically altered, it may mean all that stuff has to be
> rebalanced (not that it can't be done, just want to raise that
> point)

Noted.  One more for the reboot arch to-do list :-)

>> I don't know... strongly tempted to kill overall level entirely. What
>> is it really good for anyway?  I like the concept of item power, but
>> I'd replace it with something you get from quests.
>
>   Overall level isn't used for much.  Item power.  Hit points.
> That's about it I think.  Overall exp is still used to record
> your score.

Yeah that's what I was thinking.  It isn't used for much anymore,
so it's of arguable value.

>   For hit points, it could be done away with.  Why should one
> necessarily get a big blob of hit points every level, and
> nothing in between?  Historically, this has been because you
> got a random number of hit points per level.
>
>   But it would be simple enough to change it to some basis
> where you get 1 HP and these different points.  But see note
> above about impact of changing HP.

Or, again, possibly you gain HP on quests.  A long, arduous
journey to bathe in the Wellspring of Gaea...  I guess that would
make HP increases happen less often, but I'm fine with that, since
armor will probably be going up faster.

(Then of course each such increase needs to store a force so it
can't be used twice...)

>> Loot and money
>> --------------
>>
>>   Also selling flesh shouldn't give you that much money (I
>>   usually get my non-dragon characters started basically with
>>   selling livers).
>
>   I often thought that all flesh should basically have a timer
> (like the demon ichors) - they only are 'fresh' for so long,
> then become rotting, and then eventually disappear entirely.

Good point, that's entirely reasonable.

Heh, could even be creatures that *prefer* rotting flesh.

>   But most flesh should really be of very little value.  If it
> isn't used for some recipe, it really has no value beyond its
> food, so why would someone pay much money for it?

Well, the problem now is with the ones that *can* be used in
recipes... for balance reasons they end up having high values (or
maybe they have no value and the server calculates it automatically)

> My quick thoughts:
> Changing the name doesn't really change value.  If silver is replaced
> with bronze piece, and gold with copper, etc, that doesn't really do
> much to change actual wealth, all that really changes is what we call
> it.

True.  Changing the names is separate from gameplay; it's for
ambiance.  The gameplay leg of this section was, as I said on
Kevin's reply: putting more granularity in server values, and
re-thinking the value of things for balance and ambiance.

Like, IMO things like enchanted armor should cost in the gold
range.  Even *normal* swords/armor should be very expensive... in
the dozens of reggries (thousands of dollars) range I guess.

As a partially-related aside, I don't see orcs and goblins having
swords at all.  Clubs, spears, stoneaxes... hatchets maybe... are
more reasonable.

> I'd strongly suggest a decimal system be used (10:1 or 100:1 ratios).  I
> really don't want to have to be doing 64:1 multiplication to try and
> figure out values of different items.

Yes but that doesn't arise.  What happens is that things will go
in ranges... and we can even hardcode it that way.  So like, food
will always be quoted in cleekins (and if the merchant says
"three and a half", you do know half a cleekin is 4 aytbits);
clothing, weapons, armor, books, horses, etc always in reggries;
enchanted stuff, high-level books, etc, in the silver/gold
system; and houses, magical beasts, ships, and the like always in
plat only.

> I had suggested at one time that instead of actually having all those
> coins about (and extra code to deal with it), a characters money is just
> another attributed like hp or exp.

That's another possibility.  It detracts (IMO) from the feeling
of immersion, but it makes things simpler.

I guess it depends on how much the game would focus on
accumulating money.  I want to focus more on RP, build a
"believable" world, and for that I prefer coins.

> I'm also not fond of regional currencies.  While realistic, this tends
> to just become more of a bother to players to go in and exchange
> currency than actually adding much.  Now maybe you have some special
> quests (someone will only take regional currency or something), but have
> to keep in mind point is to have fun and not get bogged down in details
> of real world economics.

Again, depends on how much money is in focus.  If you want to go
to a different nation "trivially", just to complete a quest or
something,  I'd expect you to be able to do that without spending
any money.  But if you want to stick around, do the places'
quests, etc, then you'd want local money.

But that's something to think about only later.  For probably the
next year or more there will be only one nation on "rebootworld" :-)

>> Setting
>> =======
> < much about reboot removed>
>> I'll write something up the next few days.
>
>   Am interested in seeing that write up.  Do you envision doing
> all new maps them?  Including new world, new cities, etc?

Yes.  World and cities are all new.  Dungeons will be a mix of
new and ported, but porting requires some actual editing, not
just copying the file -- as per the cell size changes below, and
new features like tall faces, but more importantly, making sure
it fits the setting and the guidelines we agree on wrt gameplay.

>> Visual
>> ======
>>
>> - Facesets can have different pixel-per-cell sizes.  I think
>>   that's already the case, right?
>
>   Sort of.  While different facesets can have different sizes,
> I'm not sure if the clients actually use that information or
> not.

The server doesn't even care about the face pixel size, though,
right?  (Or even know...)