[crossfire] Balance changes

[Mark Wedel]

Nicolas Weeger wrote:
>>   While I haven't adjusted bow combat, from the basic uses I've done so
>> far, it seems to be somewhat reasonable - the fire/kill rate is somewhat
>> close to to melee - big advantage is that you're not right next to
>> creature.  Big disadvantage is you need to carry thousands of arrows about.
>>  A thought here is to greatly reduce the odds of arrows (at least non
>> special ones) being destroyed, so you can at least get back most of the
>> arrows you fire (special ones, like the assassinating whatever should still
>> be one shot).
> 
> Agreed on one shot assassination, but it does need to do real extra damage, 
> else no need for them - I'd rather carry/make 3 regular arrows than take the 
> time to find all ingredients for a special one!

  I think many recipes may be too hard (or do not generate enough of an item) 
for the ingredients required - that is certainly another balance issue there - 
alchemy has never been balanced, it should be done.  But that isn't quite as 
main part of the game as say magic and fighting is, and is also balance in a 
different nature (difficulty of ingredients, difficulty of recipes, etc)


>> 4) Related to this, better version of low level spells can be put in the
>> game. At level 10, maybe give out 'medium bullet' type of thing, which
>> costs more than the small one, but does more damage and also scales up to
>> higher level.
> 
> Please, no.
> No "small fireball", "medium fireball", "large fireball", "extra large 
> fireball", "xxx fireball", "mega fireball", "guaranteed most powerful 
> fireball".
> I'd rather have just damage/range gain for levels.

  Just doing damage/range gains per level may be workable with the revised 
monsters.  In the past, that didn't work when a first level monster had 20 hp 
and the level 20 monster had 2000 - there just wasn't any good way to scale up 
the damage on the spell properly.  But it is probably too early to really say if 
that is the case.

  But the other issue with different versions is a mix of area vs damage.  The 
bolt vs cone is simplest example - for any given space, a bolt does more damage, 
but the cone hits many more spaces, and its total damage potential is probably 
higher.

  For things like bolts and cones, scaling up is pretty straight forward.

  For exploding balls, this is less clear cut.  It is very possible that in some 
circumstances, I want a fireball that explodes in a relatively small radius but 
puts a good amount of damage in that radius (imagine targeting one creature). 
However, there are other cases where maybe I want it to hit a quite big radius, 
but am willing to have it do less damage for any given space.

  One can come up with some form of control language (cast fireball radius=3, 
dam=15, duration=8) type of thing, but at minimum, that would need some form of 
interface on the client.

  The harder part IMO is trying to sort that out on the server side.  It is 
fairly straight forward to say 'a fireball of radius=3, base damage=20, 
duration=5 cost X sp' and 'a fireball of radius=6, base damage=10, duration=6 
costs y SP' an balance out those SP or other values.

  It is much harder to do that formulaicly and have good values.  The issue 
isn't as much players choosing values that are not effective (spell costs 100 
mana and doesn't do a whole bunch), the greater potential problem is the reverse 
- player seeing that they can minimize (or maximize) certain of those variables 
and effectively get very effective (in terms of damage/mana) spells for certain 
situations.

  Now the morrowind/oblivion commercial game had a way to make custom spells, 
but from my experience there, the custom spells the player could make would cost 
a lot more mana than the pre define spells in the game (probably for that same 
reason - it is resorting to some simple formula to figure out cost).

  Crossfire could of course do the same thing, that basic low level fireball, 
when cast a high levels, results in a big fireball with lots of damage, but the 
player could limit its damage or affect, and get some savings in mana cost (but 
done in such a way that the cost savings are not really good).

  But I'm also not sure if a few different varieties of the spells are a bad 
thing.  Sure, 10 varieties of fireball is bad, but I'm not sure if 3 (small, 
medium, large).

  I think some of the problem with number of spells is just spells get added, 
like 'wouldn't it be neat to have a lightning ball' type of thing.  There are 
lots of attacktypes, so one could make a huge number of spells, and I think some 
serious pruning may be in order when spells are redone.

> 
> 
>>   I've also had some thoughts on other classes:
>> Thief/Rogue - crossfire doesn't really have much like this.  One thought to
>> make this a more viable class is to remove the search and disarm traps from
>> other classes - most game systems does not allow a mage to disarm traps. 
>> This doesn't help as much in standalone, but helps in party play (having
>> that thief to find and disarm traps would be useful).  I think the trap exp
>> needs to be adjusted for this to be more playable.  We should probably also
>> allow thieves to make traps, and if they kill a monster with that trap, get
>> the appropriate exp for it.  I also think traps should probably be made
>> deadlier.  A trapped door or trapped chest isn't all that dangerous if a
>> character at full hit points will never die from it (an alternative is
>> maybe longer term affects - we have discussed the idea of some spells
>> lasting hours of real time.  Imagine you get hit with a trap which depletes
>> a stat or slows the character that that lasts half an hour - you can't just
>> run out of the dungeon and wait it out, like you can with most cases of
>> poison or damage).  The last is hiding and sneak attacks - if player is
>> hidden and attacks a creature, give them extra damage, and if they kill the
>> creature, maybe split exp between hiding and the weapon skill?) Likewise,
>> letting rogues steal from shops should perhaps be allowed, but if caught,
>> they are tossed in the town jail for some amount of time.
> 
> Could be fun, but then you need to really tune traps.
> Until you have many hp, you can easily die to one trap on a door (not sure how 
> much damage it does, maybe 50?). So that's a one kill shot for players...

  Traps need to be retuned for higher HP.

  What would probably be good to add to crossfire, especially for traps, is some 
idea of bleeding wounds.

  Something like you set off a trap.  It does 25 damage.  But in addition, it 
does 1 damage/tick for the next 40 ticks (or maybe every 5 ticks it does 5 
points or something)

  So if you can heal, or you have a party member that can heal, you'll survive. 
  Perhaps even the healing spells should stop the bleeding.

  But at the same time, if you set off a trap, you're not instantly dead 
wondering what happened - you see yourself in the process of dying, and thus 
have some clue to what happened, and also have some limited recourse.