[crossfire] Spell rebalancing notes/thoughts

[Mark Wedel]

Nicolas Weeger wrote:
>>   But even with that, I found that I was waiting for mana to regen a lot. 
>> I suppose this isn't really any worse than fighters waiting for hp to
>> regen. Since by the very nature, these are range spells, the wizard should
>> ideally kill the creatures before they get next to him, and if they get
>> close, fall back, cast again, and so on.
> 
> Yes, assuming fall back is possible. The harder issue is that sometimes when 
> you exit the map monsters get on the exit too, or around, and when you enter 
> they just kill you straight.

  Yes - that can be a problem.  Typically not so much- players move faster than 
monsters, so if they run back to the exit, the monsters will be some spaces 
behind, and give a small gap.  Once you leave the map, monsters will likely just 
stand still.

  But per your other message, being able to close door behind you, etc, would be 
good.

> 
>>   But there are also a couple key points here - one actually needs the
>> space available to fall back.  In the newbie tower, once I started making
>> progress, I could basic remain beyond the monsters detect range and hit
>> them with spells (and once the kobolds are dead, gives an outer circle to
>> move in.  But the difficult time was initial assault - after opening the
>> doors, kobolds come out eliminating much space to move about.
> 
> Meaning the map is bad, maybe? :)
> Also, I'm not sure monsters obey the LOS rules, they often seem to spot the 
> player behind wall.
> That should probably fixed so we can see the global effect of combat reduction 
> (like: fire some bullets, flee around some corners, monster forgets you, you 
> can regen sp).

  Not positive if that is a good example - if a character is popping around the 
corner, firing a spell, and going back around, most monsters should be smart 
enough to either come to who is doing damage, or duck around a corner themselves 
to avoid being killed.

> 
>>   Another change I made was to give the pyromancer a spell regen bonus -
>> this helps reduce the waiting some more.  Rather than that being a force
>> (how I instituted it), doing it as a ring may make more sense - player can
>> upgrade it, but it also means that they don't really get a bonus if they
>> choose a wizard and play it as a fighter (at some point, they'd likely find
>> a ring more suitable for a fighter, and thus loose that sp regen bonus)
> 
> What about small mana regeneration potions, like minor healing ones?
> And keep mana regeneration for "medium" level items?

  The problem is you'd need a lot of those to be useful - and unless they are 
basically free, I'm not sure how many folks would buy them - it is a tradeoff of 
time vs money, but regen is generally fast enough that I'm not sure it is that 
much a bother (each cycle isn't that long) - the issue is more that there are a 
bunch of these cycles - this is also why you'd need a bunch of potions - in the 
newbie tower, it may be something like 50 rest periods, but each one is only 
15-20 seconds.

> 
>>   I'm thinking some defensive spell may be in order, so if creatures do get
>> close, they get killed.  OTOH, maybe that is part of being a mage - you
>> really don't want to be close to monsters.  But many maps don't give much
>> choice - go through the exit, and monsters are behind door 2 spaces away.
> 
> Combat rebalance could mean to rebalance many maps, something that could be 
> interesting to do (with doors you can actually close, and so on), introduce 
> things more interesting than "rush and bash".

  I was thinking something like fire/frost/lightning/whatever shields.  Those 
spells could do some damage to adjacent creatures, as well as provide protection 
to certain attacktypes.


>>   It may be that instead of defensive spell, giving them burning hands
>> (cone spell), but with very limited range would work.  But then, I'm also
>> not sure how many spells we should/want to give out at first level - we
>> need to keep some new spells for players to get as they gain levels.
> 
> IMO, it could be interesting to have classes really differentiated. One with 
> offensive spells, one with mostly defensive ones, medium ground, and such.

  Sort of tried that with the evoker/sorcerer/pyromancer/summoner.

  They were quite different, but some were hard to play, not well balanced, etc.

  Another problem is that defenses spells is a tough way to gain exp.