[crossfire] Player level vs monster level vs experience

[Mark Wedel]

Nicolas Weeger wrote:
>>   That is how I see it - monster level and player level should roughly
>> match. But in this context, I'd sort of say a group of monsters and player
>> level should roughly match.
>>
>>   For example, at first level, the character will be fighting typically
>> large groups of level 1 monsters, it's not a 1:1 battle.  But that first
>> level character might be able to take on a level 4-5 monsters on a 1:1
>> basis, but should die if he takes on a group of them.
> 
> Then that's not "matching" :)
> A real match would be a level 5 monster being able to kill a level 5 players.

  Maybe, but there are some other considerations.

  Under that matching, it means a level 1 character would have to do solo 
battles with monsters - most maps are not set up that way, or you have to have 
an idea of level 0 (or maybe even -1) monsters.

  One also has to take into account the AI we have to play the monsters.  In 
theory, 2 evenly matched characters (or even a clone of the character) should 
result in a person winning only 50% of the time.

  However, with the AI of crossfire, I'd say the player would win 100% of the 
time.  I'd also say that if a human actually controlled the monsters, than 1 
level 1 monster might kill a level 1 player on 1:1 battle a fair amount of the time.


>>   Except for the most part, there are not that many things to adjust for
>> monsters in crossfire - you do have level, hp, ac, sp, and skill levels. 
>> But if all level 15 monsters had the same hp/ac/sp, it would be pretty
>> boring - you need to be able to have enemy wizard with a bunch of sp, but
>> maybe not as many hp, etc.
> 
> Except you could say: monsters have 1 hp / ac / sp (whatever) for level 1. 
> Each level can give 2 hp, or 1 ac, or 1 sp.
> Thus for level 15 you could have 31 hp / 1 ac / 1 sp. Or 1 hp / 16 ac / 1 sp. 
> Or 1 hp / 8 ac / 9 sp. And so on.

  Note that if we look at the progression for the characters played by humans, 
it doesn't really go that way.  We could certainly change things so it does (so 
class has much more impact on things like HP and SP).  For the players, the 
amount they gain each level is about the same - what really gives a big delta is 
the stats - high constitution means many more hp, high pow means many for 
sp/grace, etc.

  Ideally, the monsters should match the mechanics the characters use - that 
helps keep things in balance.  So maybe the stats for monsters should actually 
have the same meaning as they do for characters - right now, they are often 
treated special in certain ways (hp/sp regen, ac, etc).


>>   When I was doing the rebalance, I was basically setting a monsters exp
>> based on its level, but there was still a range.
>>
>>   That said, I think it would be completely reasonable to redo it - exp is
>> based solely on level of the monster.  If a monster is too easy for that
>> exp, then it needs to be adjusted in some way (which could mean lowering
>> level).
>>
>>   However, keeping it a monster attribute does allow for maximum
>> flexibility - for example, when redoing it, I basically had this as a exp
>> value based on level of monsters:
>> 1	<10 exp
>> 2	25
>> 3	50
>> 4	100
>> 5	250
>>
>>   on so on.  But in this model, there are some big gaps - one could
>> reasonably say a tough level 4 is maybe worth 125, and and easy level 5
>> (but still harder than that level 4) is 200
> 
> Really depends on the view for higher levels.
> Will you have a level 100 player fighting 50 levels 99 monsters easily?
> Or player level 50 versus 10 monsters level 45 is ok, but 100 vs 99 is 
> balanced on 1vs1?

  Higher levels are tricky - the one flip side is that for many aspects, the 
delta between a level 90 and 100 character (in terms of percentages of sp, hp, 
damage, etc) is going to be much lower than that same delta of a level 5 vs 10.

  This is because in many places, a character starts reaching maximums - they 
get larger number of hp/sp/grace at lower levels than higher levels.  At some 
point, the characters equipment starts getting to some maximum value, same for 
stats, etc.

  It's possible a complete rethink of how all that works should be done.  There 
has been talk about making the stat range go much higher (up to 100 or perhaps 
more).  Under such a system, however, the deltas would also be less - you 
wouldn't get a whole lot going from an 85 to 86 strength, but right now, there 
are some pretty big gaps.

  Note also that the experience table also flattens out a bit at higher levels - 
at low levels (<15 or so), the exp basically doubles for each level - 5,000, 
then 10K, 20K, 40K, etc).  This sort of forces characters to move on to tougher 
targets - killing level 1 creatures means it will take a long time to work your 
way up.

  But at the higher levels, the gap, while increasing, isn't as big.  On table 
D, the amount needed for level 51 is 4.5 M,  Level 52 needs 4.8M more than that 
(characters total is about 80M at those levels).  So there isn't as much push to 
be fighting those high level creatures, as presumable the rewards sort of match 
that - if your fighting level 45 creatures instead of level 50, it probably 
means you need to kill 25% more of them or something, but not 500% more like it 
is at low levels.