[crossfire] Balance ideas

[Mark Wedel]

On 01/ 2/11 03:31 AM, Nicolas Weeger wrote:
> Hello.
>
>
> A few ideas for game balance:
> http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/user:ryo:balance

  Looks interesting - a few questions/thoughts:

Spells:
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Am I right in understanding that the modifiers only change the weight of 
damage/duration/radius?  This also means that the same actual effect could be 
achieved by different weights (eg, a long strong large fireball (presuming large 
is weight 9) would be the same the default or a small short weak fireball?  No 
problem with that, just trying to make sure I understand it.

It also seems that this doesn't necessarily change balance much in itself - it 
makes spells much more flexible, but the key for the balance on that is defining 
the right base values for things like damage, duration, radius and sp cost.

  I would guess that there would still be higher level spells out there with 
higher base damages, durations, etc (eg, large fireball as we have now) - am I 
right in that, or are you thinking of reducing number of spells and just letting 
players adjust the parameters to get desired results?

Resistances & Attacks:
----------------------
I personally think that there are too many attack types right now (26) and that 
should perhaps get reduced and cleaned up (maybe around 10?)  Many things that 
are attacktypes right now are really effects (cancellation, depletion, blind, 
etc) - as such, there is no corresponding resistance to it or it is not used much.

For many of them, maybe collapse the attacktype (and add items that provide 
resistance), but spell (or item) could still impart actual effect.

For example, confusion, slow, paralyze, fear could all be defined as mental 
attacks, so make that an attack type, and one could have items like 'Helm of 
mind protection (resist mental +50)'.

  Drain/depletion/death/life stealing could similar be put into a single 
category, and perhaps a few others could get combined.

  And some, like chaos, ghosthit, and perhaps a few others, are really effects 
(ghosthit means creature disappears after hitting, chaos means that the 
attacktype is supposed to shift around - it isn't supposed to be an attacktype 
actually encountered IMO) - those should be done in other ways.

Monsters and players:
---------------------
That looks pretty good - one thing I might add is 'should monsters use the same 
rules for stats as players?'  Right now, the meaning of stats for monsters is 
completely different than it is for players.

  If they followed the same rules, one could look at say a level 5 ogre and its 
stats and look at a level 5 character and have some idea if the fight might be 
anything close - right now, one can not really do that.  I think if one actually 
wants to add leveling rules to monsters, this makes it easier, as then monsters 
and players could basically use that same bit of code.

Lots of good ideas in all of that.