[crossfire] Balance ideas

[Mark Wedel]

On 01/ 8/11 02:54 AM, Nicolas Weeger wrote:
>>    Yes - that is reasonable.  But I also wonder if there is/should be a way
>> to increase potency at the expense of sp cost.
>>
>>    Taking that fireball example, changing the weighting would more or less
>> keep the sp cost the same - but the power of the fireball itself does not
>> change all that much.  But maybe there are some modifiers which increase
>> the power (eg, damage, duration, range), but also drastically increase the
>> sp cost - if you want to try and emulate current spell effects, your sort
>> of need this.
>>
>>    Otherwise, just by changing weighting, you will never be able to get
>> something as powerful as a large fireball currently is - but at the same
>> time, the large fireball itself is higher level and costs considerably
>> more sp (base 16 sp vs 6).
>
> Which is why I mention that possibly the sp cost is a weighted combination of
> the various weights, so you can make "power" more expensive that "radius", for
> instance.

  Right, but I think for that to really work (get desired effect), you may need 
to do something beyond weighting - adjusting the weighting itself may not change 
some parameters enough.  You might almost need some modifier which does 
something like (range+1) at some increased cost of SP.


>>    This is just my preference, but at some level, it is nice to have things
>> to try and achieve (once I get 10th level, I can cast this cool spell) -
>> if number of spells is drastically reduced, I have a feeling that effect
>> would also change.
>
> So make fireball a level 1, comet a level 47, meteor storm a level 80. That's a
> challenge to reach 80 to get really powerful meteor storm spell :)
>
> Or there could be steps in increase, ie from level 1 to 10, fireball has a base
> power of 3, from 11 to 20 5, and such, with some "big" steps along the way.

  Yes - that might work.  I was more just thinking about the idea of learning 
spells.

  On a similar note, I think it would be interesting to have most all skills 
give some new benefit once in a while, eg, for melee skills, maybe at higher 
level, there is a chance of stunning on opponent - for thieves, extra damage 
would make sense, and so on.

  Those wouldn't as much be about balance (those extra effects a fighter has may 
make things a little easier, but not a lot), but more about cool new things - 
eg, 'that is something I couldn't do before'.

>
> Or add a "fire mastery" skill, that will increase the power or radius when you
> gain it.

  That might also work.  I wonder if one could even do something like that for 
spells - have a 'beginners version', 'expert version', 'master version', 
'grandmaster version' type of things.  Maybe the higher versions have an 
increase in base damage or something else - I don't know.

  On a side note, I think it might be better to remove the sp adjustment based 
on level.  Eg, that basic fireball will only cast 5 sp, whether you are level 1 
or 50 - presuming no modifiers.  It is just odd now that based on when cost 
increases, one could gain a level but effectively cast fewer spells because 
their cost has gone up.


>
> Note that the whole global balance requires some heavy work on item_power.
> I'd definitely see good weapons over 30, just to require a player to be high
> level and not a low one.
> Same would be for armors, a 1-40 item power doesn't seem too weird. This would
> force players to compromise on the equipment.

  Yes - in some places, this is easy to fix - any pre-defined weapon (eg, it is 
set in a map) can have the item power set appropriately.

  A problem is for the random items that are generated - it can generate things 
with potentially wrong values (wrong in the sense it is too high or too low) - 
that is because it uses a fairly basic formula which is always hard to adjust to 
be perfect (some attacks are more important than others, etc).

  On a vaguely related idea would be to change the entire basis on how weapons 
are improved (armor also, but that is more limited right now).

  Many games have the idea of runes/sigils/whatever that improve items, but the 
item has a limited number of slots to hold these.  These sigils are also 
found/recovered from items during adventuring.

  In some ways, this is more interesting than current method which just requires 
large amounts of wealth - you need to find both the base item you want to 
improve (better one may have more slots, as well as just have more base slots) 
as well as the sigils themselves.  But that probably starts to stray away from 
balance, other than the fact that the current weapon improvement scheme probably 
has balance issues right now.