[crossfire] Game play thoughts, ideas, ramblings :)

[Mark Wedel]

  In general, I agree with much of what you say, and will only discuss points where I have something to add or differ.  I reference different versions of D&D here, partly because that is what the game is seemingly based on, but also because looking at what other have done may be useful

Scattered content: I agree with this, and will note that while information on some maps may have hints provided elsewhere, then it becomes the question of 'How was I suppose to know I had to talk to X to find out about this?'  And there is something of a fine line between having enough hints vs so many that it becomes over advertised.  I guess other games make this a little easier by making NPCs that have something useful to say be highlight or something.

Random maps, from my recollection, really were meant as something of a filler, as well as ways to have some variety - the final map may be set up, but the path to get there varies.  But really deep random maps more seem to be a way to get lots of items.

Game rules/races/classes - agree here, some attempts were made in the past in the past to add differentiation, but one problem is that the game is largely hack and slash, and that mage ends up behaving a lot like a fighter in order to regain sp.  I think some thought would have to be given on what changes may be necessary to let someone play as a pure spellcaster.  That concept exists in D&D because they are part of a party.  In crossfire, where they may be on their own, how does that exist?  And how to balance all of this.  One thing D&Dv5 did was give spellcasters OK damage cantrips that they can cast at well - maybe something like a 0 sp magic bullet spell.

The attribute system also follows the D&Dv1 where the bonus from stats gets a lot better as they go up (at 24 -> 25 is a lot bigger bonus than a 14->15).  D&Dv3 basically changed that to a linear system - in such a system, letting characters raise stats now and again as they level (and make weapons that improve stats) less an issue.

Items: Some games behave as crossfire (every item that the monster had drops) and other only drop a subset.  One thing that makes crossfire worse is that there are so many variation, and a lot more things are killed.  So you don't get a stack of 10 short swords from killing 10 goblins, you get 5 normal ones, 2 -1, 1 +1, a few different 'shortsword of X' where X is different, etc.

Spells: Agree there are too many.  Being able to do something like 'cast fireball of radius X' would be one way to reduce the number of spells, as small/medium/large variations go away.  X would depend on level of the caster, and perhaps keep gong up, so at level 100, you could cast massive fireballs.  Maybe as balance, if radius is large, damage goes down, but how to exactly balance is hard.

One of the elder scrolls games allowed one to make custom spells (I'm think 3- morrowind), and that did not show up in subsequent games.  But I quickly learned how you min/max spell creation, so I sort of think adding it to crossfire would create a new set of balancing headaches.

The fact that there are a huge number of spells is what led me to create different spellcasting schools - it just seemed a bit over powered that one would get access to hundreds of spells (this sort of relates to the skills).

Going to stricter classes above, if one made it not possible to learn new spellcasting skills, one could differentiate classes some by each having a unique spellcasting skill, and the spells for each skill is different (there would be some overlap, but not every one would have fireball).  This could allow for more balance spellcasting classes, which at the same time are different.

Skills could probably be revisited - some may not be interesting enough to really warrant keeping around - some were also made when character level == effective level for skills, so how to level them was not a concern, but leveling them where you have to earn experience in the skill is a problem.

Resistances & attacktypes: There probably are too many.  And some are more effect than damage.