[crossfire] Monsters balance

[Mark Wedel]

On 5/1/20 2:01 AM, Nicolas Weeger wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> 
> Monsters balance (and game balance in general) is a big topic obviously :)
> 
> 
> I think right now monsters aren't really balanced, with big gaps in terms of
> difficulty (how long it takes to kill them, how dangerous they are for players)
> versus experience they give versus rewards they provide, and such.

  Totally true. I tried to balance them somewhat at one point, but it is a big task, and hard to get right.  Also, because some monsters have vulnerabilities, they still become easy to kill if the players know to use the right spell/weapon against them.

> So I was thinking along the idea of making monsters more like players in terms
> levels.
> 
> 
> Basically: for various "types" of monsters, define a level 1 prototype, and
> leveling rules. Then using that generate monsters of various levels.
> 
> 
> 
> For instance, with totally random numbers that would need to be adjusted :)
> 
> For undead, decide that zombies are level 1, with eg 4 hp, dam 2, they give
> 100 exp. For each undead level, add 3 hp, 1.5 dam, 2 armour, and 500 exp.
> 
> If ghosts are level 5, then they have approximately 16 hp, dam 8, armour 8,
> giving 2100 exp.
> 
> 
> Of course this wouldn't be a hard rule, it could be changed and altered, but
> it could make monsters more interesting.
> 
> It also doesn't take into account armour/weapons/spells, or hp regeneration,
> of course.

  I always sort of thoughts that if you say monster level should be roughly equal to player level (though maybe not, so you tend to have swarms of monsters in crossfire), you would want things like HP to be on par, eg, a level 5 monster should have roughly same HP as level 5 player.

  My thought for that is things like spell effects - PvP was really deadly (or getting caught in a friendly spell if that was enabled) because monsters used to have lots more HP the players, so spells had to do a lot of damage to be useful.  But it then meant if the monsters had the same spell, it killed players.

> 
> 
> Exp itself is a big topic too. It really depends on how many monsters we want
> players to kill to level up. Should it be a zillion monsters? A few hundred of
> around the same level? Could one or 2 really though give enough exp to level
> up?

  The fact is that there tends to be lots of monsters piled in the game.  While it may make sense for there to be fewer monsters vs swarms you just kill by the dozens as you run through them or hit them with spells, changing all the maps to reflect that is a big change.

  Rather than monsters, it may be better to think about time to do so.  Is 30 minutes/level (up to some level, like 20) a reasonable time?  So it takes 10 hours to get to level 20?  Then you start looking at how fast you kill them, etc.

  It could make some sense that for dungeons, most of the trash monsters are worth very little experience, but the final end monster is worth a lot - more than it should be worth from a pure monster perspective, but that basis is more of 'this is the reward for getting to the end'.  And one can then make a better guess on how long it would take a player of the appropriate level to get to that point.