Re: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?
If the human players were spending bunch of time doing calculations (like in live action games), then simplifying such things may make more sense. That is the point, I think: a fun game isn't a calculation game. So why put calculations we don't need? :) Likewise, if the game was much more an adventure game, then maybe not having stats would make more sense (by adventure game, I mean games where the focus is on exploration and solving puzzles, like say myst, and not killing things). Maybe that's somethine we should consider - remove some hackslash aspect, make the game more strategic, have more time to think about what you want to do next. I'm also not sure if removing stats would help out in your dragon example - the real problem in many cases when you first go to fight something is no idea how powerful it is. In many cases tough monsters can be found in areas with much weaker monsters. Then that needs to be fixed :) I think WC is the only thing that violates that rule, correct? And the reason it does so is because it was based on the old ADDv1 version of THACO/AC (or so I believe). I'll note that ADDv3 actually fixed that - higher the AC, the better. Likewise, the idea of WC basically went away - instead, you just have a bonus to hit. Ends up being very simple - if d20 + to hit = AC, you hit. Making that change in crossfire is IMO a good idea and would be really easy to do - one could easily enough write a script to go through and replace wc X with hit_bonus 20-X (with the script doing the calculation). Likewise, a similar change for AC could be done (new_ac = 20-X) Actually, I was more thinking like: if attack == defense, 50% chance to hit. Attack defense = more than 50%, capped to eg 90%. Attack defense = less than 50%, capped to eg 10%. Maybe not linear progression, but that can be adjusted (and 50% is some value I didn't think about, can be adjusted). Also, you could have 'sword +1' = +5 bonus to attack, or +10, something like that. Agree. Too often in maps/quests, the final reward is some artifact type weapon. It would be more interesting if these were components or pieces to make up really good weapons. And ideally give out very few static rewards (meaning that you always get item X from some quest - make it a treasure list of maybe 10 different items, etc) What about something like you need to do 10 quests to have all pieces needed for a powerful weapon? Each quests only gives one piece of the weapon, 10 needed. But that still doesn't address the issue of map camping or leveling up. I don't know if the problem is so much the amount of loot, or more the lack to spend it on anything. I know there are some exceptions - guild houses go up for auction, and you can spend lots of money if you want your apartment a big bigger or quick exits to different maps. But even many of those are one time upfront costs. At some point in my adventuring, I just don't find anything in the shops to buy very often - I've gotten all the spells, the likelihood of actually finding any decent items in the shops is low. So that money just piles up. I think that is really the problem - unless there are more useful ways to spend money (needed for adventuring gear) it just accumulates. Many things can be thought of. Apartment rent. Weapon/armor reparation. Potions to buy, or ingredients. Or lessons to level up or improve a skill. How do you handle dungeons? Once someone does the goblin quest map, no one can ever do it again (who is going to repopulate it with monsters, etc) Have some algorithm regenerate the map at some point, in a different shape? Mostly, make the world dynamic, with population variations and such (you trashed many orcs? hard for them, not many to see around - will become again visible later on). One could perhaps make more of the maps persistent on a per player basis (basically store them as per unique maps). So each player could only complete certain maps once. What I don't know how to do in that cases is parties where someone has done a map and other folks haven't (or suppose it is a big party, and several folks have explored a map to some degree). Clearly parties should be able to explore the same map if they wanted to. Yes, there's the party issue. IMO we should improve a lot how party work, to make it funner too. I think one current aspect of the game is 'everyone wants to be a hero'. If we want to keep this, of course we need to level up or such. If on the other hand we want something else, then maybe not everyone needs to be a hero :) One other point that was briefly discussed on the list: currently we lack a content and gameplay leader (not necessarily the same person, but well, maybe easier). Basically we need someone who can drive the game in some direction, and decide things (yes, those maps are great, accepted, could you add some more background story, please?, no,
Re: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?
Nicolas Weeger wrote: Likewise, if the game was much more an adventure game, then maybe not having stats would make more sense (by adventure game, I mean games where the focus is on exploration and solving puzzles, like say myst, and not killing things). Maybe that's somethine we should consider - remove some hackslash aspect, make the game more strategic, have more time to think about what you want to do next. That's a bit different game. I do think too much emphasis of the game is really hack and slash. Or maybe hack and slash with no real purpose. Most RPG's do tend to have a lot of combat - that is sort of the basis of an RPG vs adventure game. But lots also have some purpose - get this item from the bottom of a dungeon, kill that nasty boss creature, etc, and these get tied into some basic storyline or quest. Some of the crossfire dungeons do fit into some framework of 'go do this and get some reward'. But a lot are just you come accross some dungeon, go in, and kill everything in sight, and there happens to be nice reward at the end. Crossfire is an RPG game at its heart - its not an adventure game (like myst), so combat will be a part of it. And while puzzles are good, and more puzzles would be welcome, they are also not as repeatable as hack and slash. What I mean by that is that in crossfire, you could play a fighter and do dungeons and get that character at high level, and then decide to try a fireborn - while defeating monsters the first time with a fighter would give me hints on how to do it with a fireborn, it is a bit of a different experience. However, for the puzzle, once you know the answer, that is it, and the next time around it could be really easy and now just an excersize of running around and doing the steps. I personally don't find much replay value in adventure/puzzle games that much for that reason - the fun was figuring out the puzzles the first time around (or finding places, whatever), but RPG's do have some level of repeatability. The combat rebalancing is slowing down combat, so does give player a bit more time to think, which is a good thing. I think WC is the only thing that violates that rule, correct? And the reason it does so is because it was based on the old ADDv1 version of THACO/AC (or so I believe). I'll note that ADDv3 actually fixed that - higher the AC, the better. Likewise, the idea of WC basically went away - instead, you just have a bonus to hit. Ends up being very simple - if d20 + to hit = AC, you hit. Making that change in crossfire is IMO a good idea and would be really easy to do - one could easily enough write a script to go through and replace wc X with hit_bonus 20-X (with the script doing the calculation). Likewise, a similar change for AC could be done (new_ac = 20-X) Actually, I was more thinking like: if attack == defense, 50% chance to hit. Attack defense = more than 50%, capped to eg 90%. Attack defense = less than 50%, capped to eg 10%. Maybe not linear progression, but that can be adjusted (and 50% is some value I didn't think about, can be adjusted). Also, you could have 'sword +1' = +5 bonus to attack, or +10, something like that. That all works. I'm not sure if it is worth while going to a percentage system - then you have other oddities like a +1 sword really gives a 5% bonus (so why don't you just make that a +5 sword, etc). But this sort of goes more into the details - I think the general thing of higher numbers is better just makes sense - explaining WC and AC is always odd. Agree. Too often in maps/quests, the final reward is some artifact type weapon. It would be more interesting if these were components or pieces to make up really good weapons. And ideally give out very few static rewards (meaning that you always get item X from some quest - make it a treasure list of maybe 10 different items, etc) What about something like you need to do 10 quests to have all pieces needed for a powerful weapon? Each quests only gives one piece of the weapon, 10 needed. But that still doesn't address the issue of map camping or leveling up. Yeah, there are different approaches. If players craft their own weapons, then one could find different components that give different bonuses - instead of the existing armor improvment logic, maybe you find something that gives it 5% of fire resistance, or +1 str, etc. And you can go and choose how to combine those different pieces together. Maybe as a way to burn up money, you have the empty weapon sold in towns. For example, for 100 GP you can buy a sword that can hold 3 of those enchantments. If you want a sword that hold 10, it is 2500 GP, etc. At low levels, you may not be finding many of those enchantments, so not a big deal. Map camping is probably a different problem - I'm not sure it can really be solved as it relates to loot. I don't know
Re: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?
Andrew Fuchs wrote: 2008/12/14 Nicolas Weeger nicolas.wee...@laposte.net 1) Don't give out stats to players. Don't give HP/SP/GR/ whatever. Only give hints about the health (you feel very bad, you bleed a lot) and such things (with great effort you take the armor, but fall on the ground trying to put it on) Rationale: we're doing a game, not some financial computation. Also, players should feel whether they are ready to tackle dragons or are doing damage to an opponent, not merely check stats. Of course, internally, the game could (should) still use numbers/stats. Possibly use visual indicators either in-game or on the player's hud. An example for slowed movement would be a limping animation. Yep - many games also use small icons to denote effects (both good and bad) with some form a pseudo stat bar to denote duration. Putting that type of logic in probably wouldn't be that hard. For most all effects, once the effect starts, the duration is constant, so it would only need to be communicated to the client once. There are ways to end the effect prematurely, but in that case, just need some way to say 'this effect is now ended' 5) Remove map reset. A player destroyed a map? Well, another needs to rebuild it ingame - or let an NPC do it. That costs money and time, that's fine. And no need to rebuild it the same way :) If a player has already completed the dungeon and enters it alone, alter the later parts of it to show that it has already been completed. If they enter with a party and leave the dungeon with artifacts they already have (we would need to implement some type of item tracking system) add 'defects' to the newly obtained artifacts. These defects would make the artifacts break and become less effective. This starts to get pretty tricky, as I can quickly think of various ways this can be circumvented (if in a party and one of the other party members picks up those artifacts and then gives them to another player later on). There are probably ways to try and prevent that, but I'd be cautious of adding anything that may reduce player interaction (trades in this case) I think the problem that is trying to be solved needs to be identified, if there is a problem - there may be simpler ways to fix it. One could pretty simply put in certain force objects into the character to denote they've completed that dungeon (or maybe even just how many times they have been in it), and also prevent characters from entering if they've done it too often, etc. 2008/12/15 Mark Wedel mwe...@sonic.net I don't know if the problem is so much the amount of loot, or more the lack to spend it on anything. I know there are some exceptions - guild houses go up for auction, and you can spend lots of money if you want your apartment a big bigger or quick exits to different maps. But even many of those are one time upfront costs. At some point in my adventuring, I just don't find anything in the shops to buy very often - I've gotten all the spells, the likelihood of actually finding any decent items in the shops is low. So that money just piles up. I think that is really the problem - unless there are more useful ways to spend money (needed for adventuring gear) it just accumulates. An automated system that would allow a server administrator to charge a rent or tax on guild houses would be nice. Possibly allowing granular, per region, configuration. Rent for apartments could be charged, but we would need to implement a system that would allow players to recover items (except for built customizations) left in their inaccessible apartments. Guild house rent makes a lot of sense, since the guilds are supposed to be active, and if they are not, they should default on the rent and someone else buy the guild house. Apartments are perhaps trickier - do you base rent on amount of time the character is played, or real world earth time? And the rent has to be such that characters don't create secondary bank characters, etc because the rent is too high, and if it is too low, doesn't have much affect on getting money out of the game. Another idea is if a player's items occasionally need to be repaired. Requiring that powerful artifacts be maintained after some use or time, potentially by very skilled and expensive craftsmen, would give higher level players a use for their money. Consideration should be taken for lower level players, who might come to depend on artifacts which where donated to them. Done possibly by weakening the artifact to a point where it is of little use to higher level players, but still valuable to players at lower levels. This has been discussed many times. I've played some games that have such a system - in many cases, it can just end up being more annoying than anything else. That said, coming up with such a system may not be hard. Off the top of my head, each item could have some type of
