Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
Hi! I'm going to reply to multiple emails in one mail, so please bear with me if I seem to jump from thing to thing rather incoherently. First, Mark did nothing to monsters and spells; what he did was a start, not the whole thing. And I think his approach is good: first make fighters work in melee like we want them to. After that, adjust everything else. We have a clear (well, -ish) goal: to make a balanced combat system, where every class and race stands (relatively) equal chance of staying alive (on average - some class/race combos will naturally fare better against certain adversaries and worse against others), gaining levels etc; plus we want to have a system where battles happen slowly enough to make it possible to use tactics and even teamwork. I think the best way of doing this is to first get a baseline, like 1st level fighter battling against newbie tower and beginners places #1 and #2. We can then proceed to other 1st level classes while fighters go up to 2nd level (or fifth or whatever small number) to fix the baseline there. But what Kevin did with the priest, is very important as well; although it may have been a little premature at this point. Later on, though, that kind of testing will be paramount. The idea of mana/grace regeneration needing rest is, again, one thing that has been used a lot in pen-and-paper RPG's over the time. I think it has proven itself a good solution. *BUT* in order to keep the magic users comparable to warriors in this kind of system, the magic users must be able to do a lot more damage than warriors per unit time. This is because the magic user can only cast a certain number of spells before retreating to regenerate the mana/grace while the warrior can keep up hacking and slashing. (Note that some systems have some kind of exhaustion or endurance for warriors as well, which means they need to rest as well. In that case the amount of damage/time may be closer to same.) But this does lead to an interesting question - how do we deal with classes that are not good at melee, especially hybrid classes? Do we need to handle them any differently from basic classes? I do not think 50/50 fighter/mage has to be able to finish off a 80th level monster - the character is just 50th level, after all. In practise, this means twice the work for the dual-class character to reach 50/50 level when compared to a single-classer, but is that a problem? The dual-classer is basically playing two single class characters. Paladins, rogues (do we have them?-o) and such are a more difficult question. They need careful balancing. monster. The simplest fix would just can't use a bow if next to monster (and vice versa) whether it is attacking you or not. I have a different idea about this. How about if arrows never hit a monster/*player* next to the archer? This should be easy enough to implement for single-square monsters, but how about bigger beasts, like dragons, I do not know. The nice thing about this is that it gives possibility of teamwork: put a fighter in front of the archer to keep the orcs from hitting the archer... and the archer won't hit the fighter either. I am a little confused about the talk about buffering keystrokes. Do we need to buffer them at all? What advantage does it give anyway? It seems to mostly make people die; have died many times myself casting a few too many spells in a row... Personally I hate it and use running all the time because it does not buffer (why?). As what comes to the speed of the battle, I do not think it matters is clearing the newbie tower takes some time. I do not care if getting to level 2 takes a while etc. What I crave for is a sense of going forward, gaining something. This can be loot, levels, skills, spells; sometimes it can even be a piece of information eventually leading to some quest or just the history of the place. Slow pace is ok, I do not need to be 100th level in a couple of days. Mark mentioned he needed to use tactics in the newbie tower - I think this is a good sign! We are definitely moving in the right direction. Generators, of course, are a bit of a problem if killing monsters takes too long, but generators spawn-rate can be adjusted down accordingly (without need to remove the generators at all). I do not like generators but I do not think we should get rid of them - yet. They are too essential (they provide the challenge) in too many maps. As what comes to spells, I am against big, medium and small versions of the same spells; just having the effect increase by caster level is enough. I also favour area effect spells and big numbers of monsters - in certain situations. This has to do with the above mention of spellcasters needing a higher kills/second ratio than fighters because their resources run out. (BTW spells like fireball are useless even now, they can kill nothing except critter: at low levels not even a fireborn can cast enough of them to kill any relevant number of orcs and when the caster has
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat (vs magic)
Nicolas Weeger wrote: I think most everyone knows magic is messed up in many ways - many of the top vote getters were related to magic. And certainly once melee combat is done, the spell system gets redone I'd say we should try to do both. Fixing melee implies to balance monsters, so we should take the time to balance for magic too. I'm not denying that magic needs to be redone - in fact, I know magic needs to be redone. A baseline against what to tune is needed however. If monsters are still getting adjusted to be right power in melee, any adjustment to spells is hard, because the monster may still be in flux. But what may work is something like deferred tuning. What I tend to see for melee tuning is that it will basically start at low levels and work up. So we may be at a point where we say 'melee combat up to about level 5 is correct', and we could then start working on the spells that tune magic up to about level 5. And if some major problem is found in how things are working that requires re-tuning of monsters, at least things are not so far along that it prevents major effort on retuning everthing. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
Newbie tower's kobolds are seemingly not possible with him even at second level even trying to use hit and run tactics... and this is even with a priest who can regen grace by praying. We do not want to bore people to tears at the beginning of the game, or no-one will stick it out. I'd hate to think how a mana magic user would fare with their limited mana regen. Once I got up to level 2 praying, I was finally able to take out generators near the door, so I was able to figure I was making headway, but this took a long time... maybe over 15 minutes. Now I am no expert crossfire tactician but I cannot buy stuff because the guy doesn't have any money, so not much to be done, and he has died a couple of times already without hope of being able to get a potion to restore stats. This strengthens concern about the feasibility of looking at physical combat only. I think it might be tough to keep disciplined at checking how stuff affects all characters. Testing with a character that uses primarily physical combat is going to tend to off-balance those that have to use physical combat as a backup because they are going to be affected even more than the warrior class. Remember that combat speed isn't all about how fast I hit them. The more I play, the more I realize that mostly what changed is I can't hit as fast. I am still extremely vulnerable to buffered keystrokes... maybe even more so now because action is so much more slow. I have to play very fast to avoid death. I can't say that I think this is an improvement. I don't want to be slower on one hand, I want to be able to be faster at saving my life. OTOH, regarding balance of physical combat vs. magic, yes, there is an element of wanting to be slower so I can really play a magic user without always having to defer to saving myself with physical combat. The player should not always be on the edge of death due to things like buffered up keystrokes... Michtoen seemed to address this in his comments on being able to interrupt the incoming commands when a monster was beside the player, but I didn't really find out what all he was talking about when he reviewed what was done with Daimonin. This, to me, was a lot of what was behind my vote for slowing down combat. Kevin ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
Kevin R. Bulgrien wrote: Remember that combat speed isn't all about how fast I hit them. The more I play, the more I realize that mostly what changed is I can't hit as fast. I am still extremely vulnerable to buffered keystrokes... maybe even more so now because action is so much more slow. I have to play very fast to avoid death. I can't say that I think this is an improvement. I don't want to be slower on one hand, I want to be able to be faster at saving my life. OTOH, regarding balance of physical combat vs. magic, yes, there is an element of wanting to be slower so I can really play a magic user without always having to defer to saving myself with physical combat. The player should not always be on the edge of death due to things like buffered up keystrokes... Michtoen seemed to address this in his comments on being able to interrupt the incoming commands when a monster was beside the player, but I didn't really find out what all he was talking about when he reviewed what was done with Daimonin. This, to me, was a lot of what was behind my vote for slowing down combat. So something like that is doable. The way to explain it is that the server looks at all commands sent by the player every tick (not just the one at the top of the queue), and some commands have precedence and are perhaps meta commands, like a 'cancel all previous commands'. In that way, you're playing, having buffered up a bunch of stuff, and then something happens that changes the dynamic of the battle. You hit the 'cancel' button, it cancels the previous commands, and then starts doing the commands after the cancel. I've wanted to right this irrespective of slowing down combat - it sounds like to some extent that this is perhaps more relevant now. It also has some other advantages - some commands should be freebie commands, and thus executed whether or not the character actually has an action (things like who, maps, chat). One could also extend this so that all commands have a priority, and the server processes in priority order. So you're in the middle of combat, and have hit the keys to cast some spells. You notice your hp are low, so you drink the potion of healing. In general, you probably want the potion quaffing to be very high priority, so it happens first, but your casting of spells still goes off. This is a bit more flexible than the cancel action. Programatically, it isn't that much harder - the harder part is an interface for the players to set these different priorities - it probably be simplest just to having things like 'high, normal, low' instead of a number scheme, as that would be easier to understand. Kevin ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
Getting up to level 6 with the gnome priest gave a bit of time to review. The first few levels were very hard, but, as playing progressed, it did strike me that some of that perception could be attributable to having played so much on servers where the physical combat was so effective that one expected to do that on the new server. It became a little more easy to see that maybe tweaking physical combat first might be a decent way to start changing expectations about how fast game play should be... so there is likely merit in playing around with things so long as people are testing it and giving feedback on real experiences with a variety of characters... It is a fine line though. There are so many subjective areas that come into play. This character had high stats and so a reasonable amount of grace. With a mid-range character I think there is still a chance for being quite frustrated. In the end though, I do believe playing a mana-based magic user would be extremely dangerous / tedious. It seems very hard to think that an adjustment will not be needed there immediately even if grace based magic is left alone. Anyway, since I've spoken about balancing everything, figured it would be good to show that I see some merit to experimenting on a smaller scale also. It was a fun evening... Thanks for putting that server up. Kevin ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
Some short comments about all this... I'm concerned no one replied already, but well... My brain is slow, and needs time to formalize thoughts :) Shortly summarized (so that those who do not like to read a lot don't need to): I am not convinced at all that you can isolate the combat system from the rest of the gaming system. I'm also not convinced that tweaking the current system a bit can provide a very good answer to the current issues perceived by players. Now, for the less impatient ones, I'll provide a little more details on why I think so. First, there is a problem of content. All the current maps were designed with the base idea that combats are fast and furious in mind. It means large rooms full of monsters in which the player runs and harvest. Slowing down combat would dramatically change this, and involve the complete redesign of most - if not all - maps in which combat happens. This is probably the most important issue in making combat pace changes, especially given that there are not a lot of map-makers out there. Second, there is the problem of other combat skills - basically, spells. Those were too designed with the idea of large-scale battles, with a single players fighting lots of monsters at the same time. Cone spells, as well as the explosive spells (like fireball) were obviously made with the idea of damaging a lot of opponents in a single cast. If the combat pace is slowed down, then it means the player will, on average, face less monsters at a given time, and thus this will reduce the effectiveness of those combat spells. The result will be that magic will get harder to use - and given that it *already* is hard (try to play a spellcaster in the context of a permadeath server if you don't believe it ! :) ), it would ultimately mean changes in the magic system as well. Third, archetypes will need massive changes - if the combat pace changes, so does the game balance; and thus, the monsters and weapons characteristics. Although some of such adaptations can be performed automatically by scripts, I believe that handwriting will also be required to balance the result in an appropriate way. Finally, the whole mechanism of combat needs to be rethought, and not only its pace, IMHO. Currently, melee combat is nothing more than run into a monster. There is no combat visuals, little tactics, and no real variations between melee techniques - whatever the weapon or the melee skill used, it is just a matter of running into monsters. As a fighter, I'd like to have to choose between various techniques, to have special hits, or simply to enjoy seeing my character swinging its poleaxe all around orcs :). Overall, I tend to agree with Kevin R. Bulgrien's point of view: I don't think designing things piece by piece is a good idea. But given that the boss already expressed lack of interest on that point, I'll not extend furthermore on this. Just my 2 eurocents. (Now, Ryo, you have one more reply - and before the rewrite was finished. :) ) ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
In some sense, this is sort of an inverse of how things work now - all actions more or less take the same time, but the characters speed differs. Hum no, spell casting for instance takes a variable amount of time depending on the spell :) Also some commands take more time, I think And in many ways, the above makes a fair amount of sense - some objects should modify certain action speeds, and not others - for example, speed boots should reduce cost of movement, but really shouldn't reduce cost of swinging a weapon. I think this would also need to be explored more - one quick concern I have off the top of my head is that all the different actions may now have custom code to figure out extra cost for this action based on various attributes. It also seems to me that a basic speed multiplier for each living creature may be a bit simplistic - if one were to do that approach, one would think different actions should perhaps have different costs based on races (some may be fast at spell casting, slow at combat). OTOH, that is a distinction that is currently missing from crossfire. Having different speeds for races is maybe not required for now? Let's have variable speed for different actions first, then adjust slowly :) Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'aléatoire !] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
Here's a relatively simple alternative suggestion: Actions have a speed rating. Essentially, this represents how often an average character would be able to perform that action. So this will be an attribute of weapons and of skills (specially interesting for unarmed combat skills), and possibly spells. A special case is walking. Either just decide that this is a constant value, or make that an attribute of the living creature. Then, on top of that, every living creature has a speed modifier: a multiplier that is applied to every action's speed. While I call that speed, we could just as well do the opposite and call it time (T for the purposes of this email), meaning how many seconds, ticks, or whatever the action takes. Or call it speed to make archetype writing easier to understand, but internally convert that to T. So when your turn arrives, if you have an action queued, you perform that action, and then your next turn is after this action finishes, T ticks(/seconds/...) later. If there is no action queued, you're assumed to take the default action of wait, which has a (low) constant T. I believe this is simple to implement, easy for map/arch writers to grok, and easy for new players to understand. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. - personal:http://lalo.hystericalraisins.net/ technical:http://www.hystericalraisins.net/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
One thought I just had about this is changing weapon speed vs normal speed. snip Thoughts/comments? Seems nice :) Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'aléatoire !] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat (vs magic)
Playing with permadeath on ailesse recently has been very enlightening. I have a very hard time keeping characters alive, so I've finally become so frustrated that I have been trying out different characters. Those experiences are making me have a different viewpoint on slowing down combat than I had during the vote since I've had to play many low-level characters. In short, magic use is terrible. If you choose to play a magic-use only player, you are totally and completely disadvantaged. A magic-only user will die very, very easily, and will level very, very slowly compared to a physical combat character. Maybe large area spells will be used for fast monsters, so you're sure to hurt them? Or for monsters less powerful than you? If the change is such that large area effect spells are not so useful, that may not be bad. Larger effect spells, like fireball, will still have their uses. If monsters are far away, things like fireball still quite useful (the cone spells have a more limited range). Also, so long as each space of a big monster takes damage, large spells still have some advantage there. I'm sure these changes will require rebalancing of spells, but that is also on the list of things to do, so I'm less worried about spells right now, but just trying to keep it in mind. They already need re-balancing. So if the hp disparity between players and monsters is sorted out, and we say it is reasonable to cast 10 spells to kill tough creatures, that means it would take 10 spells to kill a same level player. That to me is quite reasonable. that's always the potential. However, it also depends on difference of HP based on level. If say a level 10 character has 100 hp, and a level 50 has 500 HP, that is only a difference of 5, so even then, unlikely 1 hit will kill a character, since target would be 10 spells for 500 hp damage (or 50 dam/spell). That said, things like resistances, slaying, etc, can all mix things up. that one of the interesting things about giving characters more starting hp. If characters start at say 50, and at level 10 have 150, that is a 3 times improvement, so would still generally take 3 spells from that 10th level person to kill that level 1 person. I think if hp is adjusted, grace and mana would have to go up also. Simply because if creatures have 50 hp, and we say the target is 10 spells to kill a creature, a player will need to have the grace/mana to cast those 10 spells. Possibly, yes, else you run the risk of making spells harder - unless they are compensated later on with really powerful things? No! Do not make them harder. They are already harder. The more I see in this discussion, the more I agree with other sentiments on thread by Juha Jäykkä [EMAIL PROTECTED], and on an IRC commentary by Michael Toennies. I am thinking more and more that any change here needs to be looked at with a system perspective first, and not tackled piece by piece. At the same time I say that, I do not know how one pulls that off very well with a distributed development team where only e-mails, irc, etc are the available ways of communicating, so, then I wonder how possible suggesting such a thing is. Maybe, but I think it would be very boring to play a mage in that case - cast a couple spells, maybe not kill anything with them, have to rest to regain mana, cast some more spells, etc. One goal is to balance things such that mages and fighters are both fairly equal at all levels, so I think low level mages need to be effective. With the changes, it may be some different spells are needed - maybe 1st level firebolt and the like. I really think I would vote differently today, and if work on one thing or another had to be done, rather than a rework of the entire system, I think I would now say that magic should be adjusted before attempting to slow down combat. Yes, of course, but we're talking of redoing the whole combat system in the first place ;) Right - I'm open to this, but would like to hear more discussion on this - do people generally think it is a good idea? I believe I agree that looking at all the combat is critical, and, that magic is severely handicapped at the moment (for low-level characters at least, which is all I know since in all these years I don't think I've every topped level 40). Ok, Ryo, you can stop complaining by at least one increment... I commented... ;-) and stopped lurking. Kevin ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat (stamina?)
One thought I just had about this is changing weapon speed vs normal speed. Right now, normal speed is used for movement, and if you attack something, what is currently your weapon speed gets moved into speed left for those extra attacks. This also creates other odd effects, as now it is also movement speed. My thought is to completely separate them. speed (and speed_left) is only used for movement, and is used like things are now. weapon_speed ( weapon_speed_left- abbreviated wsl) work like the speed ones - each tick, wsl is increased by weap_sp, not to exceed it. If moving onto a space would result in an attack, an attack is made so long as wsl0. For the attack, wsl is decreased by one. speed_left is not modified, or perhaps decreased by some amount so that it becomes difficult to do a 'move, attack, move' in same tick. I'd say that weapon_speed itself doesn't get directly changed by this, but it may be reasonable that if advanced combat options are added, some actions take more time than other (disarm maybe decreases wsl by 2 for example). Now what I thought would make this interesting is instead of weapon_speed being just a player attributed, make it an object/monster attribute. This gives another way to tune monsters. Now you can have monsters that move really quickly, but perhaps don't attack very fast - things that are hard to run from. And you could have other monsters that move slowly, but attack fast if nearby. In a sense, this could be used to mimic creatures that should get multiple attacks (think something like a squid with multiple tentacles). the default behavior for monsters would be weapon_speed = speed, so that every monster does not need to be modified. Thoughts/comments? I suspect it is going to be difficult to balance combat and effectively slow down the combat without making physical combat metered like mana/grace combat is. A proposal for making physical combat speed controlled by a metered resource like stamina is hereby on the table for discussion. Physical combat is extremely unbalanced a the moment, IMO. Kevin ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat (vs magic)
On Sun, Sep 23, 2007 at 09:34:21AM -0500, Kevin R. Bulgrien wrote: In short, magic use is terrible. FACK I compared how easy it is to clear the beginners map with a fireborn sorcerer and a troll warrior (search for fireborn sorcerer): http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/2007-July/011729.html If you choose to play a magic-use only player, you are totally and completely disadvantaged. A magic-only user will die very, very easily, and will level very, very slowly compared to a physical combat character. It's a pain to play a magic character in a role playing manner at the moment, yes. I am thinking more and more that any change here needs to be looked at with a system perspective first, and not tackled piece by piece. That's the point. Voting on single points will hardly help to improve the system at all. At the same time I say that, I do not know how one pulls that off very well with a distributed development team where only e-mails, irc, etc are the available ways of communicating, Collect all ideas at the wiki and discuss each point until we get a consistent system. so, then I wonder how possible suggesting such a thing is. Good question. As long as the coding itself has the priority without looking for the entire result, it's unlikely to end with a great system. Jürgen ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
Nicolas Weeger wrote: Maybe, but I think it would be very boring to play a mage in that case - cast a couple spells, maybe not kill anything with them, have to rest to regain mana, cast some more spells, etc. One goal is to balance things such that mages and fighters are both fairly equal at all levels, so I think low level mages need to be effective. With the changes, it may be some different spells are needed - maybe 1st level firebolt and the like. My opinion is that we have too many spells, actually. Small, medium, large fireball? I'd rather see one fireball, maybe with possibility to adjust it in real time - cast for 1s get a small fireball, cast for 3s get a large one? Note also that currently, for some spells, it gives a weird delay - it's probably faster to cast 5 small healing spells than one medium healing, and you get roughly the same amount of hp. This is perhaps getting ahead of discussions related to hand to hand combat, but I do agree, refining the number of spells will be needed. This is especially true because there is the goal to have meaningful spells from level 1 to 100 (or thereabouts). That would then equate to something like 10 different variety of fireballs. Being able to tune spells is interesting idea. the hardest part is figuring out correct balance (how much more should the large fireball cost vs small, etc). If in the end, there are archetypes for these different versions, that doesn't really help things out. You want to be able to do something like 'cast fireball (radius=5, dam=20)' type of things. You obviously can not cast a spell of higher power than you're allowed (for example, based on your level, maybe maximum damage you can do is 15). Adding this change in wouldn't be hard - but balancing it would be (in terms of mana cost and speed). I also wonder how much long term impact it has - it seems that at a fairly low level, characters will have weapons that do non physical damage (eg, fire, cold, electricity, whatever), and at that point, the distinction on physical attack types is lost. Maybe as part of this, all weapons that do extra attacktypes needs to be redone some, so that the damage of the attacktype is minor extra damage. For example, that firebrand may still do mostly physical (slashing) damage, but also do some amount of fire damage. This greatly changes weapon combat, but once again, maybe not a bad thing. Well, I guess the 'attacktype' can be seen in 2 ways: * 'absolute' value, ie 3 phy dam + 5 fire dam * 'proportion' value, ie 5 phy dam + 5% fire + 10% cold, or something like that Ideally, we could have: Right now, code has been added so you can do things like: dam_physical 10 dam_fire 5 dam_magic 3 in the objects/archetypes, so damage for weapons can be tuned in any way. However, I think very few objects have been adjusted, so it comes down to a question if most weapons should be adjusted to have mostly dam_slashing (or the like) and minor amounts of the elemental damage. Otherwise, if I can get a 'dam_fire 20' weapon, adding slashing/piercing/blunt damage types really doesn't do much. * damage dependant on overall level difference, or 'attack' vs 'defense' difference? ie you're highly skilled against a low level monster, you'll aim for weak spots and do high damage ; you fight a higher level monster, you have issues hitting correctly, opponent defends nicely In theory, this should amount to ac vs wc - if something has a high AC, it is difficult to hit. Some game systems do use the method that based on how much you hit by determines how much damage. For example, using a d20 as a basis, if you need to roll an 18+ to hit the creature, you'd never do much damage (at best, you can hit by 2). But if you need a 5+, then if you roll a 5, you still hit but don't do much damage, but if you roll a 18, your hit and do a lot of damage. I don't think I'd really like that with crossfire - adjusting damage based on how well you hit, and then adjusting it further based on resistances of the creature would in many cases meaning doing virtually no damage. I think with this, it would also make it harder to tune monsters. The game systems that do use this relative damage based on how well you hit tend not to have damage reduction/absorption like crossfire. * damage dependant on 'monster's type', ie mace against skeleton gives high damage, sword against skeleton isn't that great That is easy enough to do based on resist values - skeletons would probably have something like resist_slashing 90 and resist_piercing 90, and probably resist_blunt 0 (or maybe even negative). * 'elemental' (fire, cold, ...) damage could be either a proportion of dealed damage (ie you hit the monster for 15 phy and 10% fire), or a random value (you hit the monster for 12 phy, and randomly for 5 fire). This could lead to a greater variety of items. So you're then
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat (vs magic)
Kevin R. Bulgrien wrote: In short, magic use is terrible. If you choose to play a magic-use only player, you are totally and completely disadvantaged. A magic-only user will die very, very easily, and will level very, very slowly compared to a physical combat character. I think most everyone knows magic is messed up in many ways - many of the top vote getters were related to magic. And certainly once melee combat is done, the spell system gets redone I also do agree that larger pictures need to be kept in mind. I personally don't think a total system perspective/design can be done. Things like that just don't generally work on a distributed system - the amount of work needed is quite large, such that one person can't do it in a timely fashion, and trying to coordinate that amongst a bunch of people, especially given the time differences, is very difficult. I'd also say that is only really required if the current system (code) was deemed completely unsuitable and thus needed to be redone from scratch. Obviously, in that case, you'd need want to try and design most of the system before writing code. I don't think crossfire is in that state. Combat needs to adjustments, as do spells. Some of those adjustments may be pretty big. But I also think that archetype changes will be a much bigger piece than code changes. My perspective is that since the code is largely sound, one can do things in smaller pieces. In this particular case, it sort of falls into a 'redo melee combat, and then balance the spells so they are comparable to melee' or 'redo spells, and then rebalance melee so it is in balance with the spells'. I don't think 'redo both spells melee simultaneously and balance the two together at the same time' is especially doable, given resources available. Now in terms of rebalancing spells first and then combat, or combat first then spells, I'd sort of call that a tossup. I personally think it will be easier to do combat first and then balance spells to that, but may be wrong. I'm more than happy to take part in discussion on what the spell system should look like, ways to balance it, etc. I'm not particularly interested in getting into discussions about how things should be designed/discussed, etc, as most likely that is a large time sync that won't show much in the way of results. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
This gives another way to tune monsters. Now you can have monsters that move really quickly, but perhaps don't attack very fast - things that are hard to run from. And you could have other monsters that move slowly, but One example that comes to mind is dragon breath - at the moment dragons basically have unlimited mana and dragonbreath/icestorm/poison cloud/lightning at very quick casting times at their disposal. While the flying dragons (can they really fly in dungeons?) are supposedly quite fast and not easily outrun by PCs, they might well take some time between using their breath weapons. Of course this makes dragons easier prey than currently, which is bad I think (dragons should be tough), but that could easily be fixed in some other manner. Generally, I like Mark's idea. -Juha -- Juha Jäykkä, Application specialist non-e mail: CSC, P.O. Box 405, FI-02101 Espoo, Finland phone: 09-457 2280 ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
Hello. I'm concerned no one replied already, but well... This actually has some other dramatic effects - large area of effect spells are less useful (if the room only has a few creatures, the spell only hits a few, and not a dozen). But this also would reduce treasure income quite a bit (probably a good thing). I think exp of monsters would have to be adjusted - maybe not the first and second level monsters (where killing them slower menas it takes longer to gain a level - not a problem given how quickly one can gain the low levels), but when you start to get into mid and higher levels, if the monster count is reduced by a whole bunch, the exp for them maybe should go up - dunno. We can sort that out as things get adjusted. Maybe large area spells will be used for fast monsters, so you're sure to hurt them? Or for monsters less powerful than you? Right - in my times there, I was basically thinking of fighting a creature of roughly the same power as the character. If a level 50 creature wants to go kill some orcs, then yeah, I'd expect him to move through them quite quickly (he will hit all the time, and most likely, his weapon damage will kill one each blow). *node* I'm just thinking that at low levels, having to take 30 seconds to kill a creature would be a bit extreme - one reason is most maps are just monster heavy, but another is that at low levels, characters typically have fewer options (you don't have a choice of weapons, rods, spells, to choose from, so the character really has limited tactical offerings.) I think a reasonable delay would be 5 to 10s, depending on the monster. Of course, a big boss could take more time. Right - especially given the games scale. If you figure that for most indoor maps, each space is 5', the current system is such that a character can swing a sword 2 times in the space it takes him to run that 5'. That seems unreasonably faster, and this is a low level character. So having weapon speed be below movement speed, when one thinks about the scales involved, wouldn't be that unreasonable. Scale is another issue - the world itself isn't that well scaled in the first place ;) True, but at the same time, this wasn't a totally maxed out fighter - this was a human warrior. I think a half troll or half orc barbarian would actually have even higher numbers than that. And actually, at low level, it really doesn't make a difference - all classes are going to be level 1 in 1 handed combat - the things that really would change are the stat bonuses. I think right now that stats are actually too important for many values, and would like to go more like a 3rd edition ADD system, where the bonuses are linear - that also allows effectively unlimited stat values, since it is now a simple formula. I'm not sure if that is something to talk about as this point or elsewhere. *shrug* Making monsters have the same effect as stats on players makes sense (right now, the meanings for monsters is completely different). If nothing else, that actually simplifies the code. The issue with skills gets trickier, because I may be making a monster and say 'I want its wc to be -3'. However, it may not be obvious what level weapon skill that corresponds to, etc. Yes, so maybe this isn't that a good issue :) Or we rely on items, armor and such? Certainly for stock monsters, one could update their treasurelists to give them the various skills, and perhaps even add some hooks into the magic system to denote what level the skill is (just like there is a way to denote how magical the item is). But I'm not sure if that makes things more complicated than necessary. Makes it more messy, I'd think One thing I think will be useful, and can be determined somewhat by playing, is what ac/wc/damage/hp creatures should have to be a challenged to players. Right now, that is somewhat guesswork I think, and I have a feeling a lot of monsters are not good challenges/balanced because certain of those attributes are out of whack (monster never hits, or hits too often, etc). That is the hardship of balancing a game :) Yes - increase maxhp helps, but I think the maxhp of players would have to be increased - I thought that might be controversial. The harder part here I think may be balance. For example, at first level, 1 or 2 goblins should be a challenge, and if I go into a round and am surrounded, I should really die. Agreed. I suspect the problem with spells right now is that most spells do a lot of damage, relative to how many hp players have. The reason is pretty simple - in order to be able to kill monsters, it needs to do this damage - otherwise, you'd need to cast a hundred spells, and that really isn't very feasible. So if the hp disparity between players and monsters is sorted out, and we say it is reasonable to cast 10 spells to kill tough creatures, that means it would take 10
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
Nicolas Weeger wrote: Hello. I'm concerned no one replied already, but well... Maybe everyone just agrees with my brilliant insights :) This actually has some other dramatic effects - large area of effect spells are less useful (if the room only has a few creatures, the spell only hits a few, and not a dozen). But this also would reduce treasure income quite a bit (probably a good thing). I think exp of monsters would have to be adjusted - maybe not the first and second level monsters (where killing them slower menas it takes longer to gain a level - not a problem given how quickly one can gain the low levels), but when you start to get into mid and higher levels, if the monster count is reduced by a whole bunch, the exp for them maybe should go up - dunno. We can sort that out as things get adjusted. Maybe large area spells will be used for fast monsters, so you're sure to hurt them? Or for monsters less powerful than you? If the change is such that large area effect spells are not so useful, that may not be bad. Larger effect spells, like fireball, will still have their uses. If monsters are far away, things like fireball still quite useful (the cone spells have a more limited range). Also, so long as each space of a big monster takes damage, large spells still have some advantage there. I'm sure these changes will require rebalancing of spells, but that is also on the list of things to do, so I'm less worried about spells right now, but just trying to keep it in mind. Right - especially given the games scale. If you figure that for most indoor maps, each space is 5', the current system is such that a character can swing a sword 2 times in the space it takes him to run that 5'. That seems unreasonably faster, and this is a low level character. So having weapon speed be below movement speed, when one thinks about the scales involved, wouldn't be that unreasonable. Scale is another issue - the world itself isn't that well scaled in the first place ;) True - scale isn't consistent. But I'd say that even at the lowest scale, each square is probably about 5'. Outdoor scale is much larger (each space being 50 to 100'?) But my point being that given the scale, one could certainly ask if it is reasonable if one can attack multiple times in less time than it takes to move 5'. If the answer is no, then that would certainly also hold true if the character is outdoors and scale is 50' per square. Making monsters have the same effect as stats on players makes sense (right now, the meanings for monsters is completely different). If nothing else, that actually simplifies the code. The issue with skills gets trickier, because I may be making a monster and say 'I want its wc to be -3'. However, it may not be obvious what level weapon skill that corresponds to, etc. Yes, so maybe this isn't that a good issue :) Or we rely on items, armor and such? Right, but if when went the skill approach and wanted the monster to have a wc of -3, what level should its skills have? One nice thing with the basic wc, ac, etc attributes is it is very easy - I want it to have a wc of -3, so I put 'wc -3' in the monster. That said, items the monster picks up can dramatically change things, in both armor and WC. But then that makes things more interesting - not every monster is the same difficulty. One thing I think will be useful, and can be determined somewhat by playing, is what ac/wc/damage/hp creatures should have to be a challenged to players. Right now, that is somewhat guesswork I think, and I have a feeling a lot of monsters are not good challenges/balanced because certain of those attributes are out of whack (monster never hits, or hits too often, etc). That is the hardship of balancing a game :) Yes. But if guidelines/a table is established, that helps out a great deal. If I know that a level 10 character has ac/wc/armor/dam if X, then I can have a pretty good idea of the stats the monster needs to be a good challenge. And arguably, this shouldn't be that hard to figure out - as one plays the game, one records this information and sees what it is. So if the hp disparity between players and monsters is sorted out, and we say it is reasonable to cast 10 spells to kill tough creatures, that means it would take 10 spells to kill a same level player. That to me is quite reasonable. Could be. Of course if too big level difference, one hit kill :) that's always the potential. However, it also depends on difference of HP based on level. If say a level 10 character has 100 hp, and a level 50 has 500 HP, that is only a difference of 5, so even then, unlikely 1 hit will kill a character, since target would be 10 spells for 500 hp damage (or 50 dam/spell). That said, things like resistances, slaying, etc, can all mix things up. that one of the interesting things about giving
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
One thought I just had about this is changing weapon speed vs normal speed. Right now, normal speed is used for movement, and if you attack something, what is currently your weapon speed gets moved into speed left for those extra attacks. This also creates other odd effects, as now it is also movement speed. My thought is to completely separate them. speed (and speed_left) is only used for movement, and is used like things are now. weapon_speed ( weapon_speed_left- abbreviated wsl) work like the speed ones - each tick, wsl is increased by weap_sp, not to exceed it. If moving onto a space would result in an attack, an attack is made so long as wsl0. For the attack, wsl is decreased by one. speed_left is not modified, or perhaps decreased by some amount so that it becomes difficult to do a 'move, attack, move' in same tick. I'd say that weapon_speed itself doesn't get directly changed by this, but it may be reasonable that if advanced combat options are added, some actions take more time than other (disarm maybe decreases wsl by 2 for example). Now what I thought would make this interesting is instead of weapon_speed being just a player attributed, make it an object/monster attribute. This gives another way to tune monsters. Now you can have monsters that move really quickly, but perhaps don't attack very fast - things that are hard to run from. And you could have other monsters that move slowly, but attack fast if nearby. In a sense, this could be used to mimic creatures that should get multiple attacks (think something like a squid with multiple tentacles). the default behavior for monsters would be weapon_speed = speed, so that every monster does not need to be modified. Thoughts/comments? ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
The results of the vote were pretty overwhelming for this, so going to start some discussions. Thanks for the vote handling :) I'm also going to include the #2 point - Balance magic combat skills so they are more equal a little bit - I don't think slowing down combat is going to make that all work out, but it does seem to me that if the speed of combat is radically changed, that is likely to have some effects in that balance, either for better or worse (seems unlikely it would remain completely the same). Yes, both should be taken into account, because we're talking about potentially massive changes in hp/damage/speed. I would also consider, even if later, the implications on map. If it takes 5s to kill a middle-level monster, we probably don't want a map with 500 of them, could be messy. there is also this point on the TODO list (http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/dev_todo:change_player_speed_ - change player speed, but that is more related to movement speed, not combat speed. I think that helps/contributes to the combat speed problem, but isn't the only fix. That will also help, and should be considered. Also there is the logic factor: if I run really fast, it seems weird that I fight really slowly. I'm going to formalize this a bit. I'll also note that when talking about these things, everything should really be on the table - things should not be excluded because it is different than it is now, would result in incompatible characters (while this change could probably be made without requiring fresh characters, some of the other big points can't be), etc. I think if we try to focus too narrowly we won't be able to find good solutions. Agreed, let's consider the most things possible. SOLUTION (from a very high level fiew): Combat should take a real amount of time. 30 seconds to kill high level boss monsters does not seem unreasonable to me. I think at lower levels, this time will be less (maybe a few seconds for most monsters?). I don't think there should ever be case (except with maybe things like rats) that a player actually mows through creatures. Well, maybe when the level/skill difference is real high? But agreed on the concept, it should take some time to grind through many monsters. This could also introduce new fun spells, repel? So one thing I quickly see is that perhaps starting weapon speed is just too fast, and goes up too fast. If that got reduced to say .8 at first level, that quickly doubles time it takes to kill things. Maybe even a lower weapon speed - if you look at some games, you can move quite a bit, but get limited attacks - so a weapon_speed of .2 could be interesting (if this was done, then weapon_speed_left would need to be added, and it get added up separately to see if the player can attack, etc). And interesting thing here is that this may open up new tactics - fire a bow, run away for a bit, fire bow again, etc. Or in party player, characters swapping position based on when their next attack happens. Separating moving/attack speed could indeed help. It can be argued that it's easy/fast to move, but slightly harder to attack - must find weakness in opponent's defence, and such. The characters damage was 9, which means that pretty much every kobold (2 hp) is killed in one blow, on average, orcs (4 hp) get killed in one blow, and gnolls (8 hp) need 2 blows. The starting character WC was 16. This means that the character will basically hit every time (mechanism is basically ac + d20 wc means a hit, so tuning wc would also help. Or maybe tuning creature AC. If instead of hitting every time, the character hit only 25% of the time, that slows things down by a factor of 4. That's a warrior, though, so that could be a reason. I realize that my basic test here was just at low level, but I would think the correct approach would be to try and tune low level combat and then adjust the upper level combat, and not try to get level 100 combat balance then figure out how to do it at level 1. *nods* I think stat bonuses may also need to be tuned. But I doubt adjusting this will still be enough. It would also be nice to try to reduce the hp disparity some, but not sure how to do that. Make all living things have the same magnitude of stats/skills? What about we make monsters have skill levels matching the player's handling? So a level 50 monster could have level 49 one handed attack, and 5 pyromancy (assuming the sum of experience makes it level 50 total), and corresponding hp/gr/sp. Granted, it may limit some interesting combinations... It seems to me that adjusting base weapon damage isn't really a fix - most starting weapons go from 1-10 damage, which seems reasonable to me - you can't reduce that too much without loosing meaning of weapons (if a dagger does 2 damage and sword 3, that would seem fairly meaningless). Perhaps a lot more lower monsters should have better armor
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
Nicolas Weeger wrote: Yes, both should be taken into account, because we're talking about potentially massive changes in hp/damage/speed. I would also consider, even if later, the implications on map. If it takes 5s to kill a middle-level monster, we probably don't want a map with 500 of them, could be messy. Yes - rooms full of monsters would likely need to be changed. This actually has some other dramatic effects - large area of effect spells are less useful (if the room only has a few creatures, the spell only hits a few, and not a dozen). But this also would reduce treasure income quite a bit (probably a good thing). I think exp of monsters would have to be adjusted - maybe not the first and second level monsters (where killing them slower menas it takes longer to gain a level - not a problem given how quickly one can gain the low levels), but when you start to get into mid and higher levels, if the monster count is reduced by a whole bunch, the exp for them maybe should go up - dunno. We can sort that out as things get adjusted. SOLUTION (from a very high level fiew): Combat should take a real amount of time. 30 seconds to kill high level boss monsters does not seem unreasonable to me. I think at lower levels, this time will be less (maybe a few seconds for most monsters?). I don't think there should ever be case (except with maybe things like rats) that a player actually mows through creatures. Well, maybe when the level/skill difference is real high? But agreed on the concept, it should take some time to grind through many monsters. This could also introduce new fun spells, repel? Right - in my times there, I was basically thinking of fighting a creature of roughly the same power as the character. If a level 50 creature wants to go kill some orcs, then yeah, I'd expect him to move through them quite quickly (he will hit all the time, and most likely, his weapon damage will kill one each blow). I'm just thinking that at low levels, having to take 30 seconds to kill a creature would be a bit extreme - one reason is most maps are just monster heavy, but another is that at low levels, characters typically have fewer options (you don't have a choice of weapons, rods, spells, to choose from, so the character really has limited tactical offerings.) Separating moving/attack speed could indeed help. It can be argued that it's easy/fast to move, but slightly harder to attack - must find weakness in opponent's defence, and such. Right - especially given the games scale. If you figure that for most indoor maps, each space is 5', the current system is such that a character can swing a sword 2 times in the space it takes him to run that 5'. That seems unreasonably faster, and this is a low level character. So having weapon speed be below movement speed, when one thinks about the scales involved, wouldn't be that unreasonable. The characters damage was 9, which means that pretty much every kobold (2 hp) is killed in one blow, on average, orcs (4 hp) get killed in one blow, and gnolls (8 hp) need 2 blows. The starting character WC was 16. This means that the character will basically hit every time (mechanism is basically ac + d20 wc means a hit, so tuning wc would also help. Or maybe tuning creature AC. If instead of hitting every time, the character hit only 25% of the time, that slows things down by a factor of 4. That's a warrior, though, so that could be a reason. True, but at the same time, this wasn't a totally maxed out fighter - this was a human warrior. I think a half troll or half orc barbarian would actually have even higher numbers than that. And actually, at low level, it really doesn't make a difference - all classes are going to be level 1 in 1 handed combat - the things that really would change are the stat bonuses. I think right now that stats are actually too important for many values, and would like to go more like a 3rd edition ADD system, where the bonuses are linear - that also allows effectively unlimited stat values, since it is now a simple formula. I'm not sure if that is something to talk about as this point or elsewhere. I think stat bonuses may also need to be tuned. But I doubt adjusting this will still be enough. It would also be nice to try to reduce the hp disparity some, but not sure how to do that. Make all living things have the same magnitude of stats/skills? What about we make monsters have skill levels matching the player's handling? So a level 50 monster could have level 49 one handed attack, and 5 pyromancy (assuming the sum of experience makes it level 50 total), and corresponding hp/gr/sp. Granted, it may limit some interesting combinations... Making monsters have the same effect as stats on players makes sense (right now, the meanings for monsters is completely different). If nothing else, that actually simplifies the code.
[crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
The results of the vote were pretty overwhelming for this, so going to start some discussions. I'm also going to include the #2 point - Balance magic combat skills so they are more equal a little bit - I don't think slowing down combat is going to make that all work out, but it does seem to me that if the speed of combat is radically changed, that is likely to have some effects in that balance, either for better or worse (seems unlikely it would remain completely the same). there is also this point on the TODO list (http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/dev_todo:change_player_speed_ - change player speed, but that is more related to movement speed, not combat speed. I think that helps/contributes to the combat speed problem, but isn't the only fix. I'm going to formalize this a bit. I'll also note that when talking about these things, everything should really be on the table - things should not be excluded because it is different than it is now, would result in incompatible characters (while this change could probably be made without requiring fresh characters, some of the other big points can't be), etc. I think if we try to focus too narrowly we won't be able to find good solutions. PROBLEM: Combats in crossfire right now are generally very fast - less than a second to kill most any monster. This is too fast to really react in much of any way, think tactically, etc. SOLUTION (from a very high level fiew): Combat should take a real amount of time. 30 seconds to kill high level boss monsters does not seem unreasonable to me. I think at lower levels, this time will be less (maybe a few seconds for most monsters?). I don't think there should ever be case (except with maybe things like rats) that a player actually mows through creatures. PLAN/DETAILS: This is the hard part. Just slowing down the character really isn't sufficient unless they were made painfully slow. Just for reference, I decided to quickly create a starting human warrior. With his chain armor and long sword equipped, his movement speed is 1.0, weapon speed is 1.60. When he got second level, weapon speed went to 1.68. Third level it was 1.74. So one thing I quickly see is that perhaps starting weapon speed is just too fast, and goes up too fast. If that got reduced to say .8 at first level, that quickly doubles time it takes to kill things. Maybe even a lower weapon speed - if you look at some games, you can move quite a bit, but get limited attacks - so a weapon_speed of .2 could be interesting (if this was done, then weapon_speed_left would need to be added, and it get added up separately to see if the player can attack, etc). And interesting thing here is that this may open up new tactics - fire a bow, run away for a bit, fire bow again, etc. Or in party player, characters swapping position based on when their next attack happens. The characters damage was 9, which means that pretty much every kobold (2 hp) is killed in one blow, on average, orcs (4 hp) get killed in one blow, and gnolls (8 hp) need 2 blows. The starting character WC was 16. This means that the character will basically hit every time (mechanism is basically ac + d20 wc means a hit, so tuning wc would also help. Or maybe tuning creature AC. If instead of hitting every time, the character hit only 25% of the time, that slows things down by a factor of 4. I realize that my basic test here was just at low level, but I would think the correct approach would be to try and tune low level combat and then adjust the upper level combat, and not try to get level 100 combat balance then figure out how to do it at level 1. I think stat bonuses may also need to be tuned. But I doubt adjusting this will still be enough. It would also be nice to try to reduce the hp disparity some, but not sure how to do that. It seems to me that adjusting base weapon damage isn't really a fix - most starting weapons go from 1-10 damage, which seems reasonable to me - you can't reduce that too much without loosing meaning of weapons (if a dagger does 2 damage and sword 3, that would seem fairly meaningless). Perhaps a lot more lower monsters should have better armor values, so not all the damage goes through. But adjusting monster kill rate from players is really only half the problem. The other problem is rate of damage that monsters do to players. It may be that if it now takes several seconds for me to kill a monsters, I'll be able to watch my HP more closely, but there are lots of attacks that can kill players quick quickly - especially bolt spells if the player doesn't move out of the way quickly. I suspect if that player to monster hp disparity is reduced, then the damage that things like bolts do to players would effectively be reduced. One idea, which is probably controversial, is to increase player HP. Rather than trying to adjust all the monster HP, maybe we give players
