Re: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?
Following previous discussion about highest skill level determining hit points, one could refine it further such that highest skill level of those associated skills determines hit points. That sounds good. This would certainly deter too many class-defections. I still think that something else besides hit points must also be tied to this skill level, but I'm not sure what. Perhaps the types of quest rewards you're given could be one. And item_power could be checked against this level, too. But I'm also sort of inclined that not all classes should necessarily have all skills available (or even most). So I've noticed. =) And I disagree, but that's a matter of taste. It'll eventually be up to Lalo I think. I'm happy with both, but I'm happier with freely learnable skills. Even the system you proposed later, which dumps the classes alltogether and simply has skills. Some skills are ones that I'd say are not as adventure related (item creation skills, etc), and so sure, everyone can have those. Yes. And a way of getting decent xp in them too. Perhaps there could be three types of skills: primary and secondary class -based skills and a third set of general-purpose skills. The class-skills are those that gain XP by killing monsters and completing quests and they either can or cannot be learned by everyone and the third set has a different xp table and all, for creating rings, arrows, scrolls, even mining and fishing if we come to that. There are a lot of different ways to handle class-skills. At least the following come to mind: 1) Primary skills cannot be learned, secondary can 2) Both can be learned, but your class-primaries need less XP to advance 3) Your class-primary must always be at least 2x your highest secondary level (perhaps you'd change classes otherwise?), but they are both learnable 4) They are both free to learn, you just have the primary initially There are also some mixes of the four that can be quite ok, too, like take both 2) and 3) and you have pretty heavy punishment for fighting wizards. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, juo...@utu.fi| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- 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] What about a gameplay revolution?
And just like spell books having been made more available by the bookshop (sells common spells but at inflated prices), same could perhaps be true of recipes - finding more recipes should be easier to do, but maybe it costs something. This sounds reasonable and actually quite good, too. don't think there is necessary a right or wrong answer to it, but that answer probably needs to be decided. Yup. And you raised a good point about reducing xp when not using skills. Something else would need to be done - or nothing. This sort of goes back to that decision above - should crossfire have stricter classes, or should classes be meaningless (aside from starting skills). I'd prefer to find a middle ground. Something where we can let everyone be capable of using all skills, but with some class-features still intact so that there is no way a basher can become as good a magic-user as a wizard. Perhpas simply requiring the main skill, i.e. whatever is tied to the class, to always be higher than any other skill? Or higher than all other skills combined (this would need some adjustment on first level). There could be a guild whose services are necessary to gain a new level (or something) and the guild would simply kick you out if you violate the above rule. Or something. Yes - race bound items should be used more. Could not agree more. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, juo...@utu.fi| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- 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] What about a gameplay revolution?
Juha Jäykkä wrote: Nice point. Perhaps the recipies should be force-objects on the character? Yes - that would work. It would also allow something along the line of 'what recipes do I know'. Instead of having to jot down recipes you find in the game someplace else (or keep all those scrolls), one could get a listing of all recipes you found, etc. This would imply that one cannot learn recipies by talking to other players, would it not? That may be good but it could also be bad. (I'm assuming a character cannot create items whose recipies are unknown to the character.) Either some recipies would have to be much more common or there would need to be a shop for them. Note that right now, a recipe does not disappear when read. So in practice, characters/players could share recipes fairly easily as long as they keep the recipe books. That seems reasonable. A character would not be able to write down recipes (or maybe only could do so with appropriate skill level) and hand it off. The recipe management is really a convenience for the player (and some other benefits) - it may not imply an ability to impart that knowledge to other people. In real life, one could see this as most people know how to make some number of food items without following a recipe. But if you tried to tell someone else how to do it, especially if they are novice, you may leave out steps, put something in the wrong order, etc. When you make it yourself, this would be apparent - but for someone else that doesn't know better, this could be a real problem. Some number of recipes should probably basically be common knowledge. One doesn't have a recipe to tell people how to boil water, and same could be true for some basics in crossfire. And some number of recipes probably should be allowed without all that complexity, so could be found out reading the formulae file, talking to other players. But the more advanced recipes probably require actual having learned it. It may also be that at certain levels of those skills (including level 1), you learn various recipes. Level 1 might be the the basics. Level 10 you might learn some recipes automatically - this in a sense is that after enough experience, you'd probably figure out how to do some more complex stuff even if you don't have a recipe. And just like spell books having been made more available by the bookshop (sells common spells but at inflated prices), same could perhaps be true of recipes - finding more recipes should be easier to do, but maybe it costs something. I think you do have a valid point. One problem (IMO - others don't see it this way) is that any class can pick up any skill. So while racial bonuses do matter, what class you start with doesn't have much impact. I belong to the sect which supports almost meaningless classes, but there would need to be some incentive to specialise in a single class. Somewhere in this (or some other?) thread the suggestion of using the highest skill level for HP and perhaps something else, too, would be one step in that direction. Another might be gradual loss of skills if they are unused. That would definitely be realistic, but would it be fun? I don't know (I usually only play heavy magic users without much focus on melee so it would not matter much to my style of playing). There are those two schools of thoughts, as it relates to skills. I don't think there is necessary a right or wrong answer to it, but that answer probably needs to be decided. I'm not fond of taking away exp for lack of use of skills. Defining lack of use becomes problematic (if I kill 1 orc every hour, is that enough to not have my fighting skill go down, etc?) Simplest way to do it is that for every X ticks of play, exp in all skills go down Y%. Values of X and Y would have to be determined. In a sense, skills you don't use would eventually lose all exp. The problem here is that this messes up folks that want to hang around and help other players, chat, etc. It also means you really want to optimize the time you're not gaining exp (taking half an hour to sell your items means you have lost some exp, etc). And things brings a new meaning of characters who forget to log out - you no longer die of starvation - you just lack any exp. So rather than penalize folks, I'd much rather reward certain behavior. I think that is generally easier to do with fewer side effects. Another possibility is limiting certain items by class and/or race. Maybe only spellcasters can use a wand in their hand instead of some other weapon. If like above, that wand has affinities for spellcasting type skills, it effectively gives them a leg up. Likewise, certain weapons should probably only be usable by fighter. If we want to prevent fighters from be mages, mages also shouldn't be able to be fighters. I agree that the prevention must go both ways, but I
Re: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?
focused more on the HS - someone would find out some way to circumvent a monster, and it was like 'We can't have that' and things were changed. At I think this is wrong. If a player outsmarts the map maker, it's the map maker's shame and nothing should be changed (unless the map becomes trivial and everyone just keeps going there and pick up the reward). If there is a bug in the code, it's different. some level, if players are clever, it shouldn't be a requirement that they kill everything in sight. Which is what I basically mean above. I think the entire alchemy/item creation probably needs to be revamped. - Most all common raw materials (wood, water, rock, etc) should be something that can easily be found/harvested - Success rate for most items should be greatly increased, with the flipside that for powerful items, the ingredients should be quite rare (so you're luck to find the component to make something really good) Agreed on all accounts. items in town, etc). So for skills, if it takes a player 30 minutes to make enough item to gain a level, that would be about right in balance. Yep. - Recipes/instructions should really be a character attributed, not a player attribute. I realize there are some special recipes right now where only a character that has learned it can make it, but for a large number, it is really the player knowing the recipe (either through looking at the file, or just acquiring tidbits among multiple characters) Nice point. Perhaps the recipies should be force-objects on the character? My general philosophy on RPG worlds is that going out adventuring and killing things should be the fastest way to get money. Yes, but I rather like the idea that it is not the ONLy way to get money and xp. But related to your comment above, maybe mix different parts together. Maybe that item still can hold 10 different bonuses. Maybe 1 beholder eye can be used to give a 1% magic resistance bonus, and if the player wants, could put 10 beholder eyes on that item for a 10% resistance. But maybe also he can take those beholder eyes, do some alchemy type stuff and get a single item that gives him 3% magic resistance but only use one slot, etc. Sounds good. The current alchemy involves mixing magic (or alchemy produced) stuff in better recipies, so why not keep doing that? To get +10% magic resistance using only one slot, one might need either a more powerful monster part or something created from beholder eyes, like 10 rings of +1% magic resistance. That way we'd have a kind of chain of items, starting with beholder eyes used to create potions of magic resistance, next being these potions used to create rings, rings used to create amulets and finally amulets can be used to create rings where +10% resistance only consumes one slot. Up to some limit, of course - otherwise we hit the ulta-powerful stuff again. All of this naturally needs much tweaking to get the balance right. I think linear growth on the number of beholder eyes is too easy. have a lot of money, while other folks would say they do have lot - depends where you go. Looks like I don't know the right places. =) But even at low levels, orcs can be a good source - sure, most of the stuff is crap, but if you get 500 items dropped, a few will probably be +2 in nature or have some artifact bonus and be worth 50 platinum or something. And at low level, that is a really nice chunk of change. 50 platinum? I just sold a Ruggilli's Whisker for 23 platinum... Amulet of the Magi was the most expensive piece of equipment I had and I was offered 35 for it. Where are all those items orcs drop that sell for 50 platinum?-o That's sort of a different issue - rarity or certain items vs accumulation of wealth. One could have lots of money but still not found certain items. I lied about the rings earlier, I *do* have a Ring of Mithrandir after all. But that is still the only one of the ones I mentioned. But you also explained quite clearly what was the problem with it. There's obviously something that must be rebalanced there. Like everywhere where it comes to balancing different race/profession combos. I do not think a troll sorcerer should be as powerful as a fireborn sorcerer, but I certainly do think that the current situation where anyone or anything using weapons and armour quickly becomes way more powerful than those who do not use them - simply because there are so exceedingly powerful weapons/armour, and only those, around. Of course, adding a superior ring, for example, will not change things: the fighter will simply use it as well. What would be needed is some way prevent that. And it needs to be natural. The only thing I can think of is somehow related to the skill levels. Perhaps item powers should look at skill levels instead of the total? Something along the lines of rings need evocation, amulets sorcery, daggers one-handed-weapons etc. And after
Re: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?
That's a bit different game. I agree: I'd like to see CF stay an RPG with major hack and slash content. The amout of HS might be too high at the moment, but I do not think that's because of HS, but lack of other content - so we come back to content again. Personally, mining for diamonds instead of fighting for them in order to use them in making a ring might be more interesting. Also, making almost anything with alchemy, jewelry etc is quite difficult unless you have a script which keeps on trying. That's bad - beginners don't have scripts. Also, those skills increase way too slowly to ever really get above level 10 or so (again, without a script). And creating some of the fancier rings, for example, at level 10 jeweller... The combat rebalancing is slowing down combat, so does give player a bit more time to think, which is a good thing. And let's not waste that effort! 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. This is more or less what I proposed a year ago: to define what ingredients are required to get, for example, magic resistance +1 to an item. Suppose that is an eye of the beholder (I'd like to see some logic in this so players might guess that an eye of the beholder, a monster with 100% magic resistance, might come handy in crafting stuff to grant magic resistance). Now, you might need 1 eye to get +1%, 100 eyes to get +10%, and 1 to get full immunity (if that's even possible), so it becomes progressively harder to get higher resistances. Or exceeding +10% might even need some other ingredient as well or what ever. But these ingredients should be the same for rings, swords etc. Of course, then we need also the rign or sword itself. That, too, might be crafted by the player - perhaps level 1 jeweller can craft a ring which can consume 1 ingredient (not ingredient type: just one single eye of the beholder), level 2 can craft a sword which can consume 5 ingredients etc (or whatever progression we wish). And then nice XP from crafts, too, so they actally do increase in levels, too. is just a stick someone picked up after all). So now instead of every orc dropping a pile of stuff, maybe every 4th orc drops one item type of thing. Drastic reduction in treasure - it also means that when you do get something, it is at least a little bit more exciting. I prefer the realism of orcs dropping whatever they were using in the combat, even though it creates lots of loot. For orcs, this probably is not a problem either, since 99.9% of orc-loot becomes worthless very quickly. The same is true for most, if not all, currently generator-produced creatures: they rarely carry anything magical (except pixies and vampires). The fact that fire (if used) burns some of this loot helps somewhat with the excess, but otherwise I don't think it's a problem. Excess loot only becomes a problem when you go kill titans, death knights and such, but the rebalance probably reduces their numbers so drastically that there should be no problem there either. Besides, I *still* have never seen many of the higher power stuff, like Rings of Power (not pow +somthing, but the Three Rings for the ... and the Ruling Ring as well). And I've searched and searched... Also, making extra archetypes like broken shield (or the 0-100 condition scale discussed elsewhere) might be realistic for loot dropped by dead creatures: if you just smashed an orc with a morning star, chances are its plate mail is not in prime condition any more; likewise for other stuff, too. So make them drop smashed items. Shops won't pay for them, the player may fix them, but since these would be normal items (magic will of course vanish if item is broken), repairing them is probably not what most players want to do. And as a new player, I'd get turned off pretty quickly if I logged in, and have a list of a few beginners dungeons I could explore, only to find that they have all been cleared out. I rather liked what was proposed earlier: that monsters would gradually return to dungeons, map areas etc. That would give an added feeling of realism, would solve problem with cleared out maps and might even give a surprise every now and then, like the place which was infested by kobolds for years, and to which kobolds returned eventually no matter how many times they were cleared out, would suddenly, after latest clear-out, become infested by goblins, for example. A related question: is there something preventing us from profiting from the work done at forks of cf? It seems some of them already have some of the features we
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
[crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?
Hello. Here are some propositions to make CF a different but hopefully funnier game :) 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. 2) Make attack/defense and other things just numbers with the rule the higher the better. Attack 50 vs defense 50 = 50% chance to hit (or something like that). No is it wc which is better lower, or ac?). In the same way, make weapons +1 just give some attack bonus, that's all. 3) Don't give so many powerful items. Have players actually create such items, with difficulty, so they need to take time (or buy it from other players). Makes a craftmanship or even alchemy skill much more interesting. Want a sword with fire damage? Go find a rare stone of fire or harness the power of a volcano to make such weapon. 4) Reduce loot a lot. Don't put chests everywhere just waiting to be opened. Have stuff randomly grow on trees or plants, fish from sea, mine ore to build items, find stones to build buildings, whatever. 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 :) Just some random thoughts. 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] What about a gameplay revolution?
Hello. Here are some propositions to make CF a different but hopefully funnier game :) 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. The idea has merit as there are definite aspects of the game that could use this sort of thing. One might ask oneself if adventure/role players are more feel/mood oriented as opposed to numbers-oriented. I'd be surprised if the answer came back that role players typically prefer environment to the point of removing numbers. (And sure, CF does not have to be one more of the same kind of game, but the numbers do personally help me play the game to the point where if they were gone I would personally get frustrated with the game.) On the other hand, I suspect that crowd would find feel/mood/environment content a big plus. There is no doubt improvement on these feel hints would have a positive effect, and that this would be a good point to work on in the early stages. 2) Make attack/defense and other things just numbers with the rule the higher the better. Attack 50 vs defense 50 = 50% chance to hit (or something like that). No is it wc which is better lower, or ac?). In the same way, make weapons +1 just give some attack bonus, that's all. This seems more workable than removing the numbers altogether. I rarely know what these numbers do anyway, and personally do already prefer the simplicity of higher is better. On the flip side, what does it hurt to have the formula generally known outside of the game? 3) Don't give so many powerful items. Have players actually create such items, with difficulty, so they need to take time (or buy it from other players). Makes a craftmanship or even alchemy skill much more interesting. Want a sword with fire damage? Go find a rare stone of fire or harness the power of a volcano to make such weapon. So many powerful items is not something I have experienced, but, I do find that the unlimited map replay in CF is annoying. (Plug for feature request on limiting, but not eliminating replay). I am in support of finding a reasonable way of to do this (replay/limit powerful artifacts), but I do think that the restrictions should not completely eliminate replay, especially when large periods of time elapse between playing spurts. I personally love the fact that I can come back to CF after months and optionally start over playing long sequences that take many hours of gameplay. I am not in favor of making CF a game where you must burn 100's of hours to gameplay to attain anything cool. That said, the idea of using craftsmanship and ingredients is welcome. I personally never played with alchemy, but have found games that concentrate on resource collecting and craftsmanship have been fun. Note that care needs to be taken... the royalty quests in Scorn tend to be a bit too vague on how to get to the next stage. Not that I am at all a typical CFer, but I've never gotten to the Dragon Lord quest, and the ones before that are way too hard for those not familiar with smallworld. 4) Reduce loot a lot. Don't put chests everywhere just waiting to be opened. Have stuff randomly grow on trees or plants, fish from sea, mine ore to build items, find stones to build buildings, whatever. I am certainly in favor of the later proposition. The prior is unclear. People seem to think that loot is too prevalent in CF, and this is a mystery to me. I NEVER have enough money in CF, but I also have never gotten higher than lvl 30 something. When I was that high, the bigworld reset killed that character, and since then I have never broken 30. 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 :) No. Replay limits instead (penalty to loot/experience to the point where if you replay enough, there is absolutely no value to the map except exploration and taking in the scenery). I don't care if there are maps that work the way this is described, but it should not be the norm. This smacks of being a playground for people to spoil the game for other people. I see no good reason to make CF a game where the first guy there is the only one who can play the game at the expense of everyone else. Just some random thoughts. Good thoughts as usual! -- Kevin Bulgrien kbulgr...@att.net ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org
Re: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?
Nicolas Weeger wrote: Hello. Here are some propositions to make CF a different but hopefully funnier game :) I'm thinking that was funner, not funnier - but more humor in the game wouldn't hurt :) 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. I generally like being able to quickly glance at my stats and see how I'm doing. If I need to carefully look through messages to know if I'm about to die, that probably makes things less fun for me, not more. If the human players were spending bunch of time doing calculations (like in live action games), then simplifying such things may make more sense. 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). 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. 2) Make attack/defense and other things just numbers with the rule the higher the better. Attack 50 vs defense 50 = 50% chance to hit (or something like that). No is it wc which is better lower, or ac?). In the same way, make weapons +1 just give some attack bonus, that's all. 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) 3) Don't give so many powerful items. Have players actually create such items, with difficulty, so they need to take time (or buy it from other players). Makes a craftmanship or even alchemy skill much more interesting. Want a sword with fire damage? Go find a rare stone of fire or harness the power of a volcano to make such weapon. 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) 4) Reduce loot a lot. Don't put chests everywhere just waiting to be opened. Have stuff randomly grow on trees or plants, fish from sea, mine ore to build items, find stones to build buildings, whatever. 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. 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 :) 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) 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.
Re: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?
On Sunday 14 December 2008, Kevin Bulgrien wrote: [...] 3) Don't give so many powerful items. Have players actually create such items, with difficulty, so they need to take time (or buy it from other players). Makes a craftmanship or even alchemy skill much more interesting. Want a sword with fire damage? Go find a rare stone of fire or harness the power of a volcano to make such weapon. So many powerful items is not something I have experienced, but, I do find that the unlimited map replay in CF is annoying. (Plug for feature request on limiting, but not eliminating replay). I am in support of finding a reasonable way of to do this (replay/limit powerful artifacts), but I do think that the restrictions should not completely eliminate replay, especially when large periods of time elapse between playing spurts. I personally love the fact that I can come back to CF after months and optionally start over playing long sequences that take many hours of gameplay. I am not in favor of making CF a game where you must burn 100's of hours to gameplay to attain anything cool. That said, the idea of using craftsmanship and ingredients is welcome. I personally never played with alchemy, but have found games that concentrate on resource collecting and craftsmanship have been fun. [...] 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 :) No. Replay limits instead (penalty to loot/experience to the point where if you replay enough, there is absolutely no value to the map except exploration and taking in the scenery). I don't care if there are maps that work the way this is described, but it should not be the norm. This smacks of being a playground for people to spoil the game for other people. I see no good reason to make CF a game where the first guy there is the only one who can play the game at the expense of everyone else. I've got two thoughts here myself. For one thing, the fact that an item can be labeled with a blanket powerful or not powerful may be part of the problem. It might be beneficial to look at ways to make items more useful outside of the context of big numbers, hard- to-defend-against damage types, and hit points. As for map resets: it would obviously take a fair amount of additional new code, but perhaps a type of map that grows or develops naturally might be introduced. If something vaguely resembling the AI code for a resource based RTS game were implemented, computer generated groups could take over cleared areas and redevelop them. One might wipe out a Kobold warren, and then come back not long after and find some kobolds had come back and started rebuilding (adding new tunnels and rooms in the process). Or that Orcs had come along and taken over instead. Or that the ramshackle village of bandits hidden in the woods that was cleared out previously has now been taken over by undead cultists... It might even be feasible to have map-makers predefine who the first few groups running the map will be (e.g. predefining that lizard-people are waiting to move in once adventurers kill off the dragons in the cave). ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
