Nicolas Weeger wrote: > Hello. > > Currently, Crossfire is the kind "many monsters, much loot, fast gameplay". > > Wouldn't it make sense to change that?
Yes - in fact, the combat changes I made many months back did that a bit for combat - in general, just normal combat is slower than before. However, there are stills gobs of monsters (and I still need to redo spells) > > Have less monsters, with combats not so fast, so strategy/tactics do play a > role - put a trap, try to lure the monster? use a dagger for close combat, > versus a sword for long distance? Think of where to drive monsters so only > one can hit you, and such? Yes to all of those. Some are certainly easier than others. It is a little less clear where close vs far come in - I'd think that both dagger and sword would be close (vs bow being far) - with the granularity of one space, distance is a little odd in that regard. But one could clearly extend things beyond what they are - able to increase your chance of hit but you do less damage. Or another method to increase your damage, but maybe you're AC is worse. Or maybe various combos. This actually could be useful in many ways - when rebalancing combat, sorting out AC for monsters vs WC for players can be a challenge. When the random element is from the range of 1-20, figuring out what the correct value is gets hard - I generally targeted it at about 10-15 range If it is too low (say 5) then player is hitting most of the time, and things that improve your chance to hit don't have much impact (the number of additional hits you get isn't that great). If it is too high (say 18), then player hits pretty infrequently - makes for long combat, but also means attacks that don't have to hit the creature (like spells) are much more useful. It also means that other characters that maybe do not have the right items or stats, and thus need a 20, hit only 1/3rd the time, and the monster is that much tougher. If player can give up damager to hit better, it helps that out - player who needs an 18 can use that attack form to need a 15 (lets say) and hit twice as often, but maybe at only a 25% decrease in damage. But if the player needs a 5 to hit, reducing that a 2 may not be a worth while tradeoff - it does put more strategy in to best ways to kill monsters, and give more choices for monsters that may seem too tough. But improved monster smarts is also needed - the monsters right now all think individually (what can I do to hurt that player). Most games have the group of monsters actually work together - some may sit back casting spells while others engage the player. And they may actually cast beneficial spells on the other creatures - right now, the monster logic doesn't even look at that possibility. > > > As for loot, wouldn't it make sense to drastically reduce it, and let players > create new things (items, spells, buildings maybe?) quite freely? But with > some limits, probably. Yes on both. Perhaps the basic flaw in the crossfire logic is that all equipment a monster may attack with ends up as loot to scavenge. So you fight those 20 orcs, and get 20 long swords. But I'd be more tempted to do the reduction of monsters first, and see how loot looks after that. If a level only had 20 monsters and not 100, that a big reduction right there - maybe much more isn't needed. The other big problem is that crossfire doesn't have much to spend money on - presumably some of those other points (making new things) is a money sink. Another may be more consumable objects that players would actually want to buy. > > Also, wouldn't it make sense to really improve in game building, so players > can have a real impact on the world, really change things? Yes, but also trickier. In game building has been discussed (and even developed) many times, but that is a hard problem to solve. By my above comments (hard problems) I don't mean in any way to say that they shouldn't be done - just trying put the problem in some degree of difficulty. Of that list, reducing monsters is probably the easiest to do - that just means going through maps and removing monsters and generators. As an add-on to that, I'd still like to see a quest management system that also provides rewards in exp or spells or the like, so that the only way to get that isn't by killing monsters (this can also be done now just by updating maps). _______________________________________________ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
