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Re: CF: Player balance.




 Brian forget to send a copy of this to the list, so I will include a complete
copy of his message, with some notes from me.

On Apr 16,  1:24pm, Brian Thomas wrote:
> Subject: Re: CF: Player balance.
> > From: "Mark Wedel" writes:
> >
> >  For the skills, the chart only shows those that the character starts with
-
> > I don't include skill scrolls.  Maybe Brian can answer this:  Is there any
> > reason some classes do get skill scrolls?  Why don't we just start everyone
> > with skills?
>
> 	Yeah. There shouldnt be any starting skill scrolls. Especially
> 	now since there is a good chance you wont learn the skill.
> 	All players should start wi/ skills instead, the few classes that
> 	start with some skill scrolls should be switched.
>
> >
> >  One thing that I notice pretty much immediately is that in most cases, a
> > net gain of 0 is maintained.  However, some classes certainly start with
> > more or better skills than others.  Maybe these advantages should be
balanced
> > out some based on the stats.  I see the elf as an example of this -starts
> > out with fighter, mage, a couple misc. skills and a net gain of +1.
> > Perhaps this should be balanced better?
> >
> 	Hmm. I thought that the elf started with a -1! Oh well, I guess
> 	things chanced. Speaking of which, I am interested in how
> 	people feel the play balance is. Especially the older players who
> 	remember the game before skills showed up. Personally, I think
> 	the game is still too easy. I just started a thief character, and
> 	in a about 1 hour I had him up to 6 lvl in fighting/mental/agility
> 	skills, yow!

 I'll look over the elf again - it is possible I have a +1 someplace where
there should be a -1.

 In terms of play advancement:  I started a barbarian last night, and within an
hour, was level 4.

 In some sense, I am not sure how much this can be changed - gaining the first
few levels in the old system was quite quick.  But if you thing about it, if
the orc/goblin/whatever is 20 exp each, that is only 50 you need to kill to get
second level.  That isn't all that many.

 The first 4/5 levels have always been easy.  However, after level 5, things
start to get difficult - you need 8,000 exp, and it keeps doubling.  That is a
lot of orcs/whatever.  There just aren't monsters at that level whichc you can
go through like at lower levels and get that same amount of exp.  skeletons and
zombies are good at that level, but still takes quite a while.  I find the
middle levels can take quite a while to move through.

>
> 	My ideas on adjusting the playbalance:
>
> 	o Probably, the skills of disarm traps/skill ident stuff needs some
> 	  better tuning. Less overall exp awarded for these. I am looking
> 	  at some of the other skills too. Probably only the fighting/magic
> 	  skills dont need adjustment!
>

 All skills other than fighting/magic become difficult to tune.  Simply because
of their limited usage.  How much exp can you get from disarming traps?  You
are limited by how many traps are about.  For monsters, this is not a problem -
there are a lot out there.

> 	o Literacy skill requirement should perhaps be relaxed a little.
> 	  Allow players to read books, but with out literacy skill they
> 	  always get a 'failure' to read that results in ~ 1/2 the text
> 	  being scrambled. No successfull spellbook reading /scroll
> 	  reading w/o literacy (or perhaps make success very rare).
>

 I actually have made it so all characters start with literacy.  I did this
after my barbarian got a cursed item.  Quick summary is:  he needs literacy to
read a scroll of remove curse.  Literacy costs a lot of money (180 platinum or
so.)  But even at that, there is a chance he can't learn literacy (and in fact,
that is what happened.)

 This may all be good and proper, depending on your point of view.  But the
obvious counter is to just create a low level mage character that can read
scrolls so that they can read the scrolls instead.

 I decided to play the barbarian on the basis to see how well a total non spell
caster could do.  At present, my opinion is not very well.  Literacy at least
gives him a fighting chance, but even with taht, there is a good chance that he
can't read the scrolls even with literacy.

 I think the change that needs to be made is to add more generic spell casting
objects for money (like the identify tables.)  That way, he can perhaps drop 10
gp for a detect magic, and maybe 25 gp for a detect curse or something.  I also
think that this is justs a nice idea in general - having altars in churches
where you drop a bunch of gold to get a remove curse or something.

> 	o Relax no exp for magic item use (wands/rods/horns). Allow
> 	  players to gain 5-10% of experience for kills with these items.
> 	  Awarded exp can go to the "magic" exp category. This isnt a
> 	  problem since no clerical killing spells occur in magic items.

 I think getting exp from objects is totally reasonable.  After all, it is
killing things that get the exp, so on that basis, knowing when to use the
spells should be worth something.  Just casting a spell doesn't get exp, only
when someone casts the spell that kills something.  Thus, when using an item,
your are doing half of the work, you are not casting, but you are killing
something.

>
> 	Thoughts?
>
> 						-b.t.
>
>-- End of excerpt from Brian Thomas



-- 
 --Mark