Re: CF: Direction, maps and balcing

[Mark Wedel <>]

David Sundqvist wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 10 Jun 1999, Ryan Casey wrote:
> 
> > Regarding the balancing of monsters/players:
> >
> > (More a question than a comment, so message has been snipped)
> >
> > XP on the MUD I used to play was done on a varying scale (the more you killed of one
> > thing, the less you got for that monster).  So, it was in your interest to find
> > newer, harder things to kill.  However, it is not easy at a glance to see whether you
> > are even possibly going to kill something or just get yourself killed quickly.
> 
> Well, this is sorta implemented; 'easy kills' give less XP.

 If you use the simple exp system, I don't believe this is the case any more
(Exp is not adjusted for level difference).  But since exp is exponential, you
need to kill more of that monster to gain a level.

 In any case, the reduction was a simple level comparison.  So it didn't matter
what monster you killed - it was your overall level that changed the exp award.

 I certainly think there is incentive in crossfire to find the tough challenges
- you get better exp and better treasure.  At level 10, it will take you a lot
of orcs to get anyplace, but if you can find hill giants instead, not nearly so
many are needed.

> 
> > Is it possible to implement a 'consider' system, where you can look at a monster and
> > see whether you think you can kill it?  Here is a listing of what I remember from the
> > listings of 'consider' items (there were approx 8 levels as I recall).
> 
> There already is, in the probe spell and probe items. Maybe we should
> include that option as a default abililty tho (perhaps there could be
> varying exactness, so the spells or rods give you more info about the
> monster). Maybe we could have an option to show appropriate info in tint
> coding on squares or monsters or something when a player wants the info.

 As I recall, probe basically told you some of the monster stats (attacktype,
immunities, etc) - I think you still needed to extrapolate from that if you
could actually kill it.

 The problem with trying to have the game guess whether you can kill something
is pretty tricky.  You could do some quick calculations on damage each side can
inflict and adjust according to ac and protections.  But when it then comes to
special abilities, like firebreath, and whether the player is quick fingered and
can get out of the area of affect quickly or isn't quick fingered and dies there
is much tougher.


> Perfectly agreed :). I was thinking about treasure a bit more too, where
> monsters often have relatively little treasure. This is a good thing, for
> what they player gets (especially with the current mass slaughter
> situation), but it also handicaps humanoid monsters in that they wont have
> weapons and armor. A possibility would be to have some things 'break'
> during combat and not being part of what the player later finds. For
> example, even lesser orcs and goblins should have some form of armour and
> weapons, with a higher chance than currently (well, the weapon
> treasurelist is pretty ok), but some of the armour or weapons could be
> randomly removed at death, or only leave pieces left.

 One other possiblity is to have most treasure from the swarm type monsters to
be of low quality (-1 or worse).  Chances are the players won't want to use that
much, and the shops probably won't want to buy it (although on the shop
discussion, and addition could be the ability to repair it or even improve it
and make it fine quality (+1)).  So if that happened, you would kill all the
orcs and basically get a large pile of junk of little value - save for the orc
leaders who would have average, and the orc chieften who has fine.


> One thing I was wondering about, with some similarity, would it be
> possible to connect objects (altars or similar) to monsters? Or make some
> way for players to give items to NPC's and recieve items from NPC's?

 As of now, no.  Instead of directly connecting monsters to other items (like
gates), having the scripting language be able to have the monster do some other
action would be much more cool.  Something like

player: open gate

 with the script being something like

@match open
ok
#apply handle

 Where the # is a command the monster does - they should probably be
conversation specific and not go through the normal command structure.  So you
could also add something like

@take booze
#drop key

 (The @ take being an expansion to the @match stuff).  But this gets into a
rewrite of the scripting language.

 But the idea here is that the monsters wouldn't have inherit connected
abilities - if you killed the guard opening the gate, you could then get to the
handle he was standing on and pull it yourself.

 Now what could be interesting is to have magic ears listen to npc output and
act accordingly.  So a conversation with the PC, you can convince him to say the
password, and that password opens the gate.  But if you killed that NPC, you are
in trouble now as you have no idea what the password should be.


> This would also be a use for some object being connected to a monster. The
> moodfloors are the only objects I can think of that are sortof connected
> to monsters, altho in an indirect way.

 But such connections have to be within the map.  So if you have a multilevel
dungeon, the moodfloor (or whatever) can not be connected to the grim reaper on
level 3.  That is probably one limitation which isn't that big but can be
annoying - objects on one map can not communicate in any way with objects on the
other, save for exits to move the player back and forth.


> If we at some point add fatigue code (or just a modification to speed
> depending on wounds), that could solve the problem of little danger. If
> speed is decreased as you get wounded, the monster would be able to follow
> you (especially if monsters are modified to get closer in movement speed
> to players). So you'd better pull out in time, if you want to pull out. 

 I don't see fatigue code adding a lot to the game other than to make things
more annoying.  But you could certainly make some simple adjustments to player
speed based on damage (if less than 25%, reduce speed by 15% or whatever)


> Or increase the range so each step doesnt affect as much.

 That could be done also - d20 is I guess historical, but for computer games
where any range is easily determinable (not limited by what dice you can
create), you could go to a d30 or something for attacks.  d100 seems excessive -
then that +1/-1 is really meaningless, and seeing things like +20 to be good
just seems to be too much inflation.  Going up to +4/+5 for a really good item
just seems like a good number, but that may just be from my AD&D background.
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