Re: CF: Direction, maps and balancing

[Mark Wedel <>]

David Sundqvist wrote:

> The first is the question of having a parity between the actual variables.
> This is something I think we should do either way. Monsters and players
> should have the same variables and abilities for hp, sp, regeneration,
> etc, and they should be used the same way. This is mainly for code
> simplicity and archetype readability, to avoid bugs caused by different
> behaviour. In the cases where the needed abilities do not overlap,
> separate variables should be used, and reuse avoided.

 Well, the way I envision the 'new' object structure when it is cleaned up is
for the object itself to only have the basic information that all objects need
(map it belongs on, above, below, face, etc.)  There is then a substructure
which contains the item specific attributes (hp, sp, speed, etc for monsters,
connected status, current state, reset status, etc for gates.

 The player and monster will diverge in that model, since there are so many
extra thing the player has anyways, it didn't seem to make the player a
subobject of the monster.

 That said, things should act similar for both creatures.  If a monster puts on
a ring of regen +1, his regeneration rate should increase in a well behaved
manner.  And so should the workings of things like weapons.


> > 1)  It would be very frustrating for me to play with characters who move
> >     slowly all the time.  When I press a key, I pretty much want my
> >     character to move right then.  I don't want to:
> >     press a key
> >     wait
> >     character moves
> >     press a key again
> >     wait....

 Thats one reason I thought about making player speed a bit more fixed and not
as variable.  I personally don't see having a high dex or agility really making
you move any faster (most people in the world walk at roughly the same pace
after all).  The other benefit I thought on a fixed speed is perhaps limit a
players minimum speed to something that is still at least sort of quick (.1 or
.2) so things never become too incredibly slow for the player.

> Well, think about how the poor monsters must feel :). But I agree, a too
> slow response time isnt wanted. Too fast isnt that good either tho. I
> rather agree with Marks assessment with speed 1.0 on an unencumbered
> normal human. It could be a little bit slower during combat and a bit
> faster during travel, if there was a good way to do that, like a real
> 'run' capability that will make the character move faster but unarmed or
> something.

 In theory, the times it takes to do certain actions should be much more
variable than it is now.  A thought on this would be to have some terrain types
actually decrease the time it takes to move accross it - an example might be the
roads - maybe moving a space on the well maintained roads should actually take
.8 time instead of the 1 time that most normal movement takes.  So this way, if
you are walking accross the world on the well maintained road, it would be quite
so slow.

 Generally, I don't find the pace moving long distances that annoying - usually,
you try to trim down the amount of stuff you have to reasonable levels so you
are heavily burdened, and away you go.

 The server actually knows when the player is running vs normal movement to make
it go faster (otherwise, the client and server would need to synchronize how
often to send movement commands), so a real run command would actually not be
that hard to do at all.

> 
> On the topic of fast monsters I sorta like those fast hit'n'run types
> since they're sortof a challange.

 I think more than raw speed, more intelligence on the monsters would make them
more interesting.  How often have you run accross monsters zapping the wand for
no good reason, or reading scrolls of some effect that does no good?  If
monsters were actually even marginally intelligent (use staff of healing when
wounded, don't bother with the detect magic scrolls, etc), things could be much
more interesting.  Think of that titan down to 100 hp from 2000 drinking that
healing potion and going back up to 2000 hp.  Right now item use by monsters
seems basically random and a hope that a good effect happens.


> But the problem isnt really in the movement speed. It should be a bit more
> in parity, imo, but the average unencumbered player should probably be a
> little bit faster than the average monster. The problem lies mainly in
> attack speed. A good player can, for example, take out a hill giant at a
> pretty low level by waiting 'til it moves, run-hit-run, wait 'til it
> moves, run-hit-run, etc.

 For that matter, stand back a ways and fire endlessly with a bow.  The hill
giants tend to run out of boulders fairly quickly.


> Experiencewise that is, yes. When a player gets up to the point where he
> can kill a bit larger monsters without a problem, it does become a balance
> problem, because those monsters have inventory. A nice way to get money is
> by finding a place with a lot of skeletons and generators (raffle_1, for
> example). Run around for an hour or two killing skeletons and you can
> easily collect several thousand platinum in treasure (money isnt a
> serious problem for any experienced player after getting to a reasonable
> level 10). This in turn leads to money being rather worthless as actual
> reward for completing dungeons or quests, and instead we get artifact
> inflation. The ease of obtaining money also leads to the ability to go on
> shopping sprees, and rapidly improving the characters ac, armour, spell
> knowledge and ability scores, and 'treasure' in stores has to be balanced
> through rarity rather than pricing, which in turn leads to annoyance by
> having to run around looking for items you want.

 But all the above seem to be more an issue in map design and not inherent
unbalance in the monsters themselves.  At least a partial solution to the above
is to remove most generators from most maps.  Or at least limit the use so that
there may only be a couple generators so that if the player leaves after killing
a few, it will be a slow process for him to take out all the monsters and
generators.  Most maps have so many generators that the issue isn't able to kill
the monsters themselves, but being able to kill them fast enough/be tough enough
so you can take out the generators.


> > How about a slight mod allowing for a monster to instantly try to hit a player
> > who steps into a square next to them, say, perhaps if they have more than
> > half their speed?
> 
> That would definitely be an improvement (and just that would probably make
> monsters several times more dangerous than they are currently). I'd prefer
> a separate weapon and movement speed for monsters too tho, since it would
> be easier to tune to balance.

 The ability for a monster to hold an action probably makes sense, especially in
the swarms.  If the monster can't move because he is surrounded by his friends,
he should be able to do something almost instantly when a space opens up.  Right
now, I believe their speed is reset to 0 (or -1 or whatever) when they can't do
something.

 The logic to check surrounding monsters for attacks when a player moves onto a
space would not be that hard to do.  Presuming the speed of the monster is still
reduced in such a situation, it doesn't really give the monster extra speed,
just allows him to hold his attack for someone to approach.

> Peter writing about regeneration:
>Not that much faster.  In fact, most monsters don't regenerate at all.
>I changed this awhile ago.  Con can take values from 1 to 128
>(or was it 100?  I forget),
>with 1 being slow regeneration, and 100 (or 128?) being fastest.
>Pow does the same thing for sp.

 Some monsters do regenerate very fast.  And for monsters with huge number of
hp, a ring of regen +1 is not likely to make any difference for them.

 How monsters regenerate and the purpose of it could perhaps be rethought. 
Probably the main reason for monsters to regenerate is to prevent players
dinking the monsters with low damage arrows or coming up, hitting it a few times
and the player then running away when they take any damage - regeneration
prevents those methods from usually working.

 Having things like orcs regenerate probably doesn't make a lot of sense at this
point in time - I don't think the regeneration rate of an orc is going to change
my chance of defeating it.  

> David wrote
> >  One thing that probably needs to be done is a definate heirarchy of speed. 
> > Something like:
> > 
> > speed 2.0 - lightning bolts, arrows.
> 
> Probably even higher; 'outrunning' doesnt just mean 'running faster', it's
> also possible to sidestep the lightning bolts and arrows, especially if we
> increas game area size. It should be possible for a good character to
> sidestep an arrow, but only if he's very good and if he sees the arrow a
> fair bit away. 

 Remember that the player does have the handicate of the connection lag.  
With the client, reality is pretty much that by the player sees something and
types a command, by the time the server receives and executes the command, 2 or
3 ticks will have passed since the event first being seen.  And that presumes
fast reflexes from the player.

 speed 2.0 is pretty quick - that is 2 spaces a turn - assuming a 17x17 view
area, that means there is 8 spaces you will see if something comes from the edge
of the map before it hits you.  That amounts to 4 ticks - possible to move
aside, but as a player, you need to be on your toes (and have sufficient speed
as a charcter to do the actual movement)

> >  Perhaps also have all players start with a movement speed of 1, with strength
> > determining how fast that speed is reduced to lower values, and agility only
> > increasing weapon speed.  So higher strength means it is more likely you can
> > stay at high speed while still carrying stuff, and that high agility means you
> > can attack faster, but does not mean you will actually move faster.  Since this
> > would keep players actual movement speed a bit more constant (save for magic)
> 
> Hmmm, maybe dexterity should be split into deterity and agility, with
> dexterity affecting lockpicking and chance to hit and weapon speed and
> agility affecting movement, ac and similar... or that might be redundant. 

 That seems a bit redundant to me.  If nothing else, I think player speed should
be made a bit more constant - not nearly as variable as it is now.  If you put
on a backpack for a hike that weight 10 lbs, your walking pace is not going to
be slowed down by that extra 10 lbs.  If you put on 50, then maybe yes, but the
other big area (which crossfire does not have) would be endurance - the distance
you would walk with a 50lb load is likely to be shorter than with no load at
all.  But the actual pace may be somewhat similar.

 Armor imposes a maximum movement speed.  Weapons should probably impose a
maximum attack speed.  A high agility is not likely to help you much with a 2
handed sword - the weapon is big and heavy enough that that is going to be the
limiting factor.  In a realistic system, the strength might have an impact on
how heavy a weapon you can use, while the agilty might have speed.
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