Re: CF: Direction, maps and balancing

[David Sundqvist <>]

On Wed, 9 Jun 1999, Mark Wedel wrote:

>  Perhaps that is the biggest problem with the current setup - player to player
> combat, if it happens, pretty much means one player is killed almost instantly.
> 
>  Now player to player combat probably doesn't happen that often, but this
> imbalance can even happen when players work together (a player mistakenly steps
> infront of another casting some spell, and the player ends up dead)

Well, it's one of the most common causes of death I've found while playing
together with others. As long as the difference between monster and player
stats remain it becomes very difficult to balance spells so they wont fry
a player to a crisp if he steps the wrong way and still causes enough
damage to monsters to make a difference. 

>  There is now an upper carrying limit for players - but depending on the
> strength, dex, and other abilities, reaching that limit could still make you
> pretty slow.
> 
>  I seldom buy misc items from shops - with the large number of monsters out
> there, you tend to be able to find most 'mundane' items in the maps  (mundane
> are the basics like +2 high shiels, magical helmets, magic weapons, etc).
> 
>  The main thing I tend to buy in shops are stat potions and sometimes specific
> spell books or food (but in the case of food, it is usually cheap enough.  Now
> this point can be argued both ways - what is the point of having a shop if you
> never buy anything from it, or conversely, what is the point of adventuring if
> you can buy all the good items from the shop.
> 
> > I think it would be easier and we'd be better off from a balance point of
> > view if we got to the point where items costing a few silvercoins or gold
> > coins would actually make sense.
> 
>  I think there would be a better balance if there was more to buy from shops
> than just specialty items or stuff of high cost.

I have pretty much the same tendency. Food and a few specific items like
some spells and potions and a few rings.

One reason is the easy availability of mundane items in monster treasure.
Actually, I'd like to consider increasing the flexibility of weapons a bit
more. The 'mundane' items might as well be mundane. -2 - +2 weapons might
as well be considered unmagical (or at least uncursed) and range from
'very rusty' to 'finely crafted'. Basic monsters (and newbie players) like
orcs and goblins would mainly have access to very rusty or rusty weapons
and armour, any better weapons should be reserved for higher classes like
chiefs, elite guards, etc  (and I'll probably extend these types with
more archetypes and images to allow better variation in base monsters).

We should also improve the control of item availability in stores, I
think (actually, we should look over the store concept a bit;
shopkeepers may be one idea). The treasurelist generation works, but
mapmakers should be able to control content and pricing a bit better, so
you could create a bargain weapons store with cheap but not very good
weapons, a fine smith store with more rare weapons, perhaps even
specialized to swords or similar. This is also mostly an 'atmosphere'
thing, and a practicality thing, since players would be able to find out
which store to go to if they want a fair chance to find the
weapon/spell/potion they want and wouldnt have to run around and looking
everywhere. 

> > For more balance, a player shouldnt have to cover all angles in protection
> > if going up against known monsters; he should have a reasonable chance to
> > guess what kinds of protection should be needed. The extreme variation
> > makes it difficult to judge what a mapmaker can reasonably expect a player
> > to be able to deal with at a certain level.
> 
>  A player probably shouldn't be able to cover all bases.
> 
>  However, one thing that will change is the degree of protections.  With a
> 50%/100% damage reduction for protected/immune creatures, the difficulty of map
> can depend tremendously on what protections the player may have.

Definitely agreed. In some cases here, we're bitten by the spell
imbalance. Monsters can deal large damage amounts with spells, just
like players, and so immunity is required, because even protection will
let enough damage get through to kill a player. 

And with immunity the balance goes the other way instead. A 20th level
relatively inexperienced player warrior goes from getting frozen to a cube
by a chinese dragon to chopping it to small small pieces just from the
difference between protected cold and immune cold. 

It would be better if that player had at least a small chance with just
ordinary protection and that the monster could actually seriously damage
him even if he had the best available reasonable protection.

>  I also think the developers have to resist the urge to put in items to make
> some areas more enjoyable.  At one time, before immunity to draining from the
> strange ring, grimreapers were a major fear point.  Even the strange ring did
> not change things that much - it was rare enough and only did that one thing, so
> you tended not to wear it all the time.  But since that time, the ring of life
> has been added, which also gives a very good regen rate, so probably most
> characters at a respectible level go around immune to draining and grimreapers
> have last any fear effect they might once have had.
>
>  Now at one side, the ability to become immune to those is nice - I always
> thought they were very nasty.  On the other, removing any reason to worry about
> them at all changes the balance again.  I think we need to find restraint and
> determine what parts of the game should be played.  Adding a bag with infinite
> carry weight and 100% weight reduction because it is annoying to have to shuffle
> you inventory is another such example - maybe it is annoying not being able to
> carry everything you want.  On the other hand, such a container removes any
> decision the player may have to make about what items he should carry on that
> adventure.

This, I think, ties in to what I mentioned earlier. Players should have a
chance to prepare for what they can reasonably expect in visiting a
dungeon. Grimreapers are a perfect example of this; in earlier maps they
have been used a lot, and in very unnatural locations together with very
unnatural companions (grimreapers and goblins??). This, of course, leads
to players having to be prepared for draining monsters at any time, which
makes the reason for the ring of life abundantly clear. The mapguide
recommends placement of monsters in logical groups, but these maps may
predate it.
 
If, on the other hand, players could reasonably expect The Ugok Goblin
King Hills to be free of grimreapers, while they could expect there to be
grimreapers in The Crypts of Ancient Mists, then they could either prepare
for the visits in a more thoughtful fashion or enjoy the fear trip,
rather than come carrying everything or wearing multi-power items.

>  I will agree with that point.  The question is can that be resolved in such a
> fashion that game play is still reasonable in other aspects.
> 
>  What is the definition of 'take a while to resolve'?  Are we talking 2
> seconds?  5 seconds?  30 seconds?
> 
>  From that data, we can pretty much figure out monster speed, damage it can do,
> how often it can hit.

Well, IMO, in a balanced monster-vs-player one-on-one situation (pretty
close in power and stats) it should take about 30 seconds to resolve the
conflict one way or the other. That would give both parties some time to
back off (and run for help).

Of course, the more unequal the monster and players are, the shorter the
time would be. 

>  Now one thing that could make combats longer would be to keep same movement the
> same, but have attacks actually take longer than moving down (weapon speed <
> normal speed).  If the same is true for monsters, that means the two can close
> reasonably quickly on each other, but can not exchange blows all that fast.

This is one way, yes. Looking over the uses and ranges of hitpoints is
another, as well as the amounts of damage from different things. I think
we'll probably have to do a combination of all. 
  
>  Monsters not being able to get to players probably is a problem.  I think there
> are too many overly large monsters - while having a 3x5 monster may look
> impressive, it basically means the monster is locked into its location - the
> only way it can for sure get to the player is if the entire map is that big open
> area.
> 
>  All maps should be able to handle 2x2 objects properly (this should be a map
> standard) - this would let a lot more monsters through.

Well, at least, all monsters should (unless specifically imprisoned) be
able to in theory reach the outside. 1x1 is ok if it makes sense (gnomes,
goblins, orc tunnels, dwarves, etc), but as soon as you have any 2x2
monsters they should have a clear path to the outside world.

>  But also, we should consider the fact that what resides on the squares
> themselves is the footprint of a monster.  Just because a monster is really tall
> probably should not mean it takes a 5 spaces - its footprint may still be 1 (or
> may 2x2), and should still be able to navigate some way or another.  But this
> then gets into the issue of monsters looking good vs playability.

Indeed. The really large monsters should be made smaller. The perspective
fixups I'm working on will also make the perception of monsters different,
as you get a bit more depth feeling. This may also be better if footprint
is taken into account, altho it opens up a whole other can of worms (how
do you deal with shading and such on squares that are theoretically
another square but higher in a faked z direction? Dealing with visibility
wouldn't be too hard if we move to a layerbased system, since we could
place 'above footprint' squares of a monster in a layer above the
shading, but a lot of other things would be difficult.

>  Yeah - you could have a weight and space.  Containers have some amount of space
> for objects they contain, and take up some space themselves (which could
> potentially be variable or fixed - something like a sack is going to take up
> more space as stuff is put in it (but it is easy to carry 200 orc chops in that
> sack than on your body), while something like the luggage is fixed size.
> 
>  This would require updating all the items, but that probably wouldn't be too
> hard to do (more busy work than anything really complicated.)  Having both a
> weight and space (encumberance) is probably the closest to realism that can be
> imitated.

I agree archetype fixups are a minor problem. It's work, but it isnt
complicated.

If we get really serious about maps and balance issues we should fix up
the server until we get the finished feature set and balance, while just
using a small subset of test maps and archetypes with that. Then we can
migrate stuff in as needed, to obtain a clean new fully featured map and
archetype set.

>  Some actions would need to be expanded.  For example, if there is a sword on
> the ground and you have no weapon, you should be able to directly equip it
> instead of picking it up then equipping it.  This could be more important for
> armor, where having 2 unequipped suits in your inventory just wouldn't be
> possible.

Agreed.

/David

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