Re: CF: Direction, maps and balancing

[David Sundqvist <>]

On Thu, 10 Jun 1999, Mark Wedel wrote:

> David Sundqvist wrote:
> <snippage>
>
>  To go along with this, non magical bad weapons (rusted swords) should not be
> cursed.  The detect curse is another one of those convenience spell - with the
> huge number of cursed objects you run accross, you sort of need to be able to
> easily spotted the cursed items.

Cursed items should probably be rarer in general. Having a prevalence of
bad items isnt strange, but they probably shouldnt be cursed. With detect
curse and sense curse and the relative cheapness of detect curse altars,
it doesnt really fulfill any function anyway, since players simply dont
try out stuff before detecting anyway. 
 
>  To follow up on the above, the quality of items should probably depend much
> more on the monster and not the dungeon.  An ogre should give better quality
> treasure than an orc, even if they have the same treasure list and are on the
> same dungeon for the simple fact the ogre is a better most.  So perhaps the
> level of the creature should be the primary factor for monster treasure lists,
> with actual dungeon level having lesser input.  This would also affect things
> like the orc leaders - being higher level, better treasure.  So the leaders
> would have better treasure, and that would make sense.

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.

>  I think we already have discussed stores quite a bit.  The general feeling from
> that discussion is that the way stores works needs to be pretty much completely
> redone - we probably need to come up with a list of the features a store/shop
> owner should have and rework from scratch.

Yep. I'll have to think about that one. 

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?

>  Even clues within the dungeon could be used.  At one time, gravestones were
> used as the signal that the stuff you are coming up against is really tough. 
> Adding messages like 'you hear the wailing of lost soles' and the like could be
> nice clues to add in.  I guess the problem is really how to do that in a good
> fashion (for example, on the level proceeding the monster, yet you don't want
> that message once the monster is dead).

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.

> > 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).
> 
>  So if we assume say 60 hp for both sides, that amounts to 2 hp damage/second
> (second = roughly 8 ticks).
> 
>  I don't think you want to make damage that low (just a few hp per hit ) - at
> that point, there is little danger as at 10 hp, you can pretty much know you are
> still good for 3 hits.  So you probably still want a potential for high damage,
> and really you don't want the two sides hitting each other much.  That either
> means slower attack time and/or better AC's.

Agreed. Damage in general cant be that low; you also need to have a
possible fairly large diffrentiation with different weapons.

Better AC's would be best to avoid, I think, except, perhaps, for
monsters which are often pretty handicapped compared to players in this
aspect. 

Higher hp is another alternative too, which in combination with
slower attack time would make things last a bit longer.

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. 

One advantage of a longer combat time would also be for parties. Currently
it's not easy to cooperate in killing any low to medium level monsters,
and this is partly due to the speed with which the monsters or players are
dispatched. 

Another, and a very important, advantage is that if we increase general
combat time we become a *lot* less sensitive to the network latency
problem. A 3 second lag would be acceptable if you'll just get hurt during
that time, not immediately killed.

>  One difficulty right now in that is that the AC and WC of the player 
> can vary wildly.  I don't have a really good solution for that - a player should
> certainly get benefit from good AC and good WC.  Perhaps some form of
> adjustments when going against monsters so that the player AC and WC doesn't
> affect things as much?  Or maybe just limit the bonuses one can get for either
> of those?

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

>  Another thought is to change the attack form some.  Right now, a d20 is
> determined, and if you hit, you do same amount of damage.  What could be done is
> something like a d20 is rolled, and if you miss, no damage.  If you hit, the
> amount of damage done is determined by what you rolled.  For example:
> 
>  1: always misses:
>  2-10: glancing blow/nick - 1-2 hp damage
>  11-14: offbalance hit - 1/4 damage (min 1-3)
>  15-17: partial hit - 1/2 damage (min 1-4)
>  18-19: solid hit - full damage
>  20: severe hit - 1.5 times damage.
> 
>  This would reduce the meaning of AC/WC some - a character with really good WC
> will hit a lot, but many of those hits will be lower damage.  a person with poor
> WC won't hit often, but they will be potent hits.

This could be interesting, yes. I think we need to test some of these
solutions out, to get to where we want.

> > 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.
> 
>  True.  One way to even things out is just give the player more HP.  I think you
> don't want to reduce weapon damage that much - you want some differentiation
> between the weapons.  On the other hand, as in real life, some weapons are
> suprerior to other weapons.

True, increasing player HP (and in some cases, monster hp too) improving
monster ac and increasing monster armour and reducing player attack speed, 
would probably go some way towards balancing it. Weapons definitely should
diffrentiate, this is also an atmosphere thing, altho the better ones
should be rarer. IMO, you should be able to do reasonably well through
levels 1-5 with just rusty weapons, get up to finding/being able to
afford, a real weapon between 5-10, get a lightly to medium good magical
weapon in ranges 10-20. This has to be balanced to fit difficulty, of
course. 

>  I was thinking of this.  But strange affects like the player standing where the
> monsters image is shown for tallness could be confusinb, and the same for spells
> (the fireball hit its image, so why didn't it explode?)
> 
>  And nothing currently has ceiling information.  That titan, if done in the
> footprint method, probably should still not be able to enter most buildings
> simply because the door isn't that tall.
> 
>  I think for simplicity and clearness, mosnters will probably continue to reside
> in the spaces they physically appear in, even if it doesn't make the most sense.

Agreed. 

/David 

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