CF: getting rid of too powerful characters

[Raphaël Quinet <Raphael.Quinet@eed.ericsson.se>]

Several people on this list have mentioned (and I agree with them)
that Crossfire was designed for characters up to level 20 or 30,
and it does not make sense to allow a character to gain more levels
beyond that.  Sure, you can play with a character that is level 50
or more, but then you are not playing the same game anymore.

So I thought a bit about what could be done in order to prevent
the creation of "perfect" or "too powerful" characters.  My ideas
fall into two categories: first some ideas for making it difficult
or impossible to create characters that have maximum stats and
skills, and second some ideas for dealing with characters who have
reached a level that is too high.

1) Have a maximum value for the total of all stats, which is lower
   than 120 (6x20).  In the current game, a character is created
   with average stats and has to improve them until he reaches 20
   in each stat (plus or minus race/class modifiers).  If there
   was a maximum value for the total of all stats, then after a
   certain point it would become necessary to decrease Pow in order
   to gain some Dex, or vice-versa.  That would make it impossible
   to have the maximum in each stat.

2) Like someone mentioned a few weeks ago, instead of having some
   experience for each skill and adding these in order to get the
   overall experience, we could have one overall experience value
   together with percentages for each skill.  These percentages
   would constantly decrease over time and would only increase when
   the corresponding skill is used.  It would then be impossible to
   get 100% in each skill, because the time spent improving one
   skill would cause the others to decrease.

3) Instead of having a limit on the sum of the stats (as in idea 1),
   there could be a limit on the sum of the skills.  The skills
   would be represented by percentages (as in idea 2) and they would
   start at 0.  The player would use these skills in order to
   increase the percentages, but there would be a limit after which
   it would only be possible to gain some experience in one skill by
   sacrificing another skill.  You could for example have 50% for all
   skills, or choose to improve one skill to 100% at the cost of
   having two other skills decreased to 25%.

4) The game could end at level 30, period.  A character reaching
   that level would get a big congratulations message with lots of
   fireworks and everything, would be remembered forever and blah
   blah blah...  and would have to start again from scratch.  Not
   very nice, IMHO, but some games are working like that.

5) We could make it pointless or dangerous to keep on gaining levels
   after some point.   After level 25 or 30, each level gained beyond
   that would cause one permanent stat loss for Con, Dex and Pow,
   like if the character was getting older.  This means that if the
   threshold is set to 30, then a player reaching level 36 would have
   a maximum value of 20 - 6 = 14 for Con, Dex and Pow.  So it would
   still be possible to play the game and keep on gaining levels, but
   after a while the character would be so weak that it would be too
   dangerous to play with it (cannot stand a physical attack, and not
   able to cast spells because Pow is too low).  It would also be
   possible to compensate this loss of stats for a while by using some
   rings or improved weapons, but they would not help anymore when
   the stats start becoming negative.

6) There could be time limit after which the character becomes weaker
   or dies.  So the loss of stats or loss of MaxHP would be based on
   the playing time and not on the character's level.  Again, this
   simulates the fact that the character is getting older.  This means
   that after e.g. one week of playing, a character would become so
   old that he could not fight anymore.

The goal of all these ideas is to ensure that it is not possible to
create a "perfect" character that stays forever on a server and has
no problem killing anything that you throw at him.  The first three
ideas encourage players to specialize their characters in some areas,
and the last three encourage players to abandon characters that have
reached a high level and start again with new characters.

I am not too fond of things based on time limits like I describe in
ideas 2 and 6 because I usually like to spend some time exploring the
world and I do not want Crossfire to become and action game in which
you have to do as many things as possible before the time runs out.
My favourite ideas are 3 and 5.  I think that it could be fun to play
Crossfire with these modifications.  What do you think?

-Raphaël
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