Crossfire Archive
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Re: CF: towards 1.0
> Gripe. Gripe. I suggest that you havent (yet) the skill required
> to master these (difficult) classes. I have played every class
> up to (at least) level 25. I didnt cheat (by hacking my save
> file) or use the gross map abuses that are out there.
-:) Geez... I'm pretty sure I can reach overall level 50 with any class
within a few days without partying (and without cheating, of course)...
I was surprised to see that I could get a Barbarian to level 30 in no
time, with a little help from his older brother (but I also had to find
out that you can't handle dreads with a level 4 character). Not having
the standard equipment just means that things take a little (okay,
a big little) longer, but I don't see any problems --- for any class.
After all, there is a difference between "You can't get other classes
up" and "It doesn't make sense to use other classes".
The point is: I don't see a reason why I should maintain a whole bunch
of characters with different classes, since all classes in crossfire
are basically the same thing, except that they have different
handicaps. Since crossfire is biased towards fighters, classes that
are handicapped in this area are more difficult to play, since you
don't get any real advantage in return.
Fireborns are immune fire? Cast "immunity to fire" or "holy
possession of mostrai". Fireborns are immune to poison? Don't remember
when I was poisoned the last time --- back when I did get poisoned, I
had a key to invoke "cure poison", and before I learned that prayer, I
had a ring of life (geez... back then this ring seemed extremely
valuable) (okay, I kept the ring of life after learning the prayer -:)),
and my trusty old Warrior's helmet that I got from another player.
I never had problems with poison.
Monks have the "meditation" skill? That makes them better spellcasters
than wizards, since they can recharge really fast. But it takes a
while to kill monsters, compared to just wielding a weapon and running
through them at weapon speed.
What I was trying to say is simple: you have all sorts of classes, but
IMHO you get nothing in return for the handicaps that some classes
have. Crossfire _attempts_ to balance things, but it doesn't work
out (IMHO). Unfortunately I don't have any suggestion how to fix this ---
we have discussed this issue quite often, with no "breakthrough" -:)
Semi-handicapped classes such as wizards or mages are okay --- I
started with a ninja to learn something about the game (coming from
nethack, I figured I should start with a fighting character before
trying the other classes), dropped him after a while, and restarted
with a wizard (this was 0.93.4, so a wizard could recharge really
fast... and as a cf newbie and nethack user, the cf spells seemed so
powerful...). It took me ages to get him up (I was really happy when
somebody discovered the "singing abuse"). I still remember being so
happy that I could finally cast waybreads --- and dropping back to
roastbirds or foods after loosing >maxhp hitpoints -:( Or the first
time I could cast "holy possession of mostrai" (back then some of us
didn't know about the spellbook of fire immunity, despite the fact
that the hints are obvious... but we sort of neglected talking to
people if we didn't have to)--- just to loose it again when I died. I
also remember my first attempt of killing a wizard --- after a long
time of spellcasting, I figured it would be best to do it physical
(recently I discovered that bombs kill wizards --- we never used bombs
on anything). I was really happy to see all those "you are now level
xx in foo based skills" messages (although I really had no idea why I
got them)... until I realized that the numbers were going down... I
also remember a bunch characters standing around a Jessy (Oppie or
Fonz... the highest level character on that server killed the other
one, and left one of them for the others to play around with), trying
to survive and kill him with spells... no success. Back then, we
didn't realize that Jessy is a demon, so nobody tried holy orb of
Jehova... people kept getting teleported back to Scorn (you know,
loose some exp to get your hitpoints back to full -:)). Nowadays it
takes a single hit from a Demonslayer.
Don't you dare thinking I don't know my way around crossfire ---
I had to learn things the hard way, like all the people here (I took
over the crossfire installation around September last year, so before
that time there was no way I could cheat. Cheating spoils the fun
anyway, to the temptation isn't there either.
It is interesting to look at the development of the highlevel
"semihandicapped" characters on my server (I don't know any others);
wizards and and a mage. They _all_ (including my old wizard)
adopted a playing style matching their class --- that is, the wizards
used a lot of spellcasting, the mage did so, too, but chosse to
use a weapon more often than the wizards. As their levels got up,
they started to balance things --- they had high magic level, intermediate
physical and low wisdom, so they started to balance them out. Then things
started shifting --- they started killing more and more monsters with
physical attacks and holy word/orb of Jehova (we didn't discover the
spellbook of faces of death and the spellbook of meteor swarm for a long
time). Now all these characters wield a weapon and run through the monsters;
casting the counterspell/face of death combination as appropiate.
Okay, wizards and mages are not really handicapped, as they are free
to do anything that can be done in the game. But in my experience,
highlevel characters use a very limited set of attack styles:
a) physical attacks using a powerful weapon (Dragonbane, Demonslayer
or an improved axe of B1FF)
b) the face of death/counterspell combination
c) destruction (very popular if you have the Greyshield maps... the
"cheat item candidate" is not Lepred's bag (discussed some time ago)
--- it's Jagre's horn.
It is obvious that b) is not the main thing to use, as it uses too
much grace. Most of us don't use c) when dealing with maps that we
don't know yet (pupland), or just because we know there is no need to
use destruction, or because there are monsters that can't be
destructed, or because destruction simply takes too long. This leaves
a) as the standard way of killing monsters. All this is my
personal experience, from my own playing as well as from watching
the playing style of other highlevel characters.
When talking about pupland, a) becomes even more important --- there
are lots of places where b) and c) can't be used. I have yet to find
a place where "something blocks the impact of your weapon". And I still
have to find a weapon that tells "you don't have enough weaponpower to
deal that blow", or "The weapon obeys your command, though you are
unworty".
Geez... this got longer than I wanted this to be. It just happens
that talking about the "good old times" makes me type a lot faster...
I guess this discussion doesn't get anywhere. I _do_ like to start
discussions about things that I think need some discussion --- in this
case, it's the question how to make the classes more distinct, so that
you _get_ something in return for the things that you _loose_.
But often things tend to go nowhere... -:(
Christian
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