Crossfire Archive
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

CF: Stupid: strange ring

Christian Stieber writes:
 > Hi,
 > 
 > well, after some discussions with a crossfire player who has played
 > crossfire from the very beginning, I finally know why the "strange ring"
 > is there. But while it used to be useful in the past, nowadays the
 > ring of life, which is a frequently found random ring, is a lot better.
 > 
 > So how about removing the stupid strange ring from the list of random
 > artifacts? After all, it's on top of the most useless artifacts list...
 > 
 > Christian
 > 
 > 
 > -- 
 > Christian (Icho/Gandhi/Ribald @sunbroy53.informatik.tu-muenchen.de, 13326)
 > [to unsubscribe etc., send mail to crossfire-request@ifi.uio.no]
 > 

  Look, Christian:  artifacts are supposed to be precious, rare, and
  priceless.  You're not supposed to be able to carry around your ten
  (or 50) favorites.  The fact that you can suggests that Crossfire
  has a *serious* play-balance problem that will prevent it from ever
  being a successful mass-market game unless it gets fixed.

  As much as I'd like this mail to end with ranting flames about how
  this game has degenerated from the "pure" RPG that Frank wrote,
  I'll instead close with some contructive suggestions that have been 
  painfully obvious to me for the past 3 years of playing Crossfire:

	- limit the max player level to 30.  Period.  Anything beyond
	  that is unbalanced, silly, and embarrassing.

	- fix it so that the maximum experience you can receive from
	  ANY monster is 15,000 experience, or whatever is needed to
	  take you to the next level, whichever is less at the time
	  you kill the monster.

	- get rid of the One Ring, the Ring of Elrond, and all the
	  other seriously unbalancing artifacts.

	- implement a working "unique-artifact" system, so that you
	  can *never* see two of the same unique artifact together
	  on the same system.  Make sure it checks saved player files,
	  or better, prevent people from saving with artifacts in
	  their possession.

	- make more of the artifacts (strange ring, ring of life,
	  bonecrusher and so on) unique.

	- don't allow artifacts to be enchanted, EVER.

	- don't allow items to be enchanted beyond +3 without an
	  increasing chance of exploding.

	- lose the "trade 50 scales for this shield"-type artifacts.

	- get rid of (or weaken) the two over-powerful religions.

  I could list more, but the point is that Crossfire is currently
  a very silly game, largely due to the efforts of a small minority
  of players who think it's cool to have +150 swords.  Speaking
  directly to Mark, Scott and Brian, all of whom I trust:  *please*
  address this before 1.0 is released.  Our goals should be:

	* the progression up to 30th level should take a very
	  experienced player at least 2 months of round-the-clock play.
	  For inexperienced players it should seem to be an almost 
	  unattainable ideal.

	* you shouldn't be able to walk through dragons, cyclopes or 
	  any other strong monsters as if they're not even there,
	  no matter how well-equipped you are.

	* the experience of finding ONE artifact should be so
	  exhilarating that it actually breathes life back into the
	  game.

  And, no, I'm not going to fix these things myself, since it would
  make me extremely unpopular with the kind of player who opens his
  Christmas presents and says "aw, I GOT one of these already! <toss>"

  Besides, as I've mentioned before, I'm hard at work on a completely 
  new game that you'll all be invited to play in a few months.

  -steve


[to unsubscribe etc., send mail to crossfire-request@ifi.uio.no]
References: