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Re: CF: play balance


I briefly refer to issues brought up in previous letters.

I suggest all players are morally obligated to share whatever abusive
methods they have discovered.  If the action is abusive then the game
would better if it was fixed (though not all can reasonably be fixed).

> It's easy to get physique & magical xp, but hard to get wisdom xp
I see no problems with that.  No reason to think that all skills should
be easy to gain exp.  Though, I wouldn't mind if modest wisdom exp was
granted for completing some quests.

I think weapon enchanting currently makes sense since artifact weapons
are better than what you can make.  In contrast, armor enchanting is
unbalancing since you can make items more useful than you can find.
Maybe only body armor should be enchantable by players.

Alchemy needs to be integrated into the game.  Materials need to be found
in maps (salt near the ocean, minerals in mines,,,).  Alchemy books
(containing rare formulas) need to exist as artifact items.

There does need to be an artifact tracking system.  It would be a
database limiting the number of artifacts in the world.  I think it
should have have a lower threshhold (no limits until that number),
a max rate of creation after that point (like one a week), and an
absolute max.  If this creates a shortage of artifacts then it is
under the control of the DM (who can modify the parameters) and maybe
it forces player interaction regarding allocation of items.  I think
very few artifacts would be limited to only 1 existing, but most all
should be highly limited so they are rare.

It might also be interesting if all artifacts impair healing and/or
mana recovery (and doubly if not equipped since item wants to be equipped).
Idea being that such powerful magic items distorts the universe/planes
about the character which impairs natural recovery.  It is a very common
theme that powerful items are also a bit of a curse due to their side
effects.

There needs to be a spell effectiveness table for monsters.  In that
they are likely to get the good spells and use them.  It is very
unbalancing to have powerful spells commonly used by players, but
rarely used by monsters.  In fact, if monsters aggressively used the
best spells then we might finally reach agreement that some spells are
too powerful.

I think a key game balance measurement is that difficult monsters are
always difficult.  There should be no way to be so good that a powerful
monster is not a threat.

As for monster exp, layout is a major factor in determining the difficulty
of killing monsters.  Thus, the only way to consistently accurately give
the most accurate exp is to edit the monster's exp for all maps which
it isn't right.  Generally speaking, monsters in a row should all be
given less exp than if they were found in an open area.

I note that people are willing to submit code bugs that bother them,
but I have never seen a patch to fix map bugs.  The maps are as much a
part of CF as the code.

And while map designers like to create new items as part of new maps,
no new items should be significantly better than existing items.  Items
with special abilities should have balancing negatives.  For example, the
BoneCrusher isn't such a great weapon since it is so heavy.  I think
PeterM's maps are notable (among other reasons) for creating new items
that are useful, but they aren't really any better than previous items.

							sdw

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