Re: CF: Death, Stats and a Simple Party...

["Mark Wedel" <mark@icp.siemens.com>]

On Dec 19,  3:17pm, John Cater wrote:

> When we all started, life was good, our rolled stats were reasonable so
> we formed a party and went off adventuring. Until... we all accidently
> ran into a place with a bunch of skulls. Ouch! Things rapidly
> deteriorated.
> The "penalty" for death in crossfire really bites. Losing 20% of
> experience seems pretty fair, but the loss of stats really makes it
> difficult to get through levels 5-12 where suitably matched monsters and
> quests seem to be lacking.

 Prime things in that level range are probably wyverns and hill giants.  A
group of wyverns can be pretty nasty (multiple fire cones), but hill giants
shouldn't be as bad.  Good time to get the bows out also.

>
> Our quick fix was to comment out the five lines or so of code that
> reduces a random stat and this seems to work quite well. What does
> anyone else think?

 Whatever makes things more enjoyable for you is reasonable.

 On the other hand, death should definately be something the player wants to
avoid.  Crossfire is actually a bit more generous than many games where death
is permanent (there is in fact an option for crossfire to allow that).

 However, possible spoiler:

 Potions of strength, int, wis, ... gain the respective stat permanently.  So
any stat loss can be 'erased' provided you can find/afford the potions.

>
> Something else. We don't really like the system of initially allocating
> stats. I guess the "rolling" evolved from D&D or something. As it is
> people playing on my machine just sit there pressing "roll again" until
> they get something they like.

 Most games had rolled stats.  Crossfire actually limits the range to something
like 85-105 (would have to check), so there is definately some best character
you can get.  However, giving a set total and letting characters adjust as they
want probably wouldn't be a bad idea - saves on rolling time, and characters
can better customize the charcters they want.

>
> Wouldn't it make more sense to allocate a number of Points (Based on
> Class?) that the player can "spend" accordingly?
> Or perhaps various classes just have fixed base stats that can be
> improved with gameplay somehow?

 The entire character creation method potentially be redone to be something
like:

 1) Player chooses race.  Race has some intrinsic abilities (See in dark,
protections, whatever), maximum allowed stat values, and possible adjustment in
starting points.
 2) Player chooses class.  This determines starting skills, equipment, and more
possible adjustment in starting point (a weak class may get higher stats than a
good class).  Not all classes would be available for all races.
 3) Player gets so many stat points based on the selections above, and
re-arranges things until they are satisified.

 (note - 1 and 2 could be reversed - choose class than race).

 As said in the spoiler above, there is already a way to raise stats.  However,
perhaps there should be a limit on how fast stats can be raised (for example,
if a stat total of 140 is max (20 in each of the 7 stats), and the character
starts at 105 (average of 15), there are 35 stat gains he could do.  Maybe only
allow 1 stat potion/level - for example, a 5'th level character could get
effects from 5 potions, but no more until he gains some more levels.  In this
way, it would actually take a while for a character to get all 20's.

>
> Also in the party we discovered that when one member attacks a monster
> and then another member of the party finishes it off, the first player
> gets experience in whatever skill is currently applied!

 This is a known bug.  In fact, if you are playing in a party mode, the other
characters don't even need to hit it - a charcter sitting back and doing
nothing will still get exp for the killed monsters. (really up to the other
characters to do something about that, since exp is divided by the number in
the party, so that freeloader is just sucking exp).

 Since the above case is true, it is hard to determine what skill to give it
to.  PRobably best to give it to whatever skill was used to kill the monster
(ie, if hth, then all players get hth experience, if magic, all characters get
magic exp).  If they don't have the skill used, they get general exp (general
exp would need to be added - basically, it is experience that is only applied
towards additional overall levels, and not towards skills).




-- 

-- Mark Wedel
mark@pyramid.com
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