Re: CF: Playbalance

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

On Mar 4,  2:03pm, David Sundqvist wrote:
> Subject: Re: CF: Playbalance
> On Wed, 3 Mar 1999, Mark Wedel wrote:

> As you say, it's pretty easy to clear out the newbie tower and gain
> levels. Or, for the average spellcaster, read your starting books
> and you'll be second level with twice the HP you just had. These things
> are, of course, necessary but easy for the first level character, who is
> otherwise beset with a rather random death problem, since with a bit of
> bad luck they may get whacked enough to die on one blow from a rather
> lowlevel monster.

 True.  The spellbook problem could be solved by not giving exp for reading
starting equipment spellbooks.

 Traps generally only seem be be dangerous at lower levels where the damage is
enough to kill outright.  At higher levels, they can be annoying (take down a
bunch of your hp), but are not life threatening.

>
> So, I'd like to avoid the rapid jump from extremely easy random kill to
> pretty invulnerable to lowlevel monsters. Since the first levels are
> pretty much done on routine for experienced players as soon as they learn
> a few easy tricks, and it can be rather frustrating for total newbies
> since they get wacked in a rather random fashion, improving the basic
> stats (say, basics somewhere between 12-20 HP, 12-16 SP, 12-16 grace, for
> example (any numbers I throw out here is just off the top of my head, if
> we redesign anything, it should be seriously thought through)) a bit
> wouldn't detract from the gameplay. The rate of beginner gain could then
> be slowed down a bit without causing serious frustration for newbies.

 It has been suggested to re-do the starting character creation so instead of
random stats, you get some set number of points to allocate between the stats.
 That probably make sense.

 For sp/grace, the magic numbers are probably either 9-10 and 14-15 (since most
of the spells start at 5, it basically means how many spells you can get off
quickly).  Having 11 probably won't do much more good than having 10, as you
aren't going to want to wait to regain 4 points.


> Changes to this, gearing monsters to be more difficult to deal with in
> large amounts (hmmm... would increasing their HP do? Oh, by the way, why
> is there such a serious difference between monster and player stats? Is
> it the rate of hitting/damage causing of the player?), would probably have
> to be accompanied with map revisions.

 The meanings of str, con, ... for monsters is totally different than players.
 For example, con in monsters is how many hp they regenerate.

 Taking a quick look at orc, the main things to notice are they have 4 hp, ac
16, wc 19, and dam 1 (although they will typically use items to increase the
dam and perhaps ac).  There speed is also 0.15.  Most players are probably .5,
starting players even faster since they are not bogged down with a bunch of
times yet.  So a player is literally moving 4 or more times faster than that
orc.  A modest increase in speed would probably makes orc much tougher.

 I don't know if hp would do so or not - it would really depend how many hits
it may now take to kill the monster.


> Well, the range is probably enough, the problem is mainly in the
> accumulation/loss rate. While death should be painful, the effects of it
> shouldnt be really permanently bad or extremely difficult to overcome, so
> as long as statloss is an inevitability, the potions need to stay with
> reasonable availability. Either the statloss could be made to not happen
> everytime, or something else could happen, or we could just have
> experience loss, but with another way of calculating, so it is more
> painful for lowerlevel characters.

 You could do something based on the characters current stat total.  For
example, if the characters total stats are less than 80, don't lose a stat (not
really good as is).  If 100-150, lose 1 or maybe 2 stats, etc.



> Part of the reason, I think, is that they're not fast enough. Even hill
> giants can be reasonably easy to take out with a fast character at pretty
> low levels. I'm not sure how the speed works for monsters, but if it's
> like players, increasing weapon speed while retaining movement speed and
> decreasing damage would be a possibility.

 Certainly a possibility.  Have to be careful on such widespread changes - you
certainly don't want to make things too tough.





-- 

-- Mark Wedel
mark@pyramid.com
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