Re: CF: Playbalance

[sfink@digital-integrity.com]

Mark Wedel wrote:
>  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.

Well, that could be fixed easily enough. Adding a WOR trap would make
people a lot more cautious (and pissed off, perhaps). Temporary stat
draining traps could be worrisome, too. Or traps that make your
equipment permanently heavier. Acid traps would mostly harm the
beginner, I suppose. A trap of monster-blindness, anyone? (Player for a
short time is unable to see any monsters.)

> > 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.

Personally, I would modify that to start out with a base value for all
the stats, modified by class/race/whatever, and only allow the player to
modify each stat by a fixed number of points. It would at least make the
inhabitants of the crossfire world look better -- you get far too many
grotesquely ugly geniuses and supermen otherwise (switch all your
charisma to another stat, and bring along a cute friend when you want to
sell).

> > 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.

That's cool. Or you could use a sliding percentage chance of stat loss.
(You could also do it per stat, and nail the stat the player has pumped
up to ridiculous levels much more often.)

This is for store-related abuses, but how about adding reputation to
characters? Every time you sell an unidentified cursed item, the
shopkeeper's worldwide network lowers its collective opinion of you. I
guess you can improve your reputation by just selling valuable stuff, or
maybe unidentified valuable stuff. You could even claim that
alchemically-produced lumps of gold decay into lead eventually, so those
could drop your reputation too. Beginning players can rake in some quick
money, but those prices keep creeping higher and higher...

In fact, maybe you don't need a separate field. Give everyone the
bargaining skill, and let it go negative?

But there are still obvious abuses involving extra characters.
Personalized equipment, anyone? "Congratulations on your purchase of
this fine ring of immunity to fire! Now place your hand on the table,
and I'll attune it to your personal astral signature..." Also a handy
technique if it annoys you when some 30th-level character waltzes
through your quest, grabs the artifact, and gives it to a snivelling
3rd-level newbie. It doesn't really eliminate all that many abuses,
though.
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