Re: CF: getting rid of too powerful characters

[Raphaël Quinet <Raphael.Quinet@eed.ericsson.se>]

Christian Stieber wrote:
> 
> Raphaël Quinet (Raphael.Quinet@eed.ericsson.se) wrote:
> 
> > 4) The game could end at level 30, period.  A character reaching
> > 5) We could make it pointless or dangerous to keep on gaining levels
> > 6) There could be time limit after which the character becomes weaker
> 
> > Crossfire with these modifications.  What do you think?
> 
> I think it sucks. People stop playing anyway when they have perfect
> characters, but they can still be around and play with newbies. You
> are taking away the only reason to keep playing after you have found
> all items and explored all maps.

So for you, "perfect characters" are the only reason to keep playing?
And what about creating new characters and trying to solve some
quests with "challenge classes"?  For me, this is a good reason to
keep playing, because the game is different every time.

I expected that you would think that such ideas are bad, because
you are the one advocating "perfect characters" on this list.  But
such characters are often used to go through some maps without
taking any risks, get some artifacts, and give them to the newbies.
Everybody has done that, but I this has bad consequences in the long
term: experienced players keep their "perfect characters" and are not
encouraged to start again from the beginning with new characters.  So
they are not interested in the low-level (1-5) and middle-level (5-10)
maps, and they concentrate on high-level maps.  As a result, nobody
tries to create more maps suited for these players or to make the game
more interesting and more balanced for low-level characters (because
they can get the useful stuff from the "perfect characters" anyway).

IMHO, perfect characters suck and we should ban them from the game.

You can have a character that becomes perfect in some skill or stat,
but a good RPG should never allow the creation of characters that
are perfect at everything.  Currently, Crossfire allows it and that
must be changed.  Also, the game was clearly designed for characters
that can go up to level 20 or 30, but not beyond.  Currently, CF has
no limit for the level, and that must also be changed.

By the way, I suggest that you re-read my 5th proposal, which does
_not_ prevent you from playing with high-level characters:

> 5) We could make it pointless or dangerous to keep on gaining levels
>    after some point.   After level 25 or 30, each level gained beyond
>    that would cause one permanent stat loss for Con, Dex and Pow,
>    like if the character was getting older.  This means that if the
>    threshold is set to 30, then a player reaching level 36 would have
>    a maximum value of 20 - 6 = 14 for Con, Dex and Pow.  So it would
>    still be possible to play the game and keep on gaining levels, but
>    after a while the character would be so weak that it would be too
>    dangerous to play with it (cannot stand a physical attack, and not
>    able to cast spells because Pow is too low).  It would also be
>    possible to compensate this loss of stats for a while by using some
>    rings or improved weapons, but they would not help anymore when
>    the stats start becoming negative.

There is no limit in time and no limit in levels.  After you have
reached some level (30 in this example), you choose to fight or not to
fight, knowing that you will have a penalty in stats if you gain too
much Exp.  And it could even be fun to try to gain more Exp with these
characters and see how far you can go with the corresponding stats
penalties.

Or you could decide to stop fighting with a character once it reaches a
certain level.  In this case, you could still use it from time to time,
but you would not fight so much with it.  So it would be like an old
sage that has decided to retire but that can still help in some
situations, or that can teach some tricks to new players.

The goal of all this is clear: encourage people who have reached the
maximum reasonable level (that is 30, not 50 or more) to start again
with a new character.  Many commercial games force you to do that by
ending the game once you have reached a certain goal/score (as I wrote
in my 4th suggestion).  As I said, I do not like these abrupt ends and
I would like Crossfire to be a bit more creative in this respect, which
is why I submitted these ideas.

If you have other ideas for encouraging people to switch to a new
character after they have reached level 30 or more, please contribute...

-Raphaël
-
[you can put yourself on the announcement list only or unsubscribe altogether
by sending an email stating your wishes to crossfire-request@ifi.uio.no]