Re: CF: Crossfire playbalance

[David Sundqvist <David_Sundqvist@vd.volvo.se>]

On Fri, 12 Mar 1999, Pertti Karppinen (OH6KTR) wrote:
> Don't you think that removing stat potions from shops is goint to keep
> people throwing dice for ever before starting the play?

Well, that's why I suggested we combine it with the fixed stat 
distribution.

> Try your average Wizard, and see how many quest can be solved without
> stat potions. Way too many places are no spells/unholy ground, so wizard
> can be deleted, because there is now way he could ever tackle many of
> these sites.

Which is another part of the balancing. These unbalanced problems should
be solved in several ways:
Matching the abilities so that a wizard, a fighter and a priest are
roughly the same in competency at the same level when it comes to doing
ordinary things like dispatching monsters. That probably means improving
the protection/armor/ac spells for mages, improving and balancing the
offensive spells for priests and including a way to achieve better 
lower weight armor/ac for those too, altho that is not as necessary.
Making certain that mages and priests have alternate ways to deal with a
map if it includes no-spell/unholy ground.
Marking maps with no-spell/unholy ground as being dedicated
warrior/barbarian/thief class/race quest maps.

> To another matter: I don't see the problem with the current system. Too 
> powerful characters? Aren't these problem only when fighting one-another?
> How many servers are such, were players go on killing each other? Not ours
> for certain. If Your character becomes too powerful there's always the
> easy way out (quit). If there's no challenge anymore start a new character.

There are two parts to too-powerful. First there's the problem you
mention, which I agree isnt really too urgent, since crossfire is usually
played on fairly low-population servers, and often where people can just
go over to the other lab and whack the abusive player repeatedly over the
head with a Fluffy Penguin +3. It needs to be solved eventually, but I
think it's easier to do in a good way if we have a solid foundation first.

The other problem, however, is the ac/ability/power inflation compared 
to monsters that has happened. That needs to be dealt with somehow.
 
> In conclusion I think that more energy should be diverted to designing
> new maps and quests than to rendering the now playable, well tested, system
> to a potentially unplayable system by more chages to the dynamics of the game.

Well, the unbalanced dynamics of the current system needs to be changed in
some way. Updating/adding maps is part of that, but adding the maps and
fixing the dynamics later means the maps will probably have to be redone
*again* after the balancing.

Best regards,
David

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