Kaldar's ideas for improving GoS

[kaldar]

For those who don't remember me I was one of the very active players from about a year or so ago ...... i played from the first version to about the second reset of the version with towns. ( I was Nayrb Kaldar mainly back then)

I made some suggestions then but Craig was never really interested in making changes. Here are the first 2 that I think will instantly add a lot to the game.


1) Experience calculation : 20 / 10 is not only boring , but it encourages people to attack weak opponents. This results in the game becoming boring because there is a conflict between the "I wonder if I can beat him " thought and the "well if i lose i'll fall behind in experience".

Solution ? A new experience formula that works something like this

Player A attacks Player B : (Player B lvl - Player A lvl) + (Player B avg. lvl of equipment - Player A avg. lvl of equipment) = sum

(1 + sum)/ 10 * 20 for win 10 for loss = exp gained.

Example Player A : lvl 10 ; lvl 10 gear avg. Player B : lvl 15 ; lvl 12 gear avg.

15-10 + 12 - 10 = 7 ......... 1 + .7 * 20 = 34 exp for the win.

Player B attacks Player A =

10 - 15 + 10 - 12 = -7 ........ 1 -.7 * 20 = 6 exp for the win ......

I can't remember if that was the exact formulae I suggested before it was over a year ago but that is the gist of the idea. you get more exp for fighting a harder battle , less for fighting an easier.



Second idea is quests :

Random quests get delivered as either messages to everyone's in box or maybe appear on the town screen ...... whatever.

Quest sends people off to find an NPC in one of the towns. When that NPC is defeated he can give a clue to another NPC , drop a piece of a special item , different things. When the quest is completed the person completing the quest can get extra experience , assemble quest item from the pieces.

the idea of this is that maybe a quest happens once / day ...... once every 12 hours something like that , and the first person to complete the quest gets the goodies.

[Tim]

Hiya Kaldar. I remember you! Good to see you back!

Definately agree with moding the experience calculation. At the very least it will go back to being affected by difference in player level. Too easy just to use up all your battle on those 4 levels lower than you right now and reap the reward. Weapons should be figured into the mix too, but right now weapon levels do not properly reflect the strength of the item (just look at Cadinsor...). For v2 one of the things I plan to do is completely overhaul the weapons system.
Actually, v1 was mostly clan and town changes plus a lot of old bug fixes. V2 will focus more on characters and Items, with hopefully some user interface changes as well.

I've always been a big fan of the quest idea, but never been able to figure out a good way to make them work. Yours is one of the betters suggestions I've heard. I'd definately like to get quests added at some point, but no idea when that will come around. Will very likely happen eventually though.

[Morgaine Le Fay]

I remember ya

I too used to talk to Craig about Quests. We even planned a few, but in the end he just couldnt be bothered putting them in. He wasn't sure if people would take to them.

But i like the idea. We could do quests based on the Books maybe. Like finding the Green Man? Stuff like that...

[Jay alAvid]

wow - I love the formula; the only side-note would be a penalty for attempting to attack the highest players all the time (thus robbing the lower levels of the attack/defense chance): how about the standard 10 points for losses (level +/- 5), no xp for losses (level-6), 3 xp for losses to characters higher than (level+5)...

also, you would need to be sure you had you syntax perfect with that formula:
15-10 + 12 - 10 = 7 ......... (1 + .7) * 20 = 34
not
15-10 + 12 - 10 = 7 ......... 1 + (.7 * 20) = 15 (multiplication happens first by default)


Love the questing - do you have an idea about creating these 'quests' - I am not the creative type.

[flyingfang]

lol.
we could have trolloc hunting the the border lands.

i would love that.

[kaldar]

I think Aria had it right when she suggested we make some quests around the book.

Search for the Green Man , Hunt for the Horn, stuff like that ..... i'm sure our dedicated WoT readers can come up with some more good ones. I won't embarrass myself by trying to remember any more specific details since sadly it has been a couple years since i have read most of the books.

I think programatically it would be easy to implement. The NPCs would basically be player accounts pre-equipped with items that just aren't logged into. The item drops wouldn't be that hard it would just be something that happened at the end of the battle procedure if the defending person was part of the quest being run. The hardest part would be coming up with cool quest items that would be better than regular stuff , but not completely overpower everyone else.

The experience formula needs a little tweaking probably , i more or less wanted to get the idea behind it out there more than anything.

I'm glad everyone seems to like them though. The main thing the quests would provide even more than the quest items or experience would be to provide an actual reason for traveling between towns that is sorely missing now.

I'll try and think of more ideas since i know i had quite a few before.

oh yeah .... i think the other idea i had a year ago was to redo the skill tree and make it 1) continue going up and up and up 2) Not converge on itself but actuallly allow someone to work along a winding skill branch and specialize their character.

[Hugh Longshanks]

I like secon's ideas as pertaining to quests...

Kaldar, I also remember you from previous versions. I have a few ideas about the experience issue.

What if, instead of adding a modifier for the level of the opponents weapons, we instead made it based upon their skills? Ie, you would gain extra experience from fighting someone with the same, or similar skills to yours? To turn the screw a little more:
Sine Tim will be bringing weapon skills back in some form, why not make that the basis for how much experience you gain?

My plan would work like this:
A player would gain extra experience from fighting with someone with similar weapon skills. If your Sword skill was level 5, fighting a character with level 1 sword would up it by 20% (this is assuming skills start at level 0), an opponent with level 2 sword would up it by 40%, level 3 60%. 4 80%, etc. The percentage of increase would be based upon your opponents level compared to yours (some algorithm based upon a simple percentage of yours by theirs would work, I think - so if your level was 10, and theirs 20, you would get twice as much experience)...
These numbers are really too big, but we could shrink them by simply finding the percentage and then dividing by 10.....

This would encourage people to find sparring partners of their own type, instead of erely making it about the strength of your opponent....

[eisberg]

oo i really like that Hugh, thats pretty incredible if it could be implemented

[kushiel]

The quests you could do every time you go up 5 levels or every 10 levels, say the first one is find the green man well when you complete the quest why not just get a talisman of the green man its a higher talisman drop than level 5 so you would be gaining an advantage but not a massive one

Also hunt for the horn you could get talisman of birgitte

You could do one say defeat fain and gain a tainted dagger

etc etc

Also to make the quests more interesting instead of the taverns just being named taverns why not have them named after ones in the books eg The Queens Blessing and your quest could start by getting a message saying seek master gill and he might want like I don't know an item you can only get in another area so you fetch that bring it back to him and he tells you a clue or something.

It would also be a nice way to gain experience and if you bring back stamina then you wouldnt be able to move around so much making the quests harder and it would make horses a bit more useful you could travel further with them. You could add random attacks as you travel from town to town and depending where your traveling between the more dangerous the attacker. Also if you fail these quests you could lose some experience to make it a bit more risky just to make it more interesting.

[kushiel]

Good

Also I wouldn't mind seeing the message from a darkfriend back in the game so you can become a proper darkfriend again.

[kaldar]

Well the problem with my experience formula is i founded the idea back when talismans added to the weapon levels , so the level of the weapon actually did pretty much reflect how powerful it was ...... with the new system yes you could have crappy weapons at high lvl as well as really good weapons at low level.

But my main point is a system that rewards fighting powerful opponents should be encouraged rather than one that rewards fighting weak ones. As for your point about wouldn't someone just get their friends to do this or that or wouldn't someone just attack the same one over and over ........ well all of that happens now to even a greater extent so moving in a direction is the important thing.

[Hugh Longshanks]

Thanks, Nick. I appreciate that.

Been thinking about quests.....
I don't really like the idea of individual quests - it detracts from the game community. If some of the quests were to be accomplished alone, that would be okay, but I think we need to have group quests.

What do I mean?

I think there need to be quests (I really don't like that term, I prefer to call it a mission) that require a certain....diversity....in order to execute them. As in, one objective needs to be accomplished b a ranger, one by a swordsman, etc.
When you begin the quest you are given the option of inviting one or more other characters to join you in accomplishing it (I'm thinking there should be a cap of 6 chars total). All messages pertaining to the mission will be sent to all the group members, and they will all be able to attempt the goals. If the goal involves fighting an AI opponent, then I think one of the members of the group should be able to do it, chosen either by the group creator, or else by general consensus (either one could work, although leaving it up to the initiator of the quest would probably be more practicable). If the goal is traveling to a city and contacting an NPC, then all members of the group would be required to be there for it to work. The real point would be in fighting, as I envision the opponents you are assigned to be highly specialized to such a point where some will only be susceptible to Channelers, some to characters with specific skills or specific weapons, etc.
It might also be possible to make it involve group battles (these would not have the same kinds of problems as Clan battles, since only one side consists of actual players).

What do y'all think?

[kaldar]

I like the ideas , but from a programatic standpoint I would like the ideas to be able to be implemented in stages so we can have something fun to play with while Tim is working on the next part.

The reason I made the quest suggestion that i did is that it would be easy to implement and give us something to enjoy sooner while we try to come up with the next even better implementation.

[Hugh Longshanks]

I was really thinking along the lines of those olde dungeon-crawling adventure games....
Did any of you ever play Ancients? (rimshot)

[Hugh Longshanks]

right now, I'd have to say our best option is just using the old system of basing it purely off of the number of levels above you your opponent is....