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Moria new features discussion
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mewpo...@hotmail.com
Nov 5, 2012, 9:33:46 AM11/5/12
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After playing Moria for a little while, it occurs to me that it is far too difficult, especially for the first 1000-2000 feet.
Randomly rolling statistics is a terrible way to generate a role playing character.
There is disparity in the capabilities of the classes. This may be most prevalent at lower levels. Still, most classes other than warrior are quite likely to die in the first five to ten character levels.
The initial items for the players are not great and are even questionable. The ranger, for example, does not start with a bow.
Starting gold is not a substantial quantity.
If a turn lasts five seconds then a ration of food lasts only approximately seven hours (before I modified the duration, approximately ten after) and a torch only about five and a half hours. The problem here is that the general store is not guaranteed to stock food or torches. It may have around ten or none at all. Also, you must "climb" your way back out of the dungeon to reach town so you must use only half of your supplies in decent. Without scrolls of Word Of Recall, you are sorely limited by these items.
The temple isn't guaranteed to have certain items which may be needed to cure chronic conditions.
Magical items aren't shown as such before identification and potion types that have been drunk may not show a different label.
Identification of magical items is a costly and even impossible chore.
The inventory size is limited to twenty-three due to the size of the screen and length of the alphabet.
I propose that these things need to change for the game to be not less difficult but more interesting and fun to play.
I am uncertain about how to balance the classes at this point. I know after playing the warrior that I want to have more hits at higher levels as per the AD&D cleave and whirlwind feats. The mage doesn't get the fireball spell until quite late in the game. These are larger issues that will take some time to resolve. However, changing the starting items could have a significant impact. Giving the ranger a bow and arrows and the priest a mace for example, could make them quite a bit tougher initially. They should all start with some form of armour. I feel that the paladin and ranger needn't start with books, however they are quite expensive to buy but this could be the trade-off. I also feel that providing the player with a number of healing potions is important. The rations of food and torches could be increased to ten instead of five. It would make things a lot simpler if they were given a number of identify scrolls.
All of this doesn't resolve the difficulty in returning to town and then to the dungeons again. I feel that the Word Of Recall scrolls are too expensive and not nearly prolific enough. I feel that they should be replaced with an ability and some kind of charging token. Something like the way you could return to the temple using a Stone of Recall (as I recall) and crystals in Neverwinter Nights. In that game, crystals would "power" the device and allow you to return to town (the temple) or to where you came from. You could even make the crystals in Neverwinter Nights. The alternative is to make the scrolls cheaper and found more often but this may not make sense.
Additionally, the stores should provide services such as identification, recharging and healing. Items should definitely be identified before selling, in my humble opinion. The problem here is that the standard method is to charge for the identification service yet gold is actually a rather scarce commodity, or so it seems, in Moria. I couldn't imagine any more than twenty-five gold being charged for identification and yet the scrolls are much more expensive than that. Even at 100 gold, the scrolls are more expensive. These prices need to be brought into line with what is actually affordable. Perhaps the costing of all scrolls and potions needs to be investigated.
The temple and magic shop should provide healing/curing services rather than rely on "take-away" treatments. Since the availability of specific scrolls and potions is entirely random, the temple (at the very least) should provide healing services instead, so that the player is always able to heal their character. The prices for these services need to be investigated, as above.
The Moria descendants have opted for "inscriptions" on items to show that they are magical or have some meaning to the player. Something like "{magic}" post-fixed to a name to show it is magical could work for Moria. Also, "{unknown}" could be post-fixed to potion and scroll names to show that they haven't been drunk or read (or mushrooms to show they haven't been eaten). I feel this is a better solution even though extending item indicators as per cursed items (where the ')' is in the item list is replaced by a '*') could be a simpler option. Something like a '+' for magical or unidentified items could work and would leave the full width for the description.
Currently, the game needs to find all items within the same page of the inventory and that page can only be twenty-three items long. BOSS has multiple inventory pages and I feel that Moria could be improved by adding more carrying capacity. The inventory would need to be split by type of item since the game effectively already does this to the inventory and relies upon it in the way that commands are performed. I'm not entirely certain what they should be but something like five pages, one for consumables (food, mushrooms, potions, torches etc), one for books and scrolls, one for wands and staves, one for rings and amulets and another for armour, weapons and miscellaneous.
There are some other ideas that I have but these should do for now.
Daniel.
Randomly rolling statistics is a terrible way to generate a role playing character.
There is disparity in the capabilities of the classes. This may be most prevalent at lower levels. Still, most classes other than warrior are quite likely to die in the first five to ten character levels.
The initial items for the players are not great and are even questionable. The ranger, for example, does not start with a bow.
Starting gold is not a substantial quantity.
If a turn lasts five seconds then a ration of food lasts only approximately seven hours (before I modified the duration, approximately ten after) and a torch only about five and a half hours. The problem here is that the general store is not guaranteed to stock food or torches. It may have around ten or none at all. Also, you must "climb" your way back out of the dungeon to reach town so you must use only half of your supplies in decent. Without scrolls of Word Of Recall, you are sorely limited by these items.
The temple isn't guaranteed to have certain items which may be needed to cure chronic conditions.
Magical items aren't shown as such before identification and potion types that have been drunk may not show a different label.
Identification of magical items is a costly and even impossible chore.
The inventory size is limited to twenty-three due to the size of the screen and length of the alphabet.
I propose that these things need to change for the game to be not less difficult but more interesting and fun to play.
I am uncertain about how to balance the classes at this point. I know after playing the warrior that I want to have more hits at higher levels as per the AD&D cleave and whirlwind feats. The mage doesn't get the fireball spell until quite late in the game. These are larger issues that will take some time to resolve. However, changing the starting items could have a significant impact. Giving the ranger a bow and arrows and the priest a mace for example, could make them quite a bit tougher initially. They should all start with some form of armour. I feel that the paladin and ranger needn't start with books, however they are quite expensive to buy but this could be the trade-off. I also feel that providing the player with a number of healing potions is important. The rations of food and torches could be increased to ten instead of five. It would make things a lot simpler if they were given a number of identify scrolls.
All of this doesn't resolve the difficulty in returning to town and then to the dungeons again. I feel that the Word Of Recall scrolls are too expensive and not nearly prolific enough. I feel that they should be replaced with an ability and some kind of charging token. Something like the way you could return to the temple using a Stone of Recall (as I recall) and crystals in Neverwinter Nights. In that game, crystals would "power" the device and allow you to return to town (the temple) or to where you came from. You could even make the crystals in Neverwinter Nights. The alternative is to make the scrolls cheaper and found more often but this may not make sense.
Additionally, the stores should provide services such as identification, recharging and healing. Items should definitely be identified before selling, in my humble opinion. The problem here is that the standard method is to charge for the identification service yet gold is actually a rather scarce commodity, or so it seems, in Moria. I couldn't imagine any more than twenty-five gold being charged for identification and yet the scrolls are much more expensive than that. Even at 100 gold, the scrolls are more expensive. These prices need to be brought into line with what is actually affordable. Perhaps the costing of all scrolls and potions needs to be investigated.
The temple and magic shop should provide healing/curing services rather than rely on "take-away" treatments. Since the availability of specific scrolls and potions is entirely random, the temple (at the very least) should provide healing services instead, so that the player is always able to heal their character. The prices for these services need to be investigated, as above.
The Moria descendants have opted for "inscriptions" on items to show that they are magical or have some meaning to the player. Something like "{magic}" post-fixed to a name to show it is magical could work for Moria. Also, "{unknown}" could be post-fixed to potion and scroll names to show that they haven't been drunk or read (or mushrooms to show they haven't been eaten). I feel this is a better solution even though extending item indicators as per cursed items (where the ')' is in the item list is replaced by a '*') could be a simpler option. Something like a '+' for magical or unidentified items could work and would leave the full width for the description.
Currently, the game needs to find all items within the same page of the inventory and that page can only be twenty-three items long. BOSS has multiple inventory pages and I feel that Moria could be improved by adding more carrying capacity. The inventory would need to be split by type of item since the game effectively already does this to the inventory and relies upon it in the way that commands are performed. I'm not entirely certain what they should be but something like five pages, one for consumables (food, mushrooms, potions, torches etc), one for books and scrolls, one for wands and staves, one for rings and amulets and another for armour, weapons and miscellaneous.
There are some other ideas that I have but these should do for now.
Daniel.
mewpo...@hotmail.com
Nov 7, 2012, 5:28:20 AM11/7/12
to
I have changed the items that a new character receives. They now get slightly better equipment; more food and torches, a few potions of cure light wounds, a few scrolls of identify and a few scrolls of Word-of-Recall. This change will be available in the next release (this weekend or so).
I have also made a change to the way monsters "sleep." A creature can now be "idle" or magically asleep. There used to be only a single state that the monster would "wake" from any time something happened and was primarily used as a way of the creature "not noticing" the player. That initial state remains but when casting sleep on a monster, they now _stay_asleep_ until the end of the spell duration. It makes the sleep spells much more useful and allowed me to show the monster background in yellow only when they are magically asleep, confused or stunned instead of also when they are "idle". I was worried that implementing it would require a save file change but it hasn't. If you're curious about the implementation, I used the upper-most bit of the monster's csleep field to flag magical sleep (it would never have been used previously). I've made the sleep effect last for 1d7 + character level turns for the basic effect (based on something that was in the code). I wonder if I should use 2d4 + character level? What do you guys think? The open D20 system says that its sleep spell lasts 1 minute per level of the caster. Thats about 12 Moria turns. It says they awaken from being hit but if they aren't immune to criticals then they are elligible for all kinds of instant death. Moria doesn't have the ability to inflict extra damage based upon the helplessness of creatures. I think the current solution is best but I'm open to suggestions.
Daniel.
I have also made a change to the way monsters "sleep." A creature can now be "idle" or magically asleep. There used to be only a single state that the monster would "wake" from any time something happened and was primarily used as a way of the creature "not noticing" the player. That initial state remains but when casting sleep on a monster, they now _stay_asleep_ until the end of the spell duration. It makes the sleep spells much more useful and allowed me to show the monster background in yellow only when they are magically asleep, confused or stunned instead of also when they are "idle". I was worried that implementing it would require a save file change but it hasn't. If you're curious about the implementation, I used the upper-most bit of the monster's csleep field to flag magical sleep (it would never have been used previously). I've made the sleep effect last for 1d7 + character level turns for the basic effect (based on something that was in the code). I wonder if I should use 2d4 + character level? What do you guys think? The open D20 system says that its sleep spell lasts 1 minute per level of the caster. Thats about 12 Moria turns. It says they awaken from being hit but if they aren't immune to criticals then they are elligible for all kinds of instant death. Moria doesn't have the ability to inflict extra damage based upon the helplessness of creatures. I think the current solution is best but I'm open to suggestions.
Daniel.
Igenlode Wordsmith
Nov 15, 2012, 10:20:55 PM11/15/12
to
On 5 Nov 2012 mewpo...@hotmail.com wrote in message <eab2aa9a-4966-4dc9...@googlegroups.com>:
>After playing Moria for a little while, it occurs to me that it is far
>too difficult, especially for the first 1000-2000 feet.
>
[snip]
>After playing Moria for a little while, it occurs to me that it is far
>too difficult, especially for the first 1000-2000 feet.
>
A lot of what you are doing seems to be 'turning Moria into Angband' --
why reinvent the wheel?
(NB there is a school of thought -- of which I am largely a member --
which feels that the later versions of Angband, while making it
virtually impossible to run out of ID, food, Recall, etc,
auto-destroying all 'boring' objects and so on, are actually not so much
*fun* as some of the earlier versions: there's a reason why I keep
'Frog-knows' around.)
>Currently, the game needs to find all items within the same page of the
>inventory and that page can only be twenty-three items long. BOSS has
>multiple inventory pages and I feel that Moria could be improved by
>adding more carrying capacity. The inventory would need to be split by
>type of item since the game effectively already does this to the
>inventory and relies upon it in the way that commands are performed.
>I'm not entirely certain what they should be but something like five
>pages, one for consumables (food, mushrooms, potions, torches etc), one
>for books and scrolls, one for wands and staves, one for rings and
>amulets and another for armour, weapons and miscellaneous.
management': allow a character to carry five times as much equipment and
you are in effect removing most of the trade-offs between greed and
need. Admittedly it's not realistic to have a character carrying, for
example, more than one staff AND more than one set of armour AND more
than one polearm anyway, but if you allow him to carry 23 different
types of scroll then you are making life much easier than if he has to
take the risk of dumping his Scrolls of Phase Door in order to pick up
that might-be-useful unidentified wand...
--
Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://ivory.vlexofree.com/Tower/
* Usenet: Warning, may contain Nuts *
Igenlode Wordsmith
Nov 17, 2012, 3:35:00 PM11/17/12
to
[correct newsgroup line - sorry]
>After playing Moria for a little while, it occurs to me that it is far
>too difficult, especially for the first 1000-2000 feet.
>
>too difficult, especially for the first 1000-2000 feet.
>
[snip]
A lot of what you are doing seems to be 'turning Moria into Angband' --
why reinvent the wheel?
(NB there is a school of thought -- of which I am largely a member --
which feels that the later versions of Angband, while making it
virtually impossible to run out of ID, food, Recall, etc,
auto-destroying all 'boring' objects and so on, are actually not so much
*fun* as some of the earlier versions: there's a reason why I keep
'Frog-knows' around.)
A lot of what you are doing seems to be 'turning Moria into Angband' --
why reinvent the wheel?
(NB there is a school of thought -- of which I am largely a member --
which feels that the later versions of Angband, while making it
virtually impossible to run out of ID, food, Recall, etc,
auto-destroying all 'boring' objects and so on, are actually not so much
*fun* as some of the earlier versions: there's a reason why I keep
'Frog-knows' around.)
>Currently, the game needs to find all items within the same page of the
>inventory and that page can only be twenty-three items long. BOSS has
>multiple inventory pages and I feel that Moria could be improved by
>adding more carrying capacity. The inventory would need to be split by
>type of item since the game effectively already does this to the
>inventory and relies upon it in the way that commands are performed.
>I'm not entirely certain what they should be but something like five
>pages, one for consumables (food, mushrooms, potions, torches etc), one
>for books and scrolls, one for wands and staves, one for rings and
>amulets and another for armour, weapons and miscellaneous.
>inventory and that page can only be twenty-three items long. BOSS has
>multiple inventory pages and I feel that Moria could be improved by
>adding more carrying capacity. The inventory would need to be split by
>type of item since the game effectively already does this to the
>inventory and relies upon it in the way that commands are performed.
>I'm not entirely certain what they should be but something like five
>pages, one for consumables (food, mushrooms, potions, torches etc), one
>for books and scrolls, one for wands and staves, one for rings and
>amulets and another for armour, weapons and miscellaneous.
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