New Server (hard, plot based) - antiibanish rules

[kshinji]

I am setting up new server.

Nothing more can be said. My attempt might even falil.

I am disussing it with my informatics teacher, and he said 'no', but then i convinced him to at least check this game out. Now he wants me to explain how can it be good for me and other students to patch crossfire.

As mikee's server is no longer in original crossfire, i think my server could take its place as "Open Wilderness" server. (pking penalties will not make it impossible to mass-pk players, you will just have to escape from a lot of Elite & Royal Guards =)

If everything goes okay, this will be server, wher no ibanish players could stay alive - nobody will give n00b invisibility item or good heavy rod, cause they will worth to much. No_sockpuppeting will preserve ibanish players from getting max level. etc etc.
What special on my server?

GAMEPLAY:

- each monster have its HP mulitplied by X (probably 5)
- less monsters on maps
- death makes you got ban for X minutes (probably 15)
- magical items have much lower abilities
- less massive magic spells
- talismans objects added (one can wear fe. LEVEL of them )
- less rapid money gain

PKING:

- Pking gives no exp, but dead player losses all stuff that he had
- After pking, pked gots permdeath (insurance possible to buy, gets more expensive if you die more often)
- Pking skill (assasination ) test decides if pker will be imprisoned or not.

MAPS:

- completely new world map
- shopping depends on supply and demands

FEATURES:

- new alchemy system
- Some skills will be useless and require to learn first xp from special expensive books (fe. stealing).
- No max stats, but harder to obtain stat pots. Also pots will be marked with how much pots maximally could one have drunk before. (fe. pot - 1, will have to be first one you drink, more expensive pot - 5, you might drink even if it is your 5th pot etc.)

BUGFIXES:

- Big gamesaves each X hours. After crash server goes back to last bigsave to avoid doubling items.

- Temp ban and no perm xp might be treated as bugfix for sockpuppeting

Hereby i would like to ask if it is possible to make my server become original cf server, get high place on metaserver, forum here and additional DM's to help me? =-D

[Aaron]

a couple things though

1.) what is sockpuppeting?

2.) what is iban?

3.) dont get rid of spells. warriors suck, i play spellcaster. just make spells spellcaster only. take out rods above level 19, and limit staffs to 90, and wands to 40.

4.) why punish people for dieing? someone pks them and they get banned from the server? wtf?

5.) drop stuff on death? wtf? someone gets griefed, and screwed over.

6.) jail on pk? defeats the point of pking...

7.) alchemy. thats hard, see the alchemy thread. it needs a complete rewrite, and almost all the planning is already done, it just needs someone to code it.

[kshinji]

I see that you voted f*ing yes. right? ty

[/quote]

1.) what is sockpuppeting?

When you lvl up one character to fe. 25th level, you then just kill it massively inside guild house. You can reapeat it forever, getting maximal lvl, cause he have perm xp around 20.

2.) what is iban?

"who" - player who ruins gameplay on cat2

3.) dont get rid of spells. warriors suck, i play spellcaster. just make spells spellcaster only. take out rods above level 19, and limit staffs to 90, and wands to 40.

i am not getting rid of spells, but i want wizardy to be harder at lower levels, cause playing mage should be award for being player good enough to lvl him up.

4.) why punish people for dieing? someone pks them and they get banned from the server? wtf?

Its not perm ban, but just very short temp ban, cause i want players to be more careful, and i want give binuses to those who die rarely. Now you are not going to run into room filled with chinese's.

5.) drop stuff on death? wtf? someone gets griefed, and screwed over.

I have to think of it, but for sure one random worn itme will be lost.

6.) jail on pk? defeats the point of pking...

No. You have seen that i made pking much more powerful (perm death and items loss) now it needs counterweight. You have to have good assasining skill to kill player in the center of town. Still, when you do that on far away wilderness, you might not need assasintating skill at all.

7.) alchemy. thats hard, see the alchemy thread. it needs a complete rewrite, and almost all the planning is already done, it just needs someone to code it.

I'll see whats stated - if i like it, ill wait for it or even help.
If you want to know my idea/opinion, check features req. at sf.net

ty

[cavesomething]

I am setting up new server.

Excellent. I wish you luck. One thing that does concern me though is that a lot of the changes you list below are really very extensive (to the point of rewriting bits of the game in some cases) - at least until you have your server up and running, it may be better to focus on the more minor details first (although I know very well how tempting the shiny new ideas can be).

I've commented below on the likely degree of effort to implement many of these points - this is not intended to be overly critical (indeed, I think many of the points you list are things that are really needed), but more something to (hopefully) help you sort out what you need to do in what order to create most of the effect you want to achieve quickly.

If everything goes okay, this will be server, wher no ibanish players could stay alive - nobody will give n00b invisibility item or good heavy rod, cause they will worth to much. No_sockpuppeting will preserve ibanish players from getting max level. etc etc.
What special on my server?

I'm curious as to how you would intend to prevent sockpuppetting. At some level, you can't avoid it. - it would be possible to check incoming connections and drop anyone from a duplicate IP address, but then multiple players behind the same NAT wouldn't be able to use the same server, and a dedicated sockpuppeter would still be able to use proxies.

GAMEPLAY:

- each monster have its HP mulitplied by X (probably 5)
- less monsters on maps

If you read the mailing list archives, you will see that I have been trying to rally support for doing this project-wide.

A working server which implements this would probably be vwery helpful in this respect.

- death makes you got ban for X minutes (probably 15)

You will want to hook a plugin into EVENT_DEATH to achive that.

- magical items have much lower abilities
- less massive magic spells

that's going to involve rather extensive archetype changes, and maybe a few tweaks to the spell code also.

- talismans objects added (one can wear fe. LEVEL of them )

There are already talismans in the game, I'm not sure I understand how your approach is different.

- less rapid money gain

I'm curious as to how you would intend to achive that.

PKING:

- Pking gives no exp, but dead player losses all stuff that he had

That would be evil (and would also involve hooking a script into EVENT_DEATH again)

- After pking, pked gots permdeath (insurance possible to buy, gets more expensive if you die more often)

Sounds like an interesting approach, but I don't see how you will prevent an issue with an isolated griefer making the game unstartable to new players. - maybe give them one free resurrection at the start of the game (taking them to a safe place, where death is explained to them).

- Pking skill (assasination ) test decides if pker will be imprisoned or not.

I had been (before I got distracted by something else) working on a reputation system, that would seem to be closer to what you want. - PK-ing reduces reputation, and then when you commit a crime, your reputation, charisma and the relevant skill give your chance to get caught (obviously an upstanding member of the community would /never/ be capable of murder).

MAPS:

- completely new world map

I think maybe you are underestimating the amount of effort that would take, to get a world of any size would take months.

- shopping depends on supply and demands

This has been tried before and failed. The problem is that everyone sells, and no one buys - unless you can find a way to rectify that, then prices for everything will plummet.

BUGFIXES:

- Big gamesaves each X hours. After crash server goes back to last bigsave to avoid doubling items.

I'm not sure this is the correct solution; I'm inclined to say it would be more sensible to have a system of UIDs for items, so that at item creation a UID is defined for the item, and then any items with the same UID are duplicated. (storing these across stacks is a little trickier).

- Temp ban and no perm xp might be treated as bugfix for sockpuppeting

admin of that could be nightmarish.

Hereby i would like to ask if it is possible to make my server become original cf server, get high place on metaserver, forum here and additional DM's to help me? =-D

Anyone can have their server listed on the metaserver, read the settings file for instructions on how to do this.

Forums are under Leaf's control, although presumably this new server of yours would need to have a name before it could have a named forum for it.

As far as dm's are concerned, I can only speak for myself. I do not wish to dm any server; however, I would be more than willing to help out in a more technical capacity - tracking down bugs you run into or the like. - Probably you would want to look at the long term players who have characters on multiple servers already, this may suggest they like the game, but haven't yet found a server to call 'home'

[Mith]

I am setting up new server.

after reading your whole post, i am inclined to say you're not setting up a new server, but rather creating a new game!

I am disussing it with my informatics teacher, and he said 'no', but then i convinced him to at least check this game out. Now he wants me to explain how can it be good for me and other students to patch crossfire.

At least, it would be good for the Crossfire project!
For you and other studends, it might be bad, since crossfire is a rather addicting game

What special on my server?

GAMEPLAY:

- each monster have its HP mulitplied by X (probably 5)
- less monsters on maps
- death makes you got ban for X minutes (probably 15)
- magical items have much lower abilities
- less massive magic spells
- talismans objects added (one can wear fe. LEVEL of them )
- less rapid money gain

some changes sound great, others don't.
Worst of all is - imo - the death change.
I would vote for a change. For example: your spirit has to wander through the realm of death and find his way back to the living. This practially results in players not being able to run to 'the boss' again without them being unable to play. (In fact, if they are unable to play for 15 minutes, they won't return. As newb most ppl die every 15 mins...)

PKING:

- Pking gives no exp, but dead player losses all stuff that he had
- After pking, pked gots permdeath (insurance possible to buy, gets more expensive if you die more often)
- Pking skill (assasination ) test decides if pker will be imprisoned or not.

I strongly suggest NOT to punish the one that got pk'ed. At least, don't punish that hard.
I am absolutely sure that if pk-ing results in loosing all the items of the pk-ed player, someone with good items will be too often victim of (an attempt to) pk.

MAPS:
- completely new world map
- shopping depends on supply and demands

What's wrong with the current world map? Except that there are vast regions with unpassable mountains and that it's too big?
Creating a new world map doesn't need to take months (as Cavesomething suggests) but creating a GOOD worldmap is very hard.
You can simply create a randon landscape, but changes are against you.

If shopping should depend on supply and demands, make supply depending on the number of (active) players, not on the stuff that got sold.

FEATURES:

- new alchemy system
- Some skills will be useless and require to learn first xp from special expensive books (fe. stealing).
- No max stats, but harder to obtain stat pots. Also pots will be marked with how much pots maximally could one have drunk before. (fe. pot - 1, will have to be first one you drink, more expensive pot - 5, you might drink even if it is your 5th pot etc.)

these features are mentioned before on these fora. Perhaps they will sometimes be coded...

Hereby i would like to ask if it is possible to make my server become original cf server, get high place on metaserver, forum here and additional DM's to help me? =-D

You don't need DM's in an open wilderness server, do you?

I would suggest to cooperate with the developpers on a regular base. Perhaps they know of improvements that are really necessary but that are just never done, or whatever.

[kshinji]

@Cave*

Thanks for what you have written, it is very helpful.

I'm curious as to how you would intend to prevent sockpuppetting.

No permament exp solves the problem in easiest way.
One might say that perm exp is for players who dies more often, but my server is for experienced players who have played on cat2 metal or schmorp before.

There are already talismans in the game, I'm not sure I understand how your approach is different.

Sorry, i forgot about those, cause i already bought myself skill scrolls for all magic. My talismans would be those "rabbit legs" which you keep with you.
Maybe name should be different...
They would be worn, cause its just easier to code - player will be able to wear X>10 of them, or maybe (LEVEL / A)+ B.

- less rapid money gain

I'm curious as to how you would intend to achive that.

Well, it is easy. Just prozes should vary less, loot should be more rare, etc.

That would be evil [if pked losses all his stuff] (and would also involve hooking a script into EVENT_DEATH again)

No. Assasinating would be hard, and if one gets caught he will not get any stuff. (Hard to code... :-/). This way pk would be rather part of strategy between guilds.

- After pking, pked gots permdeath (insurance possible to buy, gets more expensive if you die more often)

Sounds like an interesting approach, but I don't see how you will prevent an issue with an isolated griefer making the game unstartable to new players. - maybe give them one free resurrection at the start of the game (taking them to a safe place, where death is explained to them).

I dont know what's griefer. But starting players are not gonna be pked at the beginning - better players just wont risk getting into jail for a month because of casting MS in center of a city.

PK-ing reduces reputation, and then...

good idea, gonna think about it

I think maybe you are underestimating the amount of effort that would take, to get a world of any size would take months.

Well, t will not be very large wold, but my server will be plot based, all the dungeons would be outside of the city or sometimes in undergrounds.

- shopping depends on supply and demands

This has been tried before and failed. The problem is that everyone sells, and no one buys - unless you can find a way to rectify that, then prices for everything will plummet.

Less cheap loot, more rare loot. Standart armoury should be crafted. Some balancing, and we have working S&D economy.

system of UIDs for items

Harder to do it unbuggy, but sounds as good alternative.

- Temp ban and no perm xp might be treated as bugfix for sockpuppeting

admin of that could be nightmarish.

You misunderstood me, am i right? No DM's involved, you just cant sockpuppet without perm exp.

@Mith:

after reading your whole post, i am inclined to say you're not setting up a new server, but rather creating a new game!

Disagree. Diffeences are not like between Warcraft and Starcraft, but like between Gauntlets and BG Hunters. Its not different game, but different gameplay.

Your spirit has to wander through the realm of death and find his way back to the living. This practially results in players not being able to run to 'the boss' again without them being unable to play. (In fact, if they are unable to play for 15 minutes, they won't return. As newb most ppl die every 15 mins...)

Server is for more careful people. Dying should result in high penalty. Temp ban as part of it works also good to preserve furious player losing half experince in 5 deaths, but thats not my business. Also its very easy to be coded. OTOH, maybe temp ban could be changed into something interesting, like your idea.

I strongly suggest NOT to punish the one that got pk'ed. At least, don't punish that hard.
I am absolutely sure that if pk-ing results in loosing all the items of the pk-ed player, someone with good items will be too often victim of (an attempt to) pk.

Pker risks a lot, also one player cannot be pking 10 people per hour. Also goal is to have high death penalty, and a bit more realistic game laws. Loss of items could be changed to loss of one or few items chosen by assasin. Also instead of perm death, assasin might choose just a temp ban for x minutes/days, which also could be countered by ressurection..

What's wrong with the current world map? Except that there are vast regions with unpassable mountains and that it's too big?

Nothing is wrong with current world map. I will probably use it, and old town will be used as ruins & dungeons. But i want to make soemthing new, to make good players want to explore it.

If shopping should depend on supply and demands, make supply depending on the number of (active) players, not on the stuff that got sold.

Sounds good, will think of it.


Thanks for critic opinions and ideas. Tomorrow i am talking with my teacher. Wish me luck.

[Aaron]

instead of redoing the map, why dont you just help to add more maps for people to explore. then on your server, you can just delete the scorn mapset and directory, and replace it with some ruins.

[cavesomething]

I'm curious as to how you would intend to prevent sockpuppetting.

No permament exp solves the problem in easiest way.
One might say that perm exp is for players who dies more often, but my server is for experienced players who have played on cat2 metal or schmorp before.

I would suggest you want to make that point quite obvious in the metaserver comment and motd, otherwise there could be a lot of frustrated newbies. (which, whilst amusing from my point of view, probably isn't so much fun for them).

There are already talismans in the game, I'm not sure I understand how your approach is different.

Sorry, i forgot about those, cause i already bought myself skill scrolls for all magic. My talismans would be those "rabbit legs" which you keep with you.
Maybe name should be different...
They would be worn, cause its just easier to code - player will be able to wear X>10 of them, or maybe (LEVEL / A)+ B.

In that case, what you really want is a way to vary body slots by level, that may only be moderatly difficult (I'd need to look over the body slot code to be sure) - but if done properly, it could be quite effective (imagine having dragons get a 'wings' body slot above a certain level, or quetzacoatl growing some new limbs late in the game).

I dont know what's griefer. But starting players are not gonna be pked at the beginning - better players just wont risk getting into jail for a month because of casting MS in center of a city.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=griefer

In terms of what you describe, most level 1 dragons or trolls will kill any other level 1 character, a griefer could repeatedly start characters, PK until arrested, quit, and start a new character repeating the process.

I think maybe you are underestimating the amount of effort that would take, to get a world of any size would take months.

Well, t will not be very large wold, but my server will be plot based, all the dungeons would be outside of the city or sometimes in undergrounds.

in that case, the time to create the game world would be a lot less, but there is also the danger that the average player would 'finish' all interesting maps before reaching a high enough level to enter the endgame

(The fact that the endgame is a major weakness of CF atm, is another point altogether - currently there isn't enough to do after reaching level 110 or so, if you have the WDSM, there is a reasonable case to claim that you have 'won' the game, which shouldn't really be the case in a persistant world).

- shopping depends on supply and demands

This has been tried before and failed. The problem is that everyone sells, and no one buys - unless you can find a way to rectify that, then prices for everything will plummet.

Less cheap loot, more rare loot. Standart armoury should be crafted. Some balancing, and we have working S&D economy.

I'm not quite convinced it would be so simple, if we think in economic terms, currently, there is no tertiary industry to speak of (other than selling loot), and primary industry is not something players are involved in. (food appears or is purchased, as are basic alchemy ingredients). - alchemy &co are secondary industries, and the produce of them are not consumed at a rate even approaching the rate of production, - the odd potion is used now and again, but several hours worth can be trivially produced by one reasonably high-level player in relatively little time, the only barrier to that is monster bits, but most alchemy recipes aren't well balanced enough to make that an issue.

To my mind this suggests at least 4 things.

Alchemy needs to have a lower rate of production
Items need to be destroyed more (or wear down)
items need to be able to be turned into their base ingredients more readily (eg melting down one sword to get the molten iron to work into an other sword to repair it)
Produce of primary industries need to be directly acquirable (eg, growing food, mining salt, etc)

These are issues that your revised alchemy system would need to deal with in the play-balancing if your economy system is to work.

Probably these obstacles are not insummountable, but they are certainly very tricky.

- Temp ban and no perm xp might be treated as bugfix for sockpuppeting

admin of that could be nightmarish.

You misunderstood me, am i right? No DM's involved, you just cant sockpuppet without perm exp.

I think we are using different meanings of the term sockpuppet - I am refering to /any/ use of a dummy character to help a 'real' character without being played properly itself (eg, creating a strong dragon to carry loot for a main player if they haven't learnt town portal yet).

As long as you aren't charging per account, I don't think you can ever really stop it.

after reading your whole post, i am inclined to say you're not setting up a new server, but rather creating a new game!

Disagree. Diffeences are not like between Warcraft and Starcraft, but like between Gauntlets and BG Hunters. Its not different game, but different gameplay.

I have no idea what BG Hunters is, but certainly most of what you describe looks like bug/misfeature fixes, with a small number of custom plugin scripts being needed for server-specific functionality. (you will also find this approach to be the most maintainable, as any bugfixes in upstream won't break so much (maybe....))

Thanks for critic opinions and ideas. Tomorrow i am talking with my teacher. Wish me luck.

Good luck.

[kshinji]

I would suggest you want to make that point quite obvious in the metaserver comment and motd, otherwise there could be a lot of frustrated newbies. (which, whilst amusing from my point of view, probably isn't so much fun for them).

Sure. Still n00bs donr read motd. Ill make it in 5th line in CAPS and red.

In that case, what you really want is a way to vary body slots by level, that may only be moderatly difficult (I'd need to look over the body slot code to be sure) - but if done properly, it could be quite effective (imagine having dragons get a 'wings' body slot above a certain level, or quetzacoatl growing some new limbs late in the game).

I now need way to make player suffer picking up cursed items.

In terms of what you describe, most level 1 dragons or trolls will kill any other level 1 character, a griefer could repeatedly start characters, PK until arrested, quit, and start a new character repeating the process.

Minor problem. I know that nobody likes rookgard from tibia, but its one of possible options. F.e. thief-griefers are fized this way: you can steal from player who's level is

Code: Select all

 A * YOUR_STEALING ^ 2 - B 

or lower. This makes you unable to steal from players being level 1, you can steal from players with level samne as yuors stealing, when they are midlvl. And you can steal from better players when you are high.

in that case, the time to create the game world would be a lot less, but there is also the danger that the average player would 'finish' all interesting maps before reaching a high enough level to enter the endgame

Well, i wish to base gameplay on PvP, also if i setup my crossedit so it works, i am gonna make a LOT of maps. Inventng interesting maps isnt that hard imho.

I'm not quite convinced it would be so simple, if we think in economic terms, currently, there is no tertiary industry to speak of (other than selling loot), and primary industry is not something players are involved in. (food appears or is purchased, as are basic alchemy ingredients). - alchemy &co are secondary industries, and the produce of them are not consumed at a rate even approaching the rate of production, - the odd potion is used now and again, but several hours worth can be trivially produced by one reasonably high-level player in relatively little time, the only barrier to that is monster bits, but most alchemy recipes aren't well balanced enough to make that an issue.

It all needs not REVISING, but RE-DO.

To my mind this suggests at least 4 things.

Alchemy needs to have a lower rate of production

Sure lad.

Items need to be destroyed more (or wear down)

Sure lad.

items need to be able to be turned into their base ingredients more readily (eg melting down one sword to get the molten iron to work into an other sword to repair it)

ke? sounds starnge to me, better lets have system having virtual workers, who needs money, and gives steel in location called mine. I think you understand how it should work. (they will buy food from farm etc., everything to make players able to take additional food and resources.
I dont want to explain, i think you can write ebding of this story yourself.

Produce of primary industries need to be directly acquirable (eg, growing food, mining salt, etc)

see upper point

These are issues that your revised alchemy system would need to deal with in the play-balancing if your economy system is to work.

dang! i dont understand whole sentence. Maybe thats because i have had test from those ax^2+bx+c and related.

Probably these obstacles are not insummountable, but they are certainly very tricky.

well, i think most are minor, except some which are major

I think we are using different meanings of the term sockpuppet - I am refering to /any/ use of a dummy character to help a 'real' character without being played properly itself (eg, creating a strong dragon to carry loot for a main player if they haven't learnt town portal yet).

As long as you aren't charging per account, I don't think you can ever really stop it.

I dont think its bad to have slave check cat2 players list for shinji_slave & shinji_trader They are minor problems. Sockpuppeting to get 110 lvl in 2 days DESTROYS gameplay permamenly.

I have no idea what BG Hunters is

Code: Select all

 Big Game Hunters (starcraft map)

, but certainly most of what you describe looks like bug/misfeature fixes, with a small number of custom plugin scripts being needed for server-specific functionality. (you will also find this approach to be the most maintainable, as any bugfixes in upstream won't break so much (maybe....))

Thanks for critic opinions and ideas. Tomorrow i am talking with my teacher. Wish me luck.

Good luck.

Now i have bad news:

my teacher was busy today, and my meeting was moved to thursday. Wish me luck

[kshinji]

I have got a new idea about pking.

When one gots pked, he fells uncounsious. He will be treated like container, containing all his inventory. He then can be taken anywhere by other player.
Then ( i dont know how yet ) anybody who takes him, might kill him for perm death. If anybody takes item from uncounsious player, the rest of items stops being pickable. But if somebody makes perm death, all items fall on the ground.

Defeating somebody in combat will be free on wilderness and dungeons, (in cities it will be forbidden, but you will not need very big assasinating skill to defeat players ion city.) Killing uncounsious will work as i said before - big chance of getting into prison, losing exp and stats and payibng money or items.

Why to make it this way? You will be able to do normal pk, where you just want to make player lose some exp, you get some exp and one item, etc, without having him permamently dead, and you imprisoned for a week.

Strategical kills in guild wars still can be done easily.

PS movable player corpeses might be bad idea... (bugs and guilds "prisons")