Issues Affecting Game Balance

A list of of issues that may make it way too easy to level up, obtain items, and/or complete dungeons. (as believed by one or more persons)

Please dump any thing that you think needs review here. And also add more information, possible fixes, reasons for keeping something, etc.

• Some items are too available to players, and should have a more limited number in circulation. This would help create more economical interaction between players.
  • give some items a unique tracking number, and limit the amount (based on a flag, could be a ratio to players) in the game at one time. If the total amout allowed is reached, don't generate any more of the object.
  • perhaps some artifact weapons should be both, rarer, and a bit more powerful/useful (i.e. defender, excalibur)
  • Adjust weights to be more realistic (no more 20 kilo aprons)

• Fix sockpuppet exploits for leveling. On servers where pking is allowed, this is widely abused to rapidly gain exp, and levels.
• The experience table table could be adjusted.
• Gameplay is generally too fast - typically die instant or kill the monster instantly - things should be slower so there is enough time to run away, etc. See changing player speed

Balance issues with player race/class individually or in combination

• dragon monks, fireborn monks, monks following gaea
  • Caused because the no weapon/armor restriction is applied twice, but the seccond time it does nothing
• fireborns with meteor swarm
• Should players have to stick to their class choice?
  • Perhaps have something similar to attunement for various skills, and give that to certain classes
  • See race/class changes

Spells and magical objects that are way too powerful, or are not powerful enough (based on requirements to get/use it)

• banishment particularly
• too easy to get high levels of?

• barely used because of their low charge limit (bad weight/usefulness ratio compared to rods and scrolls)
  • increase random level or number of charges?

• overpowered
  • meteor swarm (not that easy to get, though)
  • burning hands at lower character levels?
  • earthwalls?
  • town portal
    • restrict to specific regions?
  • charm monsters / command undead (devastating if used well)
• underpowered
  • various stat modification spells
  • some damage spells underpowered at high levels while about right at lower levels
  • probe
    • could give more useful info to low/medium level players, whether the monster heals, whether the last hit did anything at all (different messages for 100% and 99.99% hp)
  • perceive self
    • most of the information is already available in the client info windows, except maybe for depleted stats

• overpowered
  • some attack potions
    • a low-level player can find a potion of black fire (comet) or fiery destruction (meteor swarm) in a shop, try it without knowing what it does and be killed instantly
• underpowered
  • most are not very useful except for the following cases:
    • as trinkets for newbies to kill very low level things.
    • in the rare maps that block all spellcasting (i.e. ancient pupland volcano)
    • fire/cold resist potions at low to moderate levels

• gods shouldn't forgive 'transgressions' so easily?
  • in role playing sense, wouldn't different gods have different traditions/methods of praying? could be used to “fix” this
• more things affect grace both positively and negatively?
• grace should both go up and down slower perhaps?
• perhaps above could be implemented as a separate thing from grace? a sort of long term reputation with one's god?
• some games count killing enemies of the god as increasing the grace - this may not work so well in cf and cause more game balance problems

Places in the crossfire world where powerful items can be found too easily, or the reward for completing a dungeon or quest is too little.

• Heaven and Hell random maps (variel and gorokh churches in scorn)
  • Move them to an other place that we want players to move to?
    • Darcap perhaps for one?
• High level players using low level maps to test spells, rods, etc; thus making it harder for low level players to level up
  • new “combat testing” map, with monsters that give no exp or items
  • also, perhaps low and high level places are too spread out, it is very easy for an experienced very high level player to find relatively low level maps in remote locations (i.e. things in world_120_109)
• Giving high level players reason to stick to higher level general locations
  • Perhaps make it more difficult to get to high level places in the first place, and cluster them vaguely near to eachother so players won't want to bother to make the trip too often.
• The small house n the south of scorn, below the sothernmost signs, tends to give too many valuables for the difficulty of the map and the level at which it is found (or perhaps, is it that the other newbie places don't have sufficient rewards to beat it?)
• In general, not enough dimly lit places?
• Too easy to go to some quest maps for the scorn royalty quest before you've done earlier parts of the quest, and too hard to find some of them once you do get the quest

• The quantity and quality of treasure goes up, deeper in the dungeon.
• Only quality should really increase, quantity should remain about the same.
• Only change for this is the number of treasure chests - does not affect items in monsters inventory.
• The chance of artifacts (from the the artifacts file) should increase slightly the deeper in the dungeon, so rarer items will still show up.