Re: CF: Object decay, wear, and repair (Was Re: World Map)

[Hwei Sheng TEOH <hsteoh@cs.toronto.edu>]

On Fri, 10 Sep 1999, David Andrew Michael Noelle wrote:

> Mark Wedel wrote:
> 
> >  This may become simpler if/when we go to a 2 scale system (outdoor/indoor).
> > You could assume outdoor walls can be scaled, while indoor walls can not (meets
> > the cieling).  I do agree that having things 'blocked' is a bit excessive.  It
> > could even be interesting to dig through walls, albeit very slowly.
> > 
> >  Certain areas, like treasure chambers, should be protect by impeneterable
> > areas.  But the bulk of the world shouldn't be.
> 
>     How about letting aethereal (immune: physical) players simply walk
> through walls?  As long as the walls aren't also magic-proof, of course. 
> That would allow access to the same types of places that Dimension Door
> does, with perhaps a few more because of the ability to turn corners, but it
> would be a different and interesting way to accomplish the same thing.

This would be bad... at least in the current maps. A lot of maps (and I do the
same in my own maps) use inaccessible areas to place things like gate-boulder
mechanisms and so forth. A lot is also used to simulate NPCs giving you an
item (by have a magic ear activate a pit with the item on it, that transfers
the item to the floors around the NPC). It would be disastrous to have
immune:physical players able to reach these areas, which may not be logically
"part of the map" -- since they are more like auxilliary mechanisms to make
the map behave a certain way.

We could, of course, restrict such areas by putting antimagic fields around
it... but then it does make people suspicious for no reason (why is that
circular area in the corner of the map protected by a magical field?) since
the stuff in that area doesn't really belong to the world, it's an auxilliary
mechanism.

[snip]
> >  I think aging for all equipment may just end up being too annoying.  I don't
> > think it would be very fun to have to head back to town from the middle of the
> > wilderness because your equipment needs repair.
> 
>     So, make objects wear down very gradually, like armour taking one point
> of damage every time it blocks a certain amount of damage.  Weapons might
> take one point of damage every time their roll to hit, converted to a
> percentage, is less than the target's armour.  Then it's just a matter of
> playtesting a bit to determine the right range of hit points for various
> items.
[... snip]
>     Side effects of this include: weapons and armour of varying quality
> found in varying states of repair, rare and expensive Repair Weapon and
> Repair Armour scrolls, non-magical "artifact" items of exceptional, albeit
> natural, quality that have more hit points or are more resistant to damage. 
> Use of smithery skill (and an appropriate "anvil") to repair
> damaged/worn/corroded items up to a maximum dependent on your level,
> something like +1 per 8 levels.  And don't forget the economic effects. 
> Less equipment will be sold to shops when it becomes important to have more
> spares and replace items you don't want to bother repairing, or can't afford
> to repair.  Maintaining all your equipment becomes rapidly more costly as
> you accumulate more and more powerful equipment.

Hmmm, this does add a whole new dimension to the game. It might actually make
sense, since you'd have to manage your equipment and/or finances better.
Although, personally I'd prefer that the wearing out of equipment be very
slow, so that a low level player isn't spending all his time repairing stuff
rather than using them to do something more useful/interesting.

My idea of it is basically a way of limiting powerful artifacts. So a player
who finds a +7 demonslayer will benefit from it for a significant time, but
not forever -- he'd have to find a new weapon when the old one gets overused.
I'd like to see decay in magical equipment as well (weakening of the magic
field) although this might seem non-traditional. The rationale is that players
shuoldn't rely on a superpower artifact forever, once they find it. It would
be much more interesting to make it necessary to always be finding new and
better artifacts. Of course, it will *still* be possible to use something
forever -- you'd just have to pay for the repairs/re-enchantments.


T

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