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INPUT WANTED: BattleRPG player classes.  XML
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BattleMode

Rampage
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Joined: 11/14/2007 01:35:49
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For BattleRPG V7 I want to implement an optional class system for server admins who like classes on their servers.

I intend to create a dynamic class system so server admins can design their own classes. I will probably make an example config with 3 classes (something like Warrior, Magician and Medic).

Since there are lot of fans for class based RPG on disastrousconsequences.com I would appreciate your input on this. E.g. are "Warrior", "Magician" and "Medic" good names or do you have better suggestions.

In general I think the Warrior class will get loaded weapons, the Magician loaded artifacts and the Medic a magic weapon maker. Comparable to how Druid designed it for UT2004.
TheDruidXpawX

Wicked Sick!
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Heya, I just thought I'd drop some of the brain around why I drove UT2004RPG towards classes.

In the old days, you could buy any skills you wanted. Eventually a player figured out that the rarely purchased adrenaline skills could, when used carefully, let you run a triple damage for almost the entire game.

That's when a separation of skills became necessary, and the weapons master and adrenaline master were born. The adrenaline master was supposed to be more of a mage like character, while the weapons master was your standard fighter.

Also, the medic was originally going to be more of a monster master, with just some medic skills tacked on. It turned out that the medic abilities were far more popular than the monster abilities, and hence the medic continued to grow. My only regret on the medic is that the medic uses a gun to heal their teammates. If I had unlimited time, I'd have constructed my own "weapon" for healing.

The engineer was an idea we kicked around for a while before Szlat took on the adventure to hook it up.

With almost all the classes though, it's been a very organic process. They start fairly basic, and get more elaborate over time as people want to add more and more things to them.

Another idea I've kicked around is a Melee Master, or a fighter that receives huge damage reduction skills, some manner protection from instant kills similar to our protection weapon, and no ability to pick up or use ranged weapons. I had hoped to use some of the other cool melee weapons out there (swords and katanas and such) to facilitate it, but I just haven't had the time.

Similar to the Melee Master, I've toyed with the idea of a true mage character that simply cannot use any weapons, but has an arsenal of spells (artifacts).


IMO The toughest trick is to keep the classes somewhat balanced. Everyone thinks the grass is greener; so it's tough to gauge if something is unbalancing in favor of one class over another.

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The fundamental problem is this: The first word we learn as children is NO. From that point forward society teaches women that saying no isn't polite, and society teaches men to respect those who wont take no for an answer.

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Szlat

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I think Warrior, Magician and Medic are good starting points. People understand the terms.

I notice you allow players to sell abilities they have bought. Are you planning to allow them to change Classes?

The key to making it successful is how well the abilities can be configued to the classes:
  • which abilities can be bought by which classes
  • which abilities can be bought without a class
  • can class A purchase the same ability as class B, but cheaper and/or to a higher level

    The other consideration is what non-Magicians will do with mana - at the moment in UT2004 there are booster/berserk combos.

    By the way, excellent work on the RPG.
  • BattleMode

    Rampage
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    TheDruidXpawX wrote:
    In the old days, you could buy any skills you wanted. Eventually a player figured out that the rarely purchased adrenaline skills could, when used carefully, let you run a triple damage for almost the entire game.

    That's when a separation of skills became necessary, and the weapons master and adrenaline master were born. The adrenaline master was supposed to be more of a mage like character, while the weapons master was your standard fighter. 
    I didn't know that. The onsrpg.com version of RPG has similar restrictions (e.g. you cannot buy loaded weapons if you have loaded artifacts) but without the classes. Essentially it has 5 build types (generic, weapons, artifacts, medic or vehicle). I separated the vehicle stuff (e.g. there is vehicle vampirism) from the other stuff. This being because in ONS vehicles play a larger role.

    TheDruidXpawX wrote:
    If I had unlimited time, I'd have constructed my own "weapon" for healing. 
    Hm, interesting thought.

    TheDruidXpawX wrote:
    The engineer was an idea we kicked around for a while before Szlat took on the adventure to hook it up. 
    I never looked into that one. Is there a description somewhere?

    TheDruidXpawX wrote:
    IMO The toughest trick is to keep the classes somewhat balanced. Everyone thinks the grass is greener 
    Jup this sounds very very familiar . I also noticed this isn't a stable condition. People invent new ways to play the game all the time, so you keep (re)balancing things.
    BattleMode

    Rampage
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    Szlat wrote:
    I think Warrior, Magician and Medic are good starting points. People understand the terms. 
    Ok.

    Szlat wrote:
    I notice you allow players to sell abilities they have bought. Are you planning to allow them to change Classes? 
    Yes, I would. I intend to use the same trick Druid used, by making classes abilities. My own UT2004 RPG flavor has a rebuild button instead of the reset button. If this is disliked by server admins I can of course add a setting to disable the sell button, but so far I got no request for that.

    There is an additional consideration. With UT2004 it is relatively easy to create multiple builds, each with their own abilities. With UT3 this has become harder.

    Szlat wrote:
    The key to making it successful is how well the abilities can be configued to the classes:
  • which abilities can be bought by which classes
  • which abilities can be bought without a class
  • can class A purchase the same ability as class B, but cheaper and/or to a higher level 
  • Different pricing based on one's class. Have to think about that one. I intend to make the classes configurable allowing server admins to choose their own aproach, but I am not sure about dynamic pricing. It is more complicated to make, maintain and explain. What I intend is to at least allow requirements (e.g. you need level 3 of X before you can buy Y) and exclusions (you cannot buy A if you have B) for it. But I have to play around with it a little to see what works best. INI settings are less flexible than code and I want to try to keep it so most server admins will understand how it works. Hm the more I think about it the more I realize this is going to take multiple iterations .

    Szlat wrote:
    The other consideration is what non-Magicians will do with mana - at the moment in UT2004 there are booster/berserk combos.  
    I intend to give some generic artifacts (probably bonus and spiderpig) to everyone. And I will make it configurable allowing server admins to choose their own aproach. Perhaps I should make artifacts similar to the original combo's.

    Szlat wrote:
    By the way, excellent work on the RPG.  
    Thank you.
    Disiple

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    I hope there a melee that can reflect damage like the reflecting guns we have 2004.
    Szlat

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    BattleMode wrote:

    TheDruidXpawX wrote:
    The engineer was an idea we kicked around for a while before Szlat took on the adventure to hook it up. 
    I never looked into that one. Is there a description somewhere? 
    Here
    BattleMode

    Rampage
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    Szlat wrote:

    BattleMode wrote:

    TheDruidXpawX wrote:
    The engineer was an idea we kicked around for a while before Szlat took on the adventure to hook it up. 
    I never looked into that one. Is there a description somewhere? 
    Here 
    Thank you.
    BattleMode

    Rampage
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    I have implemented dynamic abilities now (as suggested in PM by Szlat, thanxs again) which for example allows multiple flavors of the same ability (e.g. a cheap and an expensive one which could be available to different classes, dynamic abilities can also have different max levels, custom names and custom descriptions, so almost anything is dynamic).

    I am now working on the configuration options for defining dependencies (and thereby also classes).

    So far what I am creating allows things like:

    "Before you can buy ABC level 3 you need (DEF level 2 AND GHI level 5) OR (GHI level 2 AND JKL level 4)"

    and

    "You can not buy ABC level 7 if you have (MNO level 2 AND PQR level 4) OR (MNO level 8 AND STU level 3)"

    I think this will allow for some pretty complicated setups for server admins who want to have them. No programming required.
    BattleMode

    Rampage
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    Just ran into an interesting aspect I didn't realize before. My amazing sell button makes keeping up with all the dynamic settings quite complicated. Replacing sell with "sell all" will probably be the easiest solution. This will also allow for some penalty in a future version for this (to prevent people from rebuilding too often).
    Szlat

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    BattleMode wrote:
    .... Replacing sell with "sell all" will probably be the easiest solution. This will also allow for some penalty in a future version for this (to prevent people from rebuilding too often). 
    Sounds fine. Could you have a configuable "number of levels you lose by selling"? I suspect it would be little effort at this stage, and would allow server admins to let it be free, charge 1 level per "sell all", or set an even higher penalty.
    BattleMode

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    Szlat wrote:

    BattleMode wrote:
    .... Replacing sell with "sell all" will probably be the easiest solution. This will also allow for some penalty in a future version for this (to prevent people from rebuilding too often). 
    Sounds fine. Could you have a configuable "number of levels you lose by selling"? I suspect it would be little effort at this stage, and would allow server admins to let it be free, charge 1 level per "sell all", or set an even higher penalty. 
    With my own flavor of UT2004 RPG you do not lose levels but experience for a rebuild (in part because high levels are extremely hard to achieve on my servers). This can of course result in losing a level.
    BattleMode

    Rampage
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    Example of the dynamic abilities settings:

    Code:
    DynamicAbilities=(Id="HealthBonus",AbilityClass=Class'BattleRPG.BattleAbility_HealthBonus',AbilityName="Healthbonus",AbilityDescription="Gives you 10 extra health per level every time you spawn.",AbilityMaxLevel=10,AbilityLevel1Cost=5,AbilityCostIncreasePerLevel=0)
     
     DynamicAbilities=(Id="QuickFoot",AbilityClass=Class'BattleRPG.BattleAbility_QuickFoot',AbilityName="Quickfoot",AbilityDescription="Gives you 5% extra walking speed per level.",AbilityMaxLevel=10,AbilityLevel1Cost=5,AbilityCostIncreasePerLevel=5)
     
     DynamicAbilities=(Id="SuperJump",AbilityClass=Class'BattleRPG.BattleAbility_SuperJump',AbilityName="Superjump",AbilityDescription="Gives you 5% extra jump height per level.",AbilityMaxLevel=10,AbilityLevel1Cost=5,AbilityCostIncreasePerLevel=0)
     
     DynamicAbilities=(Id="WeaponSpeed",AbilityClass=Class'BattleRPG.BattleAbility_WeaponSpeed',AbilityName="Weaponspeed",AbilityDescription="Givesyou 5% exra weapon speed per level.",AbilityMaxLevel=10,AbilityLevel1Cost=5,AbilityCostIncreasePerLevel=0)


    Example of a requirement (you are required to have SuperJump level 2 AND WeaponSpeed level 2 before you can buy QuickFoot level 2):
    Code:
    DynamicAbilityRequirements=(This=(Id="QuickFoot",Level=2),Required=((Id="SuperJump",Level=2),(Id="WeaponSpeed",Level=2)),NotAllowedWith=)


    Example of a requirement (you can have either QuickFoot level 4 or HealthBonus level 2 but not both of these:
    Code:
    DynamicAbilityRequirements=(This=(Id="QuickFoot",Level=4),Required=,NotAllowedWith=((Id="HealthBonus",Level=2)))
     
     DynamicAbilityRequirements=(This=(Id="HealthBonus",Level=2),Required=,NotAllowedWith=((Id="QuickFoot",Level=4)))
     
    (Please note this needs to be defined 2 ways).
    Szlat

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    Looks excellent
     
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