My two brothers and I play as one class each - Mage, Cleric and Fighter. (I'm the Fighter, so I'm not biased here) Co-op mode is awesome, but in Death Match, we think that it is horribly unbalanced. The Cleric always loses by huge amounts, barely getting any kills. If there is anyone who always chooses the Cleric in a KMOD DeathMatch, and doesn't have a problem with him, can they give us some advice? The Cleric seems to be too much of a character who is "part Mage, part Fighter" instead of being his own character, and seems to suffer the worst of both worlds in the process. When he starts out, he has to get close to enemies, like the Fighter, and it takes him forever to kill them, like the Mage. The healing spell just prolongs the agony. The things that would make him useful aren't available till later levels, which he has no chance of getting to. Some ideas we had for the Cleric are; -The Cleric's Mace takes life from the person being attacked, and gives a portion of it to the Cleric. -If he was invulnerable to his own Fletchet gas, he could use them in more interesting ways. -The Spirits Within probably costs too much and might be better if it just cost 1pt per corpse, and limited it to 10 ghosts at one time. BUT - This problem would probably be solved if there was another way to gain levels, something else other than directly attacking someone. If you get levels for killing someone, and lose them for dying, them you get the boring situation where the winners keep on winning and the losers keep on losing. "Star Wars: Force Commander" anyone? A cool idea I had, is that you gain exp points by taking healing (eg. collecting Vials, using Quartz Flasks, etc.). This means that you get rewarded for staying alive. And if someone starts winning, they won't get hit as much, and start hitting other people, meaning they will get a chance to level up as well, keeping the play balance and keeping it fun. BUT THEY WON'T if they are not skilled enough to dodge the attacks and find the healing. So your skill pays off, instead of it just becoming a hopless situation. And if the Cleric is invincible to his own Fletchett gas, like I suggested earlier, he won't be able to cheat by hurting himself and healing himself.

Although I really like the idea about the Cleric being immune to his own flechette (it could create some interesting advantages), IMPO the EXP for healing might backfire too easily. With this in place, everybody gets rewarded for healing themselves, not staying alive. A more experienced player would have a higher change of taking the potions rather an a less experienced one. Also, there's no stopping a player from intentionally hurting themselves (like jumping off a high platform or staying in a pool of lava) and gobbling up more and more health just for the EXP. But that's just my opinion.

Yeah - we think having the Cleric immune to his own Fletchetts would be very interesting. You're right about EXP for health - my idea would need work, but I'm just hoping to give the KMOD creators an idea of what I'm talking about. My main concerns are how to make the Cleric more effective, and changing the "making the winners more powerful" thing. 2 games I know of that do this really well; Snowboard Kids on the N64 - you race each other on snowboards on a track, and when you hit a powerup icon, you're given a random powerup. The lower place you are (eg. 4th is last place), the better chance you have of getting the more powerful powerups, that affect the other players. And conversly, the higher place you are (eg. 1st place), the crappier powerups you tend to get. Plus when anyone uses a "Slowdown" powerup, it is always applied to the 1st place player. So you have to be REALLY GOOD to keep that first place - the race is generally very exciting because everyone is kept together - there is never a point where you go "Oh well, I'm so far behind I'll never catch up, I may as well quit now", which is what can happen in KMOD. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters - you have a 'rage' bar that when it is filled, you can do your special attack. You fill it by blocking other attacks. The lower your life bar is, the more energy you get from a single blocked attack! Which means you can sometimes do 3 special attacks in a row when you're nearly dead - it's really worth clinging onto that last few pixels of life!! Unlike Street Fighter when you just go "Oh well, the odds of me actually winning are so slim now, I may as well give up now."

well, maybe giving exp only when you are healing when you are very injured, let's say like 20 hp. This would make the idea of hurting yourself to heal and gain experience less attractive since after the 20 you would get no... plus i think it goes with the bee gees idea of the prize of ?staying alive?

It would still be abusable. I think it's the mace that causes problems. It's hardly stronger than sapphire wand (you need about 5 smashes per ettin, versus 7 or so wand projectiles), yet it's much more troublesome to use . Especially in DM, where your opponent isn't going to behave like an ettin ! ...and when compared to Spiked Gauntlets, I can't see even 'theorycraftish' advantage of the mace ! Same range, almost half the power. ----------------- I know KMod team doesn't want to change original weapons too much, but how about Mace range increase ? It would make a lot of sense that you can reach farther than with just fists. As for single player, it won't matter because 1) it won't help against swamp stalkers, the only actually dangerous melee monster 2) against centaurs and ettins, they were never a challange anyway. They never catch up unless you get yourself surrounded. (or play on skill 5). In case of surrounding, additional range won't help, so no balance problems I guess. I'm thinking about serious range increase, like +30% or so.

How about setting up the mace similar to the fighter's axe? If the cleric doesn't have any mana, then it would be the normal mace, but when he does collect some, it would gain a bit of range and power (along with maybe a whitish aura). Since it is the cleric's first weapon, it should be a little bit weaker than the axe, but somewhat stronger than the fighter's fists (not the third megapunch though).

I hope the KMOD creators read this thread soon <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) --> The good thing about this is, me and my brothers aren't the only ones who think there's a problem with the Cleric in KMOD. The bad thing about this is, we weren't wrong and there truely seems to be a problem with the Cleric in KMOD. I really like those ideas about improving the mace (both posts).

[quote="Domarius":18084hjt]A cool idea I had, is that you gain exp points by taking healing (eg. collecting Vials, using Quartz Flasks, etc.). This means that you get rewarded for staying alive. And if someone starts winning, they won't get hit as much, and start hitting other people, meaning they will get a chance to level up as well, keeping the play balance and keeping it fun. BUT THEY WON'T if they are not skilled enough to dodge the attacks and find the healing. So your skill pays off, instead of it just becoming a hopless situation. An idea just hit me earlier today about this concept of earning EXP for healing yourself. Would it be possible so that the code would know the difference between being hit by an enemy and hitting yourself? I mean, if you are attacked by another player or an enemy, a boolean statement would trigger TRUE, and if the player escaped from the assault, he could heal himself and earn extra EXP. However, if he fell from a great height, or was attacked by a trap like the ones in Vivarium, the boolean would trigger FALSE, and no EXP would be rewarded for healing yourself. OTOH, even this enhancement has its flaws too. There's no stopping a player from continuously getting whacked by an ettin and then healing themselves, only to repeat this forever. O well. How about you only earn EXP for healing yourself if you are attacked by another player? This way, you can't rely on dumb AI to just give you a whack, and you can run and return. With being attacked by a player, you are either incinerated right there, or you impede the offensive. Of course, you can try to escape, but you'd have a greater chance of being persued than have the player go, "Meh, not worth it..." <!-- s:idea: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_idea.gif" alt=":idea:" title="Idea" /><!-- s:idea: -->

Here is a completely different idea: instead of getting EXP for healing yourself, a completely different solution for the same base issue would be to give the player EXP for every point of damage caused to other players and/or monsters. Say, 1000 EXP for killing a player, and 1 EXP for causing 1 HP damage. With such a ratio, it still wouldn't be attractive to tease with enemies instead of killing them, OTOH it'd take away the edge of the frustration of always nearly killing the other player, but never completely... by causing the other player every time 60-80 HP damage but never succeeding in killing him, still with time the player would get enough EXP to rise in level.

Or that too.

Hexen 2 uses that method. It seems like it would be easy enough to code.

Back in 2000 i've made a mod called Storm the Castle for Quake, and experience used to be obtained from hitting. This didn't work well with spells and arrows (was unbalanced actually) so I just left it to the "experience on enemy death" bit instead, to give exp. The exp system is still all wrong (in deathmatch at least, when you fight other players - kill a level 50 knight while being level 1 and you advance 20 levels or so) Also you could damage buttons and doors and get exp from those too (in my mod i mean) as well as hacking corpses. <!-- s:P --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /><!-- s:P -->

RambOrc, that's sounds like a good idea - I would like to modify it; The lower your HP, the more EXP you get for hitting someone. If you're closer to death and still hanging on, you should be rewarded. It makes it worth while hanging on. This promotes a "come back" if you escape from a battle, near death, and come back and get some more hits in, you'd go up faster in EXP than everyone else. The same principal is in a game called Turtles Tournament Fighters on the snes, a Street Fighter 2 clone. You get "rage points" for blocking hits, but the lower your life bar is, the more "rage" points you get per blocked hit, and when it fills you can do your special attack. This makes for exciting moments, when you're near death, because even though the special attack is generally only done once per fight, if you're clinging on to that last few pixels of life and STILL managing to block all those hits, you end up doing something like 3 special attacks in a row, and it really looks awesome and makes it worthwhile hanging in there for a comeback <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) -->