The thing with the Level systema and the quests system..
For levels, you have a seperate level for all types of combat, be it axe sword blunt, whatever, all magic is sperate, CW AW whatever, Everything you can ever do is seperate. For a quest to ask for a certain level, would be almost impossible, becuase it would want a certain combat and defense level, most likely, and since all combat and defense is a seperate skill, thr programing to find those things must be at least 10 times as hard to program, as a simple character level system. However there are quests that are based on magic level, but the only reason is becuase it wants s SPECIFIC magic skill, there are crystal quests azure quests ect that only require level in the one skill.
For a quest to ask for 10 sword, and 5 medium armor, would be unfair to sombody who started in leather and axes, and they would have no way to know about it anyway.
As I said, some built-in intelligence is needed then. Without levels, that task is harder, but not impossible.
For example, in skill-based games, the effectiveness of a player is spread across several skills.
Like this...
Armor skills:
Cloth
Leather
Chain
Plate
Weapon skills:
Axe
Sword
Polearm
Dagger
Mace
Defense:
Avoidance
Tactics
Offense:
Tactics
Critical Strike
Physical:
Athletics (hitpoints, fatigue reduction, etc)
Acrobatics (sneaking, critical hit bonus, etc)
..... and so on.
If one wants to give non-players the ability to 'size-up' a player then they must have an ability to gauge these many varying skills as to their corresponding weights in whatever processes are relevant. For example, if the quest involves slaying a mildly challenging melee-based monster then the quest maker might do something like the following in his/her script:
difficulty_modifier_monster = GetDiffMod(pMonster, MELEE_MONSTER)
difficulty_modifier_player = GetDiffMod(pPlayer) // dynamically determines player's strengthsWith those two values the scripter can do checks to arrive at some measure of intelligent comparison, like:
difference = difficulty_modifier_monster - difficulty_modifier_player
if(difference/difficulty_modifier_monster > 0.134f) // player is more than roughly 13% deficient
pPlayer.Send("Sorry, I think this is too tough for you at this point, come back later when you're ready.")
else
pPlayer.Send("You're just what I was looking for. Let me explain...")This won't be an exact science, but neither is intelligence often an exact science. Giving non-players the appearance of having some ability to sum up a player is actually more realistic than not giving them any at all. While I certainly haven't offered enough pseudo-code to start programming this into a game, I do not think it's nearly as impossible as some say it might be. Yes, it won't be perfect, and yes many quests are non-linear and are very difficult to test in this way because numbers don't work well for a lot of things, but it's better to give a player some feedback than to give them nothing at all.
If I come off as divisive, I'm sorry. I am not coming here to tear everybody apart. I'm trying to make my criticism constructive by offering some ideas how something like this could be applied. And further, I haven't even played this game yet. I downloaded yesterday and will make an account very soon. I really am not angry at anyone, just love to crunch numbers and think about games in general. I program off and on with different things so as you could guess I got these things on my mind sometimes.
And numbers... Too many numbers in games is restrictive. If you give players too many handholds it inevitably leads to a numbers-heavy game where everything is known with decimal point precision. It's like going to an amusement park and having fun, but never realizing the exacting engineering behind every ride and safety that comes built-in. The problem with all of this is that what happens when the player steps off the tracks or goes into the sound room where the microphones are and hte wizard of oz sits comfortably in his chair with his hands on one thousand buttons. These kinds of games are great at giving you a show, but they're expensive and change too slowly for the more creative people out there that want something more than well polished pre-approved entertainment. So sometimes good ol' you're-on-your-own is a nice thing to have. But too much of it can be discouraging for someone new until they're accomadated and ready for it. That's my view.
///////////////////////
EDIT: one alternative is to somehow allow players to rate a quest on tis difficulty and for this rating to be seen by other players who get the quest at a later point in time. i am unsure how all of it would work, but it's possible.
Some ideas...
When you complete the quest, a window pops up that asks you to rate its difficulty and to estimate the amount of time you spent doing it. Given this information, it stores the information, plus your estimated strengths. When the quest comes up again at a later time because someone else is doing it, the script for the quest will look at this rating and the associated player strength(s) to arrive at a fuzzy but helpful assessment that can itself offer the quest receiver some relevant cautionary advice.
All of this can go on behind hte scenes. The non-player can talk naturally, while conveying what's important.
And the more people that do it the more accurate the feedback will be.
