Chris' Release 9 Postmortem!

With deck system , I think that we should be able to use glyphs only once per combat. So having 5 fireballs in deck would allow us to cast 5 fireballs instead of once. There could be skill in focus tree to return some used glyphs into the deck during combat... Well, I honestly think that Focus should be separate like Combat and Magic are and maybe even use different skill points because it is quite essential and could be more complex.
Anyway if you wasted all your glyphs during combat then you would have to count on your weapon (be it staff or sword). I think it would make combat more tactical if you had to think carefully when to use your special moves, because you are not getting second chance. Also it would make more sense to have bigger decks, so far having 20 cards is perfect, because you can count on some glyphs in your hand and you know you are getting them again and again.

 

So much this. There is no point to different deck as of now, not enough points to make them viable.

And 1000 starting arrows, please.

I mean I spend half of my time (and usually more) looking for armor, reagents, arrows (and wood and gems). Third, I spent on community events, mostly building my maze (my bad) and only small fraction of my time is used on actual testing or just doing new stuff... It should be much cheaper to get stuff during these weekly releases, stuff should be cheaper, and especially resource nodes should drop more items. Once the game is (semi)persistent then it can be like in the finished game to tweak the economy properly, but now I do the same tasks too often to enjoy them and I quite miss the time to try new things.

 

Sorry but I'm totally against it. It could work against 1 enemy but against 2 or in pvp? A deck with 60 glyphs is not plannable at all and think of all the skillpoint you need to get so much glyphs. It would be better to give them a background cooldown, which takes it out of the deck for a ammount of time.

 

We need much more when the shopkeeper only sells 500 for everybody. You know that we all had to switch into single player to get some. But this will be over in R10.

 

As for PvP, it would be same for everyone, as for PvE against multiple enemies, you would have to get out of combat at times to 'regenerate' (same could work in PvP). Of course the game would have to be balanced around such a system. So skills should be probably cheaper, so you can buy more of them to fiil the deck (imaging spells costing one skill pont rather than 2).

Also the deck with 60 glyphs can still be very much plannable. I do not know whether you are fmailiar with Magic: The Gathering, it is card game I have some experience with and it has some common traits with SotA system. We actually developed our own card game at highschool, but that is not the point, the point is that despite the randomness you can build very effective decks even with high number of different cards, which you can use only once. Of course bigger decks might need more complex magic trees or option to have 10 instead of 5 same glyphs...

Anyway most of the time I run out of focus much sooner then I casted 20 spells, so I do not think it would be really problematic if glyphs would be usable only once per combat. And I think that I used more than 20 spells in very few of my combats. I usually either kill my opponent or die sooner.

PS: How about fixed spells/abilities having cooldown but being reusable?

 

1000? so you could run around me and just pluck we with arrows, and me not being able to chase you around (full plate) and not using spells to stop you since all spells fizzle too often in combat (when wearing armor)? Im sorry but archers are already op'd, dont make them invincible! 500 should be max and we should all get 10 extra skill points, so when you do run out of arrows, you can switch to a weapon and still do good! thats too many arrows to carry at once! You could just make platemail impossible for arrows to go through! then well be even.

 

I think we have to spend too much time in running for reagents, potions, and something like that. Sure we have to craft/buy them later, I'm all in for every magic spell to need reagents ( low cost for low spells, high costs for high spells) but now to get them needs a lot of focus in gameplay.

I would like to spend my weekend to create player towns/mazes for showing new players how amazing housing will be, spend time on many player events as possible to build a great community and help new players to step in this way, test fighting in Dungeons or PvP, explore new created towns.

If we are able to play more than just a weekend and don't have a whipe every time, I would like to learn more about the time I have to spend in crafting and cooking or even making gold for resources I need .

 

it would be nice to have a sunday to sunday release so everyone that works will have some time to get involved in the game and how things work etc..... on thier weekends off. Unfortunately i never have the days off when releases come out and since i work nights sometimes id rather just sleep when i get home!

 

Locked spells do not fizzle and if you have roots you can get your arcer pretty quickly... Anyway I would not mind storing those arrows at my house or something, but for the testing purposes I have to have them and I do not plan to waste them all in one battle. Anyway I have used 10000 or so arrows in R9, so 1000 would be still nothing... Also people with full palte were quite invincible to arrows (except of the piercing shot which I did not have). So I was wasting arrows on them...

 

in plate you cannot cast off root or any spell very well. Just wear plate and see how hard it is to cast spells! it absoluty sucks! I pray each time i cast a spell that it works! lol also the heal other spell works better than the heal self still!? i thought they changed that, it didn't seem to be healing very much during pvp (the heal self one), but the heal other worked great on myself. and those arrows you have do hit a lot even in plate, and its hard to catch up to archers running around. I hate going into battle with archers, since i can never get close enough to do anything to them. I normally fight archers for their own learning it really does nothing for me but shows me how fast i can be killed, since i can hardly cast heal(what little healing it does) let alone any other spells. most of my skills have to be innate abilities, like fire resist, etc... and i cant really use the first of those spells anyway since i am in armor! we should be able to take way more damage in plate than they have it set up as of now. unless of course your armor is damaged to a point where it really doesn't protect, and if your wearing that still, that is your own fault for wearing broken armor!

 

You have to lock them first There is cool down for them and higher focus cost.

Yeah those are different spels, the more powerful one is ranged but more importantly can be interrupted and you can not move while casting it, besides I think it costs more focus. And you can spend points in life innate skill to make healing spells better... Besides in R9 healing potions were truly powerful for people in plate. No fizzle or cooldown on those.

As for archers being OP, what about bludgeons... it is funny but different people though that different skills were OP, which is quite good thing. There is a lot of room for improvements, but overall balance was not that bad, it was just hard to find working deck.

 

Ill have to try locking spells and see what happens, i didnt know that they dont fizzle, if they dont then i may just start locking as many of my spells or skills i can. (which basically kills the random card set up! hehe) "yes"!

 

Yeah i had as many health innate as well (at max) as various protections, I thought bludgeon would do more dmg i had those maxed too, but it really didnt seem like it? I didnt one shot anyone with bludgeon skill, i think the best thing about bludgeon is it dmgs armor so eventually it will weaken it. I dont know if that was in effect this time round or not. I would think the most OP set up would be archer/ mage w/fire elemental! just a thought, the fire eles once on you are relentless with thier fir attack, mix that with archery, and you may not need much armor!

 

Thx for the Info

First i have Problems with the picture of a mage throwing reagents to cast a fireball.

In my oppinion the proper way would be, to First learn a spell in your labratory/Library (You Need reagents in a certain way for that) and as soon the spell is learned you can add it to your deck and cast it.
All it Needs is a spellcraftingbank? Where you can memorize your Spells for Battle or whatever.

This would make magicusers really make to think i guess


Edit:
For example: you want to cast a spell 40 Times, You Need to make a Ritual with 40 of the required reagents. If you succeed maybe 20 - 80 % of the reagents are gone but you can cast 40 fireballs

 

Ok, I play a lot and I know what I am doing so I can just imagine how hard it is if you are totally new in the game.

Getting ready
- Took few moments to make money for first plate set / reagents / potions, BUT I knew what I was doing. For total n00b that would take ages.
- Took more than few moments to get full epic set
- Was hard to get arrows

Potions / reagents
- Potions were way too slow, didnt use them that much
- Reagents, ran out few times & vendor sold just few of them at first (had to log into single mode to get them, thanks for your tip Gaelis!)

House decorating & community
- Didnt do this time, just takes so much time to get all needed from other activities
- I really hope in future releases vendors would sell more decorating stuff, I can understand the point we have to craft all we need etc. but there just isnt enough time to do that all
- Im sure its for mutual benifit if avatars get easier what they need for their very creative in-game ideas, its great way to build communitys
- All the time we need to craft / gather stuff just for few days is away from community events and such

Wearing full plate set
- Was so hard to cast spells wearing full plate set, that in the end I didnt us heal at all.
- Was very hard to kill archers but running after them for ages finally managed to do that, really took so long it wasnt worth it
- Archer managed to kill me, just took very long time.
- Bludgeons stunn effect was maybe too good?
- Polearms really could reach enemies from far, maybe too far?
- Didnt have time to test swords and dual wield long enough
- Was ok PvP deck and very good PvE deck

Being archer mage
- Learned to love this build, was fast and fun
- Was quite good PvP deck, PvE was terrible
- Had very hard time killing few guys wearing full plate set, combat was so even we finally gave up after running around Brave Coast long enough

Suggestions for future releases
- Could we please get maybe 100 reagents each in the beginning?
- Could we please get maybe 25 potions each in the beginning?
- Could we please get maybe 500 arrows in the beginning?
- Would be then just fair if we could get plate set in the beginning too...
- More arrow sellers please and faster item spawn rate
- More reagent / potion sellers please and faster item spawn rate
- More furniture sellers please and faster item spawn rate
- Can you please add more furnitures to choose from? I know there are all kind of cool stuff in the game like tents etc. and I think it would be very nice if everyone could get them quite easily
- If test releases last just 4 days or so, there just isnt enough time to test it all so please help us to test the most important new features by making the rest of the game a little bit easier for us

Thats all

 

The only issue I see with this is the random nature of the deck system. There really is no strategy, you build your deck and once combat starts you have to use what you're dealt. If the same skill keeps coming up you really don't have time to be picky about what skill you use. I'm waiting to see how combo's will work when you never know what order the cards will come out in and if you'll ever get the second part of your combo.

 

For me it is much strategy, there is so much which works together and to think about. Armour, weapon, skills, lock cards or not, how many cards for my hand, draw-speed....
1.before start to fight I have to find a good deck, choose skills out of many skill-trees and see how they will work together, tune it for more functionality and see how it fits my playstyle
2. in fight I can't use one macro-combo every time because maybe its the best or hit approved rotations. I have to deal with my cards...every second of a fight I
have to choose the best card for this situation or manage to make a combo if possible.

I like it and I have fun with this random nature system, but I had a lot of help to get it started

 

Thank you very, very much for that!
Multiple thumbs up!

 

Fiction and history! Yes. The only real reason to include them imho. Ultima had them so we have to. I can't argue against that.
Immersion. I don't want to start another big argument with Drocois. Suffice to say I think this reason is utter nonsense.
Economy reasons. This is a good reason for reagents to exist but a poor reason for them to be an absolute requirement. Any system where reagents are optional, but spells without them are significantly weaker will adequately stimulate the economy. Of course I'm still going to buy them if it makes me much more effective. Why wouldn't I?
Choices and consequences. In theory, this is the best argument. Unfortunately it doesn't hold up. Magic would need to be significantly more powerful than other options to justify the increased cost and hassle required reagent system. It is not. Not even close. What gets left out of this argument is that magic already has significant checks and balances that other disciplines do not. Magic has fizzle based on armor and magic has long casting times which can be easily interruped. Despite these large drawbacks, it is NOT more powerful. So, we're looking at a system that already has two large drawbacks, and we're adding a third. If this is the case magic needs to be CLEARLY more powerful than other disciplines in order to gain balance.
Balance. This would be reasonable if magic required one reagent of one type per casting, but each spell costs multiple reagents of different types, mages have to carry around a myriad different reagents and reagents are going to be more expensive and hard to gather. These factors are orders of magnitude different than buying arrows (all of one type, easy to find) or repairing your sword (go to a table and do it or find an armorer and pay them).
Control. I covered this above, but I have yet to see magic being any where NEAR powerful enough to justify all the hoops. Not even close. The other part of that argument is PvP. If you make magic more powerful, but have a higher cost, then a well-equipped mage will always dominate in PvP. It's not much consolation to the loser who never stood a chance, that the mage had to pay more money for his abilities. He's still at disadvantage every time he faces him.

As for the options. I think that the lowest level spells should not require reagents at all. There is precedence for this: Ultima 7 had linear spells which required no reagents. Additionally, I think higher level spells should have reagents, but that for each missing reagent the spell's power significantly drops and fizzle chance increases.

Chris. This is the WORST news I've heard since testing started. I always play in single player and it already takes WAY too much of my time to gather the equipment I need. Now I have to deal with availability in a short release? I really, REALLY think you should wait until the game is open longer before you do this. PLEASE?

 

I just had a thought I wanted to share.

One advantage of the % chance to use a reagent would be the ability to add passive skills which increase the chance of retaining the reagent. I think that would be pretty darn cool.