Casting spells without reagents = BAD

That is precisely what I intend to do. Well then, I guess I'll be sure to be on the lookout for you and your buddies hiding in the bushes ready to ambush me from behind...

 

Actually, since the KGB is an Anti-PK guild, you can be on the lookout for us to save you when you get yourself in trouble, if we can.

You're welcome.

 

I quite agree. Magic should be special and powerful. It should require 'serious' work to get competent at. Including a huge fizzle problem when you are low level, backfires that cause death and mis-targetting at times would be a nice negative for inexperienced casters. If the non-dedicated mage wants to have spells in their arsenal, they will need to suffer these effects until more skill is gained. The same as if my mage picks up a sword, he may just slice off a finger.

I am not saying make all regents 100% easy to buy and find, but make it so if you are of a dedicated mind you will be able to successfully create a stash of regents big enough to create a stock for your mage. I plan on having a regent chest full of the regents I will need, and a huge garden specifically created for regents on my spare lot of land. I am a dedicated mage

Buying regents should definitely be another option if you have the wealth.

 

A few things....

1) Not everyone, or even most people, will have the option to just store everything or have a garden of their own. So you're going to have to build in ways for the average player to get reagents continuously. But that doesn't mean you need to create a gift basket for them. They can still work for it.
2) I love your ideas about high rates of backfire and fizzle at lower levels. But I'm not sure I've heard enough about how experience levels work to know if that's something that would be balanced. I think the general idea is that someone that trained in blades can dump all that and after a short period of time get all magic. So they could probably skip the "hard parts" of being a lower level mage by leveling up as a fighter. (which would be lame)

 

Ah good point...I don't know if they mentioned having community gardens. But It's not nearly as big of a problem as it was with player towns now and more people will have lots for gardens. There are always ways for dedicated mages to get regents for sure.

Yes, I love serious consequence for inexperience! I'm not 100% sold on the leveling system as of now. I don't like levels, I like use leveling like UO had and some other older games. Haven't seen it in new games. I hope for slow leveling to make the game more fun and lasting. Leveling to me is the best part of gaming. Good old character development. Once my character is done growing the game tends to end for me.

 

If a skill take time to learn, they should take an equivalent amount of time to atrophy before they can replaced. That would presume some kind of skill cap existed. What is the current thinking on that, or has anything been announced?

 

I am more on the side of casting using regents. I know that not everyone will not be pleased but look back and remember how it was like in UO, well the version I played that is. lol You either farm them, get them off appropriate bodies as loot, or buy them. It adds another dimension to the game, made people get creative, find their favorite vendors, we had to hustle, borrow from friends lol, that was me hehe, or just veg out and farm them if you want to listen to music etc. It's just something to manage in whichever way you like to manage things like that.

 

Having no reagents boils again down to one thing: simplifying the game in order to be able to play more efficiently and thus compete with other players by being faster. With no reagents you can cast a spell faster and more often thus you can plan more efficiently and you are more efficient in PvP and combat in general.

Todays gamers are drawn to competitive games and they want to be the best in those games so everything in a game has to be simplified. Quest markers, object highlighting, question marks above heads, bread crumb trails, no reagents for spells...

I think that this is a disturbing trend. People tend to say how complex and deep MMORPGs are whereas they get simplified more and more.

Those who want to enjoy the game in single player mode and those who want to have a complex game like they have been in former days are those who suffer from this development as those are the ones who have to adapt in order to still be able to play games, whereas it should be the other way around imho.

 

I think you're over reacting quite a bit, that's my opinion...
-the economy won't suffer, most likely you'll be buying from NPCs, and who wouldn't want to make sure they were well stocked with reagents, you'll have the strongest spells...
-Crafting won't suffer as you don't use reagents to craft...
-for immersion, ha...
-for game balance, ya casting subpar spells can really change that...
-for coolness, what are you in grade school?
-for fun, ya getting your but kicked for not being smart enough to have plenty of reagents...

I think you need to re-read what Starr wrote is my opinion...
"Magic will now require reagents to cast spells at full strength (current thinking is you can still cast without reagents but the effectiveness of the spell is reduced for each missing reagent)"...

I guess you conveniently forgot the part of "(current thinking is you can still cast without reagents but the effectiveness of the spell is reduced for each missing reagent)"...

To me this means if a spell uses 3 reagents and you run out of one, your spell is 25% less powerful, run out of 2 reagent, you lose 50% of power, and if you're dumb enough to run out of all 3 reagents, your casting wimpy spells 75% power lose, but you can still cast... Who would want to do that?

Dude, it's all speculation... Trying to get an argument going to get your message count up is really trolling...

 

I didn't forget that, I paraphrased it in the OP.

Griefers. Exploiters. Min/Maxers that will focus on combat and use non-reagent spells to screw up the balance of combat because there's nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Report it then, see how far that argument goes with the moderators.

 

Right now item affinity is not in. We have little info on how that will impact the naked mage but it was my understanding that item affinity will make this not viable.

Naked mage could fizzy tons, then add in the lack of reagents and the fizzle rate could be outrageous.

 

You don't need items to cast spells, they've already said that.

Plus, as much as people whine about reagents being needed, I can't imagine they will be more comfortable with weapon affinity. So far, I haven't seen anything that would suggest naked mages are not a viable option. The devs are very clever though, so we'll have to wait and see of course. It's just always nice to hear the right language being used as opposed to "nothing" though.

 

I don't think this thread brings out a valid concern, and let me explain why :

The current design stating that reagents are not compulsory is just trying to tackle the frustration of finding yourself unable to cast spells in a middle of a fight. Because maybe it's "realistic" (talking magic here ), maybe it's hardcore, but realising in the middle of a fight that there's no other solution than fleeing because you ran out of reagents is no fun. Plus, it might mean you have to leave the dungeon you were in, go restock (and remember there probably won't be a recall-like spell) and come back only to fight the monsters you had already killed earlier.

Then it's all a matter of balance. As it is now, spell damage is pretty much on par with weapon skills, so just imagine than casting without reagents lowers damage (and possibly utility, like seconds of stun/slow...) by 50%. There is no way you can win a 1v1 against someone well stocked or not using reagents. The idea is only to allow you to keep on adventuring if you so wish at the cost of losing efficiency, or in other words, they don't want the moment you realise you're low on or fresh out of reagent X to be a forced back to town. so basically I think it will be useful to mages in groups who don't want to leave just yet, and that any serious fight (or fighter) will require reagents no matter what.

To sum it up, I think this idea won't affect combat but will reduce a case of player frustration, so I'm all up for it

 

It will definitely impact combat...it's combat.

Will some players be frustrated, sure some players are always frustrated.

The idea that it's "no fun" to be in the middle of a fight and then lose said fight because you're out of reagents is a reason to stock up on reagents, not to whine that you need reagents to cast spells.

 

My point was rather : I trust the devs will find the required balance, and I believe this balance will still require you to use reagents if you want to win anything.

 

If it is a problem, Portalarium will address it. I consider it to be a non issue, but by all means folks can troll away if they so wish.

 

That's a good point, and I hope you're right. However, I've learned after following many games that just saying "I believe in the devs" is not a winning strategy.

Although I think the developers working on SOTA are amazing and they have my full faith and respect, they're only human and these are very complex problems when viewed holistically with all the other systems and game design elements. With all the many things going on in their lives, all the technical challenges, the business challenges, and the community challenges, it's posts like these that I would hope might bring issues and potential issues to he forefront of the devs consciousness so that they might say "oh yeah, we haven't really thought about that in a while...good catch, let's not let that slip through the cracks!" Or alternatively they might say "we got that covered, no worries". Either way, it's healthy to discuss all of this until it's established that it's no longer a concern.

 

When does this stop though? Other primary weapons require 'reagents' as has been previously stated. Crossbows and bows being the most obvious. Can bows be used without ammo? Perhaps as melee weapons, which is fine, but magic should need ammo too, otherwise the restrictions should be dire.

Huge increase in focus cost (75-100%)

Very limited range (50-75% shorter)

Perhaps health can be used instead to fuel these spells.... You burn life force instead of reagents.

 

Add fizzle and backfire increases as well.

And what's the point again? What great wonderful reward are we getting for this blasphemy? Oh yeah, so people can blindly cast spells without managing their reagents and so griefers and exploiters can run around naked avoiding risk. Fantastic!

 

I really like the idea of burning through your own life force when running low on reagents for Life and Death schools of magic Not so sure it would make as much sense (conceptually) for the other schools of magic, though...