Chris' Release 9 Postmortem!

you can set your deck up anyway you like. You can only have a max of 5 cards of any one type. But no matter what you have in your deck, what pops up for you in combat is completely RANDOM. Yes, you can lock cards but that defeats the whole purpose of the deck system. You might as well have a hotbar set with the skills you'll be using.
Macro combo? Not even talking about using macro's. Certain cards used in a certain order will produce an extra effect or a more powerful version of one of the ones you're using.

 

How will you balance a decay system against steel and wood? It seems that it's always ok to put mages at a disadvantage for whatever reason. Decay of reagents seems to be another instance of exactly that.

 

What advantage does the Mage get over the fighters and archers if the complexity is increased for one style over another? If you push the mage's advantages to far from what the others can do, won't people just gravitate to the more powerful styles? If you advocate complexity for the mages, what kind of complexity are you advocating for fighters and archers?

 

Are you advocating that all skills, not just spells, should be discovered? Do fighters and archers need skill books to write their skills in? I could go on but I think you get the idea. It's fine to say that these are fine ideas for the Mage, but how do they translate into the other styles? Someone playing a Mage shouldn't be put at a disadvantage, when compared to other play styles, for wanting to be a Mage.

 

Weapons and armor have durability, so instead of replenishing your supply of reagents you have to repair them. If you mean decay of reagents while not using them (I.e., fresh nightshade), then that is more related to the food system than directly comparable to weapons and armor.

Alternatively, fresh ingredients might not be directly usable as reagents. Instead, preparing fresh nightshade (using cooking or alchemy) would prevent them from decaying naturally, and instead only decay with casting. However, it would no longer be useful for creating poison, for example; that would require fresh nightshade.

 

The freshness and decay is directly related to the play style of mages versus other play styles. As a result it is directly comparable to weapons and armour. If a mage is required to use up the reagent supply or lose it because of decay, there need to be an equivalent system for weapons. Otherwise you've placed the Mage at a disadvantage as they must continual restock their reagents because of loss that doesn't relate to their use. What is the equivalent loss for weapons? If someone doesn't use their weapon, what kind of disadvantage do they have?

 

Chris said: "If spells average 2 to 3 reagents each, you’re talking about using 500+ reagents an hour if every cast uses reagents!"

This is a critical point to remember in the reagent dialog.

Imagine you have 100,000 mages online all trying to find 500 reagents at the same time. You are out of reagents and need to go collect some quickly, but all of the spawns are camped. Meanwhile, your guild is heading to PVP and asking where you are. Fun or frustrating?

The dialog on a complex super-reagent game needs to be balanced with practical ideas of what it takes to have fun, IMHO.

 

Community ran reagent gardens. And, reagent sniffing dogs for rare reagent hunting That would be fun for me if something like that was implemented

 

*sloshes around rum in his glass*

While Captain Jack realises that Shroud of the Avatar is a new game and "successor" to the former game, Captain Jack has gone back now and experienced some of it.

Captain Jack thinks that not just spells should be reagent based, but anything ever to do with any magic should be reagent based. It. Just. Makes. Sense. If you need to make some cream for that special itch you've got, and it is magical in nature, it should require reagents. All spells of any power should require reagents. Wands if they are charged should require reagents for the spells you charge them for. It should all be a 1:1 ratio. Scrolls, reagents. Wands one time creation and not charged, reagents.

You get the idea. Reagents.

Why? While I didn't like a lot of aspects about the older games, no doubt due to Captain Jack being late to the cause, reagents were unique. Captain Jack can't just buff my mana/MP and go spam some poor soul with fireball. Captain Jack has to plan, Captain Jack has to think and if Captain Jack is not mistaken isn't that the major point to this game anyway? Taking away the typical training wheels that are now applied to today's weak as, you know what, games and giving some good old raw gaming back to we players?

Reagents! Reagents! Reagents! Simplicity! Simplicity! Simplicity!

Captain Jack doesn't care about the economy, not PvP balance, not strength of magic. Those are your problems to sort out boys, so focus on unique, focus on old school, focus on logic, focus on the big picture of is it simple to understand and does it make sense. Very important not to overlook those.

*finishes rum and pours another*

 

In regards to the consumption of reagents, a higher version of a spell should consume more reagents. This is the cost of more power. We have to consider at some point many will be 'masters' and if the majority of people are only using 1 reagent per cast, versus 10 casts per reg or even 10 regs per cast (for apprentice mages). Fizzles!

High quality weapons cost more to craft, purchase and repair. So should magic. Simple non-combat spells = no regs. Mid level spells = x1 regs per cast, High level spells = x2, x3, or x5 regs per cast.

If a mage kills a non-mage, they make off with weapons and armor.
If a non-mage kills a mage, they make off with reagents.

So in short, let's keep the "mage-pinatas" healthy on regs, high level magic controlled and balanced gear-to-damage ratios in tact.

Also, I liked what someone said about how we all start melee and slowly work in some magic. So even when\if we run out of regs, we fall back on melee skills.

 

I agree with you Chris, a percent chance to consume Certain reagents is the way to go.

What I'd like is some are 100% use, I'm hoping we'll have some more skills/spells that are hidden/powerful that have a 100% reagent use of a rare ingredients, so if anyone casts it you know they spent big money/time to cast 2 Armageddon spells. Or, 100% chance on the more common ingredients and 33% on the rare one... whichever works best for balance and fun. Tier 1 spells could have like a 10% chance.

It sounds good to me. In UO I had a runebook to all the reagent sellers and I'd just recall to each one and buy them when they had 500+, kept around 5,000 of each reagent at all times at my house and carried 30-100 of each depending on risk of losing them. -This wasn't a fun mechanic. The need to use reagents was fun, the quantities I needed and stockpiling from vendors wasn't.

 

I am a big fan of reagents and ammo in general. It is a shame so many MMO's got away from that concept settling for the mages being able to cast unlimited spells and archers/gunners with unlimited ammo. I do remember the days in UO of carrying 100 of each reagent and then having to teleport to a bank or house to fill up on reagents or potions.

I am very interested to see how the % of reagents consumed will work out. I think it could be a happy middle ground. Would this be done the same way for archers as well in terms of arrows/bolts with basic shots taking a percentage where as the more powerful shots take a 100% arrow. It only makes sense to me to keep things balanced on all "ammo" based abilities.

Chris I also enjoy your lengthy and candid posts not only from the technical stand point but also as someone who spends time playing the game.

 

That would annoy the crap out of me. I'd much rather have reagents cost and weigh 50% less than to only consume them 50% of the time. Apples to apples, please. If I'm a mage about to go out on a dungeon crawl, I'd like to know just what exactly I need to bring.

To prevent issues like in UO when you'd die on an island and be stuck because the jerk looted your blood moss, just make homeward / recall type spells not cost regs. Honestly that ability should be baked into every character anyway. It was kind of silly in UO that everyone ended up getting either enough Magery to cast Recall or enough to use Recall scrolls.

 

You should be able to average it out. if you brought 60 of each reagent and knew you would cast spells ranging from 10% (giving you 600 casts on average of tier 1) up to 50% (120 casts of high tier spells). You'll know about how many casts you'll be able to get out of your stash. Also if you start running low you can change your deck around so you only have tier 1 spells. It adds some tactical changes with that percent usage.

If you wanted it to be exactly the same make tier 1 spells cost 1 of each reagent needed, and high tier spells cost 5 of each reagent needed. Comes out to the same usage, just less randomness and more reagents needed.

 

Requiring more reagents for higher level spells might be a better way to go. You can think of reagents like ammo, then. In the case of arrows, you can (probably) buy or make better arrows to increase your damage. With magic, you just get more powerful spells, but there has to be some way to increase the cost of those higher tier spells in the same way that higher quality arrows are harder to make. That's probably the best compromise. Then just make reagents weightless.

I just don't like the idea of there being only a chance to use regs on each spellcast. It injects randomness into a resource management system, which shouldn't be random. I like knowing when I take my character into the field about how long the equipment I take will last.