Earning and Learning magic spells

I think having 3 pools (combat, magic & crafting) is appropriate, and isn't actually a slippery slope into a world where every category of each has its own experience pool. I do think that people should need to cast spells to learn magic, though.

 

Well then. How do you gain experience? Gaining experience is important because you invest that experience in what you want for your decks. 4 in fireball so i get 4 fireballs, 2 in flame touch. If you gain experience just from using it then it turns into UO, just casting the spell to cast it to gain experience. As it stands now I believe you get experience when you kill things. How would the system know what experience to give you?

Especially if I split my play style. I want maces + fire magic + light armor. Where do armor experience points fit in? Especially if I want moon magic + chaos magic + light armor.

 

The idea is that when you finish an encounter and gain experience, you gain both fighting and magic experience. It wouldn't be from just casting the spell outside of combat.

Example encounter with super simple numbers:
A:
Fought with a sword, and was attacked by the enemy. - gains 2 fighting experience

B:
Fought with a sword, cast a spell, but was not attacked by the enemy - gains 1 fighting and 1 magic experience

C:
Fought with spells alone and was attacked by the enemy - gains 1 fighting and 1 magic experience

D:
Fought with a sword, cast a spell, and was attacked by the enemy - gains 2 fighting and 1 magic experience

This way you gain more for being attacked (representing the points spent on armour equip), and for attacking even though they both are used in the fighting pool. You gain magic experience only by casting spells. Scenarios A and D rightly award more points for the use of both sword and armour.

 

Changing the way experience applies is one method for this. but I'd prefer to see various teachers scattered throughout the land. Again, lore plays into this somewhat - is the magic we've seen so far completely accepted and commonly used? Are there 'schools' that teach these trees in progression?

While the tree makes sense as far as prerequisites, I would prefer to see something where the character must adventure around to discover spells and skills that are scattered around the world. Likewise, I hope to see some crafting that requires travel to acquire. I see merchants and craftsmen hiring bands of mercenary guards to protect their travel to a new teacher or special crafting area.

I would also like to see recipes and scrolls containing skill/spell knowledge that are distributed as items given as quest rewards or just as drops. Especially with the ability to teach your skills to other Avatars, having knowledge be less than ubiquitous could have a great affect on gameplay and story. What's the point of teaching your skills to someone who already has access to them? This leads me to believe Port has some different plans than what we've seen so far.

Ideally, I would like to see teachers and recipes scattered across the continent, some linked to quests, but some literally hidden under rocks. Not only should we not know exactly when and what we'll be getting, but the path should be different for different players - the devs have hinted that some quest lines will lead you down a particular specialization. I hope they'll be emphasizing this aspect of the game.

 

Possibly, each school will have separate reagents and possibly some in common.

 

I mean, we've yet to know by what mechanism we are learning the magic. Is it inherent for Avatars? Are there organized institutions of learning that teach them? IE A fire mage guild, a temple of chaos, a healer's enclave .. It seems like they want to allow for US to make these organizations, to avoid 'classing' us with preset paths.

So, where does the magic come from? It might be frustrating for some, but I think that in a world where it seems likely that many Avatars will use a combination of magic and martial skills, making us discover the magic piece by piece might be appropriate. And it might make the magic more valuable.

 

Maybe esoteric knowledge that only a few initiates and seekers are understand.

 

While I am definitely anti-grind, I have to say that there is more realism there than in a "flat" skill system. If I've been training and competing in the martial arts for years, spending hours a day in my own dojo, training and training, and you just earned your black belt, you are NOT going to walk in off the street and beat me. Not even close. Skill continues to accrue after the supposed levels of "mastery" even in the real world, and the difference between a chef, or doctor, or programmer, or even a taxi-cab driver for that matter, who is newly inducted into the highest levels of mastery, and one who has been there for a decade, is profound.

My point being, realism is better in most cases. Life isn't grind to win, but it is always possible to practice your way to greater skill.

 

You do have greater skill. So why do you need bonuses on top of that? That makes no sense. Should be give a stroke bonus to the better golfer? +1 pawns to the better chess player?

 

Don't agree with this to an absolute degree. Someone could be a doctor for 10 years and still be a lousy doctor, and someone can show his talent very early on and be considered a prodigy. Being skilled at something, besides the rote aspects of learning a craft, is often about 'getting it.' Part of learning is abstract -- understanding concepts rather than training -- and part of it is analogic -- applying other skillsets to the one you're learning.

Repetitive practice in a field could lead to improvements, it could also be counter-productive if you're trying too hard. Ask an artist; it requires some degree of intuition, and if you keep on trying to force the result, you're going to fail.

A flat xp pool isn't very realistic, but neither is a more repetition = more skill system.

 

The mage class is already crippled enough (mana, reagents and the stupid card system), people keep forgetting that the game is supposed to be played single player as well and pure mage is supposed to be a viable build too, not just everyone as a fighter who MIGHT find some magic

 

Or, a mage who knows how to use a sword. Don't know that its crippled any more than anything else. Archery will require arrows just like spells will require reagents. There are passive mage skills that offer a lot of resistances and other advantages. High level magic should be extremely powerful, more powerful than using a weapon. And fighting skills drain mana also.

 

It's not that I should get a FREEBIE, it's that the CHARACTER is the one who did all the work. If I play my character's combat style as dual wielding swords, are you going to expect someone come check that *I* know how to dual wield swords? It's the character's ability. If the character continues, at my direction, to practice, he should continue to accrue skill of some sort. If I the player then log into a friend's account with the same build, but months or years less play time spent, the character should be weaker, because the character did not put in as much practice time.

I'm not saying that a day, or a month, should be an insurmountable difference of power between two characters.

I am simply objecting the idea of a "FLAT" progression. A very shallow upward angle would be enough.

While it is true that some people simply are not cut out for certain tasks, and some people seem to instantly click with their predestined calling, both the genius and the cretin benefit from practice. Practice means repetition, yes, but it does not mean FORCING the result.

Now, you really should revisit that last sentence, it's non-sensical. Unless you are saying that repetition does not yield any increase to skill, which is patently false.

"A flat xp pool isn't very realistic, but neither is a more repetition = more skill system." Technically, YES, a MORE repetition=skill system is MORE realistic than a flat progression system. The problem with flat systems is that they do not accurately represent true progress after the initial character creation period. You hit the cap and stop. The cap doesn't need to be official in order to function. In a repetition based system, even after you've earned all the shinies, unlocked all the levels, and passed all the checkpoints, practice still gives some benefit. It does, however, tend to level off compared to the early developmental phase.

I just think it's irrational to expect a newly minted wizard or archer or bladesman to attack someone who's been doing exactly the same thing for years and take him down, because they were BOTH max level. There IS no max level in reality, I'd like to see SotA reflect that somehow.

 

Will each archery skill require a completely different type of arrow? or even worse, more than 1? so you are required to carry a whole heap of different arrows just in case you get x, y or z skills come up because of the stupid card system

 

Again, you make no sense. Because I've played hundreds of games of chess my pawns should be +1? I mean they've killed a lot, they much have learned something...
I want a fair fight. Not some weird bonus or penalty due to play time. Trophies are fine.

 

No, but arrows do a lot less damage than fireballs.

 

That's how mages have traditionally been in old school RPGs btw. They'd have to use their magic economically -- because magic had a cost -- and in other situations had to rely on some other type of weapon, whether it was a staff or a dagger or short sword. In D&D mages had to memorize spells, and then use up the spells they memorized iteratively. A lot of DOS RPGs relied on some sort of power system, where using powerful magic drained a low level mage very quickly.

As a mage gets more advanced, and increases in level, he should be able to rely on his magic more.

 

This isn't chess. If I get told that I have to return to start position each time and play the exact same neutral, starting character build against all opponents, I'm out.

This is a RPG, in which the character I play develops and grows through the course of gameplay. I'm interested precisely BECAUSE I want his or her past experience to mean something. So if I don't get to grow and develop over time, through skills, spells, gear, tactics, and wealth, why am I playing? To prove who can spec out faster in a leveling duel?

 

This. Why does everyone need to stand up and fight? Now, there are considerations we have to make - we're not yet going to have perfect line-of-sight and collisions that allow for hiding behind chests and rocks and trees etc., but these restrictions are where different play styles come from. To paraphrase something Holt said about poetry, restrictions like this are the framework. the skeleton if you will, that creates the form of beauty. There needs to be a distinction between damage sources, types of damage, and a character's ability to deal with them.

To continue the analogy, another distinction made for mages in D&D is their considerably higher saving throws (3 or 4 points on a D20 is substantial). Now, in that game one or two solid hits would toast you, which meant playing a near-perfect game every time if you didn't want to die. That means, wait until you know you can win, and then destroy! Or gamble hard. This is what I mean by strategy - the planning that goes in BEFORE combat, the planning that extends BEYOND the order you will hit keys in (we'll see how the new combat system deals with that particular problem in a couple months).

I know SotA will not operate in the same manner, but I'd like to see some of these features taken into consideration. In a game like WoW, the differences between clearly defined classes is largely cosmetic. The real classes are tank, DPS-assist, kiting & group healer. In this 'classless' world, we need to be sure to provide real choices for players and characters that shape the development of the Avatar into a recognizable personality and play style, otherwise we'll end up with a big muddy mess of indistinct toons. Game mechanics should work in tandem with RP to create individual and lifelike characters.

 

So what happens if I don't want any armor/weapon skills, magic only then I'll be getting all this fighting experience I don't want. They intend to cap the levels so we can't be both a good warrior and a good mage, they want to limit us so we aren't all powerful. Where we have to choose things. This has been argued quite a bit in skill cap threads. (I'm 100% for skill caps).

There is no way this system can work and allow people flexibility to play the character they want.