Magic and Alchemy - the essence of a compromise

I totally agree with you. Rituals and non combat magic will make it far more fun.

UO gets a lot of criticism for everybody using magic. Early on though there weren't many good mages that wielded swords and stuff, because it did disarm the weapon. These days UO allows a player to have a weapon that has magic channeling. So players really can be tank mages with silly armor (cloth cloths that are just as good as platemail but without the negative modifiers). Who wants to wear plate in UO now?

So I think everybody being a spell caster isn't a big evil thing. What is a problem is having people able to cast a damage spell just as powerful as a a pure mage. They get death mastery and death touch and can do massive damage and heals while they are primarily a swords person... that is kind of wierd. I love games that are classless, but I don't like everybody being a perfect hybrid where they are masters of everything. Having one major and one minor skill set seems better to me, like a rogue that dabbles in magic.

It seems that somebody who dedicates their entire life to magic should be better at even the low level spells compared to those who just dabble in magic. In D&D an 18th level magic user had a much more powerful magic missile than a level 5 magic user. If a guy was multi-classed in D&D they should never expect to be as good in magic as a pure caster. That seems reasonable.

So maybe there should be some set of magic skills that increase the power of all spells in general. Therefore, people who want to master in magic would also have to spend skill points in that tree, but those who aren't pure casters they would have to dilute their skills even further if they want to cast damage oriented spells (forcing a choice between melee or caster as a main skill set). Kind of like tactics, but instead it could be like a magic mastery, with mostly innate skills or something like that?

That coupled with reagents would set mages apart from archers and melee, but it wouldn't stop people from picking up spells to compliment their skills. although I still think Life magic should be available to everybody in case a person wants to create a paladin or a cleric. Although a cleric might be more focused on magic rather than a paladin who focuses on weapons and life magic only.

 

I still don't see how reagents factor into making magic more interesting or setting magic users apart from other characters in any way. There are literally thousands of games that can pull of magic perfectly well without reagents, it's only in the echochamber of this forum where a lot of people treat magic ammo as some sort of amazing idea without even being able to really explain why. They always repeat the same stupid mantras about how reagents give more depth to magic, but they can't in any way explain why or how.

I would much rather have a game where if my character makes a deep and personal connection with an element and gains an affinity for it, performs rituals to invoke it and lives by a code that honors it he gains mastery over that element. That's interesting gameplay and makes magic users a lot more unique and interesting in the world. Instead you get this wishy washy BS about how reagents are somehow deep lore. They really aren't. They are going to get stockpiled in the tens of thousands and everyone who has to deal with them will endeavor to make them as irrelevant as possible to their play.

I really can't stand this kind of "hipsters game design", because it always ends up with stupid systems being talked up into something good just because the mainstream has abandoned them. "Things shouldn't be so easy!" "Don't dumb things down!" ... in reality they are just standing in the way of making something that is truly clever and complex by insisting some ancient garbage system is already the best thing ever.

 

While I can agree with rituals and that sort of thing (like the magic system in Pagan or something, for example), there are some sad realities to face:

1) Skill balance. Magic needs to have ammo as it's a ranged ability or it needs to have some weapon or something that can deteriorate. Warriors have weapons and archers have ammo on top of their bow, plus special arrows to use their skills. If we want to see anything but mages on the field, we need to get that cleared up.

2) The combat system sucks. So long as we're playing with cards to determine whether we swing a sword or shoot a fireball, completely disregarding tactical and situational awareness while you wait for the nuke, I doubt we'll see anything remotely interesting like an in-depth magic system (or even a creative swordplay system, for that matter).

We can fix number one, though.

 

This is the one argument for reagents I find valid, but I would argue that magic isn't really a replacement for weapons. You'll still deal a heck of a lot more damage if you have something to auto-attack with than if you just stand back an cast spells. It's also very difficult to not get hit at all in PvE, especially since a lot of enemies pack ranged attacks themselves in this game. It's a far cry from the old Ultima games where many enemies were so easy to kill with magic that the cost of spells was the singular limiting factor.

I would much rather have the system be more lenient to fighters when it comes to maintaining gear than just having everyone constantly pay upkeep. Bottom line is, constantly paying for upkeep isn't fun and adds nothing to the game.

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/social-magic.15304/

 

@Aetrion

1)
Have you not played any Ultima games before? Reagents is part of Ultima lore.
2)
We need every playstyle to create an impact on the economy.
If one playstyle is "cheaper" than the others then that one will be min/maxed.
So if you would like to advocate no-reagents you need to advocate some other consumables or what wears down for magic.
3)
I personally don't understand auto-attack for ranged attacks. I'd rather have the actual attacks make more damage/crits and thus be selected by the ranged user when and if they fire, plus put a consumable cost to doing ranged attacks.
4)
Having to repair gear, or buy new gear that broke, or buy consumables of one kind or another - all of those things does add something important to the game, an economy.
Which is essential to the crafting market and to be able to get PvE and PvP to interact and build one world.

 

Have you played Ultima Underworld before? Apparently they aren't all that important. Words of Power are also part of the lore, yet they are nowhere to be seen and change from game to game.

I'm not an advocate for "no reagents" I'm an advocate for "no upkeep". I don't like systems where you have to constantly pay even if you have done everything right. If going through the most basic motions of the game carries a cost then there is absolutely no point to that cost. I'm fine with things wearing down when you get defeated, because that acts as a reward for trying hard, but if you can go through an encounter perfectly and the game still hands you a bill for it there is just absolutely no point.

That's a much bigger mire for balance than whether or not every spell costs gold. Let alone the fact that the Glyph system theoretically allows you to open a fight with several 5-stacks if you just stood around with the draw running long enough before you start swinging would be really broken if for ranged character half their damage wasn't tied up in auto attacks. I'm not a huge fan of auto attacks either, but good grief would getting that first strike be an absurd advantage if the game does nothing to normalize damage with time spent actually fighting the opponent.

This argument you're making basically tries to answer the questions: "Why do I keep making items?" and "Why do I keep killing monsters?" with "Because killing monsters made me need more items" and "Because buying items made me need gold from killing monsters".

That's not some kind of brilliant circle of endless motivation though, it's just an endless circle of grind that on top of that is proven to simply not work by dozens of dead games that tried this.

People are going to get out ahead of the circle of grind and start accumulating more resources than they expend. The fact that you can break the circle will actually have to be built into the game deliberately, because people wouldn't play without being able to make progress. People are going to want to build a house at some point, which means that inevitably you're going to have to give them the ability to accumulate more resources than upkeep of their character demands.

Housing is going to have upkeep that is tied to the passage of real time, rather than time spent in the game, which mans it will have a threshold of time spent in the game where you can even break through the upkeep of the most expensive house and start accumulating extra wealth, as long as you just grind enough.

The thing is, this "economy" that is created by doing this doesn't actually serve as infinite motivation to keep playing. If it did we'd still all be playing Ultima Online and go "I can't stop playing this, I need to kill more monsters so I can buy more reagents!". It does have the very real effect of driving away a lot of newer players because it takes a while to get out ahead of the circle of grind and in the meanwhile they will be relegated to playing the game in a boring more cost effective way. It also has the effect of making it a lot less likely for old players to return to the game, because the constant upkeep tied to their accomplishments, like putting down houses, means that they aren't going to find things the way the left them if they care to return to the game. People with changing life circumstances also get pushed out of the game entirely if they find that they simply no longer have the time to maintain their accomplishments in the game. When people start feeling like their only goal has become to hold on to what they have they quit games, not double down on that commitment.

Retaining new players past the first month and gaining old players back after they took a break from the game are two of the biggest things that drive player retention, and you're shooting those numbers in the head with this type of circular grind economy. Meanwhile you actually don't gain anything, because the true motivator for players in the game is progress, which can't happen without allowing people who grind enough to get out ahead of the upkeep.



You simply can't ignore the human element when making games. People want to make progress. This is why WoW can retain millions of players by releasing new content every so often while games that have circular economies that could theoretically run on forever slowly die away. The second a human feels like they are going in circles they are going to want to stop. Trying to make the core motivators for a game circular ends up being the reason people quit the game instead of being the reason they keep playing as a result.

 

Auto-attack only works if you're in range to use it, plus can connect the knockdowns, stuns and roots to maximize your auto-attacks. The PvP setting I saw (last I checked - I haven't played for weeks since there haven't been any updates/releases to change anything) had a lot of mages running backwards and strafing while they mez and stack their nukes. If you get in close, death touch spam to DPS and heal at the same time, breaking even and whittling down an opponent.

Then you stop the guy from moving and set up your instakill warhead. Yes, those things cost regs, but the DPS when the warrior does get close does not. You can carry a sword or something to auto-attack with while casting, last I checked, so the mage vs. warrior and auto-attack applies to both equally. Even so, the point of the mage is to stay at range; if they aren't doing that then they are supposed to be at a disadvantage. Not to mention that auto-attack costs the warrior money every time he takes a swing or blocks an auto-attack back at him in the form of durability.

Mages do not have that cost, ergo they need to for balance purposes. Otherwise we're just going to see more and more mage builds, who won't have a huge economic dependence, and all of a sudden crafters don't have a giant market to supply (less warriors = less weapons and heavy armor needed = less crafters needing to supply warrior gear).

 

personally, i'd prefer if mages had a cost again, and the amounts on vendors was something similar to the days of the 999; stocking, but i was also a bulk reg buyer/supplier.

on top of that magery fizzle rates without are still on avg too high; we're talking like a 70% cast rate on most spells, so for them costing 1/3third of a circle for more or less 30g; that's a huge performance increase in gold return, yeah 30g a cast, yeah thats rough, but so was 8 x 3 x 4 = and 8 x 4 x 4 = and those were 4 regs @ 4gp, and 4 regs @ 3 gp

Just saying, but i am the type of person that would want to curb magicians for a lot more reasons in UO; then here, where there is a rather huge lack of utility in the mage kit, and even more so much less spells.

I think, a good mid-line to this would be equivalence to having eval-int with regs; and the dmg reflective of "without" eval-int. that way people that want to do damage have to at least "carry" regs

 

paladin skills and bushido off-set a lot of need in the D and D paradigm, by changing regs, and regs types. That said, paladins were more or less locked into direct gold ratios for their skills, and that really wasn't that bad.

I'm for a system like that, or bushido, or focus, or at least half a dozen other skills that more or less helped define, and refine, a warriors compromise, particularly since it will be rather apparent later on that mages have the upper hand, even if they are locked in cloth.

With no Reactive Armor, magic reflect, and scribe to enhance protection, ra or MA; Who knows though, as of right now the probability of a pvp warrior against mages, is pretty bleak.

at large, I think until there is damage meters; and until we can actually see just how much higher mages are in comparison, it's ill to think warriors will ever have their limelight.

Mages on the other hand, already have ruled vast worlds. But, it's kind of hard to compete with a dude that can spit fire, versus a guy who's plan is to plunge a blade into your chest cavity.

Just saying ~ at large, I think there is a lot that was left fragmented or uncared for in plenty of other games and places, particularly in the mage/warrior regard. I think warriors would do a lot better with more of the barbarian persuasion, a lot of utility skills, and natural alignments to elements helps out a lot in a lot of different scenarios, but a warrior sheet vs a mage sheet even in dnd; yields a mage win

 

For me that's all just an argument for durability loss as a death penalty rather than as an ever-present fact of life. There is no way to balance the rate of durability loss every player incurs with how many spells mages cast. There are way too many variables to how people play. You can play as a fighter and not lose any durability on your armor if you make sure someone else on your group is taking the hits. You can be a mage and only cast 5 stacks to save reagents by casting more powerful spells at a slower rate.

There is no sensible balance point to this where everyone uses the exact same amount of money for upkeep. Durability loss should be based on something that can be reasonably balanced around, like how many times characters die, since that's something that is a genuine indicator of how well the character system is balanced if you look at averages, and serves as a benchmark for how well you're playing your character individually that makes a hell of a lot more sense as an expression of skill than trying to squeeze the most profit out of your kills.

 

But it brings the balance closer to the center. Will there ever be 100% balance? No, not without castrating any sense of diversity in the game. But that doesn't mean we can't make small adjustments to get it more balanced, little by little.

And death does provide a durability loss, but it shouldn't just be when you die. They want an immersive game, and that means creating a living world where people depend on one another or pick up other skills to become self-sufficient at the cost of diversity. I can invest in blacksmithing to repair my own gear or make a friend that can do it for me while we're adventuring. In turn I can mine to help him with his skills so he can make us better gear. That creates more than an economy; that creates a community.

There's ultimately the PvP risks. Magic has to have some kind of resource to match archery ammo/bows and warrior gear, not just in attrition but also in looting risks. If there's no cost, we'll see more mages bumrush with touch spells if it means they can kill and loot without any risk.

 

Balancing anything by making it suck for everyone is a poor idea, especially if the balance would be much more solid the other way.

Circular grind isn't an economy, and the sooner people get off that idiotic mantra we're going to see sandbox games that don't choke at release.

 

That strongly depends on lvls. Warriors are generally powerful early-mid game and mages don't become useful until mid-end game. The investment in time gives the payoff of magic power. Our current system has magic OP from day one.

 

disabling an archetype on end game D:

 

I agree its horrid. But so is keeping something at low level useless. They should be balanced throughout. My only comment was regarding the reason behind D&D warrior/mage imbalance.

 

Magic needs regs.

They lend a sense of lore to magic. The fact that it is off putting to new players is kind of cool. It makes mages those who have sought out the knowledge and learned the secrets.

Mages shouldn't just be players who invest skill points into magic skills. Mages should be seekers of lore and knowledge.

The pricing aspect of regs is also good. Magery should hold the price tag of exclusivity.

 

This is pretty much a perfect example of how people are being just utterly ridiculous when it comes to reagents.

The fact that it's off putting is cool? Seriously?

Stockpiling ammo is seeking out lore and learning secrets? You've got to be kidding me.

And magic should have an exclusive price tag? So you don't even want balance, you actually want it to be more expensive?

Just... wow. If you care about player retention, fairness and deep, lore relevant systems you could not possibly make a worse argument for reagents than what you just said.

 

There are several thousand MMOs where once you get an item, it is with you forever. It doesn't wear down, it doesn't break, it cannot be lost under any circumstance. Worst case scenario is it degrades down to a point of 0/2000 where you have to buy it back up to 2000 durability because you died a bunch, but the item isn't lost. "Making it suck" is subjective; people want more realism in games, the market trends support this.

From games like Minecraft, Rust and ArmA to a little MMO with perma death called Star Citizen (that just so happens to breaking records every day), it goes to show that the standard "log in, grind some raids, grab some loot, lol and log off" isn't exactly booming outside of WoW. Not to mention this is all irrelevant as they've put in a deep crafting system with an emphasis on gathering and trade through recycling and needing to replenish supplies.

We cannot make reagents cost so much as to become an argument for magic to be inherently more powerful, though. That was the argument in UO, albeit a weak one. "It cost a lot to train." In an online game, eventually everyone can have any skill, given enough time.

 

No. Just no times a thousand. I can't think of a worse way to justify regs.

I am super pro regs, but I'd scrap that system in a heartbeat if it ever becomes a deterent to welcoming players. This isn't the original starwars mmo with jedi, nor wow and deathknights (or whatever they were called).

To make magic elitist is ridiculous and completely without merit based on current design (and anti-lore as avatars are attuned with magic... Or at least I never had one that was preventef from learning it).