Negative attunement - Inverse positive resistance

Hi gang. I know any change is always too late, so i will not go into any details like I normally do.
But resistance and attunement need that last minute love to appeal to everyone and balance the game.

Here is the idea, borrowing from old ideas:
1. Resistance no longer tied to straight attunement.
2. Return of opposing schools of magic - Attunement in one gives a negative attunement in the opposing school
3. High attunement in one school gives positive resistance to both opposing schools. (Possibly adds to the complementary schools next to these two. Too much detail right now.)

Here is how this works: Fire and Water as example using Resistance 0-100 and Attunement 0-200 (just simple numbers for comparison, loosely based on current game values)

100 skill average Fire/0 skill average Water --> 100 Attuned Fire/(-50) Attuned Water/50 resistance in both.
100 skill average Fire/50 skill average Water --> 75 Attuned Fire /0 Attuned Water/75 resistance in both.
100 skill average Fire/100 skill average Water --> 50 Attuned Fire/50 Attuned Water/100 resistance in both.

So what does this mean?
If you specialize, you can cast fantastic in your school, AND still gain resistance in both.
As you learn the other school, you gain resistance in both, but start casting more poorly.

But I'm a Fighter/Ranger/Melee/RP who hates magic!
For the minimal magic users, gaining in both schools means you cast poorly but resistance will still go up. Get your 40 average everywhere and be done with magic.
Gem Warding resistance! It works normal for rings/necklaces/chest armor/wands/staves but it works higher for weapons/bows/shields! Two handed weapons can have two different types of warding gems!

So my Tank mage carries an offhand melee weapon? Well phooey... I do not want to think about every scenario at this time till I know if anyone likes the idea in general. There will be many more special scenarios I am sure.

Please consider, @Chris @Sannio @Bzus @DarkStarr @Lord British

I'll add more thought or change thoughts/numbers if there is any merit to this idea. Thank you.

 

So spend exp to try and gain versatility, to actually become weaker, hmmmmm, sounds like something no one would ever do as why would you put effort in to actually get weaker.

 

NO way !

That was shot down virtually immediately when they implemented it back then, and it wouldn't be any more popular now.

When you do that, you are essentially saying take your pick from half the magic schools, and forget the rest....
BS !

The ability to use opposing schools is a big part of what the "classless" system is all about.

There are items in the game that do what you want (with their good positives and equally bad negatives), and that (for me) is more than sufficient..

I say NO to bringing back opposing schools of magic !

 

How would this be fair to those of us that have spent the time, XP and reagents to train all of the magic trees in order to gain the attunement/resist as it currently is? 100% XP for unlearning wouldn't cover the cost of time or reagents.

 

It went over like a lead balloon when they introduced it, and they made record time removing it.... Very, very unpopular.

 

To me, that would be too limiting in game play overall. Depending on what mob you are fighting, you need various spells in different trees to kill them. If I was a fire mage, what use would I be at the Hilt Forge? I wouldn't be able to kill either the fire or obsidian elementals which would equal a worthless character.

 

Hey great idea and I followed your pitch, it would increase the minmaxed values for resistance from what we have. Are you also suggesting diminishing returns as your resistance goes past a certain point?

I don't personally support this because having access to the skills is fun and I don't believe it's a good enough idea to justify polarizing the community(best resource rates in pvp is!).

The fun comes from being limited by your 10 deck slots and what your secondary deck will be as well as how many sets of gear you can carry for an optimized route for progression. I hope that the best routes have pvp.

 

Just take resistance out of attunment. Leave that up to gear

 

I like the current system. However, more clarification on 'why attunement matters' (in game, not esoteric forum posts) would be good. If the devs want to try opposing schools again, an alternative might be to calculate resistance based on 'skills slotted' not skills trained. Roughly, slotted skills x their skill level = resistance factor. Similar to how armor works (don different armor, get different resistance), just with glyphs. It would allow resistance to change dynamically based on skill load out and address many opposing points above.

 

I wouldn't mind, except if i ever wanted to change play styles, I would have to unlearn skills to do so effectively. I prefer the idea of attunement being separate from resistance, and resistance either being a new skill tree, or new skills added into the armor trees.

 

@Cora Cuz'avich
How about a new focus skill to allow 'magic plugs' to block a certain schools influence for a time? At a cost, you learn what you want but can enhance your deck to fully specialize at the cost of focus and resistance for a time.

I want choice, none of this laundry list of skills you have to earn to be competitive.

And while I'm at it I want mobs being able to jump! Ok, that was off topic.

 

Choice.

 

Early access is pain! Anyone telling you different is selling something. (Yes, modified movie quote).
But seriously, I'd start over completely if it made the game last instead of fold.

 

Yes on diminishing, but again those are details best left out now. I think I covered mostfof your other thoughts above. On phone, hard to quote in snips that make sense.

 

I'd prefer innates for resistance over skills you'd have to actively use.

If it's part of the armor trees, then it probably makes sense to just have a few innates. Maybe a magic resistance, and an elemental resistance. Chaos could either be a third innate, or maybe each of the previous two helps against chaos as well, but only half as much, so that "full" chaos resistance comes with leveling both innates.

If resistance gets it's own tree, then it would probably be wise to separate out each magic school into it's own resistance. I'd probably make them innates as well, but they only level when you get hit with that type of magic, so you wouldn't have to learn any magic to level resistance. Probably in three "tiers"- first would be the "magic" schools (sun/moon/life/death), second would be the elementals, third would be chaos. And maybe for fun, throw in a few interesting ones- maybe a skill in each tier which has a small chance of reflecting elemental/magical/chaos damage back to the attacker, or converting it to health. Or for Chaos, something completely random each time it triggers- it could reflect damage back, or heal, or reflect double, or double incoming damage, or whatever.

 

I like the idea to put resistances into the armor trees.. The new set bonuses could work well with that.

 

So because you don't want to train all magic trees to gain the attunement and thus resistances, you want to screw those that have and just use the lame cop-out of playing early release is a pain? Sounds legit. The beauty of this game is you can be what you want to be with 1 character. Unlike UO, where I needed 5 different characters to play different styles. Nobody is forcing you or anyone else to train skills you don't want, but you are just limiting yourself by not doing so. Just don't pander to limiting the rest of us to play by your style.

 

I have trained all of them. Don't take this personal, I used a movie quote to show that I was joking. You are assuming too much of me. I want a good balanced interesting fun game.

 

To me, this falls under the skill cap suggestion from other threads and should not even be considered.

 

IMO, The current system destroys specialization for alvl < 90.

I am 89, and still have 2 trees < 50. My highest skill is 92, and I don't even use weapon trees.

If you want to specialize, the cost is uncompetitive vulnerability. It's only after ~95 that you can afford to specialize.

So whatever change you advocate for, I hope it makes competitive character building accessible for people who don't want to grind for a year to start PvP. If you advocate the status quo, you're going to miss a ton of gamers.