R9 Horrible.

Normal doesn't equal good. Remember that.

 

I went through plenty of scene change areas where there were no torches. Even in the woods it sometimes difficult to see it coming. It's annoying.

 

So it's ok to have zero reagents and cast a fire elemental spell? Does it really matter how powerful it is or isn't? You're casting it.

What's next, a light spell that casts 20% less light? Who cares?

 

I'm saying that if you have a 95% chance to fizzle then casting fire elemental with zero reagents means you didn't cast it 19 times out of 20. Or the focus cost is so high you can't cast it without a full focus bar.

 

Right, and I concede your point. But here's mine, why would it ever be a good idea to have a 5% chance to perform something like that? Why not just make it 100% fail? What's the benefit that people are getting?

 

I think you all miss the point of the alpha.

The developers need to test systems....one of which is magic. In order to test it, they need everyone to be able to cast it. Easily...and often. The more you cast it the more successful the tests can be.

With only 4-5 days for testing, you cant expect them to make you go out and level your character so you can cast, and farm for reagents. Better they give you all the ability from day 1.

I'm pretty sure on release day, I won't be to light a candle, let alone bring a fire elemental into being, with magic.

 

I'm just saying they can find a balance that using Reagents can greatly enhance the power of your skills within their system. It makes sense to me that you could crush 5 of a reagent to make a much more powerful spell but that using 1 reagent maybe makes a weaker one. Or that with great focus you can cast a difficult spell without reagents that leaves you drained and unable to follow-up with another strong spell whereas a properly equipped mage with reagents could cast multiple stronger spells with less focus.

If you allow reagents/non-reagents then you can have people who run out of gold and reagents still RP their mage - albeit a weaker one.

 

They've given us the opposite indication. By "current" design, spells don't require reagents. So we didn't miss the point of the Alpha.

 

Sure, you can also have groups of naked mages that min/max the system. You can also have fighter mages that use magic FOR FREE to augment their real attacks. You can also have people that pretend to be powerful mages that are not. You can also have people that use the weakened spells to perform actions that have nothing to do with the percentage of power the spell has (like using air gust to push an object like a switch).

Meanwhile, the benefit to allowing the casting of magic without reagents is so that lazy people will not complain about running out. What a great compromise.

 

Since they explained that the only reason they added PvP to R8 was so they could get more combat data from earlier testing, I have to assume that combat is their single highest priority right now. R9 did introduce a lot of new skills and combos. I'm pretty sure getting those skills in the game was basically the point of this release.

Oh, and Ardoris...

Anyway it shouldn't be much of a surprise that not much has changed for this one. The sooner they get combat skills done, the more refined combat will be later on. That's one testing area that requires a bunch of data, and why not gather that data longer?

 

I agree with everything you said. BUT, the devs have designed reagents to be cast without spells. That's got nothing to do with testing PER THEM. I agree that they should open up spell casting during testing, but their intent is to keep it like that forever. That's what I'm upset about. Knowing that's the plan, it's hard for me to be excited about the game.

 

As far as reagents go. If they apply a spell fizzle for low INT, then reagents or not, some characters will not be magically inclined. Therefore, the argument that everybody is given magic for free at the beginning of the game is resolved another way other than reagents.

So a player that wants to be a pure mage would be defined by a higher intelligence score as well as skills. If that is the case, then it is the combination of reagents, INT, and skill that determines the ability of the spell caster.

Another thing that ability scores bring up is skill potency. IF higher strength increases the damage of melee weapons, and higher dex increases the accuracy of archery, and the higher the INT score the greater potency each spell could likely have too.

So this gives me hope that there is a possibility that these problems will be resolved. Maybe a low INT score might make a spell do very low damage, and a high INT score might mean a spell does massive damage. If reagents worked as a multiplier against the INT of a player, then it would be important to have both reagents and a high INT score to do lots of damage in combat. Since everybody had the same ability scores and number of skill points we don't see the effect of what different ability scores might have on these things yet.

So having no reagents might mean your spell can be cast but it isn't really any good. Or maybe that might change too.

 

Well ok, but that's a design decision. I believe the current intent is for missing regs to increase the focus cost, cast time, and cooldown of those spells, right? I do agree that mages should be outright prevented from casting spells if they don't have the necessary reagents, but that's not a huge issue I don't think if the penalties are so severe that no one would event want to cast spells without the right reagents anyway. And hey, not many game design elements are currently set in stone. When we get a taste of the penalties they're proposing, maybe we'll all agree that they should just scrap that system and require reagents for casting, like in the Ultima games. Or maybe they'll make it all work well. I don't believe the penalties were in for R9, as people were testing it and reporting in IRC.

 

Nobody, not even the Dev's know what there 'intent' is. They are in the middle of designing. They have the power to erase...to change. Nothing in the world is permanent, so they get to restart the whole iteration next release. Maybe they will require mages to ride pink unicorns to cast spells. Who knows...certainly not anybody here.

 

I think the very definition of the word "intent" makes your statement incorrect.