Hormalakh

lol look at you guys go.... even after you said there is a whole bunch of threads on this... nice troll OP

I used to play the same way - magic wasn't fun until i forced myself to learn how to play with it.

There are no spells that restore health. But there will be spells that restore stamina. I find that it is a false equivalency to think that fighters and magic-users should have similar mechanics. Fighters are usually damage dealers and takers while magic users have a much more versatile array of effects that they can conjure. Their skills are different; thus their resource management can be different. As I mentioned in my previous post, just because different classes manage different resources with different mechanics doesn't mean that every class has a resource it doesn't have to manage. Fighters and tanks usually manage health and stamina as a resource. Wizards and other casters, by virtue of the fact that they stand in the back of the formation, do not have to worry about stamina and health as much as they do about spells available. The mechanics for replenishing these resources do not necessarily have to be equal. I also do not have a knee-jerk hatred of cooldowns. The stamina mechanic works through cool-downs and I think that it makes sense for the mechanic to work that way. This does not mean that cooldowns are the only answer for every problem, nor should they be. We should be thinking of a varity of resource-management mechanics that the game employs for different classes; it makes for a more interesting game and one that is ultimately more fun. One of the examples that I like to always give is for the game, Starcraft. One of the very unique aspects of that game is that while each race is balanced in any fight, they each employ very different mechanics and strategies in combat. Using one strategy for all the different races would not make sense in that game: players would lose if they used the same strategy across the three races. Certain players thus become "experts" in certain races and learn how to best utilize the mechanics of that race to their advantage. I would love a RPG game to learn from this and try to make their classes as different as possible in terms of play style and resource management. It makes a game a much deeper and fulfilling experience when each class has to follow a different strategy.

I thought it solved some of the problems of the Vancian system as I described above quite well. No player will ever be fully ready for any given environment. This tries to play a balance between not knowing at all what you would face in that environment and having complete knowledge due to metagaming (reloading the game). As you find several spirit pools, you can change your spell arsenal between pools. I didn't talk about save spamming, only rest spamming. I also mentioned potions of restoration that would allow partial restoration for those who are, as you say, stuck between battles. Players would also learn to not completely replenish their spells at every pool. Perhaps they'd have a spirit pool saved in the dungeon for when they need to completely revamp their magic list. Similarly, towns could have spirit pools or temples that allow restoration of spells either for free or at a price. I think it's a matter of whether stamina is used for fighters only or whether it will also be used for casters as well. Just because you have different mechanics for different classes, doesn't mean that one class has to deal with resource-management while the other doesn't. Wizards and casters are less likely to rest due to healing wounds (they usually are in the back) while fighters don't need cooldowns for spells. The resources managed here are different and their mechanics are different, but that doesn't mean one has to manage it and the other doesn't. If I remember back to Baldur's Gate II, some fights were spaced quite ridiculously close. Especially in dungeons.

That was my understanding too. From what I understand, higher-level spells would still be Vancian-based. I'm just worried about these lower-level spells being misused as crutches. Even "wait-spamming" at lower levels isn't fun and it shouldn't detract from the game regardless if it's the beginning, middle, or end. You want the game to be fun at all stages, and I believe the spirit pools do a better job of this. The spirit pools is just an idea afterall: they don't have to restore higher-level spells if resting is the mechanic that OEI wants to go with. And like I said, a creative implementation of spirit pools can open up some interesting puzzles for the game developers. Ultimately, I'll be happy with what professional game developers come up with: i just wanted to throw out another idea for Josh and Tim to consider. Maybe it'll spark some new ideas for them as well when trying to tackle this very difficult problem. From all the discussions that I've been seeing on these forums about Vancian magic and cooldown-based/stamina-based magic, people have strong opinions on both sides. I'm trying to find out what the underlying problems are that people are expressing, and coming up with a solution that would address those concerns on both ends. I still don't think that OEI's current iteration (I know it's not complete and fully fleshed out, if it was, I wouldn't even be posting this) is satisfactory to everyone out there.

Unless you change the morphology it's not plausible no matter what respiratory or circulatory system you pick. If I make my spider 10000 times larger it's effective muscle strength becomes 1/10.000, which would not be enough to support it's body. Add to that that the effective strength of the chitinous outer shell or internal bones also drops rapidly compared to the mass of the creature and it effectively will shatter when it hits the ground. If we want to be scientifically accurate the creature would really not resemble a spider very much as it would have to have quite sturdy legs and a much reinforced body to not die from gravity This is a little off-topic, but some spiders (jumping spiders) use their "muscles" by pushing fluid into their limbs, making it stiffer and allowing them to move. The muscles in these guys' legs is otherwise too weak for this type of movement. http://science.howst...ids/spider6.htm Very interesting creatures, spiders. too bad they're always shown as being "evil" and "disgusting."

All the more reason to make sure we get the lower-tier spells right. If they aren't challenging and are dictated by a timer, how is that any less of an aRPG than what I have proposed? I'm not saying my system is the best, but I think it answers the challenges and problems better than a cool-down system. Edit: spelling

I would imagine so. Think about it. You have a 15 level dungeon with several parties of enemies on each level. You've used up all your level 1-3 spells on the first group of 10 goblins. You've got another 5 groups to go on that level. 20s cooldown for each group is a a minute 40 seconds of just waiting. Eh, it's not so much, but people might still wait out 20s at a time between each fight. You are still missing that key challenge of resource-management in between fights. The point is the cooldowns don't encourage the player to manage his resources over several battles: rather, he knows the lower-tier magics are freebies and can be careless with those spells. It won't matter anyway, he's going to get it back. But one spirit pool per level? You bet that the player is going to make sure to be careful with what he does with those spells in each battle. Edit: If the cooldowns are even longer, you'd be sure to have players waiting it out. A minute for a cooldown in our previous senario? That's 5 minutes of waiting right there. You have to be honest with yourself when thinking about these situations with magic, what would you do if the monsters were difficult to kill? Would you find the easiest way to defeating them? Or would you change your strategy?

I'm sure there'll be a mod out soon enough OP when the game comes out, so you should be OK.

The problem is that developer time is a limited-resource. By focusing on both at the same time, we will get two mediocre systems instead of one robust, well-designed one. It's always a give and take when it comes to a limited budget and time.

The difference comes in timing changes (resting changes the time 8 hours after all). There are also pools that are specialized for certain schools of magic as well as partial restorations (potions) - this could be used for either fully restoring lower-tier spells or randomly restoring a few higher-tier spells. The other change is that a safe rest area would allow you to constantly return to it to rest-spam. Ultimately, you can keep going back and forth to the safe rest-area to rest (this would be the case as proposed by KotC system that Josh talked about). In a locked spirit pool system, the pools are one-time use (generally, of course, you could wait several game days to pass for the pool to be replenished) and force the player to move forward in the dungeon to find the next spirit pool. Fleeing from combat and returning to a safe area is no longer an option. The way I see it with cooldowns is that, now instead of rest-spamming, we will have players wait-spamming. That removes players from immersion. You end up waiting for your level 1-3 spells to recharge before moving on. You will also very likely have players using rechargeable spells much more often than you would see higher level spells. Edit: The spirit pools would have to be one-time use for several days (or longer) to make much sense, because if they are cooldowns every 8 hours, then people can still rest-spam and reuse spirit pools. Making the spirit-pools recharge once every week or month, would generally reduce rest-spamming (you'd have to rest for one month each time you wanted to reuse a pool).

I have read Josh's proposals, and I think the lack of a resource-management challenge in-between fights is the main loss with that system. You will still have people "spam-waiting" until their cooldowns regenerate. You will also most likely see very little use of higher-level magic use except with bosses. Otherwise, you'll see mostly low-level magic use (fairly boring, if you ask me). Ultimately, though, even if wizards can use weapons, their skills are most commonly going to be directed towards magic use: weapons use would be relegated to your fighters for the main part. Otherwise there is no reason to have wizards if their magic skills are not going to be used. I believe that each class, while able to utilize non-class specialized skills (weaponry), should stick mainly to their primary class role. For the wizard, that would be magic. Edit: Even with a mixed-vancian system, I believe that a cool-down system shouldn't be the way to go. The player should have to spend resources to recharge spells. If that means instead of spirit pools, you have spirit potions, so be it. The unlimited recharge capabilities of lower-tier magic is actually more "ARPG-like" than a limited-resource like a potion or a very slowly-recharging spirirt pool.

For an example of what I'm talking about.

So I've been reading the different arguments for and against Vancian magic (sp?) and cool-down based, stamina based, and other metrics based magics. I wanted to propose another possible mechanism. I will lay out the problems as I see them, and then lay out my solution. Finally, I will try to address how this solution answers the problems as laid out. If you are not interested in reading the whole thing, look for the yellow text. The Aspects of Vancian magic (and its problems as outcomes): 1- The one-time use of memorized magic severely limits the magic-user to only using a limited number of spells per rest. This is done so as to make magic-use challenging and tactical. This is not a problem. 2- Because no player has complete knowledge of the challenges he will face in a dungeon/battle it proves difficult for the magic-user to know whether they should become involved (magically) in that particular battle. If they do, they might use up spells that may be necessary for a future battle (possibly just around the corner). Players will save even rudimentary first-level spells "for the right moment" and completely neglect one aspect of their combat choices completely. 3- However, the party is in need of a combat-ready member, and thus magic-users are relegated either to "stone-throwing duty" or heavy-magic users in parties who are "rest-spammers." This breaks the magic mechanics and side-steps the limitations put there in the first place. The Problems with "metrics-based" (cool-down/stamina/mana) magic: 1- Magic becomes more of an option for a magic user. As the risks of using magic decreases, magic-users are more likely to make this an option in combat. This is also not a problem, and is what the developers (probably) want. 2- However, the magic-user is no longer limited to a per-rest restraint, but more of a per-battle restraint. That is to say that with the end of each battle, the party can effectively wait long enough to "cool-down" the magic user so as to get into battle again. 2- This waiting time removes the player from immersion if he/she chooses to wait until the magic-user's cool-down is complete. 3- Further, because spells are (mostly) limited to a per-battle restraint, the management of spells over a series of battles no longer plays a role. Thus if two smaller battles of low-challenge monsters arrives (two camps of 8-10 goblins 2 minutes apart), the magic-user will always be ready to unleash those spells that are cool-down sensitive. Lower-tier spells are no longer an issue over multiple battles. 4- These problems are similar to all self-recharging mechanics (stamina, mana). Ultimately, the same players who rest-spammed, will now effectively wait-spam until their magic-users are fully recharged (to the best of their abilities). This will remove those same players from immersion. There are likely other problems that I have not considered, so please let me know. I have tried to summarize the general gist of most reactions to these systems. ----------------------------------------------------------- This solution to this problem actually comes from an intelligent application of the Vancian system in Baldur's Gate II (an IE game) to create a challenge in both resource-management as well as effective magic-usage. In the game, Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, during the final arena with the boss (Melissan), the player is not allowed to rest (you are in another plane of existance, you cannot rest at all), and thus magic becomes a very limited resource. However, you need to use magic (and strong magic at that!) to weaken the boss before you can even fight her, by fighting monsters that are unleashed from "spirit pools". As you defeat each group of monsters and unlock each pool, two of the three pools "restore" your party as if you are resting. Thus they act as "rest-areas" without you actually resting for 8 hours and they restore your magic during that time. However, the spirit pools are one-time use only. Thus these pools become a very limited and precious resource and there is no opportunity to spam rest or spam wait. If you do not use magic, these spirit pools are useless (forcing the player to use magic). So it seems simple enough, instead of letting "resting" restore your magic use (or stamina or mana, etc), utilize specific "spirit pools" found all throughout the P:E to restore the magic. It actually also makes more sense, from a lore perspective - I get into that at the end of this post. The "pools" act like the D&D spell "Wish" where you can restore your parties magic completely. The pools are on a cool-down (every 8 hours) and several pools can be found in a dungeon (they are spread all throughout the P:E world). Perhaps, some merchants have taken the waters of these pools and sell them to adventurers. These "potions of restoration" act like the D&D cleric's level 6 spell "wonderous recall." They allow some (random) of your soul-powered spells to return to you, so as to allow magic-users to cast these spells again. Perhaps some spirit pools allow partial rejuvination, and some only allow certain schools of magic to be restored (Spirit Pool of Divination - only allows divination spells to be restored). This allows for much more interesting combinations of restoration and more interesting puzzles and challenges in dungeons. Again you can have partial restoration through potions (Potion from the spirit pool of divination). I will now go through the problems as stated before and show how this mechanic solves these problems. 1- Vancian magic: Players will save even rudimentary first-level spells "for the right moment" and completely neglect one aspect of their combat choices completely. The player now no longer has a reason to save his or her spells. As long as the player can manage his/her resources until the next pool, s/he can utilize their spells to the most tactically advantageous way possible. If they don't use it, they lose it as they reach the next pool (all spells are restored, regardless if used or not.) 2- Removes the player from immersion The player is now even more immersed in the game, as they try to figure out (through a skill perhaps?) what kind of spirit pool they have uncovered, whether it would be best to save this pool for later use, etc and they are kept on their toes as their try to fight past monsters to get to the next "spirit pool." This continues to keep the player thinking about resource management. 3- Vancian magic-users are relegated either to "stone-throwing duty" or heavy-magic users in parties who are "rest-spammers." Magic-users can now take their proper role as magic-users. If they do not do so, they will miss their chance to use magic in between spirit pools. 1- Cooldowns: The party can effectively wait long enough to "cool-down" the magic user so as to get into battle again. The restoration of magic is no longer dependent on wait-times and cool-downs. The concern of "dumbing down the game" is removed as players are forced to once again manage resources and spells as before in the Vancian system. 3- Cooldown: The management of spells over a series of battles no longer plays a role Resource management continues to be a factor between spirit pools. Players are forced to consider that they might not find a pool for long periods of time or that there might be another pool a short distance away. Sneaking and information gather through rogues become more important. They become effective as scouts looking out for enemies as well as trying to find the next spirit pool. Even then, perhaps the next spirit pool might only restore certain spells. For those who do not manage their spells effectively, they will be forced to carry potions of spiritual restoration and hope that the spell they want is restored. Players are punished for lax play, and rewarded for strategic play over several battles. 4- Cooldown: Lower-tier spells are no longer an issue over multiple battles Once again, lower-tier spells are an issue for multiple battles. Players cannot spam level 3 flaming arrows and wait for them to cool-down between fights. Perhaps a few level one spells can continue to be on cool-down (or maybe potions would have to restore them), but these tweaks can be made over time and with enough play-testing a proper balance can be found. LORE It never made much sense (in D&D) that magic spells were memorized each morning and forgotten after being used. It also didn't make much sense that by resting you would restore these spells. I would imagine that the magic-user was not resting but rather spending his 8 hours in camp memorizing new spells. Not quite the restful break for the magician. In P:E, magic-use and its derivatives (apart from chanters?) are linked to channeling the spirits in some way. Thus as each person in this world channels their spirit in this world, they are likely to weaken this link in some way. However, spread all throughout the world are "pools" or portals in which the links to the spirits and people is much stronger and this link can be strengthened at these pools. However, the pools can only be used every so-often as the energies emanating from these pools gets used up. Over time, the energies in these pools recharge and allow people to "refresh" their links with their souls. Some merchants have tried to make a profit from this, as many pools found inside the cities are protected or bought (and can be found only in the hands of the very wealthy). These merchants have asked adventurers going out on their journeys to gather the waters of these pools and to return them to the merchants. The price paid for these waters is good, but purchasing these waters is quite expensive (merchants need to make a profit afterall). What do you guys think? Please forgive any spelling or grammatical mistakes.

It was one of the things that truly made the Fallout experience unique. I had never seen the same enemy killed differently with different weapons. It made me want to try out the different weapons to see how many ways I could kill something. My favorite has got to be the electric death with the spiked hair. Oh, and it felt oh so satisfying blowing off a chunk of my enemies. I'm not sure why...

I read your ideas, but I was honestly confused. Did you want layers so that when your character wears a helmet, it would unlock tahat layer in your portrait or were you talking strictly about changing colors and the like for a single image? I feel that a image editor sort of isn't worth the trouble for devs because one could always do that in photoshop and reimport the portrait.

Make me one?

Just keep in mind that Fallout's death animations were mainly aimed towards humans and humanoids so the animation was pretty similar across enemies. In P:E we might have all sorts of baddies and if they want to do this for all of them, it might take a while... just sayin'

Hence if they have the time. If they want to do it for bosses, that'd be cool too. Something to give the game a little flavor. I see all these posts about realism this and realism that and how we want moar bettar story, but at the end of the day, this isn't a book or a movie or anything but a game. Let's try to remember it's supposed to be fun too.

If they make modding and importing portraits a breeze, this shouldn't be a problem. You could probably use some of your favorite portraits from NVN, ID, BG, if you pleased.

One of the really interesting/cool/funny stuff that I enjoyed from Fallout 2 was the death animations from different weapons used against enemies. "But this is supposed to be an IE game, not Fallout 2," you say, and I would think back to BGII. BGII also had the famous "chunking" animation, where if you were hit with a critical hit there was a chance that your body would "chunk" to pieces and fly everywhere (Adamantium golem anyone?). It would be really cool to see more death animations in this game. Burning bodies running around, acidified body melting, souls being removed straight from the body, etc. That would add some fun to the game. This, of course, all depends on the budget and time allowed for these things. If doing these animations is going to take away from something more important, then don't do it. But I'd like the devs to at least consider this as a possibility. Here is an example

I think the old IE games need to learn a few tricks from the strategy wargames like Starcraft II and add a few extra options like follow, patrol, etc. If you had a rogue in the front scouting the area, it would be great to have a "follow" command where the rest of the party would follow behind the rogue (maybe 10 feet behind) without you having to click them along. The other idea I had was to have a sort of "lock formation" command, where let's say you had some sort of strange formation that the developers didn't think of, then what you could do is lock your formation and whenever you clickd that formation woulod be maintained. I believe Age of Empires had something similar to this. What do you guys think?

We all loved IE combat because of the counters and the strategic gameplay, but my point is that the timed spell casting ruins this strategic aspect. You say there are counters to breach, but I never said that breach was unbalanced, I said that the lower level damage spells with their quick casting time are unbalanced. No matter what spell defenses are used, and what counters are used, you have to agree that eventually both mages will be without the spell defenses (either because they cast them all and those were breached/removed, or because they switched over to other types of spells). As soon as that happens, one mage can dominate the other with spells like Magic Missile, even if the other has the most powerful spells in the AD&D system. That's what makes the whole thing broken. Spells like Magic Missile were never meant to be counters to high level spells, they are simply meant to be low level damage spells that scale very well with higher levels and might be useful in certain situations. Here is a simple example. My mage enters a fight against an AI mage (1v1 to keep it simple). The enemy mage casts some spell shield on himself. If he doesnt have the instant cast contingency/spell sequencer, I might already dominate him by casting magic missile right after him, interrupting him and stopping his shield. But even if he did have the insta cast, I cast some breach/remove magic counter spell to remove his shield. So the round after that, he can continue casting shield spells, and I can continue removing them until he is out of defenses, or at some point he can switch to offensive spells against me. In either case, I can dominate him with magic missiles/other low level quick spells, by interrupting his higher level spells while also doing damage to him. Please explain to me how you would tell the AI to act against this dominant tactic. This is clearly an exploit/cheesy tactic instead of strategy/counters. Well if the AI was written better, it could win. While you are casting breach, what is preventing the mage from casting magic missle on you? Ultimately, you also have so many magic missles (5 or 6) so you're going to run out sooner or later. There were always wands too that a mage could possibly use. Yes, I agree, a challenging mage battle requires a stronger AI. There were many improved AIs for the mages with later mods that came out for BG2. Check out SCSII as a mod; you'll see what I mean. But casting time was intended as a balancing mechanism against higher level spells. You cast all the magic missles you want, if you let me cast a Abu Dhaltzim's Horrid Wilting in the same time that you can cast 4-5 magic missles without my spell being interrupted, let's see who'd win that fight.

Thanks for the links Wombat. I would be interested in seeing how that works. I would also hope that they implement a way for modders to change PC portraits to do so. I don't want just my NPCs to change faces when emoting. I'm sure there will be mods for that sort of thing, if they allow it. Very cool, thanks again.

I just never understood what a publisher was, what a developer did, etc. I just knew Best Buy sold games that I liked. I also knew that these games were getting more and more expensive every year.