Why does every class have to have magic?

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

This whole debate seems kinda silly to me because the fighter and rogue's power descriptions are both written vaguely enough that you can interpret them both as entirely physical abilities if you want. Well, except for maybe one or two abilities like invisible, but just . .don't take those, or retcon them in your head.

[Gizmo]

 

Why does every class have to have magic

This is an old problem. I remember the original Iron Crown Enterprise's Middle Earth Roleplaying rule system did the same thing; and it did (as mentioned) diminish the mages by having everyone have magical abilities.  I certainly couldn't get past that, and ultimately quit playing.

 

*However...Magic can simply be considered something not understood by on-lookers. Both Magicians and Ninja's can use smoke bombs to achieve an effect. With fantasy games (or even printed fiction) it can be depicting skill, showmanship, embellishment in the telling,  or just be an informative visual effect for the player's benefit, rather than being presented as "common magic"; (always a peeve when encountered). 

 

Not all of a magician's tricks have to be supernatural (even if the game considers them so), and a manic Barbarian can be seen as demonic, by the terrified.  It doesn't excuse enchanting the mundane—for the sake of 'Rule-of-Cool',  but one doesn't necessarily have to look at it as [legitimate? ] spell casting, or authentic magical abilities. (It could instead be conventional tricks of the trade, or representational emphasis; like in comic books... where no one really has streaked lines or printed sound effects in the air, during a fight... like with Batman & Robin).

Edited June 14, 2018 by Gizmo

[Judicator]

I can use OP’s argument against him, it also cheapen the experience of playing a martial class, when I can only auto attacks. Baldur’s Gate 2 is an example your fighter are only be able to attack. It’s very boring to play a fighter there.

No, it's not.

[bugarup]

Yes it is.   Times I played NWN2: too many to count. Times I played NWN2 with fighter or barbarian: 0.  I can't even get into Witchers 2 and 3 because I am restricted to play the

dunce with a sword. 

[Lord_Mord]

If you look at all those posts about how boring everything in PoE1+2 is and how everything has to be bigger, enchanted, glowy and more exotic, I think they did a great job in ignoring those idiots. There are a few effects that tell you that there is something going on, but not nearly is much fireworks as in other temporary titles.

I read complaints about:

- Weapons being not big enough (seriously. That guy said, he could barely see them)
- Weapons being too realistic (boring)
- Armors being too realistic (boring)
- Weapon glow effects being gone ("I want to see the enchantment on my weapon")
- Ability animations being boring -> More glow and explosions (Which would mean more magical abilites)
- Spells looking boring in Deadfire
- Companions being not interesting enough (Solutions: Vithrack companion, undead companion, etc. As if that would make them automatically more interesting.)
- Pets being not crazy enough (What's wrong with talking skulls and demons?)

Complaining about jumping around a few meters is complaining on a high level. Just enjoy a game that succeeds in reducing that crap and be thankful that there is a company that at least tries.

But what do I do here? I'm talking to a person that tried to use WoW as a good example.

[Abel]

But those of us who like to immerse ourselves in a world, need to have things make sense. That is all I am saying.

 

Lol. I wanted to react quite a lot while reading this thread. Although i'm not bothered this much by your specific problem, i fully understand your point. And i'm baffed to see how, 3 pages long in this thread, posters would act like if they did their absolute best no to understand your point, and then throwed their unfathomable logic, except, regarding something that, indeed, has nothing to do with the reason you posted in the first place. They answered, obviously, without even trying to consider what you were saying.

 

It happened to me in the past too. Specifically, i was talking about how crafting in Pillars 1 is just about a mechanic and a dumb UI, while nothing ever makes crafting a thing in the lore. No shop, no pro crafters, no pro enchanters, nothing related to it anywhere in the game. For some odd, arbitrary reason, every enchantment needs... money? Wut? Just an obvious money sink? Last problem was: everyone could enchant anything, all it took to be able to know how to craft superb items was farming to lvl up. No skills, no training, no need to learn anything from a master, or find receipt in the game world. No need for a Cromwell either.

 

And i was discussing, too, my problem with the Might attribute. Which is to me the worst thing about Pillars. And some other immersion breaking feats of the game (infinite stash and stuff). As a whole, i think Pillars is all about gameplay mechanics. Not about any sort of Roleplaying Game ruleset, and these mechanics and attribute system do never care to tell anything about who your character is. Worse, they actually make it confusing. It could be better, in future games using Eora as a background, to just get rid of the whole class system to create a "do it to learn it" system. Even if no character sheet means various sad things, including no cool perk acquired from quests resolution or plot checkpoints. Which is still a shame.

 

I guess your problem, OP, is that Obs pretty much took example on Blizzard's Diablo III. I will make somewhat a caricature here, and forgive me, but basically, in short... In order to make things fancy, they did the same as Jerry Bruckeimer: "Let's create fancy effects everywhere, boom boom, not care about anything else, and everyone will be like "Whooooa, I'll pay, gimme more boom boom stuff"". Effects are really cool in Pillars. But they need to have some kind of deep purpose to them. Abilities which do not NEED fancy visual effect should not have them, and wizards, on the other hand, should be able to fully display their nature as wizards in a showy manner. And regarding abilities, there are much more class-specific options than just use glorified "spell-like" tricks for every class. Or at least,i t his is how i understand your point, in a caricatured but easy to grab way. I would understand why you feel that your wizard has nothing special anymore, as a wizard.

 

Well, Pillars now have quite something of a glorified hack n slash in some ways. Some even talked about the trash mobs in this very thread. Which is another aspect of it. Over the top, fancy moves with fancy out of place effects, mechanics over rulest, and so much more. I said it numerous times before, but i still can't find a way to play a flimsy female priestess with very high faith and conviction. Because Might is confusing for the sole purpose of being practical regarding game mechanics. Which is not forgivable in a Roleplaying Game, to me.

 

So yeah, Obs did probably not care much about the fact that they were developping a RPG when it came to anything but the writing, with actual character spreadsheet. And if they did, i really feel it translates poorly into the game itself. Many players tend to play this game the way they would play IWD (both IWD are crappy in my opinion. Especially IWD II). I don't particularly have a problem with this, except when these people dismiss the very fact that some don't play it the same way, while, at the same, accusing OP to do the exact same thing they do themselves.

 

Some posters made interesting points though. Whatever their personal point of view. It kinds of makes up for those who did not read OP before writing.

 

PS: only read first 5 pages. Too damn long

Edited June 20, 2018 by Abel

[Baltic]

Everyone’s read and understands the op. It’s just a matter of opinion, either you like it or you don’t. It’s not bad design to do it this way.

[Ichthyic]

I'm embarrassed to say (not really) that I often play a wizard or spellcaster the first time through any PC Rpg because... I like to see how they animate the spell effects.

MONSTER GO BOOM!

(tee hee!)

well, for the last few years, most rpgs let me experience that kind of thing with nearly every class or class combo.  From my perspective, I rather appreciate that.  I no longer need to force myself to play a wizard just to see how they made things go boom.





 

[Ichthyic]

 

 

Ok yall win, everyones a mage. Yay. Delete the mage class plz

 

Yall have finally convinced me. The wizard is nothing special, he just does more of what everyone else does already. Got it. Heard. I will go play a barb

 

 

No one except yourself has argued that everyone is a mage or that wizards aren't special. So you've effectively won an argument against yourself, with arguments you made but no one else has.

 

 

It only took him eleven pages though, so you know... uhm...

 

Sorry, no. That's just depressing . Maybe reading some world news will cheer me up though 

 

Hey, our Prime Minister just gave birth to a baby girl!

 

er... that was the only good news I could find on the world stage.  sorry.

 

 

[Loren Tyr]

Hey, our Prime Minister just gave birth to a baby girl!

er... that was the only good news I could find on the world stage.  sorry.

 

Congrats! Quite a contrast to our own, who's remained happily single for ages.

 

There is some more though, here and there. Canada wised up and legalized weed for one, and Brexit is always good for a laugh (well, Schadenfreude anway; gotta love the German language sometimes). And not even tiny-hands-guy will ever ruin my affection for the color orange. Among all the global cacophony, there's still a lot of bright spots to be found. Cause you know: having a female prime minister, and giving birth as well? That's not a headline we could possibly have seen not even that long ago. 

[Judicator]

Yes it is.   Times I played NWN2: too many to count. Times I played NWN2 with fighter or barbarian: 0.  I can't even get into Witchers 2 and 3 because I am restricted to play the

dunce with a sword. 

Well, some of us like to play more alpha-masculine types that go toe to toe with monsters. I get it if you want to be at the back behind the men shooting your bow or wand or whatever tho. That's your playstyle, but you can't call another boring just because you don't like it.

[Abel]

Yep. Even without many active abilities, i always liked warriors, even in BG. The thing i disliked about warriors in BG was actually the high level active abilities ^^. A simple, straightforward warrior has plenty of flavor to me. It does not need plenty of actives with weird cooldowns and over the top moves. But probably that i would find it fun to have a warrior the way OP described in the few first pages, too. I'm not a huge fan of DA:O, but i still liked how they used seemingly pure warrior skill in weapon and shield handling to actually create active abilities. It feels that they actually improve in pure swordmanship like they should be meant to. The only thing i dislike about this, are the cooldowns, which seem rather unnatural.

Edited June 21, 2018 by Abel

[Lord_Mord]

 

Well, some of us like to play more alpha-masculine types that go toe to toe with monsters. I get it if you want to be at the back behind the men shooting your bow or wand or whatever tho. That's your playstyle, but you can't call another boring just because you don't like it.

 

That makes no difference. You play it although it is boring, because you like what it stands for. That doesn't change the fact that it comes with very limited options and repetitive gameplay. Also, you are sooo alpha. May I touch your muscles? Just once?

Edited June 21, 2018 by Lord_Mord

[Lord_Mord]

By the way: I'd prefer it too, that fighters stick to sword moves and stuff. Maybe on a very high level they could gain some super martial arts abilites. But I think PoE handled that very well so far. I think there's no reason to complain.

 

 

The only thing i dislike about this, are the cooldowns, which seem rather unnatural.

 

Why? How often in a row do you think you could swing your big twohander in an arc iwthout a pause before your arms start getting weak?

[Abel]

It's the cooldown in general that i'm not very fond of. It totally makes sense from a mechanical perspective, but, at times, it feels like it's there because the mechanics need it. and that's it.

 

Though, i completely see your point. You don't even need to bring it up, i agree with this . But now, if you use this 3rd level active that has a cooldown, you can't use it anymore for the next 30 seconds. But you still can use this 5th level one, which looks like it would exert the warrior so much more. It would make more sense if cooldowns for straining physical actives just stacked. But i would agree that making combat feels perfectly natural, AND balanced at the same time is not so easy a feat to achieve. That's why i was ok with DA:O in this regard. Not perfect, but good enough for me.

[Lord_Mord]

 

t's the cooldown in general that i'm not very fond of. It totally makes sense from a mechanical perspective, but, at times, it feels like it's there because the mechanics need it. and that's it.

 

Though, i completely see your point. You don't even need to bring it up, i agree with this . But now, if you use this 3rd level active that has a cooldown, you can't use it anymore for the next 30 seconds. But you still can use this 5th level one, which looks like it would exert the warrior so much more. It would make more sense if cooldowns for straining physical actives just stacked. But i would agree that making combat feels perfectly natural, AND balanced at the same time is not so easy a feat to achieve. That's why i was ok with DA:O in this regard. Not perfect, but good enough for me.

 

 I like that. Now let the length of the cooldown be determined by the characters athletics and I'm in.

[Loren Tyr]

One way to achieve that would be to not use cooldowns as such, but to accrue a kind of negative resource, eg. 'exhaustion', which gradually decreases again over time and carry a penalty that scales with your exhaustion level (making you more vulnerable, less effective, etc.). So in principle you could repeatedly use a particular special ability quickly in succession (or different ones, of course), but at the cost of any number of possibly quite severe penalties afterwards; or you could pace yourself more and never really suffer any. This also gives you more options and more tactical considerations, because the number of times you can use an ability isn't limited by an arbitrary class resource pool but the tradeoff of risk vs rewards. So backed into a corner you could try hammering out three Barbaric Blows in quick succession and gamble that that will be enough to defeat the enemies facing you, but knowing that if it isn't you will be left very vulnerable and exhausted. 

 

I think in general it would be good for there to be more tradeoff to things. As it stands, most weapon abilities are purely better than just standard attacks, except for the fact that they are resource limited. It might be much more interesting for there to be more distinct downsides to such abilities as well (which also lessens the need for making them resource limited in the first place), such that it isn't so much about using your special abilities as often as you can but rather using them specifically when their benefits best outweight their downsides. And simultaneously you could add a much wider variety to fighting styles and stances that characters have innately available to them (general, class specific, weapon specific, etc.), each with their own pros and cons (akin to the current weapon proficiency modals, but much more extensive). This would give classes like fighters (and any class) a much more interesting range, without it having to be magical abilities or such (this may be quite similar to DA:O as described above, I don't know). Which would also be easy to vary somewhat across classes, such that how a fighter uses a greatsword actually feels somewhat distinct from how a rogue does, say (or Aumaua vs Dwarf as well). 

[Abel]

I'm in, if this allows more natural feeling to melee combat and combat as a whole, without these kind of mechanically forced limits your are describing. I guess, this would pretty much achieve the goal of OP and fuflill my personal own tastes. Although, probably, it would be hard to balance, in order to make them interesting, but at the same time, while avoiding players to just spam the same abilities over and over. I already see complaints and threads on these forums in the likes of "X ability is completely useless" :D

[Loren Tyr]

Balance could indeed be harder, true. Though on the other hand, if everything comes with some range of pros and cons, there''d be more dials to tweak in that regard as well. Although I do think perhaps, with regard to stuff like this, one major advance that we probably need is something like more automated testing. Using proper machine learning techniques and such to help properly tune and balance systems of this kind of complexity. Not as a replacement for human judgement of course, but there's a lot of very useful computationally demanding evaluation that could be done to really significantly aid in this. Not sure if any gaming company has even considered this sort of thing though, probably not the most commercially interesting investment (unless it helps them make more addictive loot boxes perhaps).

 

And perhaps if there are more and more varied abilities in general of various types, some of them being more situational is less of a problem (though of course you'll always have some people complaining that X is useless no matter what; can only improve the game, not human nature ;-) ). Especially if it's acquired differently, ie. you didn't spend a valuable ability point on it or something. 

[Quillon]

Why does the game have to have magic? Magic is for the weak everyone knows that! 

 

Dungeons & No Dragons ftw!

[MortyTheGobbo]

Something I didn't appreciate until now was just how hilarious it was to be lectured about entitlement by someone who expects special treatment for clicking a box labelled "wizard" during character generation.

[Boeroer]

If PoE or Deadfire had cooldown I'd not play them. Cooldowns are just a horrible mechanic - at least for me. Look at the terrible combat mechanics of Tyranny due to cooldowns. I mean I personally find them terrible. Maybe others like that kind of stuff. I don't. Just piling up some special attacks and time the cooldowns so that you can use an ability all the time - feels so boring. I think having a resource pool (finite like Discipline/Guile etc. or refreshing like Wounds/Focus) is a lot better in my book.

[Manveru123]

Having cooldowns prevents a situation where you run out of resources in the middle of a fight and have to spend the rest of the battle just auto-attacking. You always have something to do. Makes the gameplay smooth, instead of "blow your load at the beginning then right click and wait".

 

In my opinion, combat based on cooldowns was one of the best features of Tyranny.

[Takkik]

Having cooldowns prevents a situation where you run out of resources in the middle of a fight and have to spend the rest of the battle just auto-attacking. You always have something to do. Makes the gameplay smooth, instead of "blow your load at the beginning then right click and wait".

 

In my opinion, combat based on cooldowns was one of the best features of Tyranny.

I find that systems based on cooldown just push you to spam abilities without thinking too much compared to a system based on resources. But I would prefer a mix, a system based on resource generation like monk & cipher. Solo cipher miss some bases abilities that help them to build focus (like a shattered pillar monk that can use his mortification abilities to generate wounds).

Perhaps one of the cool Diablo 3 feature : You have your resources generators, a few abilities that you can use at will, but limited by a cooldown. They generate resources like the focus/wounds to fuel your more power abilities, more powerful mean need to gather more resources. So you never have to rely on auto attack, you have always something to do and choices.

 

For each classes you could get different way to generate resources/build. A healer could get resource while healing/removing affliction, a rogue could generate guile while invisible or inflicting affliction etc... All resource generator don't have to be dmg based.

[Manveru123]

I'd love it if every class had a way to regenerate resources. What you described sounds good, but it's probably too much work to implement