[Merged] Cooldown Thread

[grotbag]

J. Sawyer's talk about 'going in blind' being a negative, being forced to reload, etc, as a strike against memorising spells, seems slightly wrongheaded. I think someone mentioned earlier the idea of giving the player signals about what lay ahead, but it doesn't even have to be that explicit. The D & D player party wanders into an ancient temple filled with many-eyed statues. 'Aha,' thinks the player who's both engaged in the world and actively planning ahead, 'I should prepare for beholders. Let's head back to that old gypsy caravan and pick up some scrolls/open up my mage's spellbook and figure out how to counter them/maybe try and recruit that mad old wizard back at the inn so I have some scope'. Perhaps a local villager has the head of one of the local monsters on their wall; perhaps the local library contains scribblings about viable tactics against such beasts. If your party's about to face a central villain, presumably they've heard a little or seen a little about the spells and defences they're likely to use. There's absolutely no reason, in short, why memorised spells should lead to save-scumming or blind guesswork, so long as the encounter and dungeon design is good, and as long as the world is communicating with the player. That's not an inherent problem with the system.

 

A great joy of the RPG genre always has been the play on heading into the place of relative safety in order to prepare for the place of danger. The party returns to town/rests in the wilds/heads for the local temple, and prepares themselves as much as humanly possible for whatever challenge they believe they're coming up against next - they build up their resources, then carefully expend and conserve them as they enter the dangerous places (You fool! You just wasted your one Cataclysm spell on that Feeble Earthworm! etc). Memorising spells works splendidly with that dichotomy, though as we've seen here you can then get into concerns about the ease of resting, etc, and can even subvert it for genuine desperate thrills (aargh, we've just been ambushed with no healing spells left, how will the Heroes of Bummington get out of this scrape?) whereas cooldowns, depending on how they're implemented, can kill it stone dead.

 

With cooldowns, the town/camp/tavern/temple/safe-place loses the entire core of its identity. You lose the sense of relief as you limp back into the cobbled streets of Thingy - why would you be relieved? Your spells are all ready and waiting once again; your party's main requirement is now to survive battle-to-battle, not to survive long enough to reach that place of safety or to be able to rest. The only real remaining purpose of the non-dungeon-area is to serve as a shop/loot-storage-area; it's merely functional, it's no longer a blessing. And actually, it's interesting that the cooldown-based Dragon Age games were forced to try and invent dubious reasons to try and keep the safety/danger dichotomy relevant (you have to rest in-camp, because dying in combat can sometimes give you a small HP reduction that can only be removed in camp! You have to go home because you're not allowed to talk to your party members outside of home, for some reason!) before giving up entirely and making the town itself a dungeon; every time you step outside, thirty muggers attack you. Once you're done killing them, the merchants standing around will become selectable again. Something very special is lost in the process here.

Edited October 2, 2012 by grotbag

[aluminiumtrioxid]

A natural effect for this idea is that 'persistent' spells couldn't last more than the duration of the CD.

 

 

Or have them start to recharge only after their effect has faded. (Or got dispelled.) It could be argued lore-wise that the mage has to concentrate on maintaining the spell, and that's why persistent (or rather: sustained) ones won't recharge while their effect persists.

[metiman]

Asking how cooldowns can be used responsibly is like asking how nuclear weapons can be used responsibly. But since they seem to be in the game their impact could be mitigated by:

1. Making cooldowns 100% optional. Include an option in the setup menu or an .ini file to simply disable all of them. Even if it makes mages overpowered it might at least make the game playable for those of us who won't get anywhere near cooldowns or other MMOG mechanics.

2. Making the cooldown timers adjustable down to 0 seconds. Just allow access to these timer variables.

3. Including at least some classes that are not cooldown based. If at least fighters, for instance, don't use cooldown mechanics I could just solo a fighter.

4. Code them in such a way that makes it very easy for modders to remove them or replace them with other mechanics. Ideally this could be done even if a mod kit is not released. In other words even if you aren't willing to do all of the work necessary you could at least do the groundwork for someone else to come in and finish.

5. Include a difficulty setting that completely removes combat or just include an easy to set God mode. That way those of us who don't like cooldowns can at least experience the story. Although some if it may not make a lot of sense without the combat.

[SGray]

Was strongly against the cooldowns at first, now realized that could be made good. If only we have more info...

If it's like vacan system with day-wide cooldowns based on in-game tame with no specific spell cooldown before you depleted your prepared - that could be great and time-proven. You can still rest to replenish your spells but you can replenish some spells used in previous fight during current. (Still thinking mage running rounds waiting for last seconds of epic spell cd is hilarious, but why not?)

 

If they planning to do this another way, that'd be hard to avoid common bads of cooldown systems. Hate having Firebal, Fireball, and Feirball to do just the same spamming.

[qstoffe]

I'm seriously disappointed with this game going for a cooldown system. I was afraid of streamlining from the start... but not as bad as this

[Elerond]

You can design cooldowns to fit for sorcerer type of mage easilly, so that sytem is much fun to play and fits in with lore. As you know sorcerer has number of spells per level which s/he can cast per day. But you can as easily change this to system where sorcerer gets spell point back every 5/10 minutes. And so you have system where you still can run out of magic, but don't force you sleep so often. And this approach don't even broke (D&D's) lore as sorcerers power comes from inside of them instead of through preparation, so slowly returning magical power would be as good as need to rest for 8 hours or so.

 

And you can encourage players to push forward in dungeon instead waiting for all the magic points to return pawning lurking monsters on your party every 10/20 minutes what you have been idle.

 

And there is ways to make cooldown system to work for traditional d&d wizards too so that is sounds logical and believable. Like you have still spell slot where you can pick spell what you want your wizard to use and every spell has it own cooldown time which tells how long wizard needs time to prepare that spell. And wizard can prioritize spells in cooldown queue. And there could be limitation that cooldowns don't work in combat or when wizard casts spells. And this can make game as strategic than normal rest for all spells system or it can even add game's strategic depth as you can't abuse rest system but you are tied on cooldown queue and so you must really think how you prioritize your cooldowns so that you can have right spell ready to cast. This system also gives you flexibility to change spell on your slots as changed spell just go on your preparation queue..

[qstoffe]

I'm positive to ANY system NOT allowing you to regenerate your spells DURING combat.

Edited October 2, 2012 by qstoffe

[TrashMan]

J. Sawyer's talk about 'going in blind' being a negative, being forced to reload, etc, as a strike against memorising spells, seems slightly wrongheaded. I think someone mentioned earlier the idea of giving the player signals about what lay ahead, but it doesn't even have to be that explicit. The D & D player party wanders into an ancient temple filled with many-eyed statues. 'Aha,' thinks the player who's both engaged in the world and actively planning ahead, 'I should prepare for beholders. Let's head back to that old gypsy caravan and pick up some scrolls/open up my mage's spellbook and figure out how to counter them/maybe try and recruit that mad old wizard back at the inn so I have some scope'. Perhaps a local villager has the head of one of the local monsters on their wall; perhaps the local library contains scribblings about viable tactics against such beasts. If your party's about to face a central villain, presumably they've heard a little or seen a little about the spells and defences they're likely to use. There's absolutely no reason, in short, why memorised spells should lead to save-scumming or blind guesswork, so long as the encounter and dungeon design is good, and as long as the world is communicating with the player. That's not an inherent problem with the system.

 

A great joy of the RPG genre always has been the play on heading into the place of relative safety in order to prepare for the place of danger. The party returns to town/rests in the wilds/heads for the local temple, and prepares themselves as much as humanly possible for whatever challenge they believe they're coming up against next - they build up their resources, then carefully expend and conserve them as they enter the dangerous places (You fool! You just wasted your one Cataclysm spell on that Feeble Earthworm! etc). Memorising spells works splendidly with that dichotomy, though as we've seen here you can then get into concerns about the ease of resting, etc, and can even subvert it for genuine desperate thrills (aargh, we've just been ambushed with no healing spells left, how will the Heroes of Bummington get out of this scrape?) whereas cooldowns, depending on how they're implemented, can kill it stone dead.

 

With cooldowns, the town/camp/tavern/temple/safe-place loses the entire core of its identity. You lose the sense of relief as you limp back into the cobbled streets of Thingy - why would you be relieved? Your spells are all ready and waiting once again; your party's main requirement is now to survive battle-to-battle, not to survive long enough to reach that place of safety or to be able to rest. The only real remaining purpose of the non-dungeon-area is to serve as a shop/loot-storage-area; it's merely functional, it's no longer a blessing. And actually, it's interesting that the cooldown-based Dragon Age games were forced to try and invent dubious reasons to try and keep the safety/danger dichotomy relevant (you have to rest in-camp, because dying in combat can sometimes give you a small HP reduction that can only be removed in camp! You have to go home because you're not allowed to talk to your party members outside of home, for some reason!) before giving up entirely and making the town itself a dungeon; every time you step outside, thirty muggers attack you. Once you're done killing them, the merchants standing around will become selectable again. Something very special is lost in the process here.

 

 

You put that so nicely that I definately and utterly agree with you.

 

Hm..you know what might be interesting?

If you could only save in town!!!! (or in specific locations)

Let me see you save-rest-scumming NOW.

 

 

 

Asking how cooldowns can be used responsibly is like asking how nuclear weapons can be used responsibly.

 

LOL.

[Haerski]

There is NO tactical or unexpected encounters at all with cooldowns. THAT is what the IE games embodied.

 

Can you specify few games and explain why cooldowns were the exact reason they weren't tactical or unexpected enough? Then I might take your opinion seriously.

[C2B]

This thread has a LOT of pointless assumptions.

 

We have no real reason so far to assume that the system is going to be entirly based on cooldowns nor that they are used WOW style. That's also not what I'm getting out of Josh's quotes.

Edited October 2, 2012 by C2B

[TrashMan]

I hope you are right.

 

I think I'm pretty clsoe to the truth when I say that people who back this project up most enthusiasticly want that old IE magic back. They want the feel. If the mechanics change too much, that feel will not be there anymore.

[DCParry]

I hope you are right.

 

I think I'm pretty clsoe to the truth when I say that people who back this project up most enthusiasticly want that old IE magic back. They want the feel. If the mechanics change too much, that feel will not be there anymore.

 

See, an in depth story with tactical and strategic thinking as well as an in depth role playing experience is what I am looking for, which has more to do with the game as a whole as opposed to the mechanics.

[Uomoz]

The vancian system is ridiculous. And I'm a DnD 3rd and 4th master: it's prone to weaknesses like sleeping every fight or forcing the story to contain a very precise number of encounters per day. It's just old crap and needs to go imho.

[Haerski]

J. Sawyer's talk about 'going in blind' being a negative, being forced to reload, etc, as a strike against memorising spells, seems slightly wrongheaded. I think someone mentioned earlier the idea of giving the player signals about what lay ahead, but it doesn't even have to be that explicit. The D & D player party wanders into an ancient temple filled with many-eyed statues. 'Aha,' thinks the player who's both engaged in the world and actively planning ahead, 'I should prepare for beholders. Let's head back to that old gypsy caravan and pick up some scrolls/open up my mage's spellbook and figure out how to counter them/maybe try and recruit that mad old wizard back at the inn so I have some scope'. Perhaps a local villager has the head of one of the local monsters on their wall; perhaps the local library contains scribblings about viable tactics against such beasts. If your party's about to face a central villain, presumably they've heard a little or seen a little about the spells and defences they're likely to use. There's absolutely no reason, in short, why memorised spells should lead to save-scumming or blind guesswork, so long as the encounter and dungeon design is good, and as long as the world is communicating with the player. That's not an inherent problem with the system.

 

Only game where I have seen this kind of info gathering before fight actually be satisfying and have much benefit in actual battle is The Witcher, which used Magic only briefly and with cooldowns. So are the cooldowns really the big evil behind why this kind of things have been mostly forgotten in games nowdays? I'd like to see this in more games too, but it definitively doesn't require adoption of Vancian magic system.

 

A great joy of the RPG genre always has been the play on heading into the place of relative safety in order to prepare for the place of danger. The party returns to town/rests in the wilds/heads for the local temple, and prepares themselves as much as humanly possible for whatever challenge they believe they're coming up against next - they build up their resources, then carefully expend and conserve them as they enter the dangerous places (You fool! You just wasted your one Cataclysm spell on that Feeble Earthworm! etc). Memorising spells works splendidly with that dichotomy, though as we've seen here you can then get into concerns about the ease of resting, etc, and can even subvert it for genuine desperate thrills (aargh, we've just been ambushed with no healing spells left, how will the Heroes of Bummington get out of this scrape?) whereas cooldowns, depending on how they're implemented, can kill it stone dead.

 

Can kill if done wrong, can improve upon basic Vancian system if done right. You don't play new RPGs much do you? Even much hated The Elder Scrolls did this better than for example Bladur's Gate: When you have fought your way through snowtrolls and dragons at snowy plains for hours and finally see College of Winterhold looming at horizon that feeling you described is much stronger than ever in Infinity Engine game. And I'm not joking.

 

Oh, and TES uses mana pool BTW, so no absolute need for Vancian here either.

 

With cooldowns, the town/camp/tavern/temple/safe-place loses the entire core of its identity. You lose the sense of relief as you limp back into the cobbled streets of Thingy - why would you be relieved? Your spells are all ready and waiting once again; your party's main requirement is now to survive battle-to-battle, not to survive long enough to reach that place of safety or to be able to rest. The only real remaining purpose of the non-dungeon-area is to serve as a shop/loot-storage-area; it's merely functional, it's no longer a blessing. And actually, it's interesting that the cooldown-based Dragon Age games were forced to try and invent dubious reasons to try and keep the safety/danger dichotomy relevant (you have to rest in-camp, because dying in combat can sometimes give you a small HP reduction that can only be removed in camp! You have to go home because you're not allowed to talk to your party members outside of home, for some reason!) before giving up entirely and making the town itself a dungeon; every time you step outside, thirty muggers attack you. Once you're done killing them, the merchants standing around will become selectable again. Something very special is lost in the process here.

 

In Middle-Ages cities were dangerous places. You are blaming Dragon Age for having little realism in the game? Second I wouldn't say any of the cities in Dragon Age dungeons. If you encounter few muggers here and there that hardly qualifies. Cities in Dragon Age were places to meet people, hear rumors, find quests, replenish supplies and rest, though last one was not implemented so literally, but more as a feeling. Same as in most IE games I have played and definitively far from a "shop/loot-storage-area" you mentioned.

 

Again I don't see any relevant point why this all could be achieved only by Vancian system. EDIT: and just a sidenote: I haven't played DA2, so I can't say anything how this worked in that.

 

EDIT: For me every system (even those evil, eeevil cooldowns!) works as long as it has been implemented in fun and rewarding way and allows tactical versatility anywhere, anytime. It's after all pretty stupid to argue over any specific system since we don't know the big picture yet. Nowdays it almost always is something much more complicated than that.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Haerski

[C2B]

I hope you are right.

 

I think I'm pretty clsoe to the truth when I say that people who back this project up most enthusiasticly want that old IE magic back. They want the feel. If the mechanics change too much, that feel will not be there anymore.

 

Just don't get yourself too worked up. Considering the reaction we probably get a blog post by Sawyer, which explains/clarifies their ideas for the combat system.

 

Though, the mechanics won't really be the same (though similiar) on account of this not being D&D and being designed for RTWP combat.

Edited October 2, 2012 by C2B

[Living One]

The vancian system is ridiculous. And I'm a DnD 3rd and 4th master: it's prone to weaknesses like sleeping every fight or forcing the story to contain a very precise number of encounters per day. It's just old crap and needs to go imho.

Some people really don't like to read it seems.That is a problem with RESTING and can accour in every other non-vancian system.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Living One

[metiman]

Add a tier at 2.6 million that includes a fully viable 100% cooldown free combat option. Seems like that might be a bit more important than player houses or crafting. I'd also like to say that anyone who does not at least support the option of cooldown free combat has some kind of agenda. At the very least exposing those timer variables should be trivial. Almost no programming time is necessary for that. Just have the game read the timing variables from a text file at startup. There are probably even simpler options. I'll still be disappointed that cooldowns are being used as one of the main combat dynamics, but at least I might still be able to play the game. Hell, even the spirit recharge cooldown in MotB ruins the game for me and that's not even a combat cooldown. Some people just hate the mechanic. Is that really so hard to grasp?

[Gfted1]

I have been 100% excited thus far but, seriously, this just took alot of the wind out of my sails. I am hoping that a month or two down the line they can release some information on how this system will not sacrifice spell variety or tactical/strategic depth.

 

This pretty much sums up my feelings too. Depending on implementation, now Im just going to be standing outside of every room waiting for my abilities to come off cooldown before I proceed.

 

Crafting (specifically being able to turn a commom barrel sword into a legendary) is also a bit of a bummer. IMO, it cheapens the legendaries that will be in the game. Its not special if anyone can craft anything into a legendary.

[ogrezilla]

Add a tier at 2.6 million that includes a fully viable 100% cooldown free combat option. Seems like that might be a bit more important than player houses or crafting. I'd also like to say that anyone who does not at least support the option of cooldown free combat has some kind of agenda. At the very least exposing those timer variables should be trivial. Almost no programming time is necessary for that. Just have the game read the timing variables from a text file at startup. There are probably even simpler options. I'll still be disappointed that cooldowns are being used as one of the main combat dynamics, but at least I might still be able to play the game. Hell, even the spirit recharge cooldown in MotB ruins the game for me and that's not even a combat cooldown. Some people just hate the mechanic. Is that really so hard to grasp?

what's hard for me to grasp is how people think the vancian system led to strategic or conservative use of spells in the old IE games. It simply didn't. It led to knowing the right spells and rest spamming. As I've stated, that wasn't strictly a magic system problem. It was a bad combination of game designs where the encounter design and the rest system simply negated the strengths of the magic system. But unless the game is going to be designed very differently, the easier solution is to fit the magic system to the rest of the game instead of fitting the rest of the game to the magic system. Real strategy pretty much only exists once even with a well made information gathering system to allow you to choose the right spells.

 

Basically, I'm annoyed that so many people are up in arms over a system we know practically nothing about yet while at the same time praising the vancian system for strengths that simply were not present in any of the old IE games.

[ogrezilla]

I have been 100% excited thus far but, seriously, this just took alot of the wind out of my sails. I am hoping that a month or two down the line they can release some information on how this system will not sacrifice spell variety or tactical/strategic depth.

 

This pretty much sums up my feelings too. Depending on implementation, now Im just going to be standing outside of every room waiting for my abilities to come off cooldown before I proceed.

 

Crafting (specifically being able to turn a commom barrel sword into a legendary) is also a bit of a bummer. IMO, it cheapens the legendaries that will be in the game. Its not special if anyone can craft anything into a legendary.

these are smart people designing the game. That is such an obvious flaw in the cooldown system that I have a hard time believing that they aren't getting a little creative with the way it is implemented to avoid problems like standing around waiting.

Edited October 2, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Haerski]

I hope you are right.

 

I think I'm pretty clsoe to the truth when I say that people who back this project up most enthusiasticly want that old IE magic back. They want the feel. If the mechanics change too much, that feel will not be there anymore.

 

IE magic is very broad term so don't try to hog it just for you Vancian purists. I love IE games and I'm very enthusiastic about this project, but I DON'T like Vancian system. Learn the difference.

[Jasede]

How to use cooldowns responsibly as a combat mechanic in a tactical RPG: don't.

[Jaesun]

What if the cooldowns were on a day like timer (i.e. Fireball 2x a day) and we have limited rest?

[Jasede]

That'd be a lot more acceptable. Unfortunately we don't know what it'll be like yet either way so I can only fall back on my initial "God please no!" reaction. I'm fearing the worst: infinite magic missile castings as long as you wait five seconds. I hope it'll be something a little... smarter than that.

[Sensuki]

Cooldown systems such as Dragon Age and Diablo 3 make me shudder.

 

On the other hand ...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldq1afiKQb8

 

If the game felt more like DotA except with waaay more abilities (not the look, but the smoothness / flow of combat), slower combat, move speed and pause .. that could be interesting.

 

Although it wouldn't feel like an IE game I don't think ... (well who knows really).

 

Dragon Age combat is too slow and clunky

 

Diablo 3 is too fast.