[Merged] Cooldown Thread

[metiman]

So spells are recovered without sleep, but there will be a sleep() function implemented. Hmm. Seems like (if you are away from enemies) you could just go to sleep to pass the time and the time will recharge your spells instead of sleep directly. If a wait() function is also implemented it just means that you don't have to get away from enemies and find a safe place before you can recharge your spellbook (or mana bar). Seems fine to me except I'm still not convinced that that is the sort of "cooldown" that Josh was referring to when he refused to rule them out. Of course maybe a wait() function will not be implemented, but then you would still be able to recover your spells through the sleep() function indirectly through the passage of time.

[Tale]

Good. At least the stupid sleep spamming is gone.

 

I always thought it was a ridiculous mechanic.

You're not really adventuring unless you're narcoleptic.

 

I'm dying to see where this all goes. I guess the big info will be how frequent they aim for the most powerful spells to be on average. Every fight? Every five fights? Once per dungeon? With a mechanism to make that more frequent if you're having a hard time? The entire thing is probably undecided. The troubling thing about IE games is the standard fight probably varied a lot between different people. Some having their mage cast constantly and resting after every fight. Others plucking away with slingshot looking for only tactical casts. Will Obsidian design for the range, a median, or something closer to one of the ends?

[TrashMan]

A CRPG without rest is not a true RPG. Period.

Then you will like our CRPG, Project Eternity, which has resting.

 

 

:w00t: :w00t: :w00t: :w00t:

[Ieo]

So it's essentially just cooldown timers which are longer depending on spell strength, and go down outside of battle rather than in it?

 

Wait, isnt that what weve been discussing this whole time? Were people worried about cooldowns within a single encounter? I want to know what happens between encounters to replenish abilities.

 

Then call me on it. Prove me wrong with arguments.

 

Your post makes no sense. There's nothing to argue about when the issue is topical interpretation. Wowzers. Hysteria overdrive...

 

 

The entire thread covers both in-combat cooldown and the rest mechanic (also interpreted as a cooldown in some cases), so it's kind of mixed up.

[Gfted1]

So it's essentially just cooldown timers which are longer depending on spell strength, and go down outside of battle rather than in it?

 

Wait, isnt that what weve been discussing this whole time? Were people worried about cooldowns within a single encounter? I want to know what happens between encounters to replenish abilities.

 

Then call me on it. Prove me wrong with arguments.

 

Did you quote the wrong person? I dont understand what you are asking of me.

[ogrezilla]

A CRPG without rest is not a true RPG. Period.

Then you will like our CRPG, Project Eternity, which has resting.

 

 

:w00t: :w00t: :w00t: :w00t:

well said. I am very interested to see exactly how both are implemented. I'm picturing a more limited rest function that you can't spam, but it does essentially the same thing it did before. Meanwhile, cooldowns are just there to give some spells back in the meantime. Basically just double dipping long cooldown and rest systems to avoid the major drawback of each. But I could be way off.

 

Mostly I'm glad we know that it won't be dragon age style casting with 3 second cooldowns and spell spamming. If they come up with a system that encourages smart spell use without encouraging rest spamming or waiting around, I will be a very happy camper.

Edited October 2, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Osvir]

Title says it all.

 

Unlike this thread:

http://forums.obsidi...c/page__st__240

I wish to discuss what is the best cooldown system you can think of?

 

How would you have your cooldown best served?

 

Cold? Hot? Mild?

 

Even if you dislike it, how would a cooldown be formed so that you would enjoy it.

 

Personally I would like to have a slow progressing cooldown for all abilities. All except the Thief's ability to Sneak, Lockpick and Hide in Shadows. But I would like to remove the term "Cooldown". I think that a more fitting word such as "Meditation" is involved, as Soul's are going to be present. I have a feeling that Project: Eternity will be spiritual.

 

Out of the top of my head Story/Lore/Improvised Explanation: Meditation is the same as "Cooldown", it isn't an ability or anything within the game, but what it frankly is; a word. Simple, short, easy. Mage's constantly meditate, this doesn't mean that they are day-dreaming and being aloof, they are simply Zen in either Order (Good Wizards) or Chaos (Evil Wizards), as well as the more Grey Wizards somewhere in between (Wild Mages, part of this genre). Meditation allows the Mage to energize, mentally as well as spirituality, tuning in to the otherworldly powers that they manifest. They do so easier than most.

 

Mechanically: Meditation would replenish your ability to cast spells over a longer period of time. Not simply 3 seconds and you can then reign nuclear power upon your enemies. There would be different Levels of Spells of course.

 

Spell Levels

Level 1: 1 Charge per 1 in-game hour (Attained at Level 1)

Level 2: 1 Charge per 2 in-game hours (Attained at Level 3)

Level 3: 1 Charge per 3 in-game hours (Attained at Level 5)

Level 4: 1 Charge per 4 in-game hours (Attained at Level 7)

~etc.etc~

 

* So even for those extremely rare High Level Spells could take several days to replenish fully, and you would have a maximum of 1/1 of those rare high end spells, if you're lucky a magical item could enchant it to 2/2 End-Game Scenario.

* Forbidden Spells that gives a permanent~ effect to your Mage (similar to a Curse on Equipment but by the use of a Spell).

 

Spell Charges Explained/Example, math not calculated, fictive numbers

What is spell charges and how many can you have?

 

Initially you could start off with a mere 3/3 Charges that you can use. As you level up you get more and more, each level holding their own charges. Gaining +1/1 Charge per level. So on Level 2 your Mage would have 4/4 Spell Level 1 Charges. On Level 3 he would have 5/5 Level 1 and 1/1 Spell Level 2.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Osvir

[Osvir]

@andreisiadi: Why do you expect there to be a market speech? To be honest, when I joined I felt the community feeling almost directly.

 

@mindx2: How would you want your cooldown served bro? That's what Obsidian is interested in, that's what I think they are interested in.

Made a separate topic:

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60875-how-cooldowns-can-be-used-responsibly-as-a-combat-mechanic/page__st__240

[andreisiadi]

Yes I did. Sorry. It's edited now. So...nevermind.

[Hypevosa]

A CRPG without rest is not a true RPG. Period.

Then you will like our CRPG, Project Eternity, which has resting.

 

 

:w00t: :w00t: :w00t: :w00t:

well said. I am very interested to see exactly how both are implemented. I'm picturing a more limited rest function that you can't spam, but it does essentially the same thing it did before. Meanwhile, cooldowns are just there to give some spells back in the meantime. Basically just double dipping long cooldown and rest systems to avoid the major drawback of each. But I could be way off.

 

Mostly I'm glad we know that it won't be dragon age style casting with 3 second cooldowns and spell spamming. If they come up with a system that encourages smart spell use without encouraging rest spamming or waiting around, I will be a very happy camper.

 

I would suspect it's as simple as if you're party isn't tired they, naturally, cannot rest.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Hypevosa

[Tale]

I just hope the game utilizes a checkpoint save mechanic. Its stupid to let people save wherever they want.

I don't see it as stupid, there were lots of moments, at least in the BG games, where randomness could dominate an encounter instead of the tactics. Nobody likes losing a group wizard to permadeath because the invisibility potion popping rogues decided to team up on him in the second round. And it doesn't seem a good thing to ask the player to jump back half an hour because of it. Or ask him to just deal.

 

If they do try to eliminate swing, I expect lots of calls against "streamlining."

[ogrezilla]

A CRPG without rest is not a true RPG. Period.

Then you will like our CRPG, Project Eternity, which has resting.

 

 

:w00t: :w00t: :w00t: :w00t:

well said. I am very interested to see exactly how both are implemented. I'm picturing a more limited rest function that you can't spam, but it does essentially the same thing it did before. Meanwhile, cooldowns are just there to give some spells back in the meantime. Basically just double dipping long cooldown and rest systems to avoid the major drawback of each. But I could be way off.

 

Mostly I'm glad we know that it won't be dragon age style casting with 3 second cooldowns and spell spamming. If they come up with a system that encourages smart spell use without encouraging rest spamming or waiting around, I will be a very happy camper.

 

I would suspect it's as simple as if you're party isn't tired they, naturally, cannot rest.

 

That sounds reasonable. I just hope they manage to avoid the need to stand around and wait for cooldowns. That's sort of where I can see rest coming in and being useful.

Edited October 2, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Hypevosa]

A system I've proposed multiple times at this point is the vancian system, but every spell can recharge outside combat due to the mage studying, the sorcerer being in their thoughts, priests praying, during down time.

 

Essentially, it takes half an hour (in game) to recharge a first level spell, scaling to 9 hours for a 9th level spell. However, the lower spell levels must recharge first before the higher ones can. So you can spam 5 magic missiles and a fire ball, but all those magic missiles must come back before the fireball does. Have the lower, common use spells come back faster than the super spells. If you're efficient, you can do more with a higher level spell than tons of lower level spells.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Hypevosa

[metiman]

Well if that's the case and fatigue happens every 18 hours, say, then the presence/absence of a wait() function is key to whether leaving the game running overnight when you actually sleep will be a useful strategy or not. It's interesting that people have ruled out intra-encounter cooldowns solely based on his "Pretty much." comment. Maybe it's true but it hardly seems conclusive. If he wanted to he could just come right out and say that there will or will not likely be cooldowns within a given encounter.

[qstoffe]

For people who place 'tactical strategy' on such a high pedestal, I'm a bit perplexed at this complete lack of creativity.

 

Of course you can abuse cooldowns for a tactical advantage as well though it gets much more repetitive and boring imo.

 

I think the biggest flaw with cooldowns is that it's too rewarding to simply cast the most powerful spell as soon as it's ready. The sooner you use it, the sooner you'll get it back. I don't like that mechanic. There should be a better reward for cleverly saving/reserving powerful spells for later usage. In ALL the cooldown implementations I've seen there really isn't. You're also much less careful with exactly what spells you cast.

 

I think one of the best advantages of a fixed spell quantity is that you, or at least I, have a lot of fun just by browsing/choosing what spell to cast. I gladly pause in the heat of combat just to spend 10 minutes on reading and weighing spells against each other. Cooldowns cheapens this choice a lot.

 

Also cooldowns tend to make magical spells A LOT weaker simply beacuse they are available too often to cast (at least once per combat). I would much rather like spells that are extremly powerful but also so SCARCE in between that I wouldn't even consider using them for most battles.

Edited October 2, 2012 by qstoffe

[Hypevosa]

A CRPG without rest is not a true RPG. Period.

Then you will like our CRPG, Project Eternity, which has resting.

 

 

:w00t: :w00t: :w00t: :w00t:

well said. I am very interested to see exactly how both are implemented. I'm picturing a more limited rest function that you can't spam, but it does essentially the same thing it did before. Meanwhile, cooldowns are just there to give some spells back in the meantime. Basically just double dipping long cooldown and rest systems to avoid the major drawback of each. But I could be way off.

 

Mostly I'm glad we know that it won't be dragon age style casting with 3 second cooldowns and spell spamming. If they come up with a system that encourages smart spell use without encouraging rest spamming or waiting around, I will be a very happy camper.

 

I would suspect it's as simple as if you're party isn't tired they, naturally, cannot rest.

 

That sounds reasonable. I just hope they manage to avoid the need to stand around and wait for cooldowns. That's sort of where I can see rest coming in and being useful.

 

See, if your mage just nuked that last fight instead of letting the whole party participate, that's really your fault if you need to wait around for cooldowns to expire, isn't it?

[dlux]

A CRPG without rest is not a true RPG. Period.

Then you will like our CRPG, Project Eternity, which has resting.

 

 

:w00t: :w00t: :w00t: :w00t:

well said. I am very interested to see exactly how both are implemented. I'm picturing a more limited rest function that you can't spam, but it does essentially the same thing it did before. Meanwhile, cooldowns are just there to give some spells back in the meantime. Basically just double dipping long cooldown and rest systems to avoid the major drawback of each. But I could be way off.

 

Mostly I'm glad we know that it won't be dragon age style casting with 3 second cooldowns and spell spamming. If they come up with a system that encourages smart spell use without encouraging rest spamming or waiting around, I will be a very happy camper.

 

I would suspect it's as simple as if you're party isn't tired they, naturally, cannot rest.

Sounds good. Sleep spamming to heal is also a lame mechanic imo.

[andreisiadi]

@andreisiadi: Why do you expect there to be a market speech? To be honest, when I joined I felt the community feeling almost directly.

 

Because they boasted about making a classic game, a spiritual successor to the infinity games. Now they tell me they have cooldowns that mimic that. That is market speech. Cooldowns is a MMO mechanic no matter how much Sawyer tweaks it. Perhaps he is too stubborn to admit it. There is no bridge between classic games and cooldowns no matter how you spin it and promise me it will be good. It just means every encounter you have all your abilities available to blast away. No resource management, no strategy. And market speech won't change that.

[ogrezilla]

For people who place 'tactical strategy' on such a high pedestal, I'm a bit perplexed at this complete lack of creativity.

 

Of course you can abuse cooldowns for a tactical advantage as well though it gets much more repetitive and boring imo.

 

I think the biggest flaw with cooldowns is that it's too rewarding to simply cast the most powerful spell as soon as it's ready. The sooner you use it, the sooner you'll get it back. I don't like that mechanic. There should be a better reward for cleverly saving/reserving powerful spells for later usage. In ALL the cooldown implementations I've seen there really isn't. You're also much less careful with exactly what spells you cast.

 

I think one of the best advantages of a fixed spell quantity is that you, or at least I, have a lot of fun just by browsing/choosing what spell to cast. I gladly pause in the heat of combat just to spend 10 minutes on reading and weighing spells against each other. Cooldowns cheapens this choice a lot.

 

Also cooldowns tend to make magical spells A LOT weaker simply beacuse they are available too often to cast (at least once per combat). I would much rather like spells that are extremly powerful but also so SCARCE in between that I wouldn't even consider using them for most battles.

 

nothing they have said makes me think you will be getting your powerful spells every fight. If anything, that seems like the kind of thing they are actively trying to avoid by removing rest spamming.

[SqueakyCat]

I just hope the game utilizes a checkpoint save mechanic. Its stupid to let people save wherever they want.

I don't see it as stupid, there were lots of moments, at least in the BG games, where randomness could dominate an encounter instead of the tactics. Nobody likes losing a group wizard to permadeath because the invisibility potion popping rogues decided to team up on him in the second round. And it doesn't seem a good thing to ask the player to jump back half an hour because of it. Or ask him to just deal.

 

If they do try to eliminate swing, I expect lots of calls against "streamlining."

 

If there isn't an F5/F9 and menu 'save/load', it will not feel like an I.E. game. At least for me, checkpoints reek of consoles.

 

I've watched these discussions on a few different topics with great interest. I am always willing to compromise (within reason), however, this is something that falls outside that scope for me. There are already a few things I'm willing to compromise on and trust the devs to get right, but I cannot imagine (other than specified hardcore modes) where this would be beneficial.

 

I hope people are just trolling for reaction and that this will not seriously be entertained. I actually plan to play the stretch goal hardcore modes, but I want to be able to save my game anywhere in the regular modes.

[ogrezilla]

@andreisiadi: Why do you expect there to be a market speech? To be honest, when I joined I felt the community feeling almost directly.

 

Because they boasted about making a classic game, a spiritual successor to the infinity games. Now they tell me they have cooldowns that mimic that. That is market speech. Cooldowns is a MMO mechanic no matter how much Sawyer tweaks it. Perhaps he is too stubborn to admit it. There is no bridge between classic games and cooldowns no matter how you spin it and promise me it will be good. It just means every encounter you have all your abilities available to blast away. No resource management, no strategy. And market speech won't change that.

if the cooldowns are long enough then it will actually be more limiting than the old rest spamming system.

[Hypevosa]

@andreisiadi: Why do you expect there to be a market speech? To be honest, when I joined I felt the community feeling almost directly.

 

Because they boasted about making a classic game, a spiritual successor to the infinity games. Now they tell me they have cooldowns that mimic that. That is market speech. Cooldowns is a MMO mechanic no matter how much Sawyer tweaks it. Perhaps he is too stubborn to admit it. There is no bridge between classic games and cooldowns no matter how you spin it and promise me it will be good. It just means every encounter you have all your abilities available to blast away. No resource management, no strategy. And market speech won't change that.

 

So wait, if I let you prepare 5 magic missile spells, and put each one on a half hour in game timer cooldown, and let you prepare 3 wish spells, and put each on a 9 hour ingame cooldown timer, that wouldn't be close enough to vancian?

[ogrezilla]

@andreisiadi: Why do you expect there to be a market speech? To be honest, when I joined I felt the community feeling almost directly.

 

Because they boasted about making a classic game, a spiritual successor to the infinity games. Now they tell me they have cooldowns that mimic that. That is market speech. Cooldowns is a MMO mechanic no matter how much Sawyer tweaks it. Perhaps he is too stubborn to admit it. There is no bridge between classic games and cooldowns no matter how you spin it and promise me it will be good. It just means every encounter you have all your abilities available to blast away. No resource management, no strategy. And market speech won't change that.

 

So wait, if I let you prepare 5 magic missile spells, and put each one on a half hour in game timer cooldown, and let you prepare 3 wish spells, and put each on a 9 hour ingame cooldown timer, that wouldn't be close enough to vancian?

it would actually be more in line with the intentions of vancian magic than any of the old IE games.

[metiman]

It depends. Do I have to wait 9 hours of real time to get the wish spells back?

[ogrezilla]

It depends. Do I have to wait 9 hours of real time to get the wish spells back?

He said rest is still included. I'm guessing it will be more limited than it used to be, but this is where that would be useful.

Edited October 2, 2012 by ogrezilla