[Merged] Cooldown Thread

[Ieo]

Hmmm. I'll give it a shot.

 

Full tier cooldowns with ascending timers by power level, with spells per tier learned by choice? Let's say we have a full collection of diverse spells a la D&D (rather than the level-upgraded spells which limit diversity, which I think is the only magic system I'm bleh about). A natural effect for this idea is that 'persistent' spells couldn't last more than the duration of the CD (something like Hold would have to be much shorter, but maybe that could be changed with difficulty settings).

 

So casting any spell of a given tier puts the entire tier of spells on CD.

 

T1 = 30 second CD

Armour, Charm, Magic Missile, Burning Hands, Identify

 

T2 = 50 second CD

Blur, Horror, Knock, Acid Arrow, Stinking Cloud, Mirror Image

 

T3 = 70 second CD

Dispel, Fireball, Hold, Lightning Bolt, Haste, Slow

 

T4 = 90 second CD

Confusion, Farsight, Ice Storm, Polymorph, Remove Curse, Stoneskin

 

 

Maybe soul can increase the number of spells you can learn per tier. Or lower cooldowns (nah, I don't think I'm in favor of that). Soul could also serve as a defense, sort of like a resist or saving throw (lowering the 'persist' state to be shorter than the expected tier CD).

 

The trick for limitation here is high diversity of spells--you must choose among offensive/defensive/utility spells in any given encounter. Or something.

 

Edit: Oh, and mana. Tying mana to each spell tier should be easy, and perhaps soul can effect the amount of mana you have as well.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Ieo

[ogrezilla]

So with a cool down, I have an infinite number of fireball spells. I just need to wait for the cool down to reset. With the vancian system, I have a limited amount of fireballs I can memorise. In the IE Games, there was a delay (essentially a cool down) between spamming fireballs.

 

Unless the cool down is quite long, I don't really see any difference other than I have an infinite amount of fireballs now instead of a limited amount of fireballs. After a battle, you will just sit there and let your cool downs reset which seems a waste of time. Sleeping in the IE games just made it faster to get your spells back.

 

Go down to the next level of the dungeon? Nope, I'll just sit here for a couple of minutes for my cool downs to reset. Atleast in the IE games, if you took the chance of sleeping, you might be attacked.

ya that's something I hope they figure out how to avoid. Standing-Still spamming would be much worse than rest spamming

[Hypevosa]

I think this is the best argument I've read against Vancian magic ... and it comes straight from JE Sawyer

http://www.formsprin...730408441642308

 

 

Melnorme

I suspect that PE will end up NOT using the Vancian magic system. But I do feel that the role of the spellbook as a custom-made "toolkit" that needs to be prepared ahead of time is integral to the IE spirit. Can this be achieved in a non-Vancian system?

 

JESawyer

I think it can, but I also think we need to be cognizant that advance preparation does not always equal strategic gameplay. If the player is making choices "blind" (for lack of a better term) and those choices have a huge effect on efficacy, that's not really a strategic blunder as much as a bad guess. I think some of the spell prep requirements in BG2 fell into that category, where the player's only approach was to enter combat, see how he or she failed, and reload the game with a different set of spells memorized.

 

In difficult battles, reloading is not uncommon, but I think it usually feels better when the player's error is a tactical one rather than a "strategic" one -- strategic being in quotes because there's no way for the player to know what's coming outside of metagaming.

 

 

I was mostly leaning toward wanting a Vancian system in the game, but after reading this, I think I might have just had my mind changed.

 

Why not give the player ingame knowledge of what to prepare for? An encounter with a lich written in an adventurer's diary detailing the spells it used on his fellow adventurers before horribly wounding him and allowing him to wander the cave till his minions ate him alive. A rumor overheard after some mead of spell caster X who specializes in illusions. Finding a mage's spellbook in his room long before you actually face him. Etc.

 

There should be ways of finding out info before battles.

[Gurkog]

In Torchlight 2 some cooldowns become better if used when 'charge' meters are full. The charge meters fill up as most attacks are used. So, a player could use the cooldowns at the start of a fight with no charge, but be drasticly less effective (unless the player just came from a fight and their bar is full). They could try to use skills that maximize charge generation so that the cooldowns are more effective. Finally, they could use skills that don't build much charge and just use the cooldowns whenever.

 

That could be an effective way to manage cooldowns so they are not binary, mindless skills. They add extra layers of tactics for the player to utilize in different ways. There are probably many other methods of integrating cooldowns with other activities to add synergies.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Gurkog

[ogrezilla]

I think this is the best argument I've read against Vancian magic ... and it comes straight from JE Sawyer

http://www.formsprin...730408441642308

 

 

Melnorme

I suspect that PE will end up NOT using the Vancian magic system. But I do feel that the role of the spellbook as a custom-made "toolkit" that needs to be prepared ahead of time is integral to the IE spirit. Can this be achieved in a non-Vancian system?

 

JESawyer

I think it can, but I also think we need to be cognizant that advance preparation does not always equal strategic gameplay. If the player is making choices "blind" (for lack of a better term) and those choices have a huge effect on efficacy, that's not really a strategic blunder as much as a bad guess. I think some of the spell prep requirements in BG2 fell into that category, where the player's only approach was to enter combat, see how he or she failed, and reload the game with a different set of spells memorized.

 

In difficult battles, reloading is not uncommon, but I think it usually feels better when the player's error is a tactical one rather than a "strategic" one -- strategic being in quotes because there's no way for the player to know what's coming outside of metagaming.

 

 

I was mostly leaning toward wanting a Vancian system in the game, but after reading this, I think I might have just had my mind changed.

 

Why not give the player ingame knowledge of what to prepare for? An encounter with a lich written in an adventurer's diary detailing the spells it used on his fellow adventurers before horribly wounding him and allowing him to wander the cave till his minions ate him alive. A rumor overheard after some mead of spell caster X who specializes in illusions. Finding a mage's spellbook in his room long before you actually face him. Etc.

 

There should be ways of finding out info before battles.

that definitely can work, but it really takes away the feeling of intelligence for figuring out a fight. Typically when something like that is included it feels like the game just beats you over the head with the answer and the fight ends up lacking any excitement because you already know what to expect. If it can be done well, I would definitely like to see this implemented instead of just removing that aspect of choosing spells.

Edited October 2, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

ya that's something I hope they figure out how to avoid. Standing-Still spamming would be much worse than rest spamming

 

Standing-Still spamming is going to make the game worse. This mega-dungeon they're planning means that after you complete one level, you will just Stand-Still spam on every level and never run out of spells, before going down to the next level.

 

In the IE games, the only way to get the spells back is take the chance of sleeping in the dungeon and possibly get attacked.

[ogrezilla]

ya that's something I hope they figure out how to avoid. Standing-Still spamming would be much worse than rest spamming

 

Standing-Still spamming is going to make the game worse. This mega-dungeon they're planning means that after you complete one level, you will just Stand-Still spam on every level and never run out of spells, before going down to the next level.

 

In the IE games, the only way to get the spells back is take the chance of sleeping in the dungeon and possibly get attacked.

ya I agree. I'm not sure what the best answer is, but I would have to think the people designing this would be smart enough to see that issue: it is pretty glaring.

Edited October 2, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Shevek]

There are many problems with cooldowns.

 

Here is one. In the Vancian system, you may have several of a particular spell prepared because you want to cast it several times in fairly rapid succession (perhaps through spell sequencer use or just regular use). Like maybe, I dunno, Hold or whatnot. In a Cooldown system, you do not have that option. You have to wait for the cooldown and you are forced to use other spells. While some may argue that forces a more diverse use of spells, I would say that limits my options as a spell caster.

 

I am sure the more you focus on the cooldown mechanic the more one notices that it imposes quite a few limitations on the player while also severly limited strategic and tactical depth.

[Ieo]

Why not give the player ingame knowledge of what to prepare for? An encounter with a lich written in an adventurer's diary detailing the spells it used on his fellow adventurers before horribly wounding him and allowing him to wander the cave till his minions ate him alive. A rumor overheard after some mead of spell caster X who specializes in illusions. Finding a mage's spellbook in his room long before you actually face him. Etc.

 

There should be ways of finding out info before battles.

that definitely can work, but it really takes away the feeling of intelligence for figuring out a fight. Typically when something like that is included it feels like the game just beats you over the head with the answer and the fight ends up lacking any excitement because you already know what to expect.

 

Well, in any battle where survival is key, it behooves the party to do some initial investigation, scouting, whatever. That is the intelligent thing to do, because we're not talking about an "honor system" like a duel against a lich on equal footing. I think I would prefer having some in-game immersive hints where appropriate and with specific PC stat checks (NPC likes the race, or charisma, or something, or finding some little note tucked away from a different quest) than a metagaming "strategy" after a failed attempt, but that's just me.

 

Also, a lot of people are just continuing to complain without offering ways to counter the weaknesses of CDs; Obsidian made up its mind on a technical matter, and I really doubt any amount of complaining afterwards is going to change that. Man up.

[Hypevosa]

I think this is the best argument I've read against Vancian magic ... and it comes straight from JE Sawyer

http://www.formsprin...730408441642308

 

 

Melnorme

I suspect that PE will end up NOT using the Vancian magic system. But I do feel that the role of the spellbook as a custom-made "toolkit" that needs to be prepared ahead of time is integral to the IE spirit. Can this be achieved in a non-Vancian system?

 

JESawyer

I think it can, but I also think we need to be cognizant that advance preparation does not always equal strategic gameplay. If the player is making choices "blind" (for lack of a better term) and those choices have a huge effect on efficacy, that's not really a strategic blunder as much as a bad guess. I think some of the spell prep requirements in BG2 fell into that category, where the player's only approach was to enter combat, see how he or she failed, and reload the game with a different set of spells memorized.

 

In difficult battles, reloading is not uncommon, but I think it usually feels better when the player's error is a tactical one rather than a "strategic" one -- strategic being in quotes because there's no way for the player to know what's coming outside of metagaming.

 

 

I was mostly leaning toward wanting a Vancian system in the game, but after reading this, I think I might have just had my mind changed.

 

Why not give the player ingame knowledge of what to prepare for? An encounter with a lich written in an adventurer's diary detailing the spells it used on his fellow adventurers before horribly wounding him and allowing him to wander the cave till his minions ate him alive. A rumor overheard after some mead of spell caster X who specializes in illusions. Finding a mage's spellbook in his room long before you actually face him. Etc.

 

There should be ways of finding out info before battles.

that definitely can work, but it really takes away the feeling of intelligence for figuring out a fight. Typically when something like that is included it feels like the game just beats you over the head with the answer and the fight ends up lacking any excitement because you already know what to expect. If it can be done well, I would definitely like to see this implemented instead of just removing that aspect of choosing spells.

 

That depends on what the game tells you. "THE GUY WOULDN'T STOP CASTING MAGIC MISSILE" is different from the game explicitly telling you to cast the shield spell since it makes you immune. "He pointed his finger at orville and, in a flash of green light, he disappeared into a pile of ash!" is different from "he cast disintegrate". If you make the player have to know the spells and lore to know the answer, they've done their reconnaissance - and in a much less cheesy way than fighting and reloading.

[ogrezilla]

There are many problems with cooldowns.

 

Here is one. In the Vancian system, you may have several of a particular spell prepared because you want to cast it several times in fairly rapid succession (perhaps through spell sequencer use or just regular use). Like maybe, I dunno, Hold or whatnot. In a Cooldown system, you do not have that option. You have to wait for the cooldown and you are forced to use other spells. While some may argue that forces a more diverse use of spells, I would say that limits my options as a spell caster.

 

I am sure the more you focus on the cooldown mechanic the more one notices that it imposes quite a few limitations on the player while also severly limited strategic and tactical depth.

 

You can do a lot of different things with cooldowns. Even possibly a combination of vancian and cooldowns where cooldowns are really replacing rest instead of the spell memorization.

 

Well, in any battle where survival is key, it behooves the party to do some initial investigation, scouting, whatever. That is the intelligent thing to do, because we're not talking about an "honor system" like a duel against a lich on equal footing. I think I would prefer having some in-game immersive hints where appropriate and with specific PC stat checks (NPC likes the race, or charisma, or something, or finding some little note tucked away from a different quest) than a metagaming "strategy" after a failed attempt, but that's just me.

 

Also, a lot of people are just continuing to complain without offering ways to counter the weaknesses of CDs; Obsidian made up its mind on a technical matter, and I really doubt any amount of complaining afterwards is going to change that. Man up.

That depends on what the game tells you. "THE GUY WOULDN'T STOP CASTING MAGIC MISSILE" is different from the game explicitly telling you to cast the shield spell since it makes you immune. "He pointed his finger at orville and, in a flash of green light, he disappeared into a pile of ash!" is different from "he cast disintegrate". If you make the player have to know the spells and lore to know the answer, they've done their reconnaissance - and in a much less cheesy way than fighting and reloading.

 

I would definitely have no problem with it if they do it right. More often than not its done in a pretty unsatisfying and very blatant way. You don't feel smart afterwords, you just feel like someone forgot their spoiler warning. But that's a problem of writing and design, not the magic system.

 

I think we just need to wait and see what they plan to do with this. We know way too little to be making informed criticisms. But half of the posts in the last three hours have basically boiled down to cooldowns sucked in other games so they will always suck or the old IE games used Vancian so vancian is the only choice.

Edited October 2, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Shadenuat]

Just imagining that my "Soul" will have a "Cooldown" makes me go "WTFJap--Obsidian, seriously?".

Cooldowns are completely separated from setting already as they are. They are artificial, unless tied to in-game time in a more artsy style (a spell which can only be cast on some phases of the moon, for example).

Well, memorising is't that good either on that basis, though PnP also has ingredients which makes it more passable. Still remember how Torment tried to explain memorising inside it's setting, and it was a hard thing to believe in. But at least it's somewhat strategic and has a good feel when you search for new scrolls tirelessly in pursuit of arcane knowledge.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Shadenuat

[khango]

If cooldowns are long enough it's not sooo bad, as in if it were like a sorcerer-style casting system where level 1 spells recharged at a rate of +1 per hour, level 2 at a rate of +1 per 2 hours, and so on, with normal spells per level progression, and your spell selection was a little more limited, like maybe you could only have spells from two complimentary schools active for casting without having to reset and zero your spell counters.....

Edited October 2, 2012 by khango

[Ieo]

I think we just need to wait and see what they plan to do with this. We know way too little to be making informed criticisms. But half of the posts in the last three hours have basically boiled down to cooldowns sucked in other games so they will always suck or the old IE games used Vancian so vancian is the only choice.

 

Yes, awful shame, that, but Sawyer & co. are very seasoned game software developers so I imagine they can come up with something different but still under the "cooldown" umbrella. Personally, I'd love to see a cooldown-Vancian-mana-soul combo system of some sort.

[ogrezilla]

I think we just need to wait and see what they plan to do with this. We know way too little to be making informed criticisms. But half of the posts in the last three hours have basically boiled down to cooldowns sucked in other games so they will always suck or the old IE games used Vancian so vancian is the only choice.

 

Yes, awful shame, that, but Sawyer & co. are very seasoned game software developers so I imagine they can come up with something different but still under the "cooldown" umbrella. Personally, I'd love to see a cooldown-Vancian-mana-soul combo system of some sort.

Its a good group making the game. I'm staying positive. I don't think I'd enjoy being negative all the time.

[aVENGER]

Sigh... I'm really disappointed that they seem to be considering cooldowns as a means of balancing the spell system. Cooldowns are a boring, artificial, non-interactive mechanic and feel like a lazy cop-out.

 

If the developers are already set against using a spell memorization system, why not try a mana system with restricted potion use as an alternative? For example, The Witcher limited potion chugging with toxicity levels - Geralt's blood accumulated toxic substances with each potion use. High toxicity lowered his abilities and could even lead to death. Arcanum made the character drop unconscious if he overused his mana. I'm sure that the creative minds in Obsidian could come up with something similarly reasonable and backed up by in-game lore instead of taking the easy way out and slamming us with MMO style cooldowns.

[Badmojo]

Dragon age had a system of slow health/mana recharge and cooldowns in battle, the spells used a common regen mana pool, you could use the high level stuff but would burn your mana out fast, you could spam the small time stuff that slowed regen mana (it was still filling, just slower) and had to wait before the high level could be used again (or not spam and it would fill up faster) however, once outside of battle and away from enemies it sped up fast and you did not have to wait long. I am sure many will say that is a horrible system for various reasons, but is it really? Is it better to have to wait forever for cooldowns outside of battle? Or to force resting to recharge/heal/memorize a spell? Not to mention just reloading every few minutes until you make the "right" choice in spell slots.

 

Think it through, whatever system is used, the characters will be using a LOT. I never understood why anybody enjoyed resting, it was nothing more than a time sink.

 

As for resting in general, IF they have resting, do something interesting at least, have the character have random dreams we can read with beutifull art, have the character sit in his/her bed think about the days events and be thinking to themselves thoughts in a mini game fashion to follow some mental logic trail, if we solve the mental problem, we get a eureka moment where we gain some new insight/wisdom/spell...etc.

[Ieo]

I also think this could be more easily managed for the difficulty levels. At the most difficult levels, increase cooldowns to 24 game hours or something.

[Osvir]

Turn-Based Cooldown's. I am not talking about a quick "2 turn-Cast" spam and nuke.

 

I'd love to see 10 turn Cooldowns. Maybe the battle is done in 2 turns anyways, but your mage only managed to throw 1 or 2 spells anyways.

 

What I am thinking here is that every spell has it's -own- cooldown:

1st Turn: Magic Missiles (Turn CD: 5)

2nd Turn: Fireball (Turn CD: 10) - MM: 4 turns

3rd Turn: Warrior kills the beast - MM: 3 turns left, Fireball: 9 turns left

 

This way I don't need to rest but I'll get what I want from my mage each and every battle. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

 

In fact, in Baldur's Gate, 9 out of 10 battle's my Mage was always sitting it out in some corner while my 5 other Heroes slaughtered the mobs of foes. Because either I could do some quick burst damage that wouldn't last even ONE fight, or I could save it for a boss fight. I am quite against the Resting -> Nuking procedure.

 

EDIT: However! Something I forgot to include "Magic Points"/MP, or something similar, Fatigue. Your Mage needs to rest sometime, just like everyone else needs to at some points. It would be beneficial if it would be somewhere around the time when the entire party needs to rest~

 

For the Mage his spells are his Sword and Shield. Either that or projectile Wands/Staff's (DA:O and many, many other games).

Why shouldn't he be able to fight with it every battle, like the Fighter?

Edited October 2, 2012 by Osvir

[DCParry]

In Torchlight 2 some cooldowns become better if used when 'charge' meters are full. The charge meters fill up as most attacks are used. So, a player could use the cooldowns at the start of a fight with no charge, but be drasticly less effective (unless the player just came from a fight and their bar is full). They could try to use skills that maximize charge generation so that the cooldowns are more effective. Finally, they could use skills that don't build much charge and just use the cooldowns whenever.

 

That could be an effective way to manage cooldowns so they are not binary, mindless skills. They add extra layers of tactics for the player to utilize in different ways. There are probably many other methods of integrating cooldowns with other activities to add synergies.

 

While I don't share your burning white hatred for DA:O's magic system, you might be on to something interesting here, but I am thinking of something that is sort of the opposite of the charge bar.

 

Let's say you have a Soul Bar (cue James Brown) which has something like 10 units.

 

You cast a super bad fireball, which costs 2 units, leaving you with 8. Now there is a fatigue counter on the super bad fireball of 3, which means you have to wait 3 time units of whatever (say 5 seconds each or something).

 

However, you can supercede this cooldown by spending more soul power to overcome the fatigue penalty. So if you wanted to pop another super bad fireball off right away, it would cost you 2 soul, plus 3 more (for the fatigue penalty). BAM, double fire ball, leaving you with 3 soul left. Now you have to wait at least 2 time units to cast another fireball, because you used your soul power getting one off quicker. Of course, this allows for deadly combos that make the mage useless afterwards, or minor spells that cost low or even no soul and have a fatigue cost (so a low level soul bolt, which does minor damage, might cost no soul, but have a fatigue rating or 1 or 2, making take longer to cast, but can be empowered to cast more often by spending soul power).

 

Of course, this only applies to combat situations and such, and the regeneration of soul power as well (on rest? slow outside of combat? medium outside of combat and slow inside? on death of enemy? sucking soul from allies?). Out of combat, I don't utility spells should really be too concerned with these things unless you are magically unlocking dozens of chests at a time.

[AlexAB]

I just want to reiterate that I feel that cooldowns are a mechanic I would like to see nowhere near this game. Even if we are talking about long term cooldowns here. That is, say, an 8 hour cooldown for each memorized spell (which would make the system analogue to the one in Baldur's Gate), I still don't like the idea. As I see it, the only rason to do so was to remove the resting mechanic from that game, which arguably was really broken. the problem with resting in BG is that there is almost no consequence to it. The worst that can happen is a random encounter. However, the proposed solution is all about removing something of little consequence, instead of adding the consequence it should have.

 

People have mentioned this before, but if this game used game time as a resource,not only would rest become a whole lot more important and challenging, but the game overall would benefit from it. Have quests time out. Or change as time passes. If you take too long to rescue the hostage from the brigand encampment, not only will she be pregnant, but she won't want to leave. If you clean up the goblin tribe in the dungeon and then leave before going further, when you come back you may find the orcs from below (who were relying on the goblins before to gather info) have set up an advanced post in the upper floor and are now planning to attack a nearby city. You can even make the character decisions important to time. Like, say, if the character needed to find a water cleaning magic item for his home town, that has a limited supply of it. He might, along the way, find some merchants willing to sell water to his home town, buying the player more time! But in doing so, they might draw the attention of the evil super ogres, who would invade the player's town earlier than if he had let it remain hidden.

 

Also, I really want this game to have a huge variety of spells. I would like to find many different magics, each with a bit of backstory and personality of its own. I want to go about trying to collect them, understand them and interact with them.I also want them to have lots of strange a different uses. Much more than a combat tool, I want magic to feel as part of the world! This doesn't really have to do with cooldowns, but has to do with vancian magic. I want spells that, rather than feeling a niche (area attack spell with debuff, single person strong attack spell, strength debuff, speed debuff, etc), are more about their own thing.Delayed fireball wasn't a direct extension of the other attack spells in the game. It was thing int itself, that allowed for new approaches to be made to combat. It was, in certain ways, a game changer. I also would like for different dweomers to interact in interesting ways. For example, the protection from evil spell in D&D protected people from being mind controlled or influenced, but it didn't dispel these effects.

[TrashMan]

Cooldowns are the work of the devil.

 

Say no to them!

 

 

 

Also, why should mage usly only spells, constantly and without end? What is so wrong with mages using staffs, swords, crossbows?

Look at Gandalf - he rocks!

 

Magic being a potent resource to use sparingly IS what made it so awesome in D&D.

Edited October 2, 2012 by TrashMan

[bussinrounds]

When people spam rest in those old IE games, that is basically no different than a cooldown if you think about it.

That was a problem with the rest function being too easy to abuse though. It shoulds be more limited to certain areas ( would make the inns more useful and relevant) and have more sever consequences than being awoke by a few gibberlings that are so easily defeated anyway. They should also get some attacks off on you before you even have a chance to do anything if you're awoken from resting outdoors.

 

For the record, I'm for vancian over cooldowns, as I haven't seen/played a cooldown system that was good yet. Not a fan of staring at the little timers/bars instead of focusing on the action at hand. The games usually just devolve into 'press a button whenever it lights up' instead having to plan things out. That being said, maybe they can come up with something better than what's been done before in relation to cooldowns, but idk.

Edited October 2, 2012 by bussinrounds

[Lapsed Pacifist]

I'm not a fan of Vancian system (like many things in D&D it just doesn't make any sense to me). But neither am I a fan of cooldowns. So why not just use mana / fatigue system instead? It works fine for other pnp systems that don't use Vancian, so why can't it work here? Spells / abilities can then be balanced by how much mana they consume. And no mana potion chugging either - either they do not exist, are very rare, or have some serious side effect.

[TrashMan]

That was a problem with the rest function being too easy to abuse though. It shoulds be more limited to certain areas ( would make the inns more useful and relevant) and have more sever consequences than being awoke by a few gibberlings that are so easily defeated anyway. They should also get some attacks off on you before you even have a chance to do anything if you're awoken from resting outdoors.

 

Indeed. Fix the problem with rest abuse and you're golden.