Magic Mechanics that annoy you

[Ieo]

I hate wasting time looking for a safe spot to "rest" to get spells back so my dead-weight mages could be useful in the next fight. Strategically going through a combat scene thinking "I should save this for later--even though this demonknight critter is currently kicking my ass and half my party may die" is hardly good tactics either. But Josh is on the same page with that, so I'm good.

[Naesh]

It was a bit annoying in DA:O that there were not many spell-combos.... I wanted a magic mechanics which gives you (besides the usual spells) lots of simple, cheap and seemingly useless spells that you can put together in a certain sequence to get some mighty fine spell-combo.... all while heavily relying on common sense, of course.

Intelligence of the character could limit the length of the spell-sequencer he/she can use. And how many combos the character can keep in his/her head.

Edited December 11, 2012 by Naesh

[ReyVagabond]

O magic, how much i hate you!

 

Good grace this game has more than magic, with the hole Soul power and past lives thing.

 

Back to magic, i hate that magic is unbalaced and a Mage with his powers canot be touched by a warrior.

I hate that the melee fighters and what not are usualy gear dependent and mages are not, because they just need to consume their spells to compensate.

 

So considering that the mages are the most powerfull forces of the world is something i dont like. The grate heros and Warriors and conquerors of the world always where people with magical items, something and proves that magic is the core of the world. that magic is what makes the world go around.

 

Personaly i dont want this for the PE setting.

 

So as for Gameplay balance i want.

A combat system that uses the same resourses for magic and non magic users, like stamina. using magic consumes stamina, and maybe the more powerfull spells consume not only stamina but dimishes your maximung stamina, and on top of that maybe you need another resourse like having the spell memorized or what not.

buff spells that dimish your maximun stamina to keep them active are grate, to make you know you cant have them all on at the same time.

That Non Magic users can be as powerfull as magic users. for example You always know that the Tower of X mage was a dangerous place filled with good stuff, that steriotipe is something i hate, The tomb of a warrior could be as dangeours filled with grate stuff to, not magical but grate craftmanship. with power of the souls or gods but not magic per se.

 

 

and ill stop here for now, ill keep ranting later.

[specialagent]

I know this might garner me some hate but after all this is a cRPG - we need to use the fact that this is different from a pen and paper game and use what is available to us.

 

On the subject of buffs, I think that Guild Wars had a pretty neat system when it came to them. Assuming that we are using mana pools, then each buff could slowly deplete the mana pool over the period of time that a buff is sustained. More buffs means that the mana pool depletes that much faster.

 

Since that was an example of a magic mechanic that didn't annoy me, I guess I should post something more on-topic. I didn't see the point of using the Vancian system if it was an easy matter of resting 8 hours right after the fight. Don't get me wrong, I like the Vancian system, but if it is implemented, it shouldn't be trivialized by another mechanic.

[wanderon]

Frankly I don't see the issue people seem to have with the party resting after a battle to regain health, spells etc. isn't that exactly what a group of wounded people who's energies have been sapped by a brutal battle SHOULD be doing?

 

Is it just the idea that the mechanic seems too simple or that it doesn't require much player input to be accomplished?

 

I thought the IE games did a good job of making it dangerous to rest in the wild thus forcing a wounded party to make a choice between attempting to rest where they are or hiking off to a more civilized or safe area.

[anubite]

I agree buff effects shouldn't be shimmery bubbles of sparkling, but I can concede it's hard designing buff particle effects. But probably, buffs should be designed such that:

 

-Long cooldown

-Short effect

-Important, time-based effect

 

I think buffs should be more of a "use this under X circumstance" thing instead of a passive buff parade thing. Gameplay is more tactical when buffs are powerful but short lasting - a strong but very finite resource.

[Tsuga C]

Frankly I don't see the issue people seem to have with the party resting after a battle to regain health, spells etc. isn't that exactly what a group of wounded people who's energies have been sapped by a brutal battle SHOULD be doing?

 

Precisely. I have few qualms about "spamming" the rest button so long as it's not possible to rest in close proximity to enemies.

[Somna]

Frankly I don't see the issue people seem to have with the party resting after a battle to regain health, spells etc. isn't that exactly what a group of wounded people who's energies have been sapped by a brutal battle SHOULD be doing?

 

Is it just the idea that the mechanic seems too simple or that it doesn't require much player input to be accomplished?

 

I thought the IE games did a good job of making it dangerous to rest in the wild thus forcing a wounded party to make a choice between attempting to rest where they are or hiking off to a more civilized or safe area.

 

A lot of the complaints about rest-spamming wouldn't exist if it wasn't possible to just save and reload until you get uninterrupted rest. Unfortunately, options to reasonably limit that without going into an Ironman mode kind of playstyle would be considered draconian for a lot of the "It's a single player game, stop messing with how I want to play it" crowd at this point, regardless of if they are or aren't. For example, I doubt people would have liked the idea of, say, only being able to save if your party is at full HP, and I know there is some discontent about having designated "rest areas" in the game. (Although I'm pretty sure there has been designated no-rest areas in the IE games.)

 

Another point that gets brought up is that the player shouldn't be treating every battle as a "brutal" battle in the first place, but I think that's been rehashed enough at the point.

[Tamerlane]

Ambush-on-rest encourages rest spamming.

 

If there's a 10% chance of getting ****ed up by giant spiders every time you rest, then waiting until you're a couple giant spider bites away from dying and you don't have any spells (yes, I know PE doesn't use the old magic system) left to set up camp is a terrible idea. You want to rest as often as possible so you can trivialize the giant spider ambush.

Edited December 14, 2012 by Tamerlane

[Somna]

Ambush-on-rest encourages rest spamming.

 

If there's a 10% chance of getting ****ed up by giant spiders every time you rest, then waiting until you're a couple giant spider bites away from dying and you don't have any spells (yes, I know PE doesn't use the old magic system) left to set up camp is a terrible idea. You want to rest as often as possible so you can trivialize the giant spider ambush.

 

I did say a lot, not all. But I know I wouldn't rest spam in an area that was giving me a 90% encounter rate when resting, which honestly felt like a lot of the dungeons/towers/caves/etc in the previous games in my experience.

Edited December 14, 2012 by Somna

[wanderon]

 

 

A lot of the complaints about rest-spamming wouldn't exist if it wasn't possible to just save and reload until you get uninterrupted rest. Unfortunately, options to reasonably limit that without going into an Ironman mode kind of playstyle would be considered draconian for a lot of the "It's a single player game, stop messing with how I want to play it" crowd at this point, regardless of if they are or aren't. For example, I doubt people would have liked the idea of, say, only being able to save if your party is at full HP, and I know there is some discontent about having designated "rest areas" in the game. (Although I'm pretty sure there has been designated no-rest areas in the IE games.)

 

Another point that gets brought up is that the player shouldn't be treating every battle as a "brutal" battle in the first place, but I think that's been rehashed enough at the point.

 

And this saving & reloading is a problem to whom in a single player game?

[Ordis]

On 11/9/2012 at 1:03 AM, Ralewyn said:

I personally despise Vancian magic for being un-intuitive, unsatisfying, and requiring heavy amounts of bookkeeping, but most of all I despise it because Vancian magic demands the player make choices about their abilities for situations they have little to no information of. A choice that isn't informed in a game isn't a choice and it isn't fun or satisfying, it's just annoying. Local bookkeeping services vizit site company Your Books On Time.  Vancian magic explicitly punishes players for not knowing what the game is going to throw at them in a given dungeon or on a given adventure where unless they're reloading a save or using a guide they shouldn't know exactly what the game is going to throw at them. This makes Vancian magic even more of a problem in pen & paper RPGs, but I still find it really annoying in cRPGs for how its power usually scales and the kind of gameplay it generally encourages. As a 5th level mage in Planescape: Torment I've stabbed a good 200 times, and cast a good 10 spells tops. I'm not a mage, I'm a walking corpse with a knife that sparkles in a funny way every so often.

 

 

beautiful