Suggestion about Buffing Abilities

[Pray]

So I've been a lurker and occasional poster on these boards and I've read a few threads lately about how buffing abilities need to either be castable pre battle or they feel bad.

 

Well here's just a quick suggestion that may sway some others to like to keep it the way it is, balance pending, of course.

 

Give every buffing ability a more immediate and tangible effect, for example, if you cast a "haste" spell, it cancels the receiving targets next rest period, as well as it's usable effect. 

 

I think this is a great middle ground that prevents players from wanting to be able to pre-buff (yuck), while also not feeling like they've casted a spell without visceral, tangible, immediate benefit. In a high-paced game like PE, it's important that players feel immediate benfit from their spells.

 

Just food for thought. 

[BlueLion]

I think a better method would be to allow spells to used outside of combat but each spell increases the enemy detection range by a varying degree. Although, ultimately, I'm quite happy with the current restrictions.

[Sanquiz]

It will be nice if they let you make custom queries, so you can just click and ejecute the buffing for defense, the buffing for ofence, the buffing for undeads, etc.

[anameforobsidian]

It will be nice if they let you make custom queries, so you can just click and ejecute the buffing for defense, the buffing for ofence, the buffing for undeads, etc.

 

At that point, why not just have four different buffs?  At a certain point in bg2 buffs become inevitable, so why have a character do 14 animations and was time when they could just do one buff.

[Yonjuro]

 

It will be nice if they let you make custom queries, so you can just click and ejecute the buffing for defense, the buffing for ofence, the buffing for undeads, etc.

 

At that point, why not just have four different buffs?  At a certain point in bg2 buffs become inevitable, so why have a character do 14 animations and was time when they could just do one buff.

 

 

 The former reduces drudgery (similar to writing macro commands in software); the latter dumbs down the spell system (similar to putting the round peg in the round hole in a pre-school toy). Big difference. Huge.

 

 The idea, in case it isn't clear, is to be able to assign the spells that you want to use to a button so that you don't need to manually do all of the casts each time. Your buff 'macro' could bypass the animation sequence (or not).

[anameforobsidian]

If your complexity leads to drudgery then the complexity isn't valuable.  Sometimes concision, intelligibility, and simplicity are virtues. If you ever want to autoresolve part of the game, then that part of the game is not working.  There were a few generic buffs, like protection from evil, that it never made sense to not have up.  If any reasonable player will always have a spell up, why even make it optional?

 

Also, macros reduce the drudgery of multiple clicks, but they don't reduce the drudgery of sitting through five spell animations in a row.

[Stun]

Well here's just a quick suggestion that may sway some others to like to keep it the way it is, balance pending, of course.

 

Give every buffing ability a more immediate and tangible effect, for example, if you cast a "haste" spell, it cancels the receiving targets next rest period, as well as it's usable effect.

Your example works... for "haste" (Delterious Alacrity of Motion) because it's an offense-based buff. But it won't work for other buffs in this game because then they would become "Hard Counters", which is totally against the Josh Sawyer "nickel-and-dime = fun" philosophy.

 

It would be nice if, for instance, Arcane Veil worked like stone skin or even Shield and made you flat out immune to types of physical blows for its puny little duration. But nope. Can't have that.

Edited January 19, 2015 by Stun

[Stun]

It will be nice if they let you make custom queries, so you can just click and ejecute the buffing for defense, the buffing for ofence, the buffing for undeads, etc.

Just after the Kickstarter, me and a few other people flat out begged the developers in this game to incorporate Spell Sequencers/triggers/contingencies (which is how BG2 did your suggestion). But the response was a big fat NO. Edited January 19, 2015 by Stun

[Yonjuro]

If your complexity leads to drudgery then the complexity isn't valuable.  

 

 Cleaning a house is drudgery - never cleaning it will, at some point, show that it still has some value. Also, games need enough complexity to be interesting at all.  So I'm going to have to reject that as a general statement. However:

 

  Sometimes concision, intelligibility, and simplicity are virtues. If you ever want to autoresolve part of the game, then that part of the game is not working.  There were a few generic buffs, like protection from evil, that it never made sense to not have up.  If any reasonable player will always have a spell up, why even make it optional?

 

 Well, in BG2, you would always want to cast chaotic commands on your whole party. It protects against charm, domination, confusion, fear etc.

 

 The problem is that you can't. Early in the game you can't cast it at all. Later on, you can cast it once per day (it protects one member of your party) and it doesn't last a full day. You cast it only when you've scouted and found particular enemies. That's really the point. There is a strategic decision about which of a limited number of spells you are willing to cast at a given time. Some players find that interesting. A sequencer or other macro-like ability is an abstraction that keeps that complexity without having to repeat what you did last time you met, say, a bunch of vampires.

 

You are, of course, free to argue that the spell system should be simpler, but I don't agree. I still play BG2, long after there is anything for me to experience in the story, because there is more to figure out about how to use the spell system. The complexity is the reason why it is still interesting.

 

.. Also, macros reduce the drudgery of multiple clicks, but they don't reduce the drudgery of sitting through five spell animations in a row.

 

 As I mentioned in my earlier post, leaving out the spell animations is a possibility. I would make that optional so that new players could see when they have made a mistake (that is, layering too many buffs means that some of them will expire before the last ones are cast; it's another reason why the process can be interesting to figure out).

 

 And, just to make things clear: The ability to 'pre-buff' just means not having artificial restrictions on when you can cast the spells that you are able to cast. 

Edited January 19, 2015 by Yonjuro