Magic 3.0

Below are a collection of posts that detail some possible features of Magic 3.0.

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In the interest of communication on such a big systemic change, I'm going to post basically our full list of goals for yon new world, since right now you're all basically guessing a lot. There's still some stuff missing but I've hit my typing limit.

- Eliminate the tier system. Spell potency determined by type and guild 'sphere of influence'.

What we mean by 'sphere of influence' is basically something like: When you think of Moon Mages and hiding, this fits the aesthetic motif of the guild. This does not strictly mean skillset. For example, Warrior Mages could still have a thematic link to the shield skill.

- Spread spell ranges out over a wider array of skill.

Potentially up to 1000 ranks for many skills. This doesn't mean we want spells to be less effective for most people than they are now, simply that we want to create further avenues of growth by doing things like not requiring a capped spell to cap potency but allowing duration to extend longer. Or potentially provide a third benefit besides duration and potency, but we're not sure what here (option for you to suggest!)

- Disallow any spell ever becoming stochastically dominated by another spell in the same guild arsenal.

If you don't understand stochastic dominance, basically it means don't let spell B do everything spell A does but better.

- Rebalance our current method of teaching PM/HA in a way that discourages casting the same spell over and over in favor of using a variety of spells.

We will change this to make casting any individual spell teach much more, but degrade teaching severely to a lower bound for casting the same spell over and over, emphasizing more natural casting instead of sticking to one 'best' spell. We're going to be watching this closely for newbies with few spell slots to not screw them, and we're going to make sure all spells can teach adequately at any rank (although some may still be better on the initial casts).

- Split our largest spells into multiple smaller spells.

There are very few spells that will receive this treatment and I'm not going to name them ATM.

- Bard Enchantes & Held Mana: We don't do much with held mana right now, and how it works is kind of flaky in the first place.

We are going to change Bardic Enchantes and Held Mana to the same type of spell, that works basically exactly as Enchantes do now. A spell that takes effect and has a recurring power cost, and only one can be utilized at any given time.

Bardic spells of this style will remain the best as the thematic thrust of their guild will stay primarily on enchantes. (They will also get a side spellbook of normal spells). Cleric held mana can still utilize the orby, but I have some long talks with Grejuva about how we want to handle Cleric held mana since the understanding has always been in exchange for the orb their held spells are crappy.

- Magic Resistance: Passive Magic Resistance is going to go away for PCs and most types of NPCs. (Undead MR is TBD, for example)

Resisting Magic will require active abilities, and magic resistance on an AoE spell will impact the spell's potency only for each individual resister. So, if you are a bard casting an enchante, a sudden group of people with barriers can never make your spell collapse, and resisting people do not decrement the spell power for each subsequent target. This also means obviously that MR does not get contested on people spells don't affect. All guilds can have these active abilities, so for example it's planned Barbs will have the functionality by the time Magic 3.0 comes out.

- Tighten what mana ranges mean.

What I mean here is that I want much less of a difference in harness utilized between a 'vague' room and a 'blinding' room, in a way that probably is going to nerf blinding and the uppermost echelons and boost the lower spectrum dramatically. Our current plan is that casting be somewhere around triply effective in blinding compared to vague.

- Change the harness scale.

This is vaguely backend but since you can see the numbers anyway I see no reason not to say the plan is to change your base amount of harness to '10000' instead of '100'. This will allow your harness pool to raise with every magic rank and avoid terrible rounding in the magic system, and we will let magic primes raise slightly faster than second than terts.

- Examine the mana usage scale in general.

We want Harness Ability to play much larger of a role in mana efficiency. This is mathy and treads into NDA territory so the most I'm saying is that we want cambrinth to be always more efficient than 'held' mana and straight prep to be the least efficient.

- Instead of tiers, we define spells as types which has nothing to do with prerequisites. Types of spells are 'introductory', 'basic', 'advanced', 'esoteric'.

== Introductory - These are the simplest thematically defining spells for the guild in question. Clear Vision, Fire Shard, Protection from Evil, etc. A magic user must choose an Introductory spell as their first spell, but they are not different from 'basic' in function or potency. These spells, when cast by another guild, will use a cost schema of 'basic' instead.
== Basic - Simple magics that typically perform a single useful function. Easy to cast and don't take as much mana. Bless, Shadows, Aether Lance or Lash, etc.
== Advanced - More major magics that either do multiple basic things at once or take magic to the next level by performing more advanced feats such as DFA or a minor AoE. Static Discharge, Burn, Teleport, etc.
== Esoteric - High level magics that perform powerful utility or combat functions. Take a lot of mana and skill. Moongate, Fire Rain, Murrula's Flames, etc.

It should be noted that 'higher level' magic does not mean stronger buffs or attacks, the stuff you do at different types of spells is fundamentally different. Thus, all straight damage TM should be functionally similar, they should just attack with different physical/elemental attributes or have a slightly different side quirk.

- Prerequisites must still exist for spells but should fulfill thematic functionality instead of determining spell potency. For example, Spiteful Rebirth requires a knowledge of how to mend a corpse so it requires Necrotic Reconstruction (among other things).

-Z

From DR-ZEYURN on 1/16/2010 11:37:38 AM entitled Magic 3.0 Goals. http://www.play.net/forums/messages.asp?forum=20&category=4&topic=16&message=11559

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>>It's always been a pet peeve of mine with regards to FS vs Fireball. What's the practical difference?

Part of what's going on here is that back when Magic 2.1 and the idea of Global Caps were introduced, there was this notion that the global cap was something that should be sacred. Spells and abilities should not just immediately be at the cap (or even ever be able to cap), but instead that should define a limiter under which every ability in the game should fit, as best determined by an enlightened Guild Guru/Advocate under the eyes of an all knowing and ever attentive core systems / administrative staff.

This idea may have worked in another time and another place, but here it immediately fell on its face and went "Durp durp."

Our new schema is fairly simple: we assume any spell a guild gets is going to be "at the cap." If Empaths get an Escaping bonusing skill, then we assume that spell will be the pinnacle of what we want Empaths to boost Escaping to. From here is born the idea of "spheres of influence," where we say that, for example, Hiding is a skill that the Moon Mages should focus on, but not the Clerics, then the Moon Mage hiding boost should be stronger than the Cleric hiding boost (which may even still remain 0).

TM will work largely the same way. While guilds may have different spheres of influence within TM, within the same sphere a spell shouldn't be fundamentally weaker and stronger than the other. If Aether Lash and Aether Lance do the exact same thing, but one completely dominates the other, what is Aether Lash except a waste of a spell slot?

For TM specifically, we want the diversity of TM to be based on two things.

1: Aesthetics. If you're a weeeeeevil Tezirite that wants to use the dark shadowy magic of Dinazen Olkar as your thing, you should not be disadvantaged over the weeeeevil G'nar Pethian that wants to use Partial Displacement instead. The core functionality should be the same, but with variety for flavor.

2: Widgets. TM spells should be doing different types of damage, and have different little quirks (DFA, AOE, multi-shot) which make having a full suite useful for something other than scaling the tiers to your one, true 4th tier killer.

If a TM spell doesn't meaningfully fulfill one of these roles -- if its only meaning in the game is a stepping stone to a "higher tier" spell of exactly the same thing -- it should stop existing.

-Armifer "In our days truth is taken to result from the effacing of the living man behind the mathematical structures that think themselves out in him, rather than he be thinking them." - Emmanuel Levinas

From DR-ARMIFER on 1/16/2010 1:09:47 AM entitled Re: Magic 3.0 Goals. http://www.play.net/forums/messages.asp?forum=20&category=4&topic=16&message=11602

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The following is a conceptual overview of the new Sorcery skill. Please bear in mind that everything is subject to change as we move forward: I present this for purposes of feedback and to provide you with information about our plans, not as a guarantee that everything presented here is written in stone.

Sorcery is the skill of casting spells that are "off frequency" for the caster, as defined by their guild. For example, a Moon Mage casting Bless is off frequency and uses the Sorcery skill, but a Paladin or Cleric can cast Bless with just their Holy Magic ranks. All sorcery is considered, well, Sorcery, though Necromancers are able to cast spells from the necromancy subset with Arcane Magic instead.

Your Sorcery ranks will have three effects:

1) It serves as an alternate primary magic skill for any off frequency spell. Keep in mind that in most cases, "frequency" is a broader concept than "guild." A Bard would use Sorcery to power Clear Vision (a Lunar spell), but use Elemental Magic to power Fire Shard (an Elemental spell, even though it is not taught by his guild). If there is an extreme difference in skill, a fraction of your PM and Arcana may be used in place of Sorcery, though with none of the other benefits listed below.

2) It reduces the chance of a sorcerous or necromantic backlash occurring.

3) Clerics, Moon Mages and Warrior Mages will need to meet minimum Sorcery requirements to permanently learn their guild-based sorceries.

Sorcery is by definition a MU-only skill: it is the skill of casting outside the magician's frequency and is irrelevant for characters that do not have attunement. NMUs cannot learn or teach Sorcery.

Sorcery cannot be directly taught. Instead, if you listen to a primary magic class outside your own specialty, it will award you Sorcery ranks rather than feed into your primary magic. For example, an Empath who listens to an Elemental Magic class will gain Sorcery.

-Armifer "In our days truth is taken to result from the effacing of the living man behind the mathematical structures that think themselves out in him, rather than he be thinking them." - Emmanuel Levinas

From DR-ARMIFER on 1/17/2010 5:28:24 PM entitled Sorcery Skill. http://www.play.net/forums/messages.asp?forum=20&category=4&topic=16&message=11652

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>>Finally, a separate question: What are the plans for Enchantes 3.0? Will it come out before/after/concurrently with Magic 3.0? Will the coding guts be related in any way?

Concurrent. One of the major features of The Plan that Zeyurn will discuss in full detail is bringing the work of Magic 2.1 to its conceptual limit and fully integrating enchantes into the core magic system. There will no longer be an "enchante system" running parallel but disconnected to spells.

-Armifer "In our days truth is taken to result from the effacing of the living man behind the mathematical structures that think themselves out in him, rather than he be thinking them." - Emmanuel Levinas

From DR-ARMIFER on 1/16/2010 1:09:47 AM entitled Re: Magic, the Squishy Bits. http://www.play.net/forums/messages.asp?forum=20&category=4&topic=16&message=11545

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