Post:Magic 3.0 Goals - 1/16/2010 - 11:37:38

Magic 3.0 Goals · on 1/16/2010 11:37:38 AM	11559
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
This message was originally posted in Abilities, Skills and Magic (4) \ Magic - Suggestions, Discussions and Thoughts (16), by DR-ZEYURN on the play.net forums.