Some Recent Thoughts Of Mine About Mages

[musashi]

[--Coin:  While I agree with the economy thing, I also kind of think this is a necessary evil for now.  Gemmed mages have a hard time making coin without it, there are not a lot of job opportunities, and there are no reasons for anyone else to want to support them in the current atmosphere.

I don't think mages need to be entitled to a large amounts of material wealth from their main guild choice. Why do mages need to make immense amounts of money? Nearly every class of mage is capable of sustaining themselves without the need for money at all ... there are subguilds for the ones who can't ... and there are subguilds for the ones who want to also have some economically profitable abilities to supplement their magick.

I don't see the connection between magickal mastery, and economic mastery that you seem to.

--Skilling up:  I agree that this is done super fast.  I haven't played a mage in a long time, though.  I do not know the ramifications of turning down this speed, but I do remember that it was purposely sped up at some point to combat some sort of problem, which might have been people not being appropriately afraid and instead hunting mages down (This is uncertain, just a recollection).  I haven't seen mages doing anything that would make me want this reversed in some time.  They actually seem...relatively tame right now, compared to what I'm used to.  I think mages for the past year or so have, with some exceptions, done a very good job.   And that's from someone who hates that this game has mages.  Heh.

I'm not sure about the specifics of this since it was all way before my time but I think the story goes something along the lines of:
Mage spells used to require many more fails to skill up.
It was adjusted to give them more survivability.

I'm not advocating for increasing the amount of times you need fail a spell as a mage to branch it though, so ... I'm not really in favor of messing with this correction made by staff in the years gone by.

[Desertman]

I would prefer if the ability to cast "nil" spells for "gains" was treated much the same way the "teach" command is.

You can only get gains from casting "nil" spells to a certain point. Perhaps the "journeyman" equivalent.

Once you reach a certain level with a spell, the only way to get better with it going forward is to go out and actually use it in the world at full effect.

This would make it so that certain people couldn't just sit and cast "nil" until they were maxed out in their offensive spells before going out in three to five weeks to start dropping bombs having never really risked anything for that power. I find people make smarter decisions/more realistic decisions about their characters when their power/status/level has required some real sacrifices to obtain. If you can just sit and cast "nil" to get your gains...who really gives a shit if you risk that PC? You can just make another "nil" God after if things go wrong.

(May already be this way. I don't know. I haven't played a magicker in many years.)

[wizturbo]

The risk/reward factor is still there for mages, but not with nil vs un.  It comes to mana regen.  Safe places tend to have shitty regen, less safe places tend (some being super dangerous) have insanely strong regen.  The differences are substantial. 

[MeTekillot]

Also Gemmed Seal Team Six can oust your "no risk" casting pretty easy.

[Eyeball]

I still like an idea which was proposed several years ago. Namely that as elementalists develop, they become hugely more powerful, but their spells also more general as they lose specific control. So a really powerful Whiran could summon up a sandstorm covering an entire zone, but not individually target someone for motion any more. So it would be like they're in the background, having broad influence on the mundane world, but not ganking (or being ganked by) individual PCs outside city gates.

[Is Friday]

I still like an idea which was proposed several years ago. Namely that as elementalists develop, they become hugely more powerful, but their spells also more general as they lose specific control. So a really powerful Whiran could summon up a sandstorm covering an entire zone, but not individually target someone for motion any more. So it would be like they're in the background, having broad influence on the mundane world, but not ganking (or being ganked by) individual PCs outside city gates.

I think this is a very interesting change. Unfortunately, that is not the way that magick is coded.

p.s. chaos mage ftw.

[musashi]

I still like an idea which was proposed several years ago. Namely that as elementalists develop, they become hugely more powerful, but their spells also more general as they lose specific control. So a really powerful Whiran could summon up a sandstorm covering an entire zone, but not individually target someone for motion any more. So it would be like they're in the background, having broad influence on the mundane world, but not ganking (or being ganked by) individual PCs outside city gates.

Yeah, I'm skeptical about how difficult that would be to code but as an idea that sounds pretty awesome.

[musashi]

I would prefer if the ability to cast "nil" spells for "gains" was treated much the same way the "teach" command is.

You can only get gains from casting "nil" spells to a certain point. Perhaps the "journeyman" equivalent.

Once you reach a certain level with a spell, the only way to get better with it going forward is to go out and actually use it in the world at full effect.

Qualitatively, this is basically what I was thinking in my original post. Several times in this thread already people have mentioned that they are against the idea of making mage spell progression slower because spending 10 RL days locked in an apartment spam casting instead of 5 isn't going to make anything more fun for anyone.

I totally agree. That's not at all what I was suggesting.

If for example, a mage currently has to fail a spell let's say ... 50 times before it branches (totally made up) ...
I'm not saying let's change it so the mage has to fail the spell 100 times.

I'm saying what if the mage had to get those 50 fails casting the actual spell instead of the nil version?
If it was a healing spell, they would have to actually find someone injured to get the chance to use it on (like the folks who want to train bandage).
If it was a damage dealing combat spell they would have to actually venture out into the wilds and use it on something they were trying to kill (like the folks who want to train archery/combat).
And if it was a perception spell or a defensive spell ... then fine, they could (sometimes) still practice it locked up in an apartment or a cave out in the woods in relative safety (just like the folks who want to train barrier, crafting skills, etc).

I think it would make the process of learning magick a little more dynamic, a bit riskier, and honestly ... more fun.

But, as was already pointed out ... not being able to cancel buffs you cast on yourself and having to wait in your apartment or outside a city for hours and hours until they wear off is a huge kill joy, and until that changes ... casting that stuff at nil to practice is a playability thing. 

[Jingo]

I never really had a huge problem with magick until I started seeing magick candy dispensers in game.

Seriously. How do we reward players for engaging the role through spooky mystery instead of magic star pickups?

[Delirium]

I'd rather mundanes be able to train a nil version of their skill, with objects like obstacle courses and training dummies.

Combat progression should be nudged toward where mage progression is rather than mage progression be nudged toward mundane.

As it is you need to sink a real life year into your characters to be "badass" and throwing that investment away on an antagonist (other than a mage) feels like an exercise in masochism.

[musashi]

I never really had a huge problem with magick until I started seeing magick candy dispensers in game.

Seriously. How do we reward players for engaging the role through spooky mystery instead of magic star pickups?

Tough question. I mean you can fake it, and other people can fake the reaction. But I think that the way magick is coded just doesn't lend itself well to mystery. You have a spell list ... you know exactly what spells you can cast, and they all have help files to tell you what they do. Aside from some of the rare epic things that you don't normally branch, there just isn't much mystery to the magick system after you've rolled through it enough times.

You know when LoD and I met in Tokyo, we talked about this same thing, and he shared some thoughts about what he would like to see in a magick system to preserve that sense of peril and mystery. I liked the way he described it.

IIRC, he wanted a magick system that was skill based, not spell based.

So for example let's say instead of a mage having a spell list as a krathi, they had a Suk-Krath affinity skill, and then the mood and spheres and power levels were all also skills.

To cast a spell, you would need to open up a channel between yourself and suk-krath, and then shape and fold that energy like origami into the desired effect by using the mood and spheres in the correct order.

Every mage in the game would have access to the full spell list available to their guild from the beginning. You don't branch spells, they are all there to be cast ... ...

But you don't know what any of them are. And you never know if there's maybe still one more incantation you just haven't stumbled across or figured out yet, or whether or not a previous "dead end" wasn't really a dead end but at the time you just didn't have the magickal strength and skill to evoke the thing that was supposed to happen.

And mixed in with the proper sequence of folds and shaping that lead to awesome spell effects ... there are explosively dangerous dead ends ... and how well you can fold, shape, channel etc without causing accidents depends on how well you've developed your skills.

It sounded unbelievably awesome when he laid it out. But it seemed fundamentally different from magick as it currently exists in Arm.  

[musashi]

I'd rather mundanes be able to train a nil version of their skill, with objects like obstacle courses and training dummies.

Combat progression should be nudged toward where mage progression is rather than mage progression be nudged toward mundane.

As it is you need to sink a real life year into your characters to be "badass" and throwing that investment away on an antagonist (other than a mage) feels like an exercise in masochism.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind that too much either. Parity between the two is my concern.
I like the mundane grind (where you have to actually engage the world) ... ... so eh ... I lean more in the other direction, but I'd take either one.

[nauta]

I never really had a huge problem with magick until I started seeing magick candy dispensers in game.

Seriously. How do we reward players for engaging the role through spooky mystery instead of magic star pickups?

Tough question. I mean you can fake it, and other people can fake the reaction. But I think that the way magick is coded just doesn't lend itself well to mystery. You have a spell list ... you know exactly what spells you can cast, and they all have help files to tell you what they do. Aside from some of the rare epic things that you don't normally branch, there just isn't much mystery to the magick system after you've rolled through it enough times.

You know when LoD and I met in Tokyo, we talked about this same thing, and he shared some thoughts about what he would like to see in a magick system to preserve that sense of peril and mystery. I really liked the way he described it.

IIRC, he wanted a magick system that was skill based, not spell based.

So for example let's say instead of a mage having a spell list as a krathi, they had a Suk-Krath affinity skill, and then the mood and spheres and power levels were all also skills.

To cast a spell, you would need to open up a channel between yourself and suk-krath, and then shape and fold that energy like origami into the desired effect by using the mood and spheres in the correct order.

Every mage in the game would have access to the full spell list available to their guild from the beginning. You don't branch spells, they are all there to be cast ... ...

But you don't know what any of them are. And you never know if there's maybe still one more incantation you just haven't stumbled across or figured out yet.

And mixed in with the proper sequence of folds and shaping that lead to awesome spell effects ... there are dead ends ... and explosively dangerous dead ends ... and how well you can fold, shape, channel etc without causing accidents depends on how well you've developed your skills.

It sounded really, really awesome when he laid it out. But it seemed fundamentally different from magick as it currently exists in Arm. 

Related: I was a little disappointed to find out that the spell words are pretty easily guessed.  Just making the spell words harder to brute force (make the possible combinations much bigger) would make things interesting.

[musashi]

Related: I was a little disappointed to find out that the spell words are pretty easily guessed.  Just making the spell words harder to brute force (make the possible combinations much bigger) would make things interesting.

I've never enjoyed the "guess the incantation" mini game Armageddon offers to be honest. It doesn't feel like I'm exploring magickal potential, it feels like I'm guessing someone's computer password. I know what the objective is, I know what I'm aiming to cast. And I know that if I don't get it right, nothing is going to happen. I'll utter some nonsense and try again. I just need to figure out which little combination will do that. Making me have to play this uninteresting game for longer would annoy me more than anything else.

As it stands, if I am playing a guild I have already played and thus have already figured out all the incantations for ... I largely ignore that game altogether and instead RP the elementalist as manifesting the new spell through some kind of catalyst, and afterwards knowing the incantation intuitively ... because seriously ... I'm not playing that mini game more than once.

The reason I liked the system LoD described is that in that setup, you'd have no idea what you were about to cast, or what was going to happen. Hard won experience earned through perilous trial and error would be your only candle in the dark.

[AdamBlue]

Create a skillset specifically for magickers called 'artifacting'

Make a dozen items, each one that reacts differently based on which spell it is 'imbued' with.

[Lizzie]

Related: I was a little disappointed to find out that the spell words are pretty easily guessed.  Just making the spell words harder to brute force (make the possible combinations much bigger) would make things interesting.

I've never enjoyed the "guess the incantation" mini game Armageddon offers to be honest. It doesn't feel like I'm exploring magickal potential, it feels like I'm guessing someone's computer password. I know what the objective is, I know what I'm aiming to cast. And I know that if I don't get it right, nothing is going to happen. I'll utter some nonsense and try again. I just need to figure out which little combination will do that. Making me have to play this uninteresting game for longer would annoy me more than anything else.

As it stands, if I am playing a guild I have already played and thus have already figured out all the incantations for ... I largely ignore that game altogether and instead RP the elementalist as manifesting the new spell through some kind of catalyst, and afterwards knowing the incantation intuitively ... because seriously ... I'm not playing that mini game more than once.

The reason I liked the system LoD described is that in that setup, you'd have no idea what you were about to cast, or what was going to happen. Hard won experience earned through perilous trial and error would be your only candle in the dark.

With very few exceptions I rarely had trouble figuring out the proper combinations. Most of them made sense, and you just had to check the published public documentation on magick mood and sphere to figure it out. Some of them were -not- so intuitive, and for those, I did have to just go down the lists and try each combo til I hit the right one. And a very VERY few only made sense when you realized that part of it wasn't a normal aspect of your element at all. Sometimes that took a nudge from someone else to give you a hand on that. The only thing missing from the docs, I think, is a reminder to mage-players that their spell help files only show up once they learn the spell, and that those help files ARE indeed available at that point. I had no idea they were until after I'd played my third mage. I think I even idea'd it at one point because I thought it was broken

Another suggestion would be to include in certain of those spell help files, a nudge toward "not expected on your element's spell list" so that people know that their attempts aren't hitting something that's broken, they're just not looking in the right place.

Regarding nil reach (again): it's a necessary part of the game as it stands currently. But have heart - it still will take longer to get results using nil than it will using something other than nil. As far as I can tell this has always been the case. People who have an opportunity to -not- use nil, will climb the spell tree faster than those who use it.

As for how long it takes - well that really depends on how much mana you have to start off with, and how your character's particular stats affect mana regen. If things rely on failure to improve, one might think that having a LOW wisdom would propel you faster, because you're more inclined to fail with a low wisdom than with a high wisdom. I haven't experienced this to be the case, but logic dictates that if you have to suck at something in order to improve, then suckitude is the key, not success. The better you are, the longer it takes. That isn't true, or at least I don't think so, and it's all code stuff so I really don't give a damn which one it is.

But - I've never had any problem taking a long-ass time to branch. Especially when I'm newly genned as a mage, and then at some point after I've started branching. There's a plateau, at least for me.

Yes, this can be only a matter of RL weeks. But consider that you don't have certain skills your character needs to be useful AT ALL until you branch those particular spells. So that's several weeks of NOT doing things using your most useful magely skills, because you just plain don't have those specific skills yet and are spending a lot of time trying to get them.

Compare with a warrior, who can use his most useful warrior skills right out of chargen. He won't be very good at it right away, but at least he can use them, and work on making them better.

[Desertman]

I think a huge part of a roleplay intensive perma-death game is the fact it takes a serious amount of time to get "good".

One of the major points to having perma-death in Armageddon is that when it is combined with required roleplay it FORCES people to make realistic decisions about the actions of their characters out of a fear of loss.

When you are playing a new character you will often take much greater risks in my experience because if you lose a six or seven day PC, who really cares? It was a fun short ride and you aren't losing  a lot. You aren't acting out of a fear of consequences most of the time.

When you have a RL year on a character, something in your mind changes. You have a serious sincere fear of loss now. If you lose that PC (assuming you still enjoy them at this point) you are losing a serious amount of work, time, and devotion. You start making decisions about what that character does as if they were really alive and really existed. You start treating them like real people. In real life people don't do stupid shit because they fear the consequences of their actions. In Armageddon in my experience you stop doing so much stupid shit when you start fearing the loss associated with your PC.

It's for this reason that I would prefer if magickers represented a much greater time investment than mundane PC's in terms of how long it takes them to get "good". I want those characters to be the ones, above all others, to make decisions based on a true fear of risking their PC's. I feel that fear makes people play more realistically.

I know when I played a mage last I could get to the point I could do some very serious damage in less than 10 days played so I didn't care if I lost the PC doing that serious damage. Why would I? I can just roll up another and have them back to the same point in 10 days played or less which is really nothing at all. They are throwaway characters with huge power able to make throwaway decisions for the lulz. 

[nauta]

Another suggestion would be to include in certain of those spell help files, a nudge toward "not expected on your element's spell list" so that people know that their attempts aren't hitting something that's broken, they're just not looking in the right place.

Actually, my thought was that we could make learning a new spell require some form of actual interaction / struggle, which would take RL time and IG effort to achieve.  For instance, you might have to seek out a higher-level mage, or even Oash or Templarate resources, to find out the words to a spell.  (I think the 'components' subgame works pretty well - there are enough of these, they are rare enough, and so on that you really -do- have to ask or spend a lot of RL time experimenting on your own.)

It'd be neat if the "paths" that new spells follow from would just randomly change every few years.

[Eyeball]

Actually, my thought was that we could make learning a new spell require some form of actual interaction / struggle, which would take RL time and IG effort to achieve.  For instance, you might have to seek out a higher-level mage, or even Oash or Templarate resources, to find out the words to a spell.

In other words, knowledge would be hoarded and most mages would never have access to those spells. Just like it was with certain other magickal knowledge, which has now disappeared entirely from the PC population.

[Fujikoma]

As neat as finding a mentor is, there's not enough players in the game to really support it as a necessary thing, not to mention they eventually either die or get stored. It's fun when it happens, but nothing that should be counted on. The idea of actually being able to FIND a senior mage of your element, or having to go to Oash, is significantly slanted to the gemmer population, which, is already kind of easy mode magicker, from what others are saying.

[wizturbo]

As neat as finding a mentor is, there's not enough players in the game to really support it as a necessary thing, not to mention they eventually either die or get stored. It's fun when it happens, but nothing that should be counted on. The idea of actually being able to FIND a senior mage of your element, or having to go to Oash, is significantly slanted to the gemmer population, which, is already kind of easy mode magicker, from what others are saying.

I don't see why staff couldn't  animate NPC masters of an element for this purpose if no PC is available, except I doubt that is something they want to support.  I personally feel that elementals should play a role in the advancement of elementalists...but again, requires staff support.

[Fujikoma]

As neat as finding a mentor is, there's not enough players in the game to really support it as a necessary thing, not to mention they eventually either die or get stored. It's fun when it happens, but nothing that should be counted on. The idea of actually being able to FIND a senior mage of your element, or having to go to Oash, is significantly slanted to the gemmer population, which, is already kind of easy mode magicker, from what others are saying.

I don't see why staff couldn't  animate NPC masters of an element for this purpose if no PC is available, except I doubt that is something they want to support.  I personally feel that elementals should play a role in the advancement of elementalists...but again, requires staff support.

... theoretically, staff could animate, yes. In practice, it is quite different. There have been times, in my personal experience, where wishing up for an animation to explain something encountered in the game world, or to sort out a particular situation, has had favorable results. Other times, there simply isn't the time and/or resources, I'm assuming, to have the mysterious old man explain exactly what this flag is supposed to mean. This would lead to some people, the less patient among us, wishing up repeatedly, which would likely be quite frustrating when they're trying to sort something else out. I don't view making animations necessary for some points in character development as a positive change, as it detracts from other areas where storytellers could be focusing on plots that you don't know are going down right now.

[Harmless]

if the requirement to cast at 'un' to improve were applied selectively to certain spells that it would be reasonable to expect a player to practice with them at un, then it's okay with me. But there are a few spells where you aren't going to see many opportunities at all to practice them that way, and funnily enough the heal spell is an example of that. When you enforce this requirement it might work for gemmed vivaduans but much less so for ungemmed ones. In the end I think it'd just be a pain in the ass.

If you want mages to interact more with others, forcing them to practice more in the open is one way, but thinking of interesting plot devices that would encourage them to come out and interact is probably more fun for everyone than removing a coded feature.

[wizturbo]

...the less patient among us, wishing up repeatedly, which would likely be quite frustrating when they're trying to sort something else out.

The notion of allowing any characters to wish up and expect anything is silly.  I meant scheduled stuff via the request tool, or out of the blue animations where they might catch a PC off-guard with the interaction.  I think the later is much, much more likely than the former, as these are inherently chaotic beings in the case of elementals.

[Marauder Moe]

Moe's thumbs up/down on various points skimmed from this thread:

I'd be OK with removing the 'nil' reach if combat evocations could target objects  In theory you should be able to shoot most of these spells at the sky, and the need for a N/PC target is a code limitation.  Otherwise, though, training/branching evocations is both excessively dangerous and destructive.  Sparring with evocations also seems terribly stupid without precautions that may not be readily available.

I'm against making the spell words more randomized.  Brute-forcing of spell words is already pretty silly, what would making that process longer really add to the game?

Likewise, forcing spells to be taught would be frustrating enough for gemmed mages, with the usually low gemmed population... how then could rogues or nilazis EVER reliably find a mentor?

I REALLY like the idea of making the spell tree more random, though.  Better still if some spells were "rare" and you weren't guaranteed to branch them at all.  Give mages some uniqueness.



Though some of my mages have done a lot of study/theorizing of spell words and their meanings, I think I would remove them entirely if I were re-doing elementalism code.  Elementalism is documented and usually roleplayed as an inherent, intuitive power.  Heck, lots of people play as though their power is barely contained and might spill out if they're not careful (though this is not supported by code AT ALL). 

I'd just make it "cast '<spellname>' <strength>", where strength could be a number (1-7) or a descriptor (weak, average, strong, max).

If we want to mix things up, maybe each strength has a random chance of being bumped up or down 1-2 levels in power (in addition to the possibility of outright failure).