Alternatives to Spellcasting

[Dresan]

I'm not in favor of anything that is locked behind staff intervention.

I agree with this, I don't like the mage class as far as gameplay mechanics goes, and prefer touched for RP purposes but despite that I rather not see them turned into a bundle of frustration for those that do enjoy them. I have utterly enjoyed seeing them out and about the game this season as they just try to live their best lives.

Which is why I feel coded 'quests' or 'gated' stuff is not really the way to go.  Anything requiring staff intervention is a recipe for disaster. And I've seen this stuff tried in other games, and it just leaves tons of people butt hurt on both sides of the fence.

Instead I really like the idea of promoting interaction. Forcing the mage to come out of whatever hole they are hiding from and find people to RP with. Find someone, anyone(it doesn't have to be a mage) they can trust enough to help them get to the next level, especially if its through a mechanic that leaves them very vulnerable.

Mages are supposed to be high karma classes, played by experienced players and while perhaps boring they are still the absolute easiest class to train to OP levels of power in the game. So creating situations where more RP and risk is required should not be a huge ask here.

[Nao]

I do think there's room to explore the stigma alongside the 'diving deep' on the element, that's still RP. Solo RP, thinks/feels, playing a character rather than a stack of stats and skills, should be something all Mages/Elementalists do, at least to some extent.

To clarify, my problem is that the current nudging seems to be all about the 'make up creative things about your element part' instead of the general RP part. You can absolutely play a living, breathing person who happens to be a magicker, practices magick, and is deeply shaped by that without extensively focusing on the details of your element.

[Down Under]

I do think there's room to explore the stigma alongside the 'diving deep' on the element, that's still RP. Solo RP, thinks/feels, playing a character rather than a stack of stats and skills, should be something all Mages/Elementalists do, at least to some extent.

To clarify, my problem is that the current nudging seems to be all about the 'make up creative things about your element part' instead of the general RP part. You can absolutely play a living, breathing person who happens to be a magicker, practices magick, and is deeply shaped by that without extensively focusing on the details of your element.

100% Agree!

[Feu de Joie]

I'm not good at finding unique, one step solutions that solve code problems that have persisted for 20 years, I don't know how I can contribute to the bulk of this conversation, but I'm going to contribute what I think is useful.


You fail the spell, you have a chance of skilling up that spell.

No one needs most of these spells. They are not useful, practical, and only serve niche functions. It seems like they were made by people who embraced an emoteless grind, and didn't quite have a system behind what they wanted 6000+ chars to do in the future. Just right then, at that moment in time, back then.



What if you failed a spell inside of a group of spells, and it gave you a chance of skilling up that spell?

What if there were spells in that group that had a point to cast?


I recently found a reason to cast a spell over and over, and provide an RP impact, while increasing my chances of finding rp interaction and a natural break for each of my emotes. I was /doing/ something, something with function and a result, so it didn't seem like spam casting, and it didn't feel like grind.


I was applying a magickal effect to a certain street, all along the street. ICly, it seems like that's illegal now, but, I had one spell that could function for all the above purposes. I have another spell that, ultimately, only very few people will ever see, even though I use it a lot. The rest, I don't need or use.


If you want me to use the first spell in my list, NPC's that could use that spell and queued up for it, or wandered about ignorant of it, those NPC's existing would give me a real big reason to constantly use that spell.


I use powertools all day, most days, and there are no useful, functional, applicable types of magick I can really think of. To spoil a mystery, but a completely fair and useless mystery to spoil, A rukkian cannot make rocks. I know! Most elementalists can make their element appear. Not Rukkians. Not, technically, Krathi. They cannot make a campfire or 'fire' object for crafting with magick alone.



Just throw a crap ton of new spells in there, ICly it's the elements trying to thrive, a surge against recent attacks, and if you can find out how to /group/ them, even better, because fails in one group will help that group branch a new spell or new group of spells. Without that code change, you'd still get a lot more emotes, RP, and interaction, a lot. And then, when you see that one player has taken their new skill list and went out to do things, emoted, made a realistic attempt at progressing in that magick, you'd see it on the street, in their bios, in others' bios, and on their skill list. When another player just continues to stay in one spot, spam cast their new group of spells, and it doesn't show up anywhere, anywhere at all, except their skill list, you know staff-side who to give more spells and who to trim spells from.

Can Karma not be the only reward for good RP? Could it be spells? Unique items? A special title as a Crafter? A surge of rumors about you? I don't know. I really don't, it's too complex a system and I'm too square in the middle of it without knowledge of the code to straighten it all out.






As to Halaster's Original ask:

-Anyone elementalist that increases the presence of their element should leave a visible trail to reward them by. Smash a thousand lanterns, gather polish and display a bunch of stones, make music involving your element's properties.


-More capture the flag points that when enough commands have been used on an object, or the room, a switch is flipped and a result is achieved.

-The construction of a thousand statues in the desert promotes shade and stone, but do a disservice to vivadu and krath, things like that.

-end of list

[helix]

I admit, I didn't read every post. But I do like to keep it simple:

But, for ease of coding, I'd just add another Reach, the learning reach. When you use it, you cast the spell once. Success or fail, it gives you a skill up. Totally removes the need for spam casting.

I love the words/places of power idea though, and would love to see more stuff in the game for explorers.

[Agent_137]

I'm glad to see this conversation. Not sure I'll play a mage regardless, but whatever gets folks engaged on the way up like you can with mundanes is good.

[Inky]

If you want to deal with spamcasting, just loosen the required grind for skill gains. This should be the very first item of consideration and not some tertiary mechanic that will gate players.

It's a chore. It doesn't feel good to do. It doesn't feel good having staff lurking in the ether judging you for it. And it doesn't even feel good coming up with a new limp-wristed emote to keep an audience entertained.

But for some weird reason it's a REQUIREMENT to get anywhere. The problem is right here. Just fix it.

(Not saying no to cool mage quests. Cool mage quests are cool. But they won't fix this particular problem.)

Edit:

and that every nil fail does not grant a skill up

This is unacceptable design. There's nothing about it in the helpfiles. I might have actually saved days played spamcasting on my 50 day sorcerer if I learned about this earlier.

There's absolutely no excuse coming down hard on players that are sick of emoting every cast and then letting them find out about THIS.

[LidlessEye]

I agree with Inky. Especially given that some may only be cast at nil, and that every nil fail does not grant a skill up, and that even a singular fail can take two dozen casts to achieve, being expected to RP each and every cast can get tedious. If I'm doing this all day, I will not have time to go interact with other PCs or wilderness exploration or plotting which are my favorite part of playing Arm.

That said, I would welcome spell quests as an alternative, alongside what is there, for those that would rather not grind and emote every arduous moment of it.

[LindseyBalboa]

Sometimes spell-casting is boring when you're trying to branch something.  Our expectation is that everyone playing a mage does not engage in "spamcasting" and roleplays all the time.  That said, we can all agree that sometimes that's hard because it can get monotonous and boring.

I've seen the idea floated a couple of times lately where a mage could do something to gain in a spell instead of casting, or at least have a chance to.

For example, a whiran goes to the top of a mountain where the winds are fierce and meditates there.  Or a vivaduan who spends an inordinate amount of time at an oasis.  Or a rukkian goes to some special stone pillar in the middle of nowhere and I dunno.. casts some spells on it.

I'd love to get some ideas on this from everyone, as specific or as vague as you want.  Please avoid mentioning specific spells or mechanics, but rather ideas on things mages could do.

in the meantime a quick fix suggestion:

cast/all

can't be used on offensive skills unfortunately? or if it can they can't be targeted
since it uses up all of a PC's mana it's not something to casually use out and about

what does it do: you cast a spell until you're out of mana. maybe just in one spell casting echo. it gives a lot more chances to fail at once and requires way less emoting about casting.

[LindseyBalboa]

maybe a mage could set a primary and secondary spell to concentrate on and those would increase accordingly when the mage was hanging out in their element?

in this suggestion the primary seems like it should raise up a bit slower than someone failing the skill twice in 24 hours would raise it, and the second a bit slower than that.

unlike learn, this is an 'either / or' situation because it's not an extra benefit for mages but an rp facilitation process imo. other skills could get fails and skilled up normally.

there's also the possibility of making the progression faster if the pc doesn't skill up other spells in the typical way? even if it were a noticeably faster that'd be way slower than traditional skilling since there'd only be two skills raised at a time so as an option i don't think it has a negative. and bonus it'd be nice for the times when you have those last two spells and you really don't wanna grind spells instead of rp.

tl;dr maybe a skill selection system that progresses two spells so a mage could learn spells even while solely roleplaying although at a markedly lower rate than grinding.

[AdamBlue]

+infinity to 'add a lot more spells'

Make an entire branch of utility-based spells that maybe the Touched are more expert in.

Neverburn: You cannot fail cooking skill checks while this spell is active. The food cooked while this spell is active is particularly delicious and is preserved longer than usual.

Campfire: You conjure a magical campfire in the room. At the highest level, it functions as a kiln. Gives bonuses to both cooking, clayworking, and provides light. Can maybe give a bonus towards setting up a campsite. Provides a special damage bonus when people ignite their arrows off of it.

-
Quench: Reduces someone's thirst. Provides a small buff that gives resistance to thirst for a while. Cures Krath-Sickness.

Conjure Bandage: A plant springs from the ground and can be used as a bandage by anyone. Bandage changes appearance based on location. (Aloe vera in the desert, thick moss in a cave, lichens in the forest, ect) Quality scales with power, and can cure some poisons as some excellent quality bandages are capable of at high levels.

-
Carry Voice: Allows your 'yells' to reach up to three rooms away in distance, carried on the wind. At highest level, screaming might cause an enemy engaged in combat with you to flee with a mild fear effect because you're so god damned loud.

Camoflauge: Changes you to blend in with the environment. When you're not hiding, you are incredibly obvious as your skin appears to be shifting. When you are, you get a massive bonus to hide to blend in with the environment. Does nothing for 'sneak' as the effect is disturbed upon moving, but doesn't detract either. Makes you a 'blur' without making you actually invisible.
-
Suregrip: Your hands become covered in an incredibly fine dust. Massive bonus to climbing, become extremely hard to disarm. Provides a bonus to 'forage' while active since it's easier to grab stuff.

Stern: You root yourself to the ground and cannot be knocked down by any means. Massive bonuses against being bashed, charged, trampled, subdued, or otherwise moved by other means (magick, ect). Effect ends when you move rooms.

-
Jolt: A dual-use spell. Acts as smelling salts to wake up someone who is knocked out due to stun or is immobilized due to focus loss. Immediately sets someone who is at below 1 hp to 1 hp.


Reflex: Provides a defensive bonus against ranged attacks in particular; They receive an echo that their hair 'stands up on end' when someone aims a ranged weapon at them. Sometimes gives false-positives out of nowhere, to keep them on edge.


-
Echo: Cast on a mundane item to make a shadowy copy of said item. Functions just as that item would, except it has a value of 0 and cannot be crafted, as well as being obviously magickal. The copy disappears after a while. As the copy is imperfect, doesn't work on delicate things like keys.

Ghost Hands: Provides a single-use bonus to steal; If caught, only reveals that 'their own shadow' was the one picking their pockets! Massively increases success of 'sleight of hand' tricks while active, such as 'latch'.

-
Devour: Cast on a corpse to immediately devour it to restore hunger and thirst, leaving behind a 'carcass' like an animal had savaged it. Prevents any negatives of cannibalism. Immediately triggers a 'blood splash' to cover your clothes in blood.

Pretend: Allows you to 'appear' as a certain type of elementalist, or a sorcerer to other mages senses, or as a completely mundane person under all but the most intense scrutiny, including casting messages.



These are just ideas. Sprinkle some fun, sort of useful spells in that gets people excited to slow down the progression of mage to the 'ultimate' spells.

[Usiku]

Those are so fun!

I do like where Dresan was going with the requirement for interaction between players. I'm not vibing with the 'meditating with a mundane' giving the mundane a positive effect though. If anything I would rather see it negatively impact the mundane. If the social cost is lessened (which it has been), then I do think we need to reinforce the danger and unpredictability of mages codedly to remind people why they are supposed to be scared of them.

[burble]

So..mana orgies for skillups? Maybe if you get a group of the same kind together like uh rave?
Secret vivaduan rave at the oasis..you know where (OOC 7pm EST)..only let friends know..

Next day 20 corpses found at an oasis. No idea what they were doing there. But the vivaduan temple seems mighty empty today.

It could encourage secret networking and add the danger of being found out/ambushed by enemies.

[Dresan]

I do like where Dresan was going with the requirement for interaction between players. I'm not vibing with the 'meditating with a mundane' giving the mundane a positive effect though. If anything I would rather see it negatively impact the mundane. If the social cost is lessened (which it has been), then I do think we need to reinforce the danger and unpredictability of mages codedly to remind people why they are supposed to be scared of them.

Haha! I was expecting this response.    This will be a slight derail but do my best to keep it on topic.

This has been the mindset of staff for a long time. However, the problem is that the onus for keeping things scary and feeling unpredictable has always been on the low karma option. All while the high karma options get a free pass and full benefits whenever some newbie wants to play with the cool kids. The other historic problem is that this made karma a gatekeeping tool reserved for those that staff have liked, and used to punish those that staff don't like, by depriving them of magick and magick plots.

For someone like me who does not like playing mages both magicik and magick plots have more or less never been something I've done, sticking mostly to playing Tuluk before was closed, and karma itself has always held very little value. However, it don't mean I dont want access to magick. With this season, all my concerns with karma have pretty much disappeared, what's that? People want to play back to back mages? Yaasss! I just love to see mages now just doing their best to fit in this season.

Joking aside, I know that staff don't want to see that newbie mundane fighter, teamed up with the vivudian healer and the oh so useful stalker/touched, before going off to enjoy some great adventures without a care in the world. But I don't agree that you should be punishing the newbie mundane in these scenarios, at least not in the same historic fashion. If staff wanted to code some random bad effects to beneficial spells they would have done so a long time ago, and can still do so now, but this would really ruin mages and magick, needlessly so to in my opinion.

Thus, I think magic resistance affecting beneficial spells draws a good balance, especially this season:

• Magic attacks by random magickers are extremely rare this season. There is less incentive to be hostile for the sake of being hostile.
• Mundane will have to think twice whether to accept a beneficial magick spell now or save it for when it may be more important
• Magick users will have to consider carefully the impact using beneficial magick spell will have on them from a safety(trust ain't cheap) and their own usefulness from a utility point of view.
• High magick resistance could add a small chance of beneficials spells ending prematurely every IC hour
• Defiler magic should be considered different and should only have half or no impact any magick resistances someone may have

Also, dwarves have existed in the game for a long time and they have never broken anything as far as gameplay goes. If tomorrow staff says that dwarves due to their high magick resistance now will experience high failures or reduced effects of beneficial spells cast at full strength...well that doesn't sound like a buff to dwarves me. Magick in these scenarios may not always be viewed by everyone in the same way but elementalism and magic would become more unreliable over time due to misuse, and in high stakes situation unreliable abilities are absolutely terrifying.

Finally, whenever making these decisions, the game should always be applying a mundane first policy. Mages already have a lot of benefit, a lot of power and have gotten a lot more this season in terms of RP, code, and plot. Magick character are played by more experienced users who are able to take more accountability for how they are viewed.

[val]

If the social cost is lessened (which it has been), then I do think we need to reinforce the danger and unpredictability of mages codedly to remind people why they are supposed to be scared of them.

I agree with codedly enforcing the danger and unpredictability of mages.

You know why muls are scary to me? Because they can pop off and murder you for no reason, and the player can't control it.

You know why mages aren't scary to me? Because we claim that magick is unpredictable and scary, but it isn't actually unpredictable and outside anyone's control.

I don't think that the code should make mages unintentionally cast spells or anything like that, but the act of casting the spell not having the intended beneficial result all the time, every time? I think that would make them scary and interactions with them feel less certain.

As far as the actual idea of noncasting ways to get spell skill increases, I'm for it as long as it isn't the same all of the time, every time. The moment that it's known that spending 1 RL hour around a glowing rock increases Rukkian power (and that will be known and shared), you'll see every Rukkian spending exactly one RL hour around that glowing rock. I'd like to see something like that be sometimes effective, sometimes ineffective, perhaps with a random chance to change from this area to that area, to reflect the unpredictability of magick.

I like to keep offpeak players in mind when considering things like player interaction, as well. Sometimes we would really like to interact with people and it just isn't possible. The game is already punishing enough being offpeak without codedly falling behind for reasons outside your control.

[Down Under]

+infinity to 'add a lot more spells'

Make an entire branch of utility-based spells that maybe the Touched are more expert in.

Neverburn: You cannot fail cooking skill checks while this spell is active. The food cooked while this spell is active is particularly delicious and is preserved longer than usual.

Campfire: You conjure a magical campfire in the room. At the highest level, it functions as a kiln. Gives bonuses to both cooking, clayworking, and provides light. Can maybe give a bonus towards setting up a campsite. Provides a special damage bonus when people ignite their arrows off of it.

-
Quench: Reduces someone's thirst. Provides a small buff that gives resistance to thirst for a while. Cures Krath-Sickness.

Conjure Bandage: A plant springs from the ground and can be used as a bandage by anyone. Bandage changes appearance based on location. (Aloe vera in the desert, thick moss in a cave, lichens in the forest, ect) Quality scales with power, and can cure some poisons as some excellent quality bandages are capable of at high levels.

-
Carry Voice: Allows your 'yells' to reach up to three rooms away in distance, carried on the wind. At highest level, screaming might cause an enemy engaged in combat with you to flee with a mild fear effect because you're so god damned loud.

Camoflauge: Changes you to blend in with the environment. When you're not hiding, you are incredibly obvious as your skin appears to be shifting. When you are, you get a massive bonus to hide to blend in with the environment. Does nothing for 'sneak' as the effect is disturbed upon moving, but doesn't detract either. Makes you a 'blur' without making you actually invisible.
-
Suregrip: Your hands become covered in an incredibly fine dust. Massive bonus to climbing, become extremely hard to disarm. Provides a bonus to 'forage' while active since it's easier to grab stuff.

Stern: You root yourself to the ground and cannot be knocked down by any means. Massive bonuses against being bashed, charged, trampled, subdued, or otherwise moved by other means (magick, ect). Effect ends when you move rooms.

-
Jolt: A dual-use spell. Acts as smelling salts to wake up someone who is knocked out due to stun or is immobilized due to focus loss. Immediately sets someone who is at below 1 hp to 1 hp.


Reflex: Provides a defensive bonus against ranged attacks in particular; They receive an echo that their hair 'stands up on end' when someone aims a ranged weapon at them. Sometimes gives false-positives out of nowhere, to keep them on edge.


-
Echo: Cast on a mundane item to make a shadowy copy of said item. Functions just as that item would, except it has a value of 0 and cannot be crafted, as well as being obviously magickal. The copy disappears after a while. As the copy is imperfect, doesn't work on delicate things like keys.

Ghost Hands: Provides a single-use bonus to steal; If caught, only reveals that 'their own shadow' was the one picking their pockets! Massively increases success of 'sleight of hand' tricks while active, such as 'latch'.

-
Devour: Cast on a corpse to immediately devour it to restore hunger and thirst, leaving behind a 'carcass' like an animal had savaged it. Prevents any negatives of cannibalism. Immediately triggers a 'blood splash' to cover your clothes in blood.

Pretend: Allows you to 'appear' as a certain type of elementalist, or a sorcerer to other mages senses, or as a completely mundane person under all but the most intense scrutiny, including casting messages.



These are just ideas. Sprinkle some fun, sort of useful spells in that gets people excited to slow down the progression of mage to the 'ultimate' spells.

Really creative awesome ideas!

[Dresan]

I like to keep offpeak players in mind when considering things like player interaction, as well. Sometimes we would really like to interact with people and it just isn't possible. The game is already punishing enough being offpeak without codedly falling behind for reasons outside your control.

I want to be sympathetic here.

I think temples could have NPCs that could help through some other means. But just like my indie cannot easily find a skilled enough sparring partner at 3am est, some rogue mages at that hour should probably be having similar difficulties.

That said, seeing part of your classes skills locked out, like enforcers often have with backstab/sap, is not great. Therefore, the at very least gaining and branching through interaction should the ideal but not the only means.

[Lizzie]

I'll clarify and simplify my previous post.  I'd rather see improved coded efficiency for spellcasting, instead of more spells, more hoops to jump through, more contrived roleplay forcefulness.

1) Make casting failures mean more, when a spell can branch into a new spell.
2) Make spell powers increase more frequently when casting in your character's element (a krathi on a hot clear desert, a vivaduan at an oasis, an elkrosan during a storm, and ALL gemmed mages in their own temples). ESPECIALLY from wek to yuqa.
3) Make mana regenerate significantly faster than it currently does, if you're casting in your character's element and/or temple.

[Halaster]

and that every nil fail does not grant a skill up

This is unacceptable design. There's nothing about it in the helpfiles. I might have actually saved days played spamcasting on my 50 day sorcerer if I learned about this earlier.

From the helpfile on 'nil'

While safer to use while practicing this reach tends to slow progress when compared to casting one's magick to full effect.

I'm not trying to "show Inky they're wrong, hahah!", just pointing out that it is in the helpfile.  That said, I cannot say when it was added so maybe the last time you played a mage it wasn't there?  Or maybe didn't read the helpfile (we're all guilty of that!).

[Inky]

The webpage gives no results for 'nil'.

The webpage gives back a result for 'magick reach' that gives basic information for each reach but nothing about skill progression. There's a note that gives information about a nested helpfile that is easy to miss.

The webpage does not give back a result for "help reach reach nil". In order to get to the helpfile I need to get on the server and check manually.

So Halaster is right. It's there if you go looking. But I've played this game for over twenty years and I've never seen it.

[Halaster]

So it seems this thread has diverged a bit from what I intended, but I don't mind.

Here is a a very broad list of criteria, or design elements, we want to see for any mage in the game (for this context mage includes Nilazi, Elementalist, and Sorcerer and does not include Templars):


1. The powerful/skilled ones should be uncommon
As it implies, the people who make it to the top end of their 'magickal career' should be uncommon.  Not everyone is going to become the MacDadddy spell-caster.  This works out because a lot of characters simply get killed before they reach this point.  I expect it will be a little easier on Season One since there's a ton more gemmed than there used to be, but even gemmed aren't immune to going out in the desert and dying to a scrab or something.  But more importantly, it should be uncommon because it is difficult to reach.

The subguild aspect mages are generally 'more powerful' on an individual level because mixing things like heavy combat with magick, as we have found out, is very strong.  This is partly why they're specapp only, to keep them much more uncommon.

2. It should not be easy to get powerful
We want to avoid having a lot of very powerful mages wandering around the world, as that can make it less fun for the non-mages sometimes.  Plus, that's just the "vision" of the game overall, powerful beings are not common.  This also means that when someone does become powerful, it's a bit of a big deal and special.

3. There should be a 'cost' to being a mage.
How much of a cost has changed with Season One, but there still is a social cost, particularly for nilazis and sorcerers who are illegal.  The other cost is that you're weak in other areas such as combat.  Also... more to come [redacted].


Notice that none of the criteria of these are "balanced" or "fair".  Armageddon's game design is such that magick is not meant to be equal to non-magick, it's not even meant to be equal among the different types of mages.  The imbalance is part of the design.  That said, there is a limit to this.  We don't want it to be too imbalanced or unfair.  It's just that "keeping balance" isn't high on the list of design elements.


Why do I say all this?  Because, I'm hearing a lot of "magick is too grindy, it's no fun", which I get, I've played them too!  But as staff I can tell you that we see over, and over, and over that mages are by far the quickest to get "skilled up".  So the challenge we have is how to keep it so that becoming powerful as a mage is difficult and uncommon, yet possible, while keeping it fun for the player.

Granted, what is fun can be rather subjective.  I always really enjoyed the grind of a mage, because I really found a lot of fun in the exploration of magick as a character.  That doesn't mean every session of practicing spells was great and enjoyable, but as a whole the process was fun to me.

So what I'm trying to achieve are ways to do this.  To make it more fun for players, but keeping the powerful/skilled mages as uncommon and difficult to obtain.  That was the goal of this thread, to come up with alternative ways to grow their power.

I like some of the ideas coming, there's some that I never considered such as the idea of gaining in 'groups' and not just one spell at a time.  The aspects of each element are probably ideal for this grouping.  I'm not personally fond of ideas that are simply "Make mana regen faster" or "make things increase more frequently", though, because that's counter to what we're trying to achieve.

[Halaster]

The webpage gives not results for 'nil'.

The webpage gives back a result for 'magick reach' that gives basic information for each reach but nothing about skill progression. There's a note that gives information about a nested helpfile that is easy to miss.

The webpage does not give back a result for "help reach reach nil". In order to get to the helpfile I need to get on the server and check manually.

So Halaster is right. It's there if you go looking. But I've played this game for over twenty years and I've never seen it.

We have a thing where certain helpfiles are only available to you if your character has those skills.  Reaches, spells, and psionic powers are the main ones like that.  When I did help reach reach nil in game I forgot about that, that's why you can't see it from the web, my bad.

[Windstorm]

Well! It certainly sounds like branching has been made tediously long, while spamcasting is perhaps even less fun than sparring since it's not even in itself interactive and the players of mages are expected to emote and roleplay out what amounts to the same action possibly taken hundreds of times in detail.

And that's the rub! There has to be some way to make it so the gatekeeping mechanic is not "spamming the same action possibly hundreds of times." That has long been the complaint about fighting PCs and sparring, and strangely, as a solution, it was applied to mages. The intentions were good, and make sense! But becoming a big deal and powerful has instead fallen to people willing to codespam which was not the way. People who put roleplay first will now be the weakest and least-relevant in these ways.

Making powerful mages rare isn't going to happen via this, it's just timegating them behind how willing they are to not roleplay for the first (tens? hundreds of?) hours of their experience, which runs absolutely opposite to a roleplaying-intensive environment. Really think about thatg: the people who are willing not to roleplay and instead sit there spamcasting or just have limitless hours to play are going to be the most powerful. I don't think anyone wanted that, staff included.


IDEAS:

1. Introduce a Learn-esque mechanic which automatically branches a spell off of another spell chosen. In conjuction with bringing back Subguilds, this could be exclusive to full mages or even just Gemmed mages, or Subguild mages could use it less often. If you like, make it on par with the expectation of the Teach command also, where someone should be communing with their element in some way in order to use it. How often can it be used? Twice a week? Three times? Maybe something can be done to refresh it also, like using live spells on others - this implies there's interaction going on.

2. Bring back Subguilds. Mages can suddenly do more stuff with their time than spamcast. Removing subguilds to the point that they were (stat reduction AND special app only AND really harsh skill limits on par with the incomparably more powerful sorcerers) has basically meant every mage is now a magick-only PC. I don't know how they're doing it. It sounds like misery. There's a reason this game introduced subguilds in the first place. More options? Sure, bring back full guild mages and give them their own advantages! Exclusively more boring options to most of the playerbase? No, no, no.

3. Give mages more direct need and involvement in ongoing plots, with opportunities to empower them via story and roleplay. These are your higher-karma players. Have them earn and display it through roleplay. Sequestering them into hundreds of hours of grind does not make sense. Put them onstage instead.  Put more stuff in the world only they can interact with or benefit from, and encourage them to go out and find it.

4. Make mages able to steal each others' power! Make mages rare via a fucking Highlander mechanic. This would be neat but does have a potential for abuse if we're not careful, but I'd love it and I know y'all love some dead mages, so.. anyway.

5. Some combination of the above and... radical idea, drumroll please... literally remove branching via spamcasting. Other means will have to be made easier, obviously.

[Halaster]

Sequestering them into hundreds of hours of grind does not make sense.

I think you missed one of my points earlier (and maybe haven't played a full guild yet?), but this is not the case.  Magick is one of the -easier- things to gain and get good at.  Combat at least requires you to risk your life by fighting.  Sparring accidents happen, after all.  Crafting is kinda easy too, but it at least costs you money to get materials (or hunting if you can self-supply, which has risk).  A mage can sit around in safety and just cast until they're powerful, in a reasonably short amount of time (compared to others).

[Windstorm]

I mean just from posts on these boards I've been able to tell that - unless this has changed - some Gemmed mages can't even get into parts of their own temple without pouring (probably at least tens) of hours into branching a certain spell.

The Armageddon scale of time investment into fun in this way in particular is, I must stress, not normal. I'm a little concerned that the staff not playing their own game sometimes removes this perspective.

A fighting PC doesn't need to be able to kill a mekillot before they can go out and kill scrabs. For a mage, it's almost an on/off switch in a lot of cases, and the way that on/off switch is currently functioning is behind days worth of often non-interactive spamcasting.