Alternatives to Spellcasting

[zealus]

What about...

Roleplaying magickal research, communing with your element ect...
Gives you bonusses.
Maybe a setting you toggle, which pings to staff
[Communing]
*basks in the sun in the red desert*
+on magickal skillgain for x amount of time or something.

And then either staff can request logs, or they can actively observe if people toggle this.

Perhaps the communing tag slowly drains mana, and it's more effective in more magickal places...

Maybe the communing tag also means that staff is free to drop magickal bullshit(tm) on that player's head, to deepen their connection with the elements.

If people abuse this...
Well.
Magick classes are Karma required.

[Dresan]

...

I like your idea a lot.

The only issue I see here is some mages with travel abilities or buff abilities would have a clear advantage, unless the bad things are made bad enough. It would make it much harder for the mage who didn't get the largest group to complete.

And it would potentially turn these events into blood baths, as groups compete for the same spot. A mage will need to be killed to save the spot for another mage, instead of just knocked out and item stolen. It would be a capture the hill PK event.

I believe my idea has some of the same issues as yours but those issues seem to be dialed up to 11 within your idea. I do still like it, especially in regards to group bloodbaths.

[Windstorm]

There really isn't a catch-all solution that will be perfect, we have to accept that perfect is the enemy of improvement in this way.

So the only real question to ask is: what will create or at least enable more (non-contrived) roleplay and still be accessible to players of all knowledge levels without a requirement or encouragement towards metagaming?

I still advocate chiefly for a simple "spellbranch" style learn command and the restoration of magick subguilds. These are relatively simple low-labor solutions that achieve the above, I feel.

[Halaster]

So the only real question to ask is: what will create or at least enable more (non-contrived) roleplay and still be accessible to players of all knowledge levels without a requirement or encouragement towards metagaming?

That sounds like a great idea for a new thread, I'd encourage you to start one, I think that'd be a valuable topic.  However, the subject for this thread is: "alternatives to spellcasting instead of spamcasting".

[Windstorm]

I have to politely discourage you from attempting to assume and do the job of moderators in this thread, Halaster. That's why we have a moderation team, afterall! Let's try and keep this on topic!

That said, I believe my spellbranch idea is along those lines. It's a clear alternative to spamcasting for progression.

[titansfan]

I think ADDING new ways to do it is cool.  But REMOVING/REPLACING isn't the answer to many things. Maybe have a flag that says "Yes, I want to play vision quest." Then staff can work with that if they want/can would be a good idea. As well as, maybe learning points unlocked as you spend time doing other stuff besides nil casting.

[Lips]

I mean, that was part of it. It was also that it's the wind temple and 1 room, which requires climb or <magical means> to access, is the only room in the entire temple that even has access to 'the wind'. It's the top room. The one that requires climbing or that thing that you no longer start with. How can you 'immerse yourself in your element' in your temple if the only room that accesses it is one that falls still behind requiring climb or branching to reach.

Used what you thought you needed to spamcast and no issues getting there from day 0. If you approached this like "I want to go there and I don't want to have to do X" which is what it seemed like from your other posts, you may self-exclude from a solution readily available.

[Bogre]

So, I think that making it trivial or quick to skill up mages is not really ideal, and that potentially one problem is that the way to do so is particularly mind-numbing and requires constant repetition against very low percentage events. It's a lot less problematic for things that you would use routinely in the course of gameplay, but there are some utility spells (and utility is great, don't get me wrong, more utility!) that just don't come up that often as necessary, so using them to branch tends to feel very contrived, but in some situations may lie the path to something intrinsic to the class. Some spells are dangerous to use, and it sounds like a stumbling block may have been nil casting being very difficult to skill with.

The more major issue, I feel, is that mages are very much spell-lists rather than, and that 'mage gameplay' is essentially gated behind branching out that spellbooks. A scout PC, for example, has very limitations in being able to go out and engage in nearly every aspect of things that they could do - fighting, hunting, scrounging, etc. A pilferer rolling into the ringth can go out and start to pilfer. New mages have a very difficult time of 'going out and mage-ing'. A mage has a very anemic set of other skills, so new mage characters are left with the choice to try to use those to survive as they immediately start working on the gameplay that's locked behind brute forcing skill improvements.

Compounding this is that full guild mages now start with 5 spells as opposed 6, previously, and because one of those slots is reserved for a very cool and flavorful spell that is shared between elementalist classes, there's actually only 4 unique 'elemental' spells compared to the historic 6.

I think that you could work to achieve the time and effort requirement to become powerful and skilled (and this is analogous to mundanes and weapon skills, etc, you don't want EVERYONE to be maxed and awesome with minimal effort), but decrease the drudgery. Whilst non casting ways could certainly decrease spellcasting grind, if its not limited in some way you -will- have people maximizing its use and branching super fast.

> Nil and Qntlz should probably afford some kind of chance to skill up, or if they do right now, a more egalitarian rate when compared to un, because failure is a low-chance event anyways. You could have it skill up 1/3rd of the percent gain of an un fail, or make the timer thrice as long.
> You could make starting casting skills lower, and spells branch at lower skill instead of closer to mastery. That way, you might really be fizzling a lot of spells, and finding the first tier of new spells fast, but at the cost of having to practice further to really 'master' the element.
> You can do the above, and then even tier it such that tier 1 spells gain 4 points from novice-apprentice, 3 points from apprentice->journeyman, 2 points advanced, and 1 pt at master, and tier 2 spells gain 3 pts novice-apprentice, 2 points apprentice-journeyman, and 1 point advanced->, tier 3 spells gain 2 points novice-apprentice, 1 point from journeyman->, Tier 4 (if thats a thing?) -> crawls at 1 pt.


> The starting off / defense of mages should probably be examined. Has it been changed from before, in line with the increases that other guilds experienced? Should it gain at a slightly higher rate (like, say, at the rate of a miscreant or pilferer?)
> Consider giving mages some slightly more generic skills to start with or branch at low levels so they aren't just walking spell-lists. Flee, rescue, climb, heck - probably give them a weapon skill at a lowish level (piercing weapons or bludgeon)
> (de-nerf aspects)


----

[Twilight]

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.

It used to be in help magick reach. My first magicker was I think in 94 and it was evident enough in the helpfiles at that time that my assumption ever since then is that it would not progress as well with nil as with un.

[Stuff about starting spell numbers that I am not sure if it is kosher to talk about, so I won't compound it here]

Before subguild mages it was 6.  From my first magicker in the 90s until not sure when, it was 4, which is even more historic because it is older!

[Twilight]

1. The powerful/skilled ones should be uncommon
2. It should not be easy to get powerful
3. There should be a 'cost' to being a mage

I can agree that spamcasting is a problem, in terms of 1, 2 and potentially 3.  The entire system is designed in such a way that tap the enter key, tap, tap, etc. until out of mana, rest and repeat becomes not only the most efficient way, but the way that most respects the player's time.

In the early 90s, fails for elementalists worked differently, the same as sorcerers in terms of fail rates. While that made it easier to get fails in order to progress a spell to branching, it also meant that you needed to spend time to get a spell effective, above and beyond the power aspect. I like that you come out of the box at least able to do a little bit, rather than just fail at stuff.

If we assume the fail rate is constant at some rate, then the incentive will always be there to just tap, tap, tap. If you want to disincentivize spamcasting, you have to disincentivize the taps. You could put timers on each spell for when it was last cast.  If fail rate now is 20%, you could make it so that within a minute after casting a spell fail rate is 0%, each minute it adds 1% until it is back to 20% when you haven't cast that spell at all in the last 20 minutes.  That would also drastically slow progression, so I guess a pro to 1 and 2, but probably not be fun.  Although you might let the chance go up, so it increased say to 30% to compensate.  At least then I wouldn't be failing three spells of doom back to back to back when trying to kill a scrab when I really needed it.  It could make casting spells you haven't in awhile really annoying though.

An effective solution, to me, would need to disable tap, tap, tap as the most efficient method of gaining, while maintaining the integrity of progression, and potentially increasing 3.

Here is my idea of an effective solution. Track when spells were last cast. After a spell is cast, next time it is cast within a minute, only 25% of the base rate to fail, 50% between 1-2 minutes, 75% between 3-4 minutes, back to full after four minutes.  Or something like that. For all reaches. Potentially change nil to always learn. Remove incentive to tap, tap, tap until you get a failure.

Sorcerers have relationship to the land.  Implement an elemental affinity skill that is similar, but represents the relationship with your element. At novice, have it add 10% fail rate using "un". At apprentice, add 5% fail rate using "un". At journeyman, have that disappear. At advanced to master, have it start adding a small mana regen bonus, or a chance to cast a spell with reduced mana cost, or something similar that is positive for the mage.

When you fail a spell at "un", and there is a learn where the spell goes up, there is a chance that elemental affinity goes up. The elemental affinity skill itself, however, would not be marked as learned, more on that later. Link elemental affinity into the critical success/fail chances.  Lower skill, more chance to critically fail, higher skill higher chance to critically succeed. Make it so that "master" levels of the skill have some decent bonuses, but also, because you are a funnel of power to an alternate plane, some chance of randomly affecting the room(s) around you with stuff, from echos to coded impacts. Maybe the gem suppresses some of that.

Make it so that beyond that, elemental affinity is also a stance like riposte. Only usable by elementalists when certain conditions are met.  Weather might need to be a certain temperature or above for Krathi, non-magickal darkness for Drovians, wind level for whiran, etc. If those are met, they can enter their stance.  Stance would be like a raw channeling of their element, with echoes and such, and slowly drain their mana. Track the mana expended.  You can cast in the stance, which ends the stance afterwards.  Have the amount of mana you expended increase the chance of failure proportionally, or have it create a chance to learn on success that gives a message if it does so, and have it always take 50 mana to cast while in this stance. So spend some time, drastically enhance your chances of a failure. When such a failure happens, then put a learn timer on the elemental affinity skill itself, with a fair cooldown, like 30 mins or an hour, so you can't simply cycle through all your spells.  Make temples have flags that disable the stance.  So people need to go out and find these conditions, increasing 3.

Then link in the special places/conditions idea from Halaster.  In certain places, at certain times, maybe with scripts like dynamic shade that add flags to rooms, maybe with certain things present, if you do the above described stance and fail, instead of normal skill gain you get whatever your would have gotten, but x3 or x5 or whatever number is appropriate.

Finally, have ways that elemental affinity can go up or down outside of normal learn mechanics.  Sharing mana?  Chance to go up.  In the room with an elementalist of an opposing element for a long time?  Chance to go down.  In the room with a nilazi for awhile?  Big chance to go down.  Creature that you magickally create dies?  Elemental affinity goes down. Go through special areas or events or conditions like some have mentioned? Elemental affinity goes up if your element, potentially down if it is a different element.  Etc.

High levels of the skill would potentially give small benefits, offset by the chance you might obviously channel your element into your location without conscious effort

Make non-"un" reaches not have any of this, except the four minute learn scaling.  So that if you are a rogue and want to stay secret, managing your elemental affinity is going to be part of the deal.

[helix]

The only issue I see here is some mages with travel abilities or buff abilities would have a clear advantage, unless the bad things are made bad enough. It would make it much harder for the mage who didn't get the largest group to complete.

That's true, to a point. If it's just a direction and general distance, there's still some searching that has to be done. And to be clear, I think Halaster's point is that the bad things - whatever they are - have to be bad enough to form a gate between the decidedly more powerful next tier of mage. Likewise, the idea of having a gating system is such that not everyone will complete it.

To further iterate the challenge of a system like this though, the social rp stigma of being a magicker should make it harder to get ahead. Even more, Gemmed mages will actually have an easier time, because they're openly a mage, whereas it would be the rogue magickers that really suffer.

And it would potentially turn these events into blood baths, as groups compete for the same spot. A mage will need to be killed to save the spot for another mage, instead of just knocked out and item stolen. It would be a capture the hill PK event.

It doesn't have to be, though.

At character creation, a script could select three rooms, based on the type of magicker they are, at random. No two mages have the same rooms assigned to them, no one can map the rooms out. It's random. Every time you're just going in that direction some ways.

There are problems with that - having played numerous explorers, there are rooms that are just about impossible to get to without serious, serious firepower. Or master climb. Or in some cases, just straight up flight. I think that's part of the challenge and the inherent unfairness of it all.

I do agree that it could devolve into a group bloodbath, though - if whatever bad things were bad enough, then a TPK isn't out of the question.

Really though, I am starting to understand the scale of the problem. Given Halaster's requirements, the, 'make it less grindy' posts just don't carry the weight that he's looking for. He's not looking to make it faster, he's looking to make it more interesting - even if that could potentially mean it becomes slower.

The real challenge here is that the cost for combat and mercantile classes is easy, but there's no real other economy in the game for mages to fit into.

[Dresan]

Really though, I am starting to understand the scale of the problem. Given Halaster's requirements, the, 'make it less grindy' posts just don't carry the weight that he's looking for. He's not looking to make it faster, he's looking to make it more interesting - even if that could potentially mean it becomes slower.

The real challenge here is that the cost for combat and mercantile classes is easy, but there's no real other economy in the game for mages to fit into.

The key here is that the mechanic put in place should provide some natural limits on how strong a mage can get, not every mage can be powerful. However, the mechanic should be OOCly fair in that, everyone has similar chances at creation to forge the path greatness. This would is still a grind but how do you make this less grindy and more interesting...also perhaps somewhat unique from what we have?

This is why I recommend these 'stones/items', with a random chance for anyone to stumble upon them, and while this chance would be low different activities could produces them. The fact that everyone can stumble upon them makes the mechanic unique and interactive. Yes, a mage can spend their time foraging, killing, or exploring but clearly this isn't the most ideal solution given that other people stumble upon them all the time too. This further removes the feeling of 'grind'. Notably, it is tricky to balance out the right percentage when the entire mud population is involved but the game has a lot of experience in this using forage, skinning and loot formulas.
 
Additionally to make it more exciting and rewarding, additional elements of risk could be added by the need to go to various places to prepare the crystal. Or perhaps, mages being able to detect when crystals are near by in grebber PCs inventory or a PC hunter's apartments, allowing them to choose a path to acquire it. Both fighter and crafter have solo options but each benefit from interacting with others, mages will too. Arguably mages have it a lot tougher than the other two classes to gain power in regards to social stigmas, but again it is a karma class.

 Again though for this to work, mages would need to be fun, survivable and useful without ever having to find a crystal. These basic spells would be streamlined completely to a allow mages to get out and have fun. That way the road to power is a journey, rather than a race.  That said, I do have some reservations making 'gickery a mud wide endeavor, and this would further integrate mages into society, perhaps irreversible, which will naturally leading to more mundane/mage teams being formed.

[Halaster]

crystals

Can you do me a favor and sum up your idea in a post?  I've seen you talk about it and kind of iterate on it in several times, so I'm a little lost on it now.

[Dresan]

Can you do me a favor and sum up your idea in a post? 

The idea has been developing over a number of posts so this is a fair ask.

A summary:

• Anyone would have a small chance to this item (eg. crystal)
• These would be found through various activities at random, foraging, skinning, killing, exploring, etc.
• The overall chance to find one would be low, and these values would need to be tinkered by staff to ensure there aren't too many produced
• As an example grebber foraging for food may produce a crystal, instead of a grub, or mages as they look for components. Ultimately acquiring from other people who happen to find them is ideal rather than hoping to stumble upon them yourself
• Once a mage acquires a crystal, they would need to charge it in a location where there element is strong . The process duration of charging a crystal would leave a mage very vulnerable
• Once a crystal is charged, it can be used by the mage to branch or gain skills for an 'advance' spell
• Temples may also have shops that are willing to buy them to make finding crystals rewarding, and maybe helping with offpeak folk. Ultimately mages and organization would probably keep these cystals in high demand
• Finally a mage would be able to sense a crystal in the inventory or perhaps sitting in an apartments. Allowing them to choose a means of acquiring it if they wish
• These crystals should have some sort of decay timer to avoid hording by groups

Ultimately its just a high level idea, and I'm glad part of the requirement was not for it to also be easy to code.

Further analysis of this idea, can be found here. I hope this helps.

[titansfan]

I just want to say I don't think mages need more of a cost.  Spells being nerfed, a whole plot towards killing them, social status still low. Let's not bring more -cost- into removing spamcasting.

Just my thoughts.

[Feu de Joie]

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.

There were changes made to magick. These should all be the actual case now.

[wizturbo]

There are a lot of posts here, and I'll admit I don't want to read them all, so apologies if anything like this has already been suggested!

My suggestion:

• Introduce a new reach - NIAG
• Spells cast with NIAG have an increased chance of critical success or failure based on your skill level with the spell in question.
• You are guaranteed to get a skill increase from a spell cast using NIAG spell, but it will expend all of your mana and temporarily reduce your maximum mana while you recover from using it.
• This reach has been rumored to have been discovered by the Elementalist Temples of Allanak, and can be learned from some members there.  Teaching the reach to ungemmed is punishable by a horrible, torturous death.

Codedly, this gives elementalists an opportunity to guarantee a skill gain, at the expense of putting themselves on 'time out' magicaklly speaking so they can go off to pursue other roleplay opportunities.  The enhanced chance for a criticals is just an extra bonus, to give the reach a niche use outside just training.  The inclusion of being taught by the Elementalist temples is to make this much harder to learn by ungemmed, who put themselves at risk of discovery by practicing their magick and shouldn't have an easy way to reduce that risk.  As for the Gemmed, they can learn it from other PC Gemmed who've learned it once it's been seeded into the game through whatever means the staff want to pursue.  Being able to teach/learn magickal secrets from other PC's is a really cool element of playing a mage, and introducing more things like that is cool from my perspective.   Introducing the reach this way also allows for in-game testing... if it turns out this was bad for the game, you can just not seed the reach into Season 2, and no PC's will have access to it.

[Feu de Joie]

The path of least resistance (casting repeatedly, no emotes, almost afk) has created a habit in some players. The path of least resistance should not be that, it should be something else. It's very hard for me to define in words, I'm struggling, but please see this poetically, instead of pedantically, or semantically.


Currently, the easy path is :hide in your temple, cast, cast, cast, cast, cast, cast. No need to talk about it, share with others, ask anyone, or interact at all.


The easiest path should this: Repeatedly visit each temple, interact with NPCS, stay there while some of the NPCs cast, go to devotions, attend devotions repeatedly, look at and investigate artwork, murals, listen to stories, wander the Gemmed Quarter and beyond, talking to NPCS. Cast around other N/PCs.


Both are doable, slowly, by people with screen readers or certain disabilities, as well as encourage rp.  I have no idea how to make the second path above actually /work/, in the code. I know that languages pop eventually after hearing them enough, and frankly, spells should for sure work like this if you're of the correct element/class type.

There are allusions to the helpfiles in game that one used to be able to learn magick from those illegible items that are sometimes foraged up. You know the ones, staff. When you incorrectly look at it with special targetting IG it says that it has magickal writing all over it?

Those should be used too. Find them, find a translator, get them translated. The translator could be a Templar, an NPC, or a PC with the spell already branched. Or you spend time yourself working on it, studying it. /Something/ like that. And that's only one suggestion for a source of learning spells.

Every temple has someone around that periodically casts something (or should), and that could be extended, to have them talk about certain stories or specific teachings. Each time the NPCs talks about it, it could be a skill gain, or a bonus to learning any new spell.

Furthermore, see those people milling about for healing and looking for water outside the Vivaduan Temple? Where are the 'jobs' for Magickers? If one healed about one hundred of these wandering NPC's that pop up, wouldn't it be cool if that was why they learned the new spell? I bet it would feel very rewarding, and it's /could/ be as simple as sit in your temple, cast cast cast cast, but, I bet it'd look a lot different and would get more emoting and interaction brewing.

Things like that. I have a hard time understanding why any spell but making water and exploding people would be coveted except /fly/. The only reason I don't covet fly irl is my world has a nice sky, arm has... something underwhelming. Prepare yourself, future whirans. It's still beautifully written, though.




If you kill the temple leader, do you get to become temple leader? That would, heh, cut down on mac-daddy spellcasters. If you use the lungs of a whiran in a potion, does it actually cure anything? The more powerful my character is with magick, perhaps the more powerful and valuable my body parts are.

"I have the hand of Grimdyn the Magi, perfectly preserved. Some say it still snaps it's fingers for a catchy tune. It'll bring you great luck and fortune..... one hundred sid."

Alternatively, there is an avenue of magic practiced in real life that could be a great parallel to magick in the game, and that's 'Sacrifice equals Power'.



Why would the most powerful Drovian be a perfectly normal looking individual?

Can you harness the power of Suk-Krath and /not/ get burned? Try it.

Whira is fickle, and though you make commands, your luck fluctuates wildly with her whims now. Gambling with you could cause a riot, and nobody expects to travel outside with you in retinue.

You're tried everything to cheer yourself up. You've tried to make yourself sad. It seems as if, after years of shaping with all your heart, it has become stone itself..... You will endure.

There are ways to cure that sickness, that terrible terrible sickness, but you cannot get at the problem when it's in another's body. Sickness finds you more than others, because you are the only one committed to curing it.

Who would ever kiss you, when you've spent your entire life pouring poison from your skin, and you reek of the foul, sickening liquids you're compelled to keep around you at all times, lest your mood fluctuate wildly.



That could be fun stuff, and add a cost. And while temple hopping and interacting with npcs and getting to know the PC's around you isn't exactly hard, it's harder than sitting there just typing the same thing over and over. And if it's more rewarding, it would be the path more often taken, I feel. I /think/.



Also, each reach should be something like a skill, needed to learn, so that each spell with a different reach is a completely different skill. /THEN/ the people who max out Nil are clearly dedicated to upping something for the sake of their character and rp, not just for a new spell to branch. Look at their sheet to note the nils reached, check their rp, award them appropriately.


Open up all of the reaches, perhaps even adding new ones, I know you've thought of some. And add spells that need multiple people to cast, so a templar with a retinue is a devastating force, and two or three rogues joined together become something to be afraid of.



I think if you do all of the things I suggested, which is a lot, I know, you'll get more varied casters, differing wildly by places, any group of them would be fearsome and terrifying, and super powered, maxed out casters would be incredibly rare, and it would be harder to get beyond basic spells with rote casting alone.

But I'm not a coder or game designer.

[Voular]

Radical change is a dangerous thing, and I don't know if the return on investment would be a positive in a lot of these proposals. Most of them seem cool, though.

My simple suggestions:
- any use of a spell returns a skill increase
- raise the timer on skill increase dramatically, tied to time spent IG

This means that you might do a "training" session in your temple, and then you OOCly know "oh now I can spend 4-8 hours doing something else". Most people will. You can still have the + as a flag and a boost of endorphins for us all.


It is the coded most easy way. And then simply encourage magickers to go out and explore their magicks or whatever. Make a point of rewarding the initial batch of players that do, they'll come back and tell every temple-sitter about their sudden cool stuff(TM) and that might motivate them to leave the temple to also do cool shit(TM).

----

It won't necessarily change the speed of progression, it will change the act of progression which I feel is the bigger issue currently.

[Alizerin]

I think the issue is that this is an RP game. Creating systems where PCs can go meditate on their own, or go on coded fetch quests is fine and cool and all, but the problem is that it can lead to just the same sort of metagaming with extra steps. It might  be novel the first time, but once the systems are learned they might become just as dangerously rote as hiding in a closet and casting.

It's an RP game, so I would encourage systems which require players to interact with other players and the world in a meaningful way. The T'zai Byn is successful and fun because training is part of the RP. Nobody blinks an eye at players in the Byn because the training RP is structured. Places like the GMHs and the Atrium make some sense, too, since there is an RP environment there.

Here's some ideas:

• Create an apprenticeship system of some kind. In my mind, this is something more than just finding someone to use "teach" on you. I envision it as a lasting relationship which requires favors and work to make happen. This could be a skilled PC, or even an Elemental, or...who knows what. The current "share mana" stuff seems like a good groundwork for this.
  
  Maybe it takes the form of a Reach which branches the spell on a target when cast (perhaps at some cost from the caster, such as power levels or skill points of the spell). Maybe simply sharing mana from a more experienced PC is enough to increase chances of branching. I dunno. The point is to encourage the creation of a relationship between player characters.
  
  This could even be a way for Sorcerers to learn skills.
• Allow for offline research. I mean, something beyond the current "Learn" skill. I was always fond of automatic timed skill advancement. "Research Fireball" might set your character Researching Fireball. Once Researching you'd get an automatic tick every week of X+Wisdom bonus to the skill.
  
  If you wanted to get fancy with it, it could tie in with Halaster's ideas. Maybe meditating on a rock while researching could give some kind of bonus? I don't know. Just spitballing here. It might even tie in with the apprenticeship idea above.
• Throw out branching entirely, and make them like Templars. Though this might require more staff overhead, one idea might be to take a page from how Templars work. Elementalists could become beholden to an actual Elemental, and get their powers directly from them. Give them their abilities at Mon with max (or near max) skill. They get new abilities as they do favors for the Elemental.
  
  The downside is that this would require higher staff overhead, though possibly less if it's somehow tied in with the above apprenticeship idea.

Just spitballing here, but my point is: if the issue is "we want more roleplay beyond sitting in a quiet room and spam casting spells," the solutions should attempt to create content. Encourage players to seek out other characters and interact as a way to branch spells.

[betweenford]

• Throw out branching entirely, and make them like Templars. Though this might require more staff overhead, one idea might be to take a page from how Templars work. Elementalists could become beholden to an actual Elemental, and get their powers directly from them. Give them their abilities at Mon with max (or near max) skill. They get new abilities as they do favors for the Elemental.
  
  The downside is that this would require higher staff overhead, though possibly less if it's somehow tied in with the above apprenticeship idea.

Elemental clerics...?
Elemental clerics from ADnD Second Edition?
Pact of Fire/Earth/Air/Water?

[burble]

...

There are allusions to the helpfiles in game that one used to be able to learn magick from those illegible items that are sometimes foraged up. You know the ones, staff. When you incorrectly look at it with special targetting IG it says that it has magickal writing all over it?

...

Piggybacking off of this with the disclaimer that I would never play a gemmed mage. If these items are in game - make them temple wide and put them in some old ruins (Stienal!) where a single person could not safely extract them. You'd need an array of various mages and possibly the byn as well to go forage/search for the artifacts. Then place them in the temple for a limited time, temple-wide boost (I'm thinking a RL week). You can figure out risk/reward.

Have the ruins attract a lot of powerful animals that can sense any unseen, hide/sneak won't help, invisibility won't help. Make the items just as useful to a sorcerer (presumably they have their own army) so even more competition. Perhaps make the items work to a lesser extant with rogue witches (tempting but not wise unless you are in the employ of a large band) or maybe you need a stonecrafter to make you a temporary temple to get any use?

[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.

There were changes made to magick. These should all be the actual case now.

That wasn't my experience when Season 1 started. I noticed no change as to the frequency of mana regeneration in the appropriate environment. I noticed no change in frequency of failures in order to branch. I noticed no change in frequency of "power-ups."

I didn't play a gemmed mage, so maybe it's improved for people using the temples. But in the -actual- elemental environment outside the temples and outside the cities, I noticed no changes.


Meanwhile Dresan's crystal idea seems interesting. Perhaps a literal mana battery.  You acquire the crystal, bring it to an appropriate environment for your element, send it mana, and it holds the mana for you indefinitely. Then, you can just carry it around and if you need a mana boost that you're not getting, you can withdraw the mana from the crystal (which would NOT be the same as gathering from any other source - so no, not sorcery), and the crystal would disintegrate and you'd have your extra boost of mana.

[Feu de Joie]

I'm in favor of those crystals being the gems gemmers wear, but also being numerous other things, like the hearts of those you've slain, and strange fruit from other dimensions. Not just /one/ thing, I'm saying, throw some strange properties up in each.

[LidlessEye]

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

Why? It'll massively disadvantage anyone who is out of the staffer's time zone. You'll also have one or two staffers dealing with dozens of mage players, someone is bound to get a lot of attention while others don't do anything different but are overlooked.

There's also more than one way to play a mage. Right now, staff is putting a lot of emphasis into digging deep into your element and such. There's not a lot of ways to do that other than - solo RP and, if you're lucky and you can find one, talking to another mage of the same type. I don't really care for it - I'm much more interested in the stigma aspect, that's the reason I play mages, not because I really want to theorize about Vivadu. Yet it doesn't really seem optional right now.

Also not in favor for the Staff Intervention for the reasons you list -- it's just too 'YMMV' and reliant on schedules, on active participation for my liking. Staff Intervention should be a nicety and fun and 'on the off chance'. The more we require Staff Intervention, the more opportunity there is for the system to fail or provide opportunities for favoritism/scapegoating.

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.

I think we're experiencing a cadre of New Storytellers (relatively speaking), so they are also monitoring PCs for the first time since launch (roughly a month ago). So they are experiencing for the first time "Soandso just cast 20 times in a row without emoting once!" and having a reaction to it.

Is it a problem that people cast spells in order to fail them in order to branch them to more powerful spells? If the answer is yes...Then we are dealing with a deeper infrastructure issue.

The problem isn't (IMO) that people are casting spells in order to fail. It is that the system for improving magickal spells isn't time based, it's activity based (Must Fail in order to Succeed) alongside all other mundane skills in the game.

IMHO, don't hate the player, hate the game. It's DIKU, it's coded a certain way, and in order to achieve as a magicker, yes, you have to cast your spells enough times to fail that you get cooler, better, more useful spells. I definitely think magickers can/should think and feel inbetween casts, when they want to, emote a bit, and all of that. But it's a slippery slope too -- What about the Byn Spar? What about the Crafter trying to branch when they are almost a master, thus requiring...Many fails in order to get that last point before branching?

If anything -- I think the posits in this thread point out a potential issue in general behind branching, not having EXP / ways of spending EXP to branch skills, not having levels. It's a fundamental aspect of our code, of being an RPI, that we hide the numbers behind skills and how they improve, and keep it esoteric.

Is it 'Realistic' to say 'You must fail at this skill 40 times, precisely, in order to become a master in it?' I'm a craftsperson IRL, and all I can say is 'Absolutely not'. I don't learn through failures. I get frustrated when I fail, and I try again and typically fail a little less, but I gain much more knowledge through my successes and augmenting those successes, finding shortcuts, creating shortcuts, creating jigs that create shortcuts, and repetition repetition repetition.

That "Repetition" part is quite important -- Doing A Thing Thousands Of Times Makes You Better At It. It can also reinforce bad habits, which is maybe a digression, but i've nary met a craftsperson who said 'I got this good by failing a thousand times'. You do your best to avoid failure, not to lean into it and find more creative ways to fail as we do here at ArmageddonMUD hehe.

Very well put.