Alternatives to Spellcasting

[Renwick]

First idea:

Allow for 'consumption' of components to fuel a spell-specific learn timer (aside from the current learn command). Based on the component power level and possible alignment of the sphere to the element, it will give more or less points for a broader pool the mage can draw upon. As you get closer to branching, you may need to consume a sufficiently powerful component of the correct sphere, or wait to branch the old fashioned way.

Learn Spell XYZ
    You feel your knowledge in this area is lacking.
    or
    You consider your element and draw upon your inner essence, gaining insight into 'spell'.

Pros of this: You'd see far fewer stockpiles of components laying around in caster areas, they'd all get consumed. Those requiring components to fuel their spells would have to balance their consumption with what they keep on hand and need for use in a practical sense.


Second idea:

When you succeed with the same spell like twenty times (whatever number is appropriate) in a row, it counts as a failure for skill gain purposes.

Pros of this: Would remove spam casting/failure fishing as a thing. You stick to your practice schedule or use the spells occasionally and you will naturally continue to grow over time, freeing up time to go RP. You could still cap this progression mechanic one point past the branching point of the spell (so you don't just max out all of the spells).

[Lotion]

Currently becoming more powerful as a caster is terrible because the mechanical implementation of it goes against everything ArmageddonMUD wants to be. The only way to increase the skill level of a spell is by getting a fail when attempting to cast it. This incentivizes spamcasting as much as possible with minimum manacosts. At the end of the day the main barrier to becoming a more powerful caster is mana regeneration. To branch a mage (including increasing the power level of spells) is an annoying chore. It might be less bad for sorcerers because they can just gather.

Ideally people doing good magick RP should be mechanically rewarded by having their spells become more powerful (i.e. advance from wek to yuqa) and branch, but the only way to judge this is with human effort (i.e. staff). This presents a lot of problems:
* another thing for staff to do
* this is subjective
* must reward players long term
* must ensure players who keep doing good magick RP
* reward as many players as possible

I think the solution is simple, and it's one Halaster has already spoken of before long ago. "Gainz boost". When a staff member sees a player doing good magick RP that staffer should press the "activate magic gainz boost" button for that player. From my understanding part of StaffNSA includes allowing a staffer to be informed whenever a player casts a spell. If you notice someone doing "magick training" then just peek in for a little bit and see if they are doing good magick RP. If so press the gainz boost button.
Some stipulations about gainz boost
* Please figure out a better detection method
* It should be invisible to players and most staff members
* If a staff member gives gainz boost to a player it will refresh the duration of the buff
* Gainz boost will give more (let's just say 2x, but the number isn't important and should be adjusted) gainz whenever gainz occur (i.e. spell skill level increase for branching)
* Gainz boost will allow gainz to occur when a player successfully casts a spell. This is accompanied by a message (the community can help write these)
* Gainz boost will increase the probability of spell power level increasing

[EATtheSUN]

And hopefully a gainz boost will also copy and log the last ten minutes or the next ten minutes of their play, too. And then put it somewhere it can be read later, because of transparency and accountability.

[mansa]

What if it was based on time past from character generation and not based on failing to cast a spell.

Every week you get 30 skill points to distribute amongst all skills.

That way characters don't have to spam any spells, they just use their skill points and then continue with roleplaying.

[Inky]

What if it was based on time past from character generation and not based on failing to cast a spell.

Every week you get 30 skill points to distribute amongst all skills.

That way characters don't have to spam any spells, they just use their skill points and then continue with roleplaying.

I would like to see this or something similar. It gives staff control over progression. It cuts down on the silly grind. If something quest related is accomplished, staff can hand out some extra points.

The only downside that I can think of is that you're unlikely to ever catch hidden magickers in the act if they never have to cast. Though I think that might be another upside because I'd rather hidden magickers get caught actively doing something rather than passively skill casting.

[creeper386]

I have not played many magickers, partly because the grind seems way worse then any other character type I have played.

But I do not like the idea of just set progression either. That gives me the player nothing to do but wait. I like some crunchy, coded, do something, see progression. Removing that all together gives me even less incentive to play a magicker then I have now.

[Veselka]

Currently becoming more powerful as a caster is terrible because the mechanical implementation of it goes against everything ArmageddonMUD wants to be. The only way to increase the skill level of a spell is by getting a fail when attempting to cast it. This incentivizes spamcasting as much as possible with minimum manacosts. At the end of the day the main barrier to becoming a more powerful caster is mana regeneration. To branch a mage (including increasing the power level of spells) is an annoying chore. It might be less bad for sorcerers because they can just gather.

Ideally people doing good magick RP should be mechanically rewarded by having their spells become more powerful (i.e. advance from wek to yuqa) and branch, but the only way to judge this is with human effort (i.e. staff). This presents a lot of problems:
* another thing for staff to do
* this is subjective
* must reward players long term
* must ensure players who keep doing good magick RP
* reward as many players as possible

I think the solution is simple, and it's one Halaster has already spoken of before long ago. "Gainz boost". When a staff member sees a player doing good magick RP that staffer should press the "activate magic gainz boost" button for that player. From my understanding part of StaffNSA includes allowing a staffer to be informed whenever a player casts a spell. If you notice someone doing "magick training" then just peek in for a little bit and see if they are doing good magick RP. If so press the gainz boost button.
Some stipulations about gainz boost
* Please figure out a better detection method
* It should be invisible to players and most staff members
* If a staff member gives gainz boost to a player it will refresh the duration of the buff
* Gainz boost will give more (let's just say 2x, but the number isn't important and should be adjusted) gainz whenever gainz occur (i.e. spell skill level increase for branching)
* Gainz boost will allow gainz to occur when a player successfully casts a spell. This is accompanied by a message (the community can help write these)
* Gainz boost will increase the probability of spell power level increasing

I like this because it encourages RP, which seems to be the jist of what Staff is pushing for.

It's just a pretty grindy sloggy mess right now, and not an enjoyable process to engage with. It's unpredictable in unenjoyable ways.

I'd love to see Magick (when cast) be more unpredictable. You try to cast one spell, another spell happens, more critical fails/successes and so on. But the grindy part of raising power levels and gaining skill points and branching spells is pretty not-fun to engage with. This is doubly true for non-Gemmed Magickers, who risk their lives/gameplay existence every time they go to practice and cast some spells.

I RP worse when i'm playing a Magicker, straight up, because to get to all the fun juicy spells, you have to engage with a pretty archaic unenjoyable system that is entirely different from mundane/crafting skills. I go out of my way to use thinks/feels/remember/explorations, but it feels like lip service in comparison to what I want to do, because i'm just worried Staff might be watching me when i'm trying to get a fail or two practicing.

I almost never have that sort of worry when i'm playing a mundane PC, because I just naturally train, skill up, don't feel scrutinized or like I might be the object of scrutiny, think/feel/explore my PC more naturally, etc.

I'm not sure what the answer is, I like a lot of what Lotion put in this post. I just don't particularly like systems that require anecdotal/YMMV sort of interaction from Staff. I prefer something coded, that doesn't have bias, but it is a nice thought/incentive that Staff can basically turn on/off higher gains for people who are properly RPing.

[Jarvis]

I like the idea of having to mix and match different spheres and whatnot to discover new spells, with random effects that may be catastrophic if you fail, so it'd lead to, in layman's terms, fucking around and finding out with some fun experimentation RP. If you could match the words together you'd get some sort of feedback that tells you if you keep doing that you start building towards understanding it, with some minor effects maybe happening or having a small chance of happening as you do.

The only problem in that is there's already a "meta" of people who already know all the spell words and could fully branch a witch very quick.

[dumbstruck]

There was a situation before symbol where you had to "experiment" with the limited combination of X y words and Y z words, and it honestly sucked. It didn't make things fun and exciting, it was just the magick version of 'craft feather bone' 'craft feather bone short.bone' in that... it didn't teach you new things, it just... revealed the same thing regardless of what, and people who kept spreadsheets were always at an advantage.

[Jarvis]

There was a situation before symbol where you had to "experiment" with the limited combination of X y words and Y z words, and it honestly sucked. It didn't make things fun and exciting, it was just the magick version of 'craft feather bone' 'craft feather bone short.bone' in that... it didn't teach you new things, it just... revealed the same thing regardless of what, and people who kept spreadsheets were always at an advantage.

This is fair. Would definitely like it to be gamified into a puzzle, but can't really think of a good way for that to happen without the excell scholars having a distinct advantage

[dumbstruck]

I hate puzzles. Please do not make me play puzzles. I play this game for roleplay. Not puzzles. I hate puzzles so much I cannot begin to convey it to you.

[Halaster]

What is spellcasting gave you 5x the amount of gain per failure, but then the gain delay timer was 5x what it is for spellcasting.  It would (in theory) still be roughly the same amount of RL time to 'git gud', but it would only require 1/5 of the amount of cast commands.

(this is not in lieu of all the other ideas in the thread, or the originally stated goal of the thread, but a side thought to help with grind)

[Dresan]

What is spellcasting gave you 5x the amount of gain per failure, but then the gain delay timer was 5x what it is for spellcasting.  It would (in theory) still be roughly the same amount of RL time to 'git gud', but it would only require 1/5 of the amount of cast commands.

For this to work properly, gain timers would need to be made more clear to players. It would be currently a guess what 5x delay timer even means.  At the moment, for some hard to gain skills, it may be more valuable to wait for the '+' to reset to know if you gained, even if the timer is less, it saves time to know when you've gained. Other easier skills you can train maybe once or twice a session with some time in between, regardless of the '+'.

[Roon]

What is spellcasting gave you 5x the amount of gain per failure, but then the gain delay timer was 5x what it is for spellcasting.  It would (in theory) still be roughly the same amount of RL time to 'git gud', but it would only require 1/5 of the amount of cast commands.

(this is not in lieu of all the other ideas in the thread, or the originally stated goal of the thread, but a side thought to help with grind)

I think I would prefer that such a feature was somewhat less effective than the traditional way. Since magick gameplay includes a heavy element of secrecy (esp. for rogue mages), you run the risk of creating a "meta" where the optimal way to play is to use your spells as little as possible while still hitting your gains. This could make it borderline impossible to ever discover that someone is a rogue mage.

I would do it like this (and suggested something similar earlier in the thread):

Take the maximum possible skill timer, like if a character had 1 wisdom or whatever. Each time that amount of playtime has passed without a given skill going up, increase the amount by which it goes up next time by +1, up to a maximum of 5 points at once.

This way, if you want to focus on raising a skill, you can do it faster than that; but if you'd rather spend time on other things, you can still make pretty good progress by essentially banking potential skillgains and cashing them in later on. It'll be good enough, but not just as good as using the skill frequently.

That should apply to all skills, not just magick spells. I think it's important that there remains an incentive to go out and do stuff on a regular basis so that we don't end up with a game where you can sit in a tavern 95% of the time and still progress as fast as possible. That'd lead to empty sparring halls, a desert where you never meet anyone, and crashing market for crafting materials.

[Veselka]

What is spellcasting gave you 5x the amount of gain per failure, but then the gain delay timer was 5x what it is for spellcasting.  It would (in theory) still be roughly the same amount of RL time to 'git gud', but it would only require 1/5 of the amount of cast commands.

(this is not in lieu of all the other ideas in the thread, or the originally stated goal of the thread, but a side thought to help with grind)

It's an interesting idea, maybe worth trying out. I feel like neither players or Staff enjoy the current situation, where either Gemmed are in their Temples spamcasting, or rogue magickers are off in the woods casting trying to get ahead, instead of focusing on RP and character building etc.

You would have to practice less often, but practice provides more in the way of 'gain', which I like. I dunno, maybe worth trying.

[Lotion]

What is spellcasting gave you 5x the amount of gain per failure, but then the gain delay timer was 5x what it is for spellcasting.  It would (in theory) still be roughly the same amount of RL time to 'git gud', but it would only require 1/5 of the amount of cast commands.

(this is not in lieu of all the other ideas in the thread, or the originally stated goal of the thread, but a side thought to help with grind)

This is a step in the right direction and a very good bandaid to put onto the wound right now while something better can be designed and implemented. Please implement asap!!

[Windstorm]

I do think it would be a very good move to implement something easy relatively quickly for the players of magickers, even if it's not perfect, rather than search for months here for the perfect more complex solution which still no one will agree on.

[Veselka]

What is spellcasting gave you 5x the amount of gain per failure, but then the gain delay timer was 5x what it is for spellcasting.  It would (in theory) still be roughly the same amount of RL time to 'git gud', but it would only require 1/5 of the amount of cast commands.

(this is not in lieu of all the other ideas in the thread, or the originally stated goal of the thread, but a side thought to help with grind)

I also think it's worth looking at how power raise / failure rates factor in. Are numbers rounding up? Maybe they should be rounding down, etc. I've noticed it's been pretty difficult to raise power levels and/or fail spells compared to magickers I played pre-Seasons, not sure if there have been code additions to affect that during the downtime.

How does Wisdom factor in? I feel a high wisdom score (Very Good+) should drastically improve learning spells / branching / gain power levels, but it doesn't seem to have much effect from what I see.

[Inky]

How does Wisdom factor in? I feel a high wisdom score (Very Good+) should drastically improve learning spells / branching / gain power levels, but it doesn't seem to have much effect from what I see.

This would be nice.

[Twilight]

The goal is not to make it faster or easier though, right? Lots of suggestions would do that, even if targeting an issue.  The 5x idea would make branching laughably easy, simply because the math was done for a single spell, rather than a portfolio of spells.  So it would make spell cycling even more effective, given mana regen rates and how long it typically takes to fail all your spell.. spells, at least when you start out.

Most other "important" skills have a dual factor requirement.  Fighting you need a sparring partner or critter.  Crafting you need materials. Both then have time as a resource, after a fail. It is not the time piece that causes folks to need to move around, meet other people, etc.

Mages essentially only have the time requirement. They need something that makes them need to move around.  Maybe casting/regen of mana depletes the amount of your element in the area.  More you cast in one place, less of it there is, longer it takes to regen mana.  So you need to move around. Although I guess opposite for nilazi. Something like that, which forces movement out of safe places, resulting in more interactions, more activity, more accidents, more death and fewer powerful sat-in-a-room-forever mages.

[Inky]

The goal is not to make it faster or easier though, right? Lots of suggestions would do that, even if targeting an issue.  The 5x idea would make branching laughably easy, simply because the math was done for a single spell, rather than a portfolio of spells.  So it would make spell cycling even more effective, given mana regen rates and how long it typically takes to fail all your spell.. spells, at least when you start out.

It would be for players that don't pace themselves, I agree. But we already have players that are full branched in two weeks.

[titansfan]

The difference here in trying to make smiling up mages harder is that mages have to always use resources to have their skills work. Crafters make crazy coin after a short period of practice.  Combat pcs no longer have to really expend anything to kick out 40 damage in a round of combat after a period of skilling behind a gate. I dint think that should be the focus to make people necessarily have a harder time doing it. The flavor effects being added and the idea that there -can- be rodent ways to increase spells without going for a failure is cool. But mages don't need to have a worse time skilling up with full guilds back.

[Dresan]

How does Wisdom factor in? I feel a high wisdom score (Very Good+) should drastically improve learning spells / branching / gain power levels, but it doesn't seem to have much effect from what I see.

This would be nice.

I have come to believe that wisdom probably need to be reworked to provide more value in other areas at this point (eg. like crafting, poisoning) rather than just learning speed. Wisdom could play small roles in the effectiveness of all sorts of different skills including magic, in the same way +gear and some stats do. 

The game also seems to be moving towards more automated forms of learning, and rewarding IC opportunity while being less punishing to players with less time to play. This has actually really worked well for the game, and makes it much more enjoyable. I do believe more automated forms of learning does help promote RP and reduces twinking. I myself have pretty much given up on gaining on some skills and have just accepted it will take months to get to max with learn feature since my character has no opportunities to effectively train them.

I actually like the idea of mages finding themselves just naturally getting better over time, but the game should still also be looking for way to reward mages for finding IC opportunity like with other hard to gain skills.

[Alizerin]

What is spellcasting gave you 5x the amount of gain per failure, but then the gain delay timer was 5x what it is for spellcasting.

What if in addition to this skill gains were also tied into power level increases? I never understood why bumping up a power level didn't also increase skill in the spell. To me it always made sense that if I can suddenly cast a spell at a higher level I should "know how to do it better."

[Lotion]

What is spellcasting gave you 5x the amount of gain per failure, but then the gain delay timer was 5x what it is for spellcasting.  It would (in theory) still be roughly the same amount of RL time to 'git gud', but it would only require 1/5 of the amount of cast commands.

(this is not in lieu of all the other ideas in the thread, or the originally stated goal of the thread, but a side thought to help with grind)

Has this been implemented yet? Such a bandaid is highly necessary.