Armageddon General Discussion Board

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.

I'm honestly still of the opinion of the method I had recommended in the past. Using components. Especially now that all full-guilds start off with component crafting, gaining power/branching checks by 'consuming' a relevant component (you can flavor it how you want, maybe you absorb it's 'mana' and that makes it inert) gives you progress towards a branch or increases the power of a spell you know. There's tons of components in the game, component crafting is cool and there are a good few elementalists which I obviously wont name that barely use components, and this will open up a new need for them.

Needing to have certain components can also add more 'active' stuff for mages to do. Rather than sitting in their room all day, they need to either go out and find the right materials for the components, forage artifacts in special, historic rooms, or pay people to do so. I think it both is more interesting and would encourage more interaction and general 'adventuring' over spamcasting.

Some ideas of mine:

A vivaduan goes to a specific oasis and keeps filling it with water.
A drovian spends time in a specific deep, dark cave.
A krathi eats burned meat.  :)
A whiran rests on top of a mountain with strong winds.
A rukkian finds a specific, special pillar of stone in some remote location and lays their hands on it.
An elkrosian spends time in the fiercest sandstorm with nothing covering their face.
A nilazi spills the blood of an elementalist.

With combat classes they need to find someone or something to get better. This interaction while at times challenging and dangerous makes it interesting and fun to get better.

Instead of just purely making it easier, which by the mere nature of this being a game is just adding more bordom. We introduce some benefit alongside some more interaction and potential risk?

A mage can meditate their spells with another of the same type mage or even better any non-mage character. During the mediation, the would be extremely vulnerable, lagged and only being able to talk and emote but would benefit from channeling and flowing their powers through someone else to skill gain.

-if its another mage of the same type, both mages gain skill.
-if its another non-mage, the mage gains skill while the non-mage gains resistance to that particular element. Maybe wisdom helps in this particular case?


On the side note, it cannot just be about mages getting easier and stronger so the idea above begins to balance out the complex relationships between mages and nonmages. If there is more magic in the IC world, there should growing resistances to it as well. With seasons, adding more elements of interaction this make sense given the changed nature of mages in the game's society.

Some ideas:

-Mages that are taught/learn spells from other Mages gain more than they might on a simple fail. For Temple Gemmed, maybe that means access to NPC trainers that teach common to uncommon spells for a price.

-If a mage casts a spell on you that you know (or might come to learn later on in life), you have a chance of instantly branching that spell, based on wisdom.

-Allow a 'Branched' Mage to teach a spell from that branch to another Mage of their element.

-Allow a Nilazi to cast a version of 'Dispel Magick' that erases a random branched spell from that mage's spell list -- they can rebranch it, but will have to cast it to do so, etc. In so doing, the Nilazi gains X points in their own spells.

-Maybe certain rituals each Element can perform (codedly) that passively improves all spells by 1-5 points following the 'Learn Timer', akin to what Halaster mentioned already. Examples might be a Vivaduan watering a plant, a Rukkian crafting stone, an Elkran resting in a sandstorm, a Nilazi having a spell cast on it or doing other Nilazi Related Activities. The gains could be small and infrequent (1 / RL week) but still assist in pushing a Magicker forward along the track without requiring spam casting.

-Consider 'Group Spells' or ways that multiple Magickers of the same element might achieve a sort of symbiosis and extra learning if they cast spells together or in proximity to one another.

-Consider 'Group Spells' or ways that multiple Magickers of a different element might rub against one another, and make learning more difficult, or make spells more unpredictable/higher chances of critical failures.

-Staff-Assists: Maybe encourage biographies, explorations of magick via think/feel, and rewarding Magickers with extra skill points in their spells.

-Staff-Detriments: Maybe discourage spamcasting by removing spells or reaches or mana points if people don't RP appropriately behind their spell casting.

---

I'm leery of a 'LOCATION BASED' gain center, as that means you'll have all the idling Rukkians around the Pillar in the middle of nowhere. I prefer either an action-based approach (Crafting, or working with other PCs), or time-based approach (simply being alive means you passively have a greater chance of branching, akin to Learn).

It's a particularly rough hustle for Rogue Magickers, who don't have a convenient Temple to wake up and practice in day in and day out. The expectation and pressure to RP well, while also trying to practice and branch your spells, is I think even higher for those who aren't Gemmed.

I think we all know that Staff would prefer that we don't spamcast in order to branch spells; but the system, in its monotony, almost requires that at times as you try to make a PC that can survive the rigors of Zalanthas. I think this is doubly true for Full Guild Elementalists, who are really quite squishy compared to their subguild counterparts.

Can I just ask to clarify:

You mean something like a staff-supported "mini-quest" to cause a spell with .. to branch rather than forcing a fail by casting a hundred times?

Quote from: Kavrick on July 24, 2024, 04:27:46 PMI'm honestly still of the opinion of the method I had recommended in the past. Using components. Especially now that all full-guilds start off with component crafting, gaining power/branching checks by 'consuming' a relevant component (you can flavor it how you want, maybe you absorb it's 'mana' and that makes it inert) gives you progress towards a branch or increases the power of a spell you know. There's tons of components in the game, component crafting is cool and there are a good few elementalists which I obviously wont name that barely use components, and this will open up a new need for them.

Needing to have certain components can also add more 'active' stuff for mages to do. Rather than sitting in their room all day, they need to either go out and find the right materials for the components, forage artifacts in special, historic rooms, or pay people to do so. I think it both is more interesting and would encourage more interaction and general 'adventuring' over spamcasting.

I also really like this 'Objects of Power' approach, it reminds me of Conan the Cimmerian, where Sorcerers would need to hunt down bizarre and dangerous objects of power to gain immense skill in their craft, gaining an edge on their contemporaries.

Maybe that could be achieved through charged components or artifacts of some kind; when discovered, they might grant certain boons (or detriments). Among those might be knowledge of certain spells (instant branching) or curses (cutting off connection to their element temporarily, or semi-permanently, damage to health over time, poison, inability to use the Way).

Maybe Mages could craft (themselves) a spell or knowledge of it into a component or potion, and if it is consumed or otherwise assimilated, the mage that does so would gain that spell/knowledge. It could be identified by those able to do so, and the element discerned (maybe Nilazi artifacts would appear normal/non-magickal except to Nilazi, and the same with Sorcerous artifacts).

I'd love this.
Anything in this.

Mini quests, words of power written in caves... lessons from each other...
Anything that fosters roleplay :)

Quote from: Halaster on July 24, 2024, 04:11:50 PMSometimes 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.

The problem I see here is it seems you would either be relying on Code, or Staff Intervention.

Code takes time and i'm not sure there's much bang for the buck here.

Staff Intervention takes time and coordination (and skill in seeing the PC perform the actions in the first place, or scheduling time to do so).

If there's any kind of Code intervention, i'd want it to be as broad and applicable to all elements/non-elements as possible, which to me seems to be 'time based'.

If Mage = 1 days played, add X points in T1 Spells, Y points in T2 Spells, Z points in T3 Spells.

If Mage = 2 days played, add X points in T1 Spells, Y points in T2 Spells, Z points in T3 Spells.

If Mage = 4 days played, add X points in T1 Spells, Y points in T2 Spells, Z points in T3 Spells.

If Mage = 8 days played...Etc.

If they reach a branching threshold this way, branch the spells.

This encourages longevity/playing the PC over skilling them out. If you had the assurance that yes, your mage will become powerful over time, even if you do not spam cast spells in your temple, it might alleviate the need to do so a bit.

I like everything @Down Under said here and like it all. I especially agree with the last bit. I think the bit for how elementalists and Nilazi interact with one another seems fun and interesting and unique as well.

Quote from: Riev on July 24, 2024, 04:43:31 PMCan I just ask to clarify:

You mean something like a staff-supported "mini-quest" to cause a spell with .. to branch rather than forcing a fail by casting a hundred times?

I was thinking more along the lines of automated things players could do in lieu of casting a spell, to get a gain in it.  It would still be on the same gain timer, but just an alternative way to get it.

I think spellcasting, just like other skills, would get spammed a lot less if you got the skillup on a success rather than a fail. Think that literally just reversing how skillgains work would be a net benefit to everyone and since skills gains are locked on a timer you still couldn't skills up quicker than the timer. It'd also flood the IC market with a bunch less low tier crafts from people just trying to branch and make sparring a bit easier I'd think.

I'll just add that unless gaining or branching with "spamcasting" is made more difficult most of these ideas will not work well to change things.

This is due to the safety and sheer convenience of hiding in a room and spamcasting while watching netflix on the side.

If no challenge, risk or interaction elements are introduced, while making spamcasting more inconvenient,  you might as well use learn feature to give every mage max skill and branch every week to four spells of their choice or made more linear.

I'd rather see a more efficient skill-gain opportunity. I don't know the code. But.

If wek to yuqa is a 20-point difference - and the usual cast would increase by 1 point...

then maybe it could be changed to 1.25 points after you reach the first 10. Or a critical success could bump it by 3 points, AND add a higher likelihood of having that critical success even if the caster has low wisdom.

Also change the random number generator (is that a dice roll?) so there's a higher chance of branching than presently - regardless of your wisdom score.

I know I've played mages where I would spend two hours spam-casting, trying to FAIL just so I could branch off a spell I really had no use for. But it'd take that long because mana regen took long - because I didn't have good enough wisdom? Dunno. I was casting in my character's temple, so there -should've- been a bonus. But if that bonus means more success, it means lower odds of branching since you can only branch off a fail.

I think that needs to be addressed, more than RP'ed opportunities to skillgain.

This is not a long-term solution, but there's always the option to special app with some sort of alternative plan up front, if you KNOW there is a particular branch in your tree that doesn't make sense for your character to practice.  This also doesn't help anyone who hasn't played that guild before, unfortunately, but it's -a- way.

Quote from: FantasyWriter on July 24, 2024, 05:38:30 PMThis is not a long-term solution, but there's always the option to special app with some sort of alternative plan up front, if you KNOW there is a particular branch in your tree that doesn't make sense for your character to practice.  This also doesn't help anyone who hasn't played that guild before, unfortunately, but it's -a- way.

Definitely true -- Back in the day I would definitely special apply for a guild I was familiar with and ask for T2 Spells (if I knew what they were). I've found YMMV now-a-days with apps like that, it's a new era, different Staff, etc.

I definitely think it's an interesting posit for the Special Applications Coded Advantages perhaps -- playing a Magick Guild you have Karma for, but with expanded T2 Spells instead of starting out with T1 only, so it's codified and not anecdotal?

I love all this talk about 'Alternative Ways to Gain in Spells', and maybe it's a thread of its own, but i'd also love to see 'Alternative Ways to make Magick Unpredictable'. We have critical successes/fails already in the game, and i'd love to see people way less certain that Magickers are useful and awesome. But yeah, likely worth a thread of its own.

It might also help if you could gain on a qntlz fail which I have literally never seen happen in the many times I've had it fail.

Could combine multiple methods together like going to specific Oases with a Mon Viqrol component for your random skill increase. Might make them feel more like their dnd Cleric counterparts if they're sacrificing objects of power for, well, power increases that scale with the tier of the dismantled component.

I'm partial to it being moreso tied to your environment or by risk, that way you end up creating spots where you know elementalists might hang around and you can potentially ambush them in, but it couldn't hurt to throw in sudden niche effects also contributing to it like a krathi who takes fire damage from flaming weapons or effects having a chance of skillgain when wounded by his element.

Could tie in their gains to the defiler/preserver systems too, locking people out of gaining via this method when the local environment is too defiled, in the presence of an ashen circle, or increasing the benefit of gains when someone has a high Relationship To The Land or if the corresponding area is bustling with life.

edit:
There's also a potential where rooms can be manually flagged for this like the elemental temples, where they give consistent yet inferior skill gain over time for hanging around in them; which is analogous to spamcasting without absolutely spamming anyone's terminal.

Quote from: betweenford on July 24, 2024, 05:49:19 PMCould combine multiple methods together like going to specific Oases with a Mon Viqrol component for your random skill increase. Might make them feel more like their dnd Cleric counterparts if they're sacrificing objects of power for, well, power increases that scale with the tier of the dismantled component.

I'm partial to it being moreso tied to your environment or by risk, that way you end up creating spots where you know elementalists might hang around and you can potentially ambush them in, but it couldn't hurt to throw in sudden niche effects also contributing to it like a krathi who takes fire damage from flaming weapons or effects having a chance of skillgain when wounded by his element.

Could tie in their gains to the defiler/preserver systems too, locking people out of gaining via this method when the local environment is too defiled, in the presence of an ashen circle, or increasing the benefit of gains when someone has a high Relationship To The Land or if the corresponding area is bustling with life.

It's an interesting way of putting it RE: Location Based.

All them Rukkians around the Pillar in the middle of Nowhere would sure look tasty to a Nilazi. haha.

Quote from: Down Under on July 24, 2024, 05:45:32 PMWe have critical successes/fails already in the game, and i'd love to see people way less certain that Magickers are useful and awesome. But yeah, likely worth a thread of its own.

I had an interesting idea on something of the same vein.

If a mage gives someone a buff, the target of that buff would also gain some resistance for that element depending on wisdom. Drinking and eating magick creating stuff, would have similar effect. Overtime the mage would find it harder to buff that person due to their weaker spells beginning failing. They would be forced to use stronger versions for a chance at success.

This would create a potentially dangerous scenario where a mage could run out of mana before being able to buff someone during important  battles. Or worse potentially be creating a person increasingly dangerous to their kind.

High magick resistance(and only magic resistance) would be both good and bad in the current season, yes you can survive nasty spells a bit better but the beneficial spells are also likely to fail on you. Of course, this would have no effect on self casting so dwarf mages need not worry.

I think it might be a good thing to have alternatives, because we can also limit spell branching this way as well.


We could potentially lock spells behind reputation, or quests, or select interactions that we design.


That way, we can really set the expectations of when characters should have access to certain spells, rather than just them casting a spell until it appears in your list.  We could design it so that you need to be rank 6 in the suk-krath temple clan to get access to "fireball" or something similar.

Quote from: talos on July 24, 2024, 06:24:49 PMI think it might be a good thing to have alternatives, because we can also limit spell branching this way as well.


We could potentially lock spells behind reputation, or quests, or select interactions that we design.


That way, we can really set the expectations of when characters should have access to certain spells, rather than just them casting a spell until it appears in your list.  We could design it so that you need to be rank 6 in the suk-krath temple clan to get access to "fireball" or something similar.

I mean...

Maybe.

I don't think rogue elementalists/magickers should be gated out of gaining spells. Maybe Temples/Temple Gemmed could have alternative methods to getting to the same result, and maybe those would be quicker or challenging in a different way. But I would hate to make it so you HAVE to be Gemmed to gain access to certain spells.

I also dislike having Staff be arbiter to who gets access to what; I sort of like that right now it's based around code, which doesn't have the same biases that a Staff member might (what is good vs bad RP, for instance).

Options are good! Alternatives are good! But I think gating is not great, particularly if it's designed around an oblique system that is neither obvious or straight-forward to navigate. We're currently trying to reduce the amount of requests (it seems) by eliminating the non-leadership character report requests / interactions between Staff and Player.

The kind of system you are describing would seem to require that level of engagement, unless you think it would be handled all IG/IC, which I would find...Difficult to imagine, really, without some kind of over the table discussion.

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.

I think, you need to look at the impetus for what causes spell spamming, and determine whether this actually redress a solution to it. Or will just create some kind of additional complexity that will not actually get used.

Personal opinions follow: If it's an option in addition too, I think if it's harder than just hitting a command 6 times, and hoping for a fail. Then pausing to emote something relatively canned... It's not gonna be a good drop in that actually goes to use. Unfortunately, the path of least resistance is sitting in your temple/apartment/cave and spam casting to max.

I think, at the same time, making the current system more gated than it already is, whether that's behind components, Roleplay in a faction or otherwise, or 'microgating quests', runs the risk of creating a situation where all but around 10% of magickers feel useless. And that would be a terrible situation to have.

The current system is imperfect, but making it harder for mages to advance, I don't think is the route the game would be healthiest in. Especially given that most full guild mages are extremely extremely squishy and reliant on others already. If you remove the ability, or gate their ability to branch, then you run into a situation where they feel even more useless for even longer.

That said...

Perhaps, a compromise could be, that if you use a component, with a specific new reach, XPND or something. It has a near guaranteed chance of learning, and consumes a component related to the spell and power level +1 of what it's cast at. With possibly a perpetually maxed mana cost.

This would give spell spammers a single command that they could do. And then get on with their RP that actually matters...

Just my two cents.

Quote from: Nao on July 24, 2024, 07:00:14 PMI'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.

Quote from: Down Under on July 24, 2024, 07:14:08 PMI'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.

Quote from: Down Under on July 24, 2024, 07:14:08 PMI 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.

Quote from: Nao on July 24, 2024, 07:34:33 PM

Quote from: Down Under on July 24, 2024, 07:14:08 PMI 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!

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

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.

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.

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:

Quoteand 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.

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.

Quote from: Halaster on July 24, 2024, 04:11:50 PMSometimes 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.

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.

+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.

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.

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.

Quote from: Usiku on July 25, 2024, 04:59:26 AMI 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. :P 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.

Quote from: Usiku on July 25, 2024, 04:59:26 AMIf 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.

Quote from: AdamBlue on July 25, 2024, 04:41:47 AM+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!

Quote from: val on July 25, 2024, 07:46:13 AMI 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.

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.

Quote from: Inky on July 25, 2024, 02:12:58 AM

Quoteand 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'

QuoteWhile 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!).

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.

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.

Quote from: Inky on July 25, 2024, 10:18:26 AMThe 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.

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.

Quote from: Windstorm on July 25, 2024, 10:49:08 AMSequestering 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).

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.

Quote from: Windstorm on July 25, 2024, 11:18:01 AMI 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.

That element used to be my favorite guild. I'm forcing myself to log in a couple times a week a couple hours at a time in the hopes that one day I have access to what those PCs used to start with. When I brought it up as a concern I was told by not one but two different staff members (one of which was Halaster) that it wasn't a concern, it was changed because the thing it's now locked behind would have been redundant if it wasn't locked there. Locking it there doesn't make it not redundant.

Quote from: Windstorm on July 25, 2024, 11:18:01 AMI 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.

Sure, that's a thing.  Everyone doesn't get access to everything immediately.  I'm not overly concerned whether we're "normal" or not, but I can say that I've played countless games where access to certain areas or things of the game are gated behind "unlocking" it.  This is a fundamental aspect to many games in general, I dunno what to tell you.

Quote from: Halaster on July 25, 2024, 10:20:22 AMSo 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. 

One way i can think of to achieve this in an interesting way to the all the players is to stream line learning of basic spells, making them more linear, but advanced spells would require random items scattered around the world.

As an example, we'll go with power crystals, each a different color for, each magick element. The way it would work is finding these crystals doesn't require any additional forage skill or to be in any special locations, any mage looking for components would already have a chance to find these crystals, so would anyone else looking for stuff, people would just find them randomly. You would need these easily identifiable crystals to gain skill or branch advanced spells.  Because they are found at random, RP, reputation, financial power and connections becomes more important than just searching for them yourself.

Also because it would be a random chance when looking for anything, a grebber looking for food might stumble upon them, maybe finding a vivudian crystal or krathi crystal which could be sold for a decent amount at the temple or to the individuals. Organizations keeping mages may offer their own rewards for them too.

Additionally the game would be able to modify the rate of likely hood of finding them, so if there is a lot of people the rate could go down, or if less people the rate could go up. You could also have different crystal sizes or qualities if you want further control of what the likelihood to gain or become better at certain powerful skills for certain mages. Finally, staff could also use them as exploration rewards or random finds. Perhaps killing a NPC might find one in its inventory, or skinning an animal finds one in its gut.

Unlike components, the more random flat chance the better to avoid people feeling like they have to go somewhere or do something specific all the time to find them. If anything they should just be Rping and living their lives.  Like offense and defense for fighters, the benefit here is that two mages could put in the same amount of effort and time and come out with different outcomes. At that point, the mage player can only blame their own bad luck. Each play through would be different for each mage, yet effort and interaction would still be often more rewarded.

Defilers and void mages would probably remain as is or use a different system.

Quote from: Halaster on July 25, 2024, 11:30:51 AMThis is a fundamental aspect to many games in general, I dunno what to tell you.

Okay, I have to call you on this because I can't resist:

What other game considers it an engaging function, earned by a longterm player who has proven their worth and trustworthiness to be able to unlock this role, to be standing in what is possibly an otherwise empty room, potentially interacting with no other object, repeating the same action over and over for upwards of (being completely generous in this time estimation, mind) ten hours before you get to where you can get to the part where you can just walk in the essential room where your PC is supposed to, for example, be able to sit down or log out?

Or even like.. kill a basic, low-level monster, or be useful to another PC, or do the basic things they signed up to do?

Can we, the playerbase, give you a hall pass to go play this role and see how fun this is?

Quote from: Halaster on July 25, 2024, 11:12:37 AM

Quote from: Windstorm on July 25, 2024, 10:49:08 AMSequestering 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.  A mage can sit around in safety and just cast until they're powerful, in a reasonably short amount of time (compared to others).

Nah. My 10 day mage is still going to get bodied by a zero day stalker.

I also kinda have to agree with Windstorm here. I don't understand why players should have to 'earn' access to their starting clan building, seems a little weird. Also, 'earning' is always such a weird things in games like this. In most games, earning access to a new area is usually done through a feat of skill or otherwise effort. A lot of stuff in Armaggedon is merely a grind that's time-consuming more than anything else, and I don't really think gating stuff behind 10+ hours of doing not particularly interesting gameplay is the best way to go about things.

Hunters have to 'earn' the ability to go to difference places in the world because their combat skills directly correlate to being able to survive different areas. This is usually a fun experience because hunting is very dynamic and will provide you with things like hides, meat, horns, bones and stuff that you can then trade with other people for more material progress and interactions.

I played a full-guild for a short while, and I've played my current character far longer. I'm nowhere near finishing skilling up on my current character, but it's been far more enjoyable because the 'grind' is actually fun. Mages have to stand in a room casting for 100+ hours to branch/skill and there's nothing else to it.

Quote from: Inky on July 25, 2024, 12:15:02 PMNah. My 10 day mage is still going to get bodied by a zero day stalker.

Also this, mages are fun, have cool spells and generally enjoyable to play outside the grind. But I really don't think full mages are strictly more powerful than mundane classes. I will always be far, far more terrified of any class with good stealth and backstab than a gick. Also gicks are denied most opportunities to 'gang up' unlike mundanes. Three dudes on mounts or with good bash will absolutely wreck a gicker.

Quote from: Windstorm on July 25, 2024, 11:38:05 AMOkay, I have to call you on this because I can't resist:

What other game considers it an engaging function, earned by a longterm player who has proven their worth and trustworthiness to be able to unlock this role, to be standing in what is possibly an otherwise empty room, potentially interacting with no other object, repeating the same action over and over for upwards of (being completely generous in this time estimation, mind) ten hours before you get to where you can get to the part where you can just walk in the essential room where your PC is supposed to, for example, be able to sit down or log out?

Lol of course I cannot say another game does that because that's an absurdly specific scenario you've cooked up to prove a point that could only be our game, and does not at all reflect the point I was making.  My point was much simpler:  "access to certain areas or things of the game are gated behind "unlocking" it".  Which is a common thread to games.

But does the changing things to gate things that they used to not because the thing was redundant to start with improve or make poorer the experience of playing that thing. Does it add to anything? Other than the skillups required and time sink required to access a room that those very people used to access without grinding?

And I think that it's important context that this is in a thread you yourself made about ameliorating the grind for mages some. Why did adding grind that didn't exist happen? What did it benefit? What was made more fun? Especially in the context of this is now a 50+ post thread on how to do /the exact opposite/ yet it's not a problem when people point out that this is a choice incongruent with stated reasoning and goals? And it's not just me. It's a lot of people. Most of whom have played gemmed in 'Seasons', which I assume you have not?

Quote from: dumbstruck on July 25, 2024, 12:36:58 PMBut does the changing things to gate things that they used to not because the thing was redundant to start with improve or make poorer the experience of playing that thing. Does it add to anything? Other than the skillups required and time sink required to access a room that those very people used to access without grinding?

And I think that it's important context that this is in a thread you yourself made about ameliorating the grind for mages some. Why did adding grind that didn't exist happen? What did it benefit? What was made more fun? Especially in the context of this is now a 50+ post thread on how to do /the exact opposite/ yet it's not a problem when people point out that this is a choice incongruent with stated reasoning and goals? And it's not just me. It's a lot of people. Most of whom have played gemmed in 'Seasons', which I assume you have not?

It's OK if you don't agree with some of our game design decisions.  We can't please everyone.  It sounds like your specific feedback to this thread is "Fix it so that that one particular room is more accessible":  noted!  I'll have the staff who oversee that temple where that room is located look into it and if they think it should be changed, they'll change it.

Do you have any other feedback to the larger questions in the thread?  I'm hoping you have more.

Quote from: Halaster on July 25, 2024, 01:00:18 PM

Quote from: dumbstruck on July 25, 2024, 12:36:58 PMBut does the changing things to gate things that they used to not because the thing was redundant to start with improve or make poorer the experience of playing that thing. Does it add to anything? Other than the skillups required and time sink required to access a room that those very people used to access without grinding?

And I think that it's important context that this is in a thread you yourself made about ameliorating the grind for mages some. Why did adding grind that didn't exist happen? What did it benefit? What was made more fun? Especially in the context of this is now a 50+ post thread on how to do /the exact opposite/ yet it's not a problem when people point out that this is a choice incongruent with stated reasoning and goals? And it's not just me. It's a lot of people. Most of whom have played gemmed in 'Seasons', which I assume you have not?

It's OK if you don't agree with some of our game design decisions.  We can't please everyone.  It sounds like your specific feedback to this thread is "Fix it so that that one particular room is more accessible":  noted!  I'll have the staff who oversee that temple where that room is located look into it and if they think it should be changed, they'll change it.

Do you have any other feedback to the larger questions in the thread?  I'm hoping you have more.

I do. I posted them even. You must have missed them. Firstly I agree with everything Down Under has said. I love AdamBlue's idea, but my main one was 'make fails on qntlz actually have a chance of increasing the skill' unlike 'nil', you're not trying to 'not cast the spell' so why reduced learning on it? (If you gain at all, I've never seen a qntlz fail result in a skill gain).

quick edit to add: If you are talking to people about the temple in question being more accessible that is awesome and appreciated. I still don't get why you're locking the thing behind spam then looking for how to get alternatives to spamming but I don't suppose it has to make sense to me.

Quote from: dumbstruck on July 25, 2024, 01:07:09 PMI do. I posted them even. You must have missed them. Firstly I agree with everything Down Under has said. I love AdamBlue's idea, but my main one was 'make fails on qntlz actually have a chance of increasing the skill' unlike 'nil', you're not trying to 'not cast the spell' so why reduced learning on it? (If you gain at all, I've never seen a qntlz fail result in a skill gain).

BTW, Talos and I just took at look at the temple in question, and have made an alternative fix.  The issue, if I recall, was that a new temple member didn't have access to a Safe / Save room.  We made one of the rooms that all members have access to to be safe/save now.

Quote from: Halaster on July 25, 2024, 12:32:11 PMLol of course I cannot say another game does that because that's an absurdly specific scenario you've cooked up

Ahhhhh but your counter here was that "other games do this," and then when called out, you confess that other games.. do not do this?

Also, I didn't 'cook it up.' You did. You have a player right here that's experienced it telling you about it. It's not even the first time.

Listen, I know ArmageddonMUD's historical solution to problems being called out is to dig in heels and insist it's not a problem, but I have to go on to point out here the utter hypocrisy and the way you've painted yourself into a corner in this conversation string. This is a problem. ArmageddonMUD is alive today because we did a 180 on the old ways and actually addressed some problems. Let's please not repeat the past in this way. It didn't help us then and it won't help us now. If something's a problem, it's okay to admit it and backtrack. We can do better than what almost killed us last time.

This isn't an isolated issue with one type of mage or one building, either. It's emblematic. But it took me coming out here to drag you over the coals to address it. That shouldn't be the case. I'm glad something's been done, but all the same.

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.

Quote from: Windstorm on July 25, 2024, 01:12:08 PMAhhhhh but your counter here was that "other games do this," and then when called out, you confess that other games.. do not do this?

Maybe you don't understand what I'm trying to say?

My point was much simpler:  "access to certain areas or things of the game are gated behind "unlocking" it".  Which is a common thread to games."  That's it, that's the only thing I was trying to point out.  The simple concept of gating things behind an unlock is common to many, many games.

Your scenario was much more involved and specific to a single person.  You are absolutely right, other games do not do that specific scenario you laid out, that is totally absolutely unique to us.

I'm a little confused by what you think you've "caught" me in, rather I think it's a misunderstanding between what we're each trying to say.  Dumbstruck was talking about one specific case, they even had a Request about it a few weeks ago, which we have now looked into.  Which of course you wouldn't know that.  If there's some bigger conspiracy, I'm failing to see it.

To reiterate the point of this thread:  I'm trying to solicit feedback from players about alternative ways to gain skills than just spam casting.  Not sure what you're on about.

Trying to keep it more on topic, I want to add something to the idea. Found here (https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60803.msg1106674.html#msg1106674)  :-\

For the idea to work:
1. Basic spells would need to ensure mages are fun, survivable and useful.
2. Advance spells would give mages abilities to make them obscenely deadly, or buff someone to be obscenely deadly.

I think the second is an important distinction this season. It is not that mages can't have defenses or deterrents but some buffs are more dangerous than the old 'energy beam'. This is especially true with the expanded social roles of mages. So certain mages, people :P and organization may have a vested interest in ensuring magick users become 'more' useful to them by acquiring the items mages need to grow...by any means necessary.

It also occurred to me, that one more sinister element could be added. What if defilers, like templars could produce a strong crystal from the corpses of sufficiently powerful dead mages (PC only, not NPCs). I am not sure the game the game would want to go that direction, but does make things interesting, asking what are players willing to do to pay the cost for power.

Unfortunately, for off-peak users, this would mean isolated mages without a network or people to support them would likely end up weaker than those with more RP opportunities. In this scenario, the strongest mages are probably the ones with the most interesting interconnected RP.

My other suggestion which I forgot a bit ago, was simply reverse how skilling works across the board for everyone so it's the inverse and you get skillups from successes rather than failures (not just for mages, across the board), then you're not doing something you're ostensibly pretty damn good at 50 times trying to fail it which if we are ever talking about realism has always been an issue with both skilling in general and the branching system more specifically.

Quote from: Windstorm on July 25, 2024, 01:12:08 PM

Quote from: Halaster on July 25, 2024, 12:32:11 PMLol of course I cannot say another game does that because that's an absurdly specific scenario you've cooked up

Ahhhhh but your counter here was that "other games do this," and then when called out, you confess that other games.. do not do this?

Also, I didn't 'cook it up.' You did. You have a player right here that's experienced it telling you about it. It's not even the first time.

Listen, I know ArmageddonMUD's historical solution to problems being called out is to dig in heels and insist it's not a problem, but I have to go on to point out here the utter hypocrisy and the way you've painted yourself into a corner in this conversation string. This is a problem. ArmageddonMUD is alive today because we did a 180 on the old ways and actually addressed some problems. Let's please not repeat the past in this way. It didn't help us then and it won't help us now. If something's a problem, it's okay to admit it and backtrack. We can do better than what almost killed us last time.

This isn't an isolated issue with one type of mage or one building, either. It's emblematic. But it took me coming out here to drag you over the coals to address it. That shouldn't be the case. I'm glad something's been done, but all the same.

...It's a game...

You haven't 'caught' anyone or 'raked them over the coals'. C'mon. I don't think we need to dial up the heat of the rhetoric in an attempt to get a point across.

You have some great ideas (here and in other places) but you dilute your arguments and great points by your word choices and heated approach. You aren't going to get anyone (particularly Staff members, and probably particularly Halaster) to agree with you with these methods.

If your goal is to enact some sort of change, or make suggestions that are taken seriously, i'd recommend a different approach.

All right, let's get this thread back on topic. I suggest we all take a few steps back, and make this a little less heated <3
I don't like locking threads when they are productive, so let's get back to being productive, yes?

Thank you :)

I think the solution is simpler, and incidentally could apply just the same to all skills, not just magick (and it's arguably more needed for mundane skills where you don't have a temple designed for risk-free practice, or the option to dry-cast purely for practice):

The longer it has been since you last raised a skill, the more you gain next time it goes up. Obviously set a cap so it doesn't shoot up from novice to advanced if you haven't used it for a month, but maybe one point per six hours of play or something (and perhaps longer for skill groups that have an inherently longer wait), up to a maximum of five points in one go. If the goal is to alleviate the need to split your time between roleplaying and raising the skills you need for your character concept, that should satisfy both those who prefer to spend as little time as possible on grinding and those who find it satisfying to work on their skills (and can raise them faster than you could by waiting).

Is it realistic that you learn more the longer you didn't use a skill? Eh, not exactly; but most facets of this game are steeped in unrealistic malarkey that we ignore and play around. As long as it's not the fastest way to improve, it'll be fine. Most importantly, the unrealistic nature of this hypothetical feature does not tarnish or interfere with roleplay, gameplay or PvP balance in any way. Nobody else will notice. Nobody's gonna say 'wow, that guy is roleplaying so much that he benefits unfairly!'

While I'm not a fan of the thing some MUDs do where you just gain RPXP from emoting and spend it on skills, it does undeniably steer players away from obsessive skill-grinding that replaces interaction. I think the above would be a reasonable compromise that both makes it possible to improve without excessive grinding, makes it possible to improve faster by grinding for those who enjoy the dopamine hits from solving the game, and makes it impossible to improve without ever doing the thing that raises a given skill. You'll still need to steal (and fail at it!) from time to time if you want to become a master thief. I think that part is especially important.

There's a very real problem in this game where many skills can only really be raised at a relevant rate if you use them for the express purpose of raising them, even though you have no real IC reason to do whatever it is that raises them. Not all skills, but certainly quite a few. If you try to play a character whose primary mode of aggression is backstab (just to pick an example) but you use backstab only when you have a legitimate, rational IC reason to try and murder somebody, you're never getting anywhere with that skill. As such, the game itself requires that you "twink" by using it just because you want it to go up. And then you see that you were rewarded for doing that, so your lizard brain tells you to do that more. And you shouldn't, but then again, you can probably get away with it, right? Who's gonna notice?

That's the big flaw of Armageddon's skill progress system. If you play fair, you lose out. If you spend most of your time talking to people, planning plots or otherwise "doing the right thing," your character falls behind in the invisible arms race and becomes irrelevant compared to those who only grind, or know how to balance grinding and interaction in order to check both boxes sufficiently.

Many aspects of this game are simulationistic. The new 'learn' feature was ostensibly an attempt at solving the issue outlined above, and simulate what your character is learning from the life they're living even when you're offline; but we all know that one point per week is completely ineffective when it comes to meaningful progress in any given skill. If instead you could make, say, half the progress of someone who grinds hard, so long as you do use the skill in question at least enough to qualify for a gain every 24 hours played or thereabouts, I think it'll satisfy those who prefer to interact and socialize and plot while not undermining the satisfaction of those who derive a lot of enjoyment from the feeling of building up a mechanically effective character.

I think that's a lot more palatable and a lot less goofy than the oddly gimmicky and formulaic "go to the stone pillar and pretend to pray so that you branch Spell X."

Quote from: Halaster on July 25, 2024, 01:00:18 PMDo you have any other feedback to the larger questions in the thread?  I'm hoping you have more.

I think you should look at the common pain points and address some of those before you start working on the baller mage quests you're cooking up. This might actually mean compromising on your vision for mages to make the game enjoyable to play.

Me? I actually don't care where my character sits on your power gradient. I just want a few simple things.

- Fix Nil. There's no reason for it to be like that. It's just another gameplay trap.
- Not to lose my character in a sparring match gone wrong. I've already put in a request related to this.
- To not have to engage in hours of brainbreaking grind.

Quote from: Roon on July 25, 2024, 02:07:55 PMI think that's a lot more palatable and a lot less goofy than the oddly gimmicky and formulaic "go to the stone pillar and pretend to pray so that you branch Spell X."

I don't think the idea of going somewhere is bad to be honest.

But the problem is without any random chance or risk added to the mix you are basically supplementing one form of spamming for the other or just linearly extended the time required to cap.

Tying it back to the idea I had, instead of separate colored crystals, it would be just one blank crystal which required mages to find sources of power to fill. During this time a mage would have to find an appropriate location, and would find themselves vulnerable as the fill the crystal with power, putting them at serious risk of being attacked, knocked out and robbed.

In this way, the random chance requirement would be filled by acquiring a crystal, but the risk would come when trying to to fill the crystal later, going to a potentially dangerous location, where your mage friend could be waiting to jump you to steal that crystal. Maybe mages sensing when these crystals are being used, just by being in the general vicinity. Again even in this scenario, more RP-oriented interconnected mages would be likely to advance by being able to hire people to watch their back.

Quote from: Halaster on July 25, 2024, 10:20:22 AMSo 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].

I think this post from Halaster got buried in the shuffle, because I don't see many people responding to its points.

If I could boil the problem down though, @Halaster, the 'cost' of magic seems to be the main issue. Right now the costs can be summarized as:

• Combat Class: Risk of injury and/or death.
• Crafting Class: Money and/or materials.
• Magic Class: Time, and Social RP

And I realize that mages are faster to skill up - having played one, years ago, I was amazed at how quickly my spell tree filled out. The social RP aspect has been reduced in Season One (which I, for one, appreciate), but other balance is time. If a mage wants, they can sit in their apartment and spam cast until they're fully branched.

I interpret your statement of your criteria as:

* A gating function that signifies a beginner mage from an intermediate mage, from an advanced mage.
* That gating function should be dangerous enough that not all who get there can pass it.
* The gating function should require other people to complete, thereby hopefully being more interesting than spamcasting.

I might be off in my interpretation, but now I see why you mentioned things like places of power/words of power.

An idea in this vein, rather than making it 'less grindy':

* Have a script the randomly selects a room in-game as a place of power... for that particular magicker. Each magic class gets a spell to sense the direction of this place of power - they have no idea where it actually is, just a general direction and distance. They have to go there and perform a ritual.
* The ritual is a spell, which must be cast with a new reach - the wild reach. The mage unfetters their power in hopes of ascending to the next 'tier' of mage, and there's a real chance to lose control of the magic, here. Bad things happen if control is lost. Doing this in a group of people is better. Doing it in a group of similarly-aspected mages is best, as they can help control things.
* The ritual is cast, a new tier is ascended to - new spells open up. If the progression was from beginner to intermediate, then a new random room is selected, and the race begins anew.

I have no idea how difficult something like that would be to code. But I think it means the cost of being a mage is kept such that it's a rare mage that could put together all the required people, time and resources to move themselves up to the highest class of magick. I don't even know if this is a good idea, I'm really just trying to figure out if this kind of idea actually is the direction you want to go more into?

So - after thinking about this, I think any alternate way to gain spells needs to work

1. Without staff intervention - reasons are in my earlier post

2. Interaction with other players should be encouraged by the system, but shouldn't be required. I'm saying this because mages should stay playable even when numbers are low, you play when there's 5 players online, or you want to play the stereotypical cave/sewer mage. Or even just a rogue who doesn't know any others.

There's also one positive aspect of spam-casting for gemmed that hasn't been brought up yet. The temples become a gathering spot because you need to cast a lot of spells and this is best done in the temple. There's a lot of socializing and RP happening in there with characters that have nothing else in common and probably wouldn't interact anywhere else, but here the rinthi elf will spend time with the Oash circle member. Remove the need to spend a lot of time at the temple and that goes away.

It would be cool if some alternate way to gain skills could maintain the temples as spots to RP with other mages, or introduced alternative spots.

I like the idea of learning from other mages as an alternative to spamcasting. Maybe we all just need to use teach more often?

You could learn from watching other PCs cast, possibly even (v)NPCs, as long as you're thinking, talking and/or emoting and not just idling. I'm sure you could put some timers on that so it doesn't get easier or faster than spamcasting, and doesn't work to make your spamcasting more efficient. Or make it PCs only. Maybe you can even learn from mages of other elements if their spells are 'similar' (same mood/sphere).

Or lets use components for spells that otherwise don't need them. Using a component gives you a chance for a skill increase without a skill fail, with more powerful components giving you a higher chance. This would make components more useful, too.

Quote from: helix on July 25, 2024, 02:37:01 PMMagickal pilgrimage stuff!

This is a cool idea!  ;D

If we do locations or items or whatever is going to funnel into the same argument of experienced players knowing more things and wanting it all public which then would lead to people just metaing it and doing that grind. They're are still people that won't rp that because they want Ice Ball on their spell list.

I also don't think staff having to oversight it is the answer either as staff can't always pay attention to everyone on every timezone.

I could see giving some automated bonus to those who use emote, feel, think and such but again people will likely game that system too because they just want that spell because it hates them from killing horrors. And darn it,  things shouldn't be gated.

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.

Quote from: helix on July 25, 2024, 02:37:01 PM...

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. :D

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.

Quote from: Windstorm on July 25, 2024, 03:29:09 PMSo 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".

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.

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.

Quote from: dumbstruck on July 25, 2024, 01:13:02 PMI 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.

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)


----

Quote from: Inky on July 25, 2024, 10:18:26 AMSo 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.

Quote from: Bogre on July 25, 2024, 06:51:08 PM[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!

Quote1. 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.

Quote from: Dresan on July 25, 2024, 02:53:33 PMThe 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.

Quote from: Dresan on July 25, 2024, 02:53:33 PMAnd 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.

Quote from: helix on July 26, 2024, 01:12:23 AMReally 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.

Quote from: Dresan on July 26, 2024, 10:39:22 AMcrystals

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.

Quote from: Halaster on July 26, 2024, 10:43:38 AMCan 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 (https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60803.msg1106768.html#msg1106768). I hope this helps.

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.

Quote from: Lizzie on July 25, 2024, 09:12:20 AMI'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Quote from: Alizerin on July 28, 2024, 01:25:18 PM

• 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?

Quote from: Feu de Joie on July 28, 2024, 01:10:10 AM...

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?

Quote from: Feu de Joie on July 27, 2024, 10:45:52 PM

Quote from: Lizzie on July 25, 2024, 09:12:20 AMI'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.

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.

Quote from: Down Under on July 24, 2024, 07:14:08 PM

Quote from: Nao on July 24, 2024, 07:00:14 PMI'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.

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).

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

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.

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.

Quote from: mansa on August 14, 2024, 03:37:09 PMWhat 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.

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.

Quote from: Lotion on August 14, 2024, 04:20:18 AMCurrently 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.

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.

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.

Quote from: dumbstruck on August 14, 2024, 10:28:05 PMThere 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

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.

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)

Quote from: Halaster on August 15, 2024, 10:00:00 AMWhat 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 '+'.

Quote from: Halaster on August 15, 2024, 10:00:00 AMWhat 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.

Quote from: Halaster on August 15, 2024, 10:00:00 AMWhat 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.

Quote from: Halaster on August 15, 2024, 10:00:00 AMWhat 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!!

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.

Quote from: Halaster on August 15, 2024, 10:00:00 AMWhat 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.

Quote from: Veselka on August 15, 2024, 02:31:45 PMHow 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.

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.

Quote from: Twilight on August 15, 2024, 04:45:31 PMThe 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.

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.

Quote from: Inky on August 15, 2024, 03:29:06 PM

Quote from: Veselka on August 15, 2024, 02:31:45 PMHow 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.

Quote from: Halaster on August 15, 2024, 10:00:00 AMWhat 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."

Quote from: Halaster on August 15, 2024, 10:00:00 AMWhat 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.

Quote from: dumbstruck on August 15, 2024, 04:41:05 AMI 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.

This made my day, thanks