Idea: Increase cast times for STRONG spells

[mansa]

::EDIT::
I've revised my idea to this:
So, I would say this would be my revised suggestion:

1) Have an additional line echo around the cast to show how /powerful/ the spell being cast is going to be.

The tall, muscular man starts casting a SUL water element spell.
- POWERFUL water elements seem to SWIRL and coalesce around the tall, muscular man, as he prepares his magick

The tall, muscular man starts casting a PAV water element spell.
- The water elements seem to coalesce around the tall, muscular man, as he prepares his magick

2) Increase the possible minimum spell delay for PAV and EEN by 1 game tick, and the minimum spell delay for SUL and MON by 2 game ticks.

3) Introduce a 'quickcast' spell reach, available for everyone, that reduces the minimum spell delay and has a higher chance at critical casting pass/fail - but not allowing the spell to fail with 'you lose your concentration'.


Original Post:


With the idea that combat has become slower, I would like to suggest this change:

When you cast the 2 highest spell powers, Mon and Sul - triple the cast time and have an additional echo saying that a lot of elemental power is flowing around your character.
The tall, muscular man starts casting a water element spell:

5 seconds later:

POWERFUL water elements seem to SWIRL and coalesce around the tall, muscular man, as he prepares his magick

5 seconds later:

the tall, muscular man utters an incantation:

When you cast the next 2 highest spell powers, Pav and Een - double the cast time and have an additional echo saying that some elemental power is flowing around your character.
The tall, muscular man starts casting a water element spell:

3 seconds later:

The water elements seem to coalesce around the tall, muscular man, as he prepares his magick

3 seconds later:

the tall, muscular man utters an incantation:



Finally:  Introduce a new reach that is a "quick cast" reach - where you cast extremely quickly BUT you have more of a chance to do critical things - either critical success or critical failure.

[dumbstruck]

I dislike this immensely.

This puts every single spell on the same footing as combat related skills and a significant number of spells aren't even combat related, for one.

Secondly, een is a 4 on a scale of 1-7, when literally the last time I played a (magick subguild that could do a certain illusion thing), who was not even 5'5 and only weighed 7 tenstone, you had to use a 3 on that scale to use it on yourself, let alone what you would need for someone elf sized, aka literally 1/2 way up a scale. And you think that should double the time it takes to... do everything magick related?

Because some people are murderhobos?

Gross.

[whengravityfails]

I absolutely abhor this idea for all the reasons dumbstruck mentioned.

I've never used magick in PvP and once again a blanket punishment is proposed to be levelled on everyone because, as she puts it, due to some murderhobos.

How about not allowing murderhobos to play gicks? Or put a cooloff period on them at the very least as opposed to punishing people who haven't done anything.

[Kestria]

With the idea that combat has become slower, I would like to suggest this change:

When you cast the 2 highest spell powers, Mon and Sul - triple the cast time and have an additional echo saying that a lot of elemental power is flowing around your character.
The tall, muscular man starts casting a water element spell:

5 seconds later:

POWERFUL water elements seem to SWIRL and coalesce around the tall, muscular man, as he prepares his magick

5 seconds later:

the tall, muscular man utters an incantation:

When you cast the next 2 highest spell powers, Pav and Een - double the cast time and have an additional echo saying that some elemental power is flowing around your character.
The tall, muscular man starts casting a water element spell:

3 seconds later:

The water elements seem to coalesce around the tall, muscular man, as he prepares his magick

3 seconds later:

the tall, muscular man utters an incantation:



Finally:  Introduce a new reach that is a "quick cast" reach - where you cast extremely quickly BUT you have more of a chance to do critical things - either critical success or critical failure.

This happened to crossbow use.. and barely anyone uses crossbows because they don't want to wait 30 seconds for the frikken thing to load.  Leave things alone that do not need fixing lol

[Patuk]

Oh, please. Bringing magic in line with other mechanics is a good idea. I'm all for it.

[zealus]

I'm against making it the same delay for the simple reason of mana.
There is already a limiting factor in how often and strong you can cast, and it's a hella lot less than two people going
Amos: Kill man
Malik: Charge man
Disengage
charge man
ect.

[Patuk]

Even if I were watching my keyboard like a hawk, the delay can be so short I definitely couldn't type charge amos in the time it'd take for a spell to go off, no.

[najdorf]

i am all in for nerfing mages in any way possible, including OP

[H182]

Don't like this at all.
Mages are already very limited by mana and it takes a lot of work to get to the point where you can even cast strong spells with success.
As it is if you choose to cast a strong spell you risk wasting the mana with failure and limit your options with what you can do magick wise.
Systems works well as it is.

[HazelHomewrecker]

16 seconds to cast a spell? Haha. No. That's a ridiculous overshot.

[Riev]

16 seconds to cast a spell? Haha. No. That's a ridiculous overshot.

[Kestria]

16 seconds to cast a spell? Haha. No. That's a ridiculous overshot.

Could you imagine!  Just.. OOC wait there a moment mate.. it's coming.. it's... it's nearly there.. I'm just waiting for the fire to warm up/water to get wet enough...

[mansa]

...
The tall, muscular man starts casting a water element spell:

5 seconds later:

POWERFUL water elements seem to SWIRL and coalesce around the tall, muscular man, as he prepares his magick

5 seconds later:

the tall, muscular man utters an incantation:
...

I was thinking about this, and I don't like having the second line be delayed to show off the power level of the spell.

An alternative would be this:
The tall, muscular man starts casting a SUL water element spell.
- POWERFUL water elements seem to SWIRL and coalesce around the tall, muscular man, as he prepares his magick
and
The tall, muscular man starts casting a PAV water element spell.
- The water elements seem to coalesce around the tall, muscular man, as he prepares his magick

This would eliminate having to have the game echo a second line to split up the delay.  Just append a new line to the casting echo to display how powerful the spell is being prepared.

...
Finally:  Introduce a new reach that is a "quick cast" reach - where you cast extremely quickly BUT you have more of a chance to do critical things - either critical success or critical failure.

This might be too powerful, because players would quickcast to ensure fails to branch new spells.

[whengravityfails]

Of all the ideas I've heard to cut down the amount of mages, this is easily the worst. They would become nigh unplayable as this would be applied across the board to all spells, not just combat. Terrible. This is the sort of change that would actually drive people off.

Besides, what are you people doing to get such long combat delays? Filling your britches with sand? I'm not experiencing anything remotely like that.

[Armaddict]

I haven't experienced new combat, so bear with me.  It was specifically mentioned that this was to go in hand with slowed down combat, i.e. that was a buff to delay-based actions in combat because non-delay, automated attacks now come slower/have lower overall dps.  That's the posit.  I have no idea how accurate that is.

So talking about this as a nerf to mages is not exactly accurate; they were buffed by that change.  That relationship has been mentioned at least once.

I think the numbers thrown out there were thrown out more as example of concept than the actual number to be focused on.  If combat is being slowed down, it makes sense for those elements involved in it to also be slowed down.

[Patuk]

Yeah, fifteen seconds is pretty damn long - even ten would be. I'd just be happy with a guaranteed five second delay, which should in fact be enough to shove someone down or whatever. Spells as-is can be pretty damn instant.

[Synthesis]

nah

[Fragmented]

nah

[Pariah]

More of a counter to mages than adding a bunch of roundtime should be concentration checks.  I know if you have a mage casting something and he gets mollywhomped (reel hit) he'll lose it.  But even just a regular hit should trigger a chance for them to lose their concentration.  I've fought a mage before where I get four hits off from the time he swirls with magick to when his spell goes off, hitting each one and then he still fireballs me.   That's the bullshit part.

[RheaGhe]

I think a dedication system would work and be a bit more. Say you can only dedicate (NUMBER OF SPELLS/4) with a minimum of 1. And to cast another you need to get rid of 1 you already have.

So starting off, you have a buff up, your magical energy is consumed and tied up in casting that buff, that you cannot cast your combat spells. Branch those spells, up to 5 or 6 spells. And you suddenly have 2 spells available, you can have a buff up, imbue an item, what have you, and cast a spell with it active. Get up to 8 spells, you've got 2 buffs active, and a free slot to cast spells. Or because of what I'm gonna say next, two slots to cycle your active spell and a buff.

Instant cast spells should have a lingering dedication, representing the elements grip on your focus and maintaining control that lasts about 5-8 seconds after casting.

Making magic more about tactical thinking, and preparation. Than about who casts the most spells at mon on themselves/their enemies before/during combat, and also early on providing the choice between imbuing/summoning an item, and buffing yourself, would create an interesting counterplay.

You're a corruption Viv? Well time to take down your mon poison you've got running on someone else, to focus on healing yourself. Because you're focusing on  2 buffs to keep you alive versus the mek and you need that extra healing slot NOW so you can flee.

This would also buff sorcs within the context of the system, compared to eles. Because I believe according to docs, Sorcs have more spells they can learn naturally. It would allow them to have more buffs up natively than an elementalist could.

Potential downsides would be elementalists grouping together and super buffing one of their combatants. But honestly, that makes sense in the context of tribals. And would leave the elementalists vulnerable themselves.

[Riev]

Vancian magic, as its known.

The downside being that all your ideas would've worked a year ago before magick was changed significantly vis-a-vis buffs and amount of buffs.

Also the spell lists would need a revamp as some elementalists are built to be utility based. I can think of one such elementalist, where one split would work with Vancian magic but the other split kind of requires 2-3 spells up at a time.

[RheaGhe]

Vancian magic, as its known.

The downside being that all your ideas would've worked a year ago before magick was changed significantly vis-a-vis buffs and amount of buffs.

Also the spell lists would need a revamp as some elementalists are built to be utility based. I can think of one such elementalist, where one split would work with Vancian magic but the other split kind of requires 2-3 spells up at a time.

Semi-Vancian.

Vancian would be limited casts flat out.

This is limited simultaneous casts.

[HammerofJericho]

Less focus on how strong something is in relation to pk might go a long ways towards making things feel more "fun and balanced".

[Kestria]

Instead of messing with something that really doesn't need it... Why not request magick absorbing shields be made in game or something.

[RheaGhe]

Instead of messing with something that really doesn't need it... Why not request magick absorbing shields be made in game or something.

Plenty of reasons. A: From a narrative standpoint;

That sounds like something only a particular type of mage could produce, and thus, by docs, wouldn't anyone who doesn't have magic, inherently not trust it?

How would a person, an armor crafter what have you, test their magic absorbing shield, other than by exposing it to magic. Which would inherently rely on magickers to test and invent it. Which is against docs.

B; From a gameplay perspective.

A gambit device like antimagic shields would be cool. But ultimately it would feel gimmicky and only patch over the problem of a game design issue.

That issue being, if we are to allow pvp to occur. It needs to be balanced in some way. Given that a branched and trained magicker can literally 1 shot most mundanes before they can land a hit. This is an issue for balance. Balancing magic with a negative social interaction, doesn't change the fact that that magicker can again, when fully trained can in 1 spell, 1 shot most mundanes that are not Mul or Half-Giant.

While also being as good as any other heavy or light combat class. Albeit without subjob for diversification.

As you can see, the balance issues are myriad. The solutions are not as easy as, "Just invent an anti magick shield"  Because from a narrative and gameplay perspective, that solution is a dead end and a bandaid over a major balance issue.

Want my other suggestion?

You have a magic subclass. You only get 3/4ths-2/3rds of your main jobs skills and off/def.