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| Thread: Regarding the Magic System |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 · NEXT» |
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted September 07, 2014 03:16 PM |
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Edited by Elvin at 15:41, 07 Sep 2014.
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Poll Question:
Regarding the Magic System
Something that has been on my mind for a long time now, is how one would best balance a magic system that features 7(!) magic schools.
H3 was fine because it only featured 4 schools. H4 had faction-aligned schools with annexes but Ashan is not going in that direction. H5 had 4 schools again, with limited amount of spells yet 2 guaranteed elements in each town. Again, no problem.
I am concerned about two things: One is how one would balance the random spell distribution and secondly, how to best organize the magic skills without having too many schools that do exactly the same but each for its own element. See H4, all magic schools increased their element's effectiveness and reduced their cost. Every magic skill was a carbon copy of the other, with different names and their only difference was the element's secondary skill(summoning, resurrection, necromancy etc).
I see two general approaches:
(A) One would be having the 7 magic skills, each for learning and improving the appropriate element. Such a system would require improved odds at getting spells from your element(s) of choice, such as your element's mastery improving the odds of getting spells from that element in adventure locations(ie utopias and mage vaults) or your element mastery giving you a x% chance to learn native spells by observing another hero or unit that casts them. Basically an element-based eagle eye that you don't have to pick. There are of course many possible solutions for tweaking the odds but the idea of this suggestion is 7 magic skills with the game giving you better odds to get the spells of your choice.
(B) The other would be ditching the 7 magic skills and using sorcery and/or enlightenment in their place. With this approach, sorcery would take over the spell effectiveness and magical effects while enlightenment would manipulate the odds of learning. Things like trading spells, learning from observation, increasing your knowledge and so on. This way it would be easier to learn spells, without the fear of investing in an element and not getting the spells you wanted. There are many approaches but the general idea is do away with the 7 magic skills and unify spell learning through 1-2 skills like sorcery and/or enlightenment.
There could also be a mix of the above but.. there simply are too many skills to learn for a magic build. It feels cumbersome. If you had to choose between one of the above, 1) which would you favour most and 2) how would you implement it?
There is a third option for those who dislike either solution but please do not pick it unless you feel that your idea is easy or even possible to implement. I should note that magic schools are not going to be reduced anytime soon, we are stuck with 7 elements.
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The_Polyglot
Promising
Supreme Hero
Nuttier than squirrel poo
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posted September 07, 2014 03:42 PM |
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Make it 2 universal skills, cause H2 was awesome and I miss it. 
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted September 07, 2014 04:02 PM |
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Edited by Elvin at 16:02, 07 Sep 2014.
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As for me, I would normally prefer to have magic school skills with a diverse skill tree but.. 7 is too many. I most enjoyed the H3 way where you could go for more than one schools and there were plenty of spells that even with random guilds you were fine. H5 did not support going for two schools unless you were a wizard and that simply sucked. Far less combinations. But with 7 magic skills and random guilds you will NEED some kind of failsafe if you want to invest in more than one magic skill. It is too risky to hope for the right spells when there are so many magic schools. And I feel that the best way would be a skill that allows you to learn from every element(naturally your faction would have affinity with certain magic or be unable to learn others) so that you do not have to concern yourself with what to pick early and pray that it was not a wrong choice.
So, 1-2 universal magic skills for me.
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Protolisk
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted September 07, 2014 05:27 PM |
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I voted 1-2. I would have preferred two, not one. But now, I am not so sure.
I really enjoyed HoMM5's skill distribution, that it made for an impressive amount of skills that all augment spells in interesting ways. H5's numerous "master of *small spell group*" was helpful, and the various advanced traits were pretty cool, but having this kind of effect 7 times would be a tad bit overkill if it was to be used in H7. Furthermore, it had all the "classic" elements shoved into mostly just one tree (fire, water and air, with a small amount of earth) which are now supposedly each getting their own trees in a 7 system.
My only problem is that without these cool small traits, each tree wouldn't really exist, and instead two rather bloated skill sets become available if they tried to supplement all the main spell schools, but then you'd have vary few traits to pick up on. Or it could be rather generic, not advancing any of the seven in any particular way, which might be a bit boring. Either way, they have problems in my eyes.
I really can't see either working very well, and if Ubi/Limbic can get it right, I'll applaud them.
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War-overlord
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Presidente of Isla del Tropico
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posted September 07, 2014 06:04 PM |
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I chose none, but My ideas may not be that radicall. Or maybe they are. But I've been playing with this idea in my head for a very long time.
The idea works in a curious combination of Heroes III, IV and V.
The idea is that every faction has acces to a singular spellschool that is unique to their faction. And in addition their unique school they can build 2 annexes of the 4 Elemental spellschools of their choosing. All spellschools have 5 levels.
The racial magic can only be learned in a special building in the town and only by heroes of the correct faction. Let us, for instance, say that Stronghold uses Shamanism as their racial magic and Barbarians and Shaman are the might and magic classes of Stronghold. Shamanism can thus only be learned by Barbarians and Shamans, further more all Shamans have Shamanism as a default learned school. The building for Shamanism, let's say the Hall of Shamans, can only be built in Stronghold towns. The Hall of Shamans has 5 levels and with every level build can unlock spells of that level.
In this manner, there is a unique school for every faction.
Then there are 4 schools of Elemental magic: Fire, Earth, Water & Air.
Each town, no matter what faction, can add 2 annexes to the Magic building in their town. Each town can choose any of 2 annexes. The annexes need not be upgraded and grant spells of the level that the magic building is. But an annex grants less spells when compared to the racial magic. Say we have a Stronghold town with a level 3 Hall of Shamans and a Fire Annex, then if the Hall of Shamans gives 3 level 3 spells of Shamanism, the Fire annex grants 2 level 3 Fire spells. On the other hand, because all factions can learn elemental magic, elemental spells can be learned through other locations on the adventuremap.
As far as skills go, I think them rather in the line of Heroes V. Everyone can learn level 1 & 2 Spells of the elemental schools and their racial school, but the appropriate skills are needed to learn higher levels. So to learn level 4 Earth Spells, a Hero needs to know Advanced Earth Magic. Like Heroes V, the skills grant bonuses to the effectivity of the spells cast, and for elemental spells give equal resistance to magic of their own school. Racial Spells have no elemental affinity unless otherwise specified.
Sorcery and Enlightenment still exist, but work in the way they did in HeroesIII, where Sorcery increases the effectiveness of any and all spells cast by a certain percentage. Sorcery stacks with the effectivity of Schoolskills. Enlightenment cuts down the mana cost of any and all spells by a certain percentage.
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yasmiel
Supreme Hero
Former Chessmaster
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posted September 07, 2014 06:27 PM |
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If we introduce some level of effect overlap to the schools, i think it solves the problem of having too many schools to begin with. (This is how the issue is solved in DoC id say - by splitting up certain spells among schools we get the situation where instead of a spell being in 1/7 of schools, it is present in 2/7 - nearly the same as in H3). It doesn't have to be exactly the same, but if it covers the same situational use it's enough.
So, for example, while Sanctuary heroes would have slim chances of getting Fireball, they have steady chance to get Geyser with similar effect.
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Magic guilds can work as in H3/H5 imo. With faction affinity being towards 1 or more schools (for example Haven having alignment toward Air and Light would steer the magic guild spell distribution into that direction).
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malax83
Famous Hero
Game ranger, HotA Player
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posted September 07, 2014 07:20 PM |
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H5 did well, the skill tree - cross with spell was really a good thing. So they keep the tree. As some of you, i think 7 magic school is too many : 5 school spells works well in Heroes 5, but as Yasmiel said, spells could be divide.
I was satisfied by Heroes 5 spells, and i think specials abilities are the best way to improve spells. So only one skill should be link to one school of magic. Cause, whatever if it s power, duration, area, main skill improve it then special abilities grant other effect (.. as Heroes 5..)
The main problem was the racial ability, it could imbalance the game, but it s an another discussion.
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted September 07, 2014 07:40 PM |
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Voted for 1-2 magic skills, not directly tied to the elements. Although WO idea caught my attention
War-overlord said:
The idea is that every faction has acces to a singular spellschool that is unique to their faction. And in addition their unique school they can build 2 annexes of the 4 Elemental spellschools of their choosing. All spellschools have 5 levels.
The racial magic can only be learned in a special building in the town and only by heroes of the correct faction. Let us, for instance, say that Stronghold uses Shamanism as their racial magic and Barbarians and Shaman are the might and magic classes of Stronghold. Shamanism can thus only be learned by Barbarians and Shamans, further more all Shamans have Shamanism as a default learned school. The building for Shamanism, let's say the Hall of Shamans, can only be built in Stronghold towns. The Hall of Shamans has 5 levels and with every level build can unlock spells of that level.
In this manner, there is a unique school for every faction.
Following this idea, what if Racials were divided in two parts: Racial Magic and Racial ability?
Racial ability could work only with creatures from the same faction, but Racial Magic could be used on any creature, not necessarily from the same faction.
This way, racials could exist without totally bashing army mixing, yet at the same time you'd make sure to have creatures of your faction because of the Racial Ability.
I liked your idea 
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted September 07, 2014 08:34 PM |
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Edited by Stevie at 22:10, 07 Sep 2014.
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I think the best question to ask here before anything else is: are 7 magic schools actually too many?
I think not.
First of all from a lore perspective, this is what we have. Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Light, Dark and Prime. And, maybe one day even Void magic. Ubisoft went this way and I don't think it was a random decision. But just from where I stand, 7 schools are actually great. It feels that you have a lot of flexibility. 9 Factions would rock with 7 magic schools, each presenting possibilities for unique spell development.
But then, as I know you certainly think Elvis, you wonder if there won't be a lot of spells repeating themselves under just different names and icons. Well, that doesn't really depend on anything else but imagination and a clever implementation. But I'd say no, and here's why:
First of all we need to understand what spells are, besides just flashy pixels on the screen. Spells are the way in which the hero directly intervenes into the combat by affecting -
A. Creature numbers - by reducing them (destructive spells - implosion, armaggedon, etc.) or increasing them via raising them (resurrect, raise dead, etc.) or summoning new ones (Phantom Forces, Summon Elementals, Conjure Phoenix, etc.)
B. Creature stats - by increasing them with blessings (haste, bless, shield, etc.) or decreasing them with curses (slow, curse, weakness, etc.)
C. Friendly Creatures' Abilities - offensive (Precision, Counterstrike, etc.) and defensive (all magical protect shields, Deflect Missile, Magical Immunity, Fire Shield, Arcane Armor, etc.)
D. Disabling Enemy Creatures - usually higher level spells (like puppet master, blind etc.)
E. Utility - like the ones for positioning (teleport) or siege combat (earthquake)
F. Battlefield terrain - (quicksand, ice path, fire wall, etc.)
G. Adventure map - outside of combat spells (town portal, dimension door, etc)
I see a lot of possibilities here. I could almost make a list of spells myself.
A. You can pretty much turn every element into a weapon, I don't see any inconsistencies here. But you can not make any element heal you. I see that reserved for light (Healing, Resurrect), earth (Regeneration) and maybe dark (Raise Dead). We've had a discussion about Prime receiving the Raise Dead spell and frankly I don't know how it concluded, but imo it should stick with dark, if it's even a spell and not a racial. Now, you could have a summon elemental for each school, and with some extra conjures you could go up to 10. As for the destructive spells, you could easily get 3-4 for each magic school. All in all, you could get around 40 spells affecting the numbers of creatures in one's army.
B. Basically each stat can be increased or decreased with spells. Attack, defense, damage, hit points, initiative, movement, morale and luck. 16 Spells just from here. Get some others affecting multiple stats, or bring something more original to the table and you reached 20.
C. Endless possibilities here. Firstly, 7 magic schools would mean 7 magical protect shields, and add to those the other ones like fire shield and magical immunity and you'll get more than 10. Then offensively, you could grant creatures abilities like vampirism, reduced range penalties, enchanted weapons with element deal elemental damage or apply debuff... With a bit of thought you could even get up to 15.
D. Again, only obstacle is one's imagination. You can maybe get the opposite of magic protection shields as debuffs on enemy creatures, as an innovation (not that original tho). The other ones are already quite well known, puppet master, blind, frenzy, forgetfulness; petrify, terror, time statis with Heroes 6. So let say another 15.
E. Teleport and Earthquake are really the only spells that I can think off at the moment. Remove object from Heroes 3 maybe, but I doubt it we'll ever see that spell again.
F. Tactical battlefield spells mostly. Positioning is key. Spells like quicksand, ice wall, fire wall, frozen grounds, land mines are just awesome spells that could win you the battle.
G. These spells are great to have but not in the way that makes picking a certain school a no-brainer. Also there's the need of balancing so that things don't end like in Heroes 3 with unlimited Town Portal and 5 Dimension Doors.
So around 100 spells here. This might seem much, but it's not. It's about 15 spells per school. Not too many like in Heroes 3, but not too few like with Heroes 5. I think It's a balanced number.
It's a crude list, in no way exhaustive, but I never meant it to be that way. No, what I wanted is to give you sufficient reason to trust that there are enough possibilities to have enough spells with 7 magic schools. So I don't believe that a new system should be opted for when this one should obviously do. There's no need to fix something that's not broken. The only thing that needs to be done is to implement worthwhile spells. Repetitiveness and redundancy should be reduced to a minimum.
But we now must ask the other question, as Elvis fairly pointed out. How are these spells going to be distributed? Because the distribution will affect which type of hero can get which type of spells. There are a lot of variables here:
A. The number of Mastery levels a hero can skill in a magic school that would enable him to learn spells from the next magic level.
B. What is the highest spell level that a hero with no mastery has access to.
C. The number of spells per level.
D. The difference between a Might hero and a Magic hero.
These are elements that condition one another and must be established in a balanced and coherent way. If I were asked to come up with the scenario I'd like to see the most, I'd say this:
A. I'd like 5 mastery levels.
B. Heroes with no mastery level in respective school don't get access to that school.
C. More spells on lower levels, decreasing in numbers with progression to higher levels.
D. Might heroes can only achieve full mastery level in the most representative magic school of the faction (like Grandmaster Light for Haven Might hero); Might heroes can skill mastery in a limited number of schools (like Light, Air, Fire and Water for Might Haven hero). Magic heroes can get full mastery to a secondary mastery school (like Light and Air for Haven Magic hero); Magic heroes can skill mastery in almost all magic schools but their most opposite (like Dark for Haven Magic hero); By virtue of their nature, Academy gets an extra third full mastery and no school restrictions.
Now that might sound strange to you, but I'm sure it'd work. Heavily influenced by DoC and MMX, and that's why I like it. There's nothing uglier than absolutely no restrictions. There should be lore supported restrictions and gemeplay ones. And maybe surprisingly for most of you, this would ensure a lot of replayability.
Now, what I think we'll actually see with Heroes 7:
A. 3 Mastery levels.
B. Heroes with no mastery can get spells up to and including the second level.
C. Progressive spread, from many low level spells to few high level ones.
D. Differences will consist in access to certain magic schools.
I don't mind this, but I think mine is just a tad better. At least for me.
And let's not forget that there will be 4 Heroes classes. Will those be 2 might heroes and 2 magic, or 1 might 1 magic each with an upgrade, or will they be 4 distinct classes altogether, I cannot say. But everything is in relation with everything and you cannot just request or change one thing without modifying other to fit that option.
Hope you appreciate my input here. If you think it was a long read, imagine I had to type it all
Thanks.
TL;DR version - Mostly option 1.
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malax83
Famous Hero
Game ranger, HotA Player
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posted September 07, 2014 08:43 PM |
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...
a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted September 07, 2014 08:51 PM |
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I don't like any of this, simply because it makes sense to have abilities that "work" with the spells: giving additional or area affects, making Resurrect "True" and so on.
However, 7 schools don't work, period.
My suggestion is 4 schools:
Twilight (Light/Dark)
Horizon (Earth/Air)
Steam (Water/Fire).
Prime
Since it may seem strange to be able to get opposite spells with the same skill, you can make different combos as well, but it makes no sense to have seven different schools and skills but it makes sense to have specific magic skills to allow specific magic abilities.
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odium
Known Hero
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posted September 07, 2014 09:47 PM |
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Edited by odium at 21:50, 07 Sep 2014.
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7 magic schools is way to hard to balance and at the same time not to make it boring (iterating the same spell in each/many of the magic schools). In my opinion, 4-5 magic schools is about right. Regarding the magic skills I believe that H5 was pretty good. All heroes can learn most basic spells (level 1-2) but you had to have magic school expertise of the corresponding level for the spells of levels 3-5. To these, one can add the generic skills that can improve the amount of mana (enlightenment in H5) or to further improve their efficiency (sorcery in H5).
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Minion
Legendary Hero
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posted September 07, 2014 10:00 PM |
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Just because there are 7 magic schools that Asha the God knows exist, that doesn't mean that the world of Ashan knows about them the same way. They can label the things they learn any way they want - just like they did in H5. Summoning is being focused on magic that oh well, summons thing. I say make new schools, the number 4 seems pretty good. I would hate there being one Sorcery skill that is essential to anyone wanting to learn spells beyond level 3, ugh, one "must have" skill in addition to logistics and soon we have heroes looking like clones of each other.
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Nocturnal
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted September 07, 2014 10:19 PM |
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Elvin said:
H3 was fine because it only featured 4 schools. H4 had faction-aligned schools with annexes but Ashan is not going in that direction. H5 had 4 schools again, with limited amount of spells yet 2 guaranteed elements in each town.
H5 spells were not divided to schools according to elements, that was H3. H5 spells were divided to schools regarding spell categories. "Destruction", "Conjuration", "Dark" and "Light". And this is what I want again.
The H3 way of dividing according to elements, which resulted in (for example) "Lightning Bolt", "Haste" and "Hypnotize" being in the same school. I find that ridiculous as they have nothing in common.
And naturally I find the A choice to my liking as I think the H5 spell system was nearly perfect. The only problem was the probability of your main spell not showing up in your town. So just fixing that would make it flawless.
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Wellplay
Famous Hero
Poland Stronk
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posted September 07, 2014 10:44 PM |
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But DoC developer mentioned at one of streams that Prime is Void Magic
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War-overlord
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Presidente of Isla del Tropico
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posted September 07, 2014 10:45 PM |
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Wellplay said:
But DoC developer mentioned at one of streams that Prime is Void Magic
I think that is supposed to be the other way around.
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Vote El Presidente! Or Else!
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LizardWarrior
Honorable
Legendary Hero
the reckoning is at hand
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posted September 07, 2014 11:03 PM |
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Well I'd suggest to make 4 schools very different from each other like:
-Elementalism/Shamanism=>Basically 4 schools in one, keeping only the good and classic elemental linked spells, like earthquake, lighting bolt, fire wall, summon elemental.
-Alchemy=>Instead of dark and light, we get potions masked as spells, this could include elixirs of haste, strength, life etc. Also various debuffs like poisons and corrosive fumes and spells like land mine and even summon mandrake
-Arcane=>Magic that isn't linked with elements, this school could house various spells like direct damage magic missile, force fields, teleport.
-Void/Primordial=>Spells that have to do with the universe itself and the order of the world, like raise dead, implosion, black hole.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted September 07, 2014 11:09 PM |
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You know that I dislike the 7 magic schools with a vengeance, but I accept that this is not the place to discuss that.
Looking back at H5, if we count Enlightenment as a magic skill (which I think is only half the truth) there were 6 magic skills. That's pretty close to the 7 magic skills there will be if we have a skill for each magic school. We don't know the number of non-magic skills, but supposing they stay fairly close to what we saw in earlier game, there won't be much room beyond those 7 skills if skill pool is not going to be swamped with magic schools (even if each faction being excluded from one school will help with this).
As I see it there has to be a skill for each school that allows learning the spells of higher levels; having one common spell for learning spells was tried in early games and did not work well (default skill choice = boring). I would probably enroll Sorcery either into the main skill or as perks in each skill - boring, but probably the best in a bad situation. The Enlightenment effects like Scholar, Intelligence etc. should be a separate skill I guess, as it won' make sense to have duplicates of these in each school.
As for learning the spells, we don't know how many spells are offered on each level and exactly how they are learned (mage guild?). In H5 each level of guild only gave you few spells, while (particularly lower levels) in H3 gave more spells. I'd prefer some sort of biased randomness where each level (at least the lower ones) gave a larger number of skills and where some had high probability of giving the factions "prefered" school while others were more random.
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What will happen now?
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Minion
Legendary Hero
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posted September 08, 2014 12:01 AM |
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So where is it confirmed that we have 7 magic schools in game? Am I short of knowledge here?
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RMZ1989
Supreme Hero
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posted September 08, 2014 12:17 AM |
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Edited by RMZ1989 at 00:18, 08 Sep 2014.
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Minion said:
So where is it confirmed that we have 7 magic schools in game? Am I short of knowledge here?
We know that from the IGN video, when they had opened a spellbook, we saw 6 magic schools and those were light, prime, air, earth, water and fire(only dark was missing but that was because Haven doesn't have dark magic at their disposal).
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