|
| Thread: Regarding the Magic System |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 · «PREV / NEXT» |
|
mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
|
posted September 08, 2014 02:57 AM |
|
|
There should only be two magic skills: Eagle Eye and Mysticism.
Jokes aside, 7 schools of magic is too many, but if we absolutely have to have them, then it's best for them to have their own skills. Otherwise, the generic magic skills are likely to be too good and overused. Perhaps it would be best to have 8 or 9 magic skills - 1 for each school, and 1-2 that enhance your spellcasting in general, as well as helps you with the schools that you don't specialize in. Something like the Magic Insight ability from H5.
____________
Eccentric Opinion
|
|
alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 09:17 AM |
|
|
mvassilev said:
There should only be two magic skills: Eagle Eye and Mysticism.
Jokes aside, 7 schools of magic is too many, but if we absolutely have to have them, then it's best for them to have their own skills. Otherwise, the generic magic skills are likely to be too good and overused. Perhaps it would be best to have 8 or 9 magic skills - 1 for each school, and 1-2 that enhance your spellcasting in general, as well as helps you with the schools that you don't specialize in. Something like the Magic Insight ability from H5.
I think 8 is a nice and even number, so I'd say 7+1 magic skills: One for each school and then one general skill.
____________
What will happen now?
|
|
odium
Known Hero
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 09:45 AM |
|
|
|
I believe that at this stage nothing is set in stone. Wouldn't it be better to change the elemental magic school separation from H6 to something else (similar to H5). This will help to reduce the number of total magic schools and associated skills to something less than 7. In this situation they could have also 2-3 generic magic skills not particularly associated to any school. So it would be something like 4/5 (particular) + 2/3 (generic) magic skills.
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 10:08 AM |
|
|
The problem with skills in general is that
1) All skills must basically have a comparable amount of active and passive abilities because
2) The number of active abilities that makes sense to have is limited, since you can only use 1 per combat turn.
That means, while it can't hurt to HAVE things you get for free (like "additional" spells) the number of spells you actually have a need for is fairly limited.
HoMM V did show that one Magic skill for 5 guaranteed spells plus 2 Mass versions was already plenty, 2 with double-digit figures more than enough.
That won't change, right? It doesn't matter how many spells a school comes with, you won't learn more than 2 - at least not because of spells. If you learn more than you'd do it for passives like Soil Burn (that are worth it), not because of spells, but it would be a mistake to allow a ton of passive stuff for a couple of reasons.
|
|
Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 11:51 AM |
|
|
You're mistaking. Sorely.
An individual's preference for certain spells does not render the rest useless by any stretch of the imagination. That's faulty reasoning. Spells can be effective depending on the situation. For example you'd rather cast Ice Wall in a situation where the enemy creature is in range of your shooter, while in other situations you'd prefer to slow them, reduce their damage or destroy their numbers. To say that because you don't use some that often they're useless is a gross overstatement.
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 12:19 PM |
|
|
You tend to understand the things I say the way you want to understand them. Where did I say anything about useless? So I repeat it in steps for you:
1) the amount of times you can use an active ability in battle is limited, since it lasts only a certain number of turns (if some or all have a cooldown, this number is reduced further; if the use costs something - like Mana - the amount of it is another limit).
2) There is no limit for the amount of passive abilities you can bring to bear, that can be effective at the same time.
3) If it costs a resource (like Mana) you must sacrifice primary attribute points to have enough of them (instead of pumping them into attack and defense to support your creatures passively).
4) Acquiring active abilities may cost level-ups that you might use for gaining passive advantages.
5) Your heroes may already start with a cost-free active ability called "hero attack".
6) Provided all spells are equally useful, even if situational, if points 4) and 5) are valid, it's still best to limit your active abilities in an effective way, because of 1), 2), and 3) in an effort to optimize the balance of passives and ideally stronger (because otherwise useless) actives which must also be significantly more advantageous than the ability mentioned under 5).
The bottom line is, that short of being able to aquire something like "immediately win every combat" combos by investing into a lot of spells, if it costs you level-up(s) to gain spells that also cost mana, you will be better off having only a limited amount of them because of 1) and 2).
In other words: It makes no sense to learn 5 magic schools just for getting more spells to cast, because part of those level-ups will be better used elsewhere. Just because you would like to cast Ice Wall twice in the game, it makes no sense to learn Advanced Water Magic or something like that, when you can learn Basic Attack and Battle Frenzy instead.
On the other hand, if you can get Ice Wall, Cure, Ice Bolt, Deep Freeze and 2 more Water spells, it makes sense to invest the skill points in acquiring the ability to learn them and in making them better with a couple of effects, provided they are effective enough. But you will then avoid Fire Magic, just because you'd like to have Fire Bolt since it does somewhat more damage and you like the possible Immolation effect better, but you can't get any other Fire spells.
|
|
Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 12:45 PM |
|
Edited by Stevie at 12:45, 08 Sep 2014.
|
Ok. I see now. Thought you were arguing against a big pool of spells to choose from.
Well, no. I don't see anything wrong with improving spell passives. Tho it's a bit complicated because it depends on other variables.
JollyJoker said:
In other words: It makes no sense to learn 5 magic schools just for getting more spells to cast, because part of those level-ups will be better used elsewhere.
Not necessarily. Plus, some prefer a wider range of spells than specialization on just a few of them. It comes down to gameplay.
JJ said:
Just because you would like to cast Ice Wall twice in the game, it makes no sense to learn Advanced Water Magic or something like that, when you can learn Basic Attack and Battle Frenzy instead.
You're arguing a highly unlikely scenario here. I don't think anyone thinks in those terms, like skilling a magic school just because they want one single spell. They are surely considering other spells from that school too.
|
|
foxxxer
Promising
Famous Hero
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 12:46 PM |
|
|
Seven Magic Schools System
Seven magic schools wouldn’t be a problem if the hero is able to learn 8 main skills. This can be possible only if we have separated learning mechanisms for main skills and perk. I already mentioned it in other thread. When your hero levels up you can choose to advance already learned main skill, advance racial ability or learn a new main skill. Meanwhile your hero receives 1 point per level up and you can pick perk whenever you want. The main skills are based on 3-grade system, racial ability on 5-grade system. So you need 24 level ups (not counting Witch Huts and some other adventure map objects)to develop the main skills and +5 levels to masterize the racial ability which makes 29th level for fully developed hero. Imo It’s a good mix of H3, H5 and H6. Of course this system needs some restrictions like hero 15th level requirement for Expert grade of the main skills, some perks and 25th level for the 5th grade of the racial skill. Also such mechanics require a whole lot of creativity (20+ main skills and 60-100 perks) and it’s hard for balancing. But if you have 8 available skill slots you can spend 3-4 of them for magic schools. I doubt such system to be ever implemented due to the lack of creativity and enormous lines of coding.
Four Categories System
Others already proposed such systems:
Similar to H5 System
Destructive magic
Cursing magic
Blessing magic
Summoning magic
Similar to JJ’s system
Light - Air
Water - Earth
Fire - Darkness
Prime/Void
Some other possibilities
First group (Light – Water – Air)
Second Ground (Darkness – Fire – Earth)
Void/Prime
Summoning
One-two Categories
Two groups
First group (Light – Water – Air – Prime)
Second Ground (Darkness – Fire – Earth – Prime)
So if your hero learns one of the two groups always gains Prime/Void School
One Group
They can always bring back Wisdom as a Main Skill. The difference will be the perks. The main skill gives you Prime (Basic – 3rd level spells; Advance – 4th; and Expert – 5th) and you can pick 3 magic schools out of 6 via perks. The perks will be linked to the corresponding mastery of the Wisdom. So if you have Advance Wisdom and perks Light, Fire and Earth your hero can learn 4th level spells of the respective schools. This system somehow is limited cuz can be learnt only 3 out of 6.
MAGE GUILDS
Here is even harder. How to be distributed the spells (especially 5th level). H4 comes to my mind, I mean the distribution not the racial thingy. There the 5th level presents 3 spells (if you build annexes). In H7 the spells can be divided in three groups.
For instance First group (Light – Water – Air), Second Ground (Darkness – Fire – Earth) and Void/Prime. So 3 spells (5th level) will appear in your Mage Guild, 1 per each group. If the spell variety is too big then adventure map buildings will play big role.
Another approach is through restrictions. For instance Haven can be restricted to Darkness school. The 3 groups may be Light-Prime, Fire-Earth and Air-Water.
To be honest I expect from Limbic more than one school restriction for the factions’ Mage Guilds in similar way like H6 where the heroes are restricted for some schools. Maybe the heroes won’t be restricted but they have to learn the spells in other factions’ towns.
Conclusion
Everything depends on the skillwheel mechanics. I felt myself restricted somehow in H5 cuz only 5 main skill spots. There are perks but they are linked to the main skills and the “global” development of the hero seems restricted. Mostly I prefer the first example I gave (Seven Magic Schools System) but I don’t mind if they implement Four-Categories System. I hope that there will be at least 6 spots for main skills if the later is implemented.
|
|
alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 01:02 PM |
|
|
I'm more than a little confused about exactly what point you are trying to make, JollyJoker. Sorry if it's just me being daft ...
I think one of the major problems with the Heroes 6 skill/spell mix was exactly what you say: When you need to invest skill points to learn a new spell, you'll be inclined to learn only a few spells. This for me (and maybe this was the point you were getting at) had an extremely negative effect on the game, because it made battles extremely boring and repetitive, just spamming the same spells over and over again. The "fix" they made by adding cooldowns just made it worse, because now battles were not only boring and repetitive but also needed to be dragged out for maximum performance (minimum losses). Yay ...
I think Heroes 3/5 system of spell learning worked because you would need to invest some skills to maximize the range of spells you had available (H5 was better than H3 here because Wisdom was a no-brainer), but you could still have a fairly wide array at a reasonably low cost. Mastering them at maximum efficiency was an entirely different story. H5 system had the flaw of also having too few spells compared to H3, but at your magic skills had the dual action of both allowing you to learn them and improving the ones you had.
Looking to Heroes 7, if we assume we get mage guilds (is that confirmed?) at least we'll be over some of the Heroes 6 problem. What I fear is that the 7 spell schools will end up with the same problem we saw in H4: Big overlap between schools with replicate spells that essentially do the same. This will put a natural damper on your incentive to learn many magic schools, which you can consider both a bad and a good thing, because it at one hand solves the problem of the game being swarmed in magic skills (good), but on the other hand makes the whole idea of different magic schools redundant (bad). But again, I feel I can't really come up with anything that adds towards a solution to the problem because the problem imo. is inherent of the number of magic schools.
____________
What will happen now?
|
|
War-overlord
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Presidente of Isla del Tropico
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 01:33 PM |
|
|
alcibiades said:
I'm more than a little confused about exactly what point you are trying to make, JollyJoker. Sorry if it's just me being daft ...
That's not entirely to blame on you. I often need to read several of JJ's posts before I understand what point he's trying to make. I sometimes suspect that JJ suffers from the altogether common affliction of being so into the subject that it becomes hard to be clear to more layman people.
alcibiades said:
Looking to Heroes 7, if we assume we get mage guilds (is that confirmed?).
We're confirmed something of the like.
Heroes 7 FAQ said:
- And the magic system?
Spells are outside the skill system again, and must be learned in town guilds, adventure map buildings or from other Heroes. Player can complete their Heroes' spell collection while exploring a map or completing a campaign.
____________
Vote El Presidente! Or Else!
|
|
Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 02:11 PM |
|
|
I think JJ point it's fairly simple: it's not optimal to pick lots of magic schools skills, since you can only cast one spell per turn, instead you should focus on picking more passives skills/perks.
I agree that 7 magic schools are way too much, and I'd rather have a lower amount (4-5 being ideal).
Another important fact to take into account is the number of skills the hero can learn. In Heroes 3 you could have all magic with 5 skills (wisdom + Air/Fire/Earth/Water) and still have room for three more skills (magic or might). In HV you were limited to 5 skills, and that meant you would never pick all four skills since you would be giving up on crucial skills (provided you picked Sorcery so you can cast more spells in combat, you wouldn't have Logistic, nor Attack, nor Defense, nor Enlightment...)
____________
|
|
Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 02:44 PM |
|
|
Peculiar that we have to decipher an insider's posts. Isn't having good explaining skills a requirement for such a position?
Whatever. What JJ wants to say is this: the transition of level-up points matters.
You wouldn't want to expend one point for one spell, when there are far more powerful perks to be chosen. This was the case in Heroes 6, and it sucked.
With the other iterations, one point transitioned into several spells. When you got basic Water say, you basically exchanged one level-up point for this number of spells. And that way it worked.
Storm-Giant said:
it's not optimal to pick lots of magic schools skills, since you can only cast one spell per turn, instead you should focus on picking more passives skills/perks.
Not at all. As I said, it depends on gameplay. Some people would rather want more spells to choose from, some would like to have few spells but specialize them. Take Haven for example, with the exception of dark, why would it be bad to have the rest of the schools available? I see nothing wrong with that, in fact even more, I think it's great! There's a ton of replay value in there, since obviously there are a variety of ways in which you can develop your magic!
Just think of the Freemage from MMX. Was the fact that it had access to all magic schools bad? Hell no, it was actually the most prefered magic class. So a bigger pool is a better pool.
Now, the one move per turn system on the other hand... I think it's detrimental to spell casting. A hero should have the ability to increase his number of casts. So in this regard, I prefered the ATB. But if this can be accomplished via skills or whatnot even given the turns system, I have no complaint.
|
|
Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 03:03 PM |
|
|
I'd loved to see you dueling in HV. Seeing your 4 magic school heroes getting crushed time after time would have been so much fun 
____________
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 03:22 PM |
|
|
Actually I want to say both: you need a certain number of passives and transition of level-up points matters.
Keep in mind that passives are more or less spells that you start the battle with already cast, cost no mana and have unlimited duration.
You also start with an active ability that costs nothing and has no cooldown.
|
|
odium
Known Hero
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 03:30 PM |
|
|
|
@Stevie: in a real balanced system, expansion in breadth limits the expansion in depth and the other way around. You shouldn't be able to do both because then there is nothing fun about it. Also, in practice, in almost all systems that I know of, there is a bias towards expansion in depth. That is, your build will be better of when specializing than when becoming a generalist. I'm not saying that it isn't theoretically possible to come up with a system that makes expansion in breadth also viable. However, I am quite positive that the system that Limbic develops will be having the same bias for expansion in depth.
|
|
Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 04:05 PM |
|
|
In a system with 7 magic schools you can either be specialized or a generalist. That's not that important however. What I think it's key here is that, you can specialize in more than one combination of schools.
Say we have a Haven magic hero that can learn all schools but not Dark. A specialized hero could probably have a maximum of 2 schools of magic fully developed by level 15. The number of possible combinations of 2 schools in 6 without counting the ones that repeat are 15. That means you can get 15 different builds if your hero were to chose 2 magic schools out of 6. That's a lot!
Now what if there were only 4 schools, combinations of 2 would result in only 6 possible scenarios. That's a lot less.
Now let's see for Academy, thinking that they'll have access to all 7 schools. Combinations of 2 in 7 equals 21. Now THAT's replay value right there.
So if you want to specialize, you have a lot more options from a bigger pool of spells divided into more magic schools. And I think that's the way to go. 
|
|
dragon
Hired Hero
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 04:49 PM |
|
|
|
maybe they are going to use heroes 3 system. We there had sorcery ability which gave us high level spells, so basically you can learn all spells you can if you have only expert sorcery, but if you want your spells to be stronger you specialize certain magic school. Like in heroes 3 you specialize earth magic and have super effective town portal spell.
|
|
War-overlord
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Presidente of Isla del Tropico
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 05:00 PM |
|
|
dragon said:
maybe they are going to use heroes 3 system. We there had sorcery ability which gave us high level spells, so basically you can learn all spells you can if you have only expert sorcery, but if you want your spells to be stronger you specialize certain magic school. Like in heroes 3 you specialize earth magic and have super effective town portal spell.
That was wisdom, not sorcery.
____________
Vote El Presidente! Or Else!
|
|
dragon
Hired Hero
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 05:08 PM |
|
|
|
sorry my bad but my point stands, we will have wisdom skill so you learn all spells you are allowed and than specialize for certain schools that way 7 schools is not too many
|
|
Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted September 08, 2014 06:17 PM |
|
|
|
I wouldn't like such a system. Sure, it may have worked with Heroes 3 but I think now it's obsolete. Having one skill that grants you all the spells in existence is ridiculous to me. The way of acquiring spells should be more restrictive and I think that learning them by specializing in their separate schools is the right choice here.
|
| |
|
|
