4Dimensions Forum
General Category => Suggestions & Ideas => Topic started by: Prometheus on May 01, 2009, 09:00:17 am
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All,
I have been looking through the code for damage based spells because Alpha brought up some interesting points. I am going to tweak the damage of some spells so this will be your chance to input before I start making changes. Right now lightning based spells with control weather worse do more damage than fire based spells with hot weather. I am going to go through and tweak the damage of the spells based on tier and level.
It looks like Mana blast doesn't do jack right now. I will be in process of fixing mana blast since spellinfo and help mana blast show it as area effect. I will be working on fixing that.
Also Alpha suggested an area effect spell the will hit flying mobs which I think is a good idea as well.
Please give me your suggestions. No promises on me using the suggestions.
Prometheus
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I'd actually like a broader range of elemental spells to choose from.
For example, electric spells, you have shocking grasp, call lightning, lightning bolt, and chain lightning.
Shocking grasp being available at T1 somehow is the strongest version out of all three. Call lightning used to be decent, until Morde went and changed it to a buggyish version that hits everything in the room, causing them all to aggro you and gives a very long lag time, making it one of the worst choices you'd pick to use. Lightning bolt, if I remember, was very weak compared to shocking grasp, even though it's only available at T3 priest.
I don't remember chain lightning being anything spectacular either (I used to play a GM priest and have experimented with it before). I think it'd be okay to tone down the first spell, and give a vast improvement to the latter choices, even if it means changing call lightning back to a regular type of spell.
Another example is water types. There is only one available, and that is acid arrow (Mage T2 level 50). Mind water is also the weakest of the elemental boosts (by weakest, I mean it's available to all caster classes at the earliest point you start gaining mind spells), but the only water spell is quite unavailable. Acid arrow itself isn't that weak, since it works well when raining/stormy on land, but there should be more choices, even weaker ones, to make water type spells more available.
I do agree, flame arrow is quite bad. I haven't used it much before, so I had trained it up on my caster. In every single case, a fireball had a higher multi than it. Fireballs even do quite well when indoors, again, making one of the early choices the best ones.
I have more I want to write, but I have to head off now, so I'll post this for now, but will probably add more later.
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Ah right, another thing I wanted to add is the issue of timers.
I know a lot of higher tier spells have a timer on them, but it doesn't make sense to put a timer on offensive spells. For a caster, not being able to cast a spell they invested in for 20-100 seconds between each cast makes it quite unusable. Why should I cast them at all if I could pick some other spell with no restriction on it?
Then there's the issue with the alignment based spells. I think it's a similar problem with drain blood, where because the alignment of a person is not static, it will cause these spells to never be useful. My only chance is to find a zone of of mobs of a certain alignment, where I can use those spells and kill mobs that don't change my alignment, but honestly, how many alignment based zones are there in the mud intended for leveling?
I'd like to suggest timer removal on all offensive spells, unless they have a certain factor that would make them worth using (like a debuff of some sort, like causing blindness with mana blast or something). Or perhaps make them able to start combat only, so you can only case them once per fight. Also, either make alignment spells more lenient or completely replace them with more elemental spells.
Oh yes, one thing I forgot in my last post was the directional spells. Those are quite heavily nerfed at the moment (They do like 1/4 - 1/5 of the damage they normally do), so it's pretty much useless to cast them at all. Why nerf it? Just makes a potentially good spell into a bad one.
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Some suggestions:
electric spells:
Shocking grasp: Tone down the stormy and/or underwater bonus.
Call lightning: Change it back to a single-hit regular spell, make it generally best used during stormy weather
Lightning Bolt: Upgrade the underwater bonus, make it generally best used under water.
Chain lightning: Make it an area type spell. Must be weaker in damage than the above, but gains slight bonuses during stormy weather/under water.
Electric Blast: Make it an area type spell where the damage is dependent on the enemies in the room. One enemy = focus all damage on it. Two enemies = damage is split among them, but there should be a slight bonus in damage, also dependent on the number of enemies, like 55% instead of 50%.
Fire spells:
Burning hands: It's quite weak, but should really be similar to shocking grasp in terms of effectiveness. So depending on how much shocking grasp is or isn't nerfed, burning hands might need a small boost too.
Fireball: Best spell at T1. Should probably be increased to at least T2.
Flame arrow: Larger bonus from weather and day hours. Perhaps even a higher base. Should be better than fireball anyway.
Inferno: Make it an area type spell where the initial damage is heavily influenced by weather and day hours. Causes the room to burst into flames, making the room gradually cause further damage to all entities in the room (even the caster, but please greatly reduce it for players). However, the gradual damage can be prevented by effects like protection_from_fire, fire shield, and wearing a thermal protection item (Each gives a percent, maybe 25% from protection from fire, 25% from fire shield, and 50% from thermal protection). Perhaps the duration of the effect depends on the stats of the caster (Maybe 1 second per dam-bonus, so up to 144 seconds with full stats?) and with no protection, mobs may take anywhere between 500-1000 damage per second. It may sound like a lot, but on higher levels, like when this spell is available, a lot more damage can be done within the span of 1-2 seconds.
Ice spells:
Chill touch: Not sure if the slowness effect does much, but vs mobs, the effect is often unnoticable. Perhaps up the damage a little, so it's not weaker than magic missile.
Cone of cold: Decent spell, but too good for a T1 spell. Maybe increase the tier on this one (T3?), then create one in between this and chill touch where the effects aren't too strong.
There aren't too many ice spells, so here are some suggestions for new ones:
Ice needle: Damage boost during raining or stormy, but not so great underwater. Low level spell (T1 or T2) with better damage in between chill touch and cone of cold.
Freeze ray: With my freeze ray, I will stop. The world... Just kidding obviously.
Snow storm: Area spell that gets bonuses from stormy weather, night hours, and mountainous terrain? Tries to cause slowness on targets.
Water spells:
Acid arrow: Decent for late T2 spell. Leave alone.
Suggestions for new spells:
Acid touch: Perhaps another name than touch, since chill touch already uses it, but essentially a low level tier 1 spell for water types. Should be in line with the chill touch, burning hands, shocking grasp spells. Slightly bonused by raining/stormy or when underwater.
Acid rain: Higher tier spell (T3) that can only be cast when raining or stormy with a good multi. Penalty when underwater.
Tidal wave: Area spell with bad affect on land, but strong affect in water? Is there a room sector for beaches or a type of sector close to water? Would be cool to be able to make it be able to check when there are adjacent water rooms, or if there is one at least X rooms away that bonuses the spell.
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Oh yes, one thing I forgot in my last post was the directional spells. Those are quite heavily nerfed at the moment (They do like 1/4 - 1/5 of the damage they normally do), so it's pretty much useless to cast them at all. Why nerf it? Just makes a potentially good spell into a bad one.
This was because someone was using holes to hit mobs in rooms where they couldn't cross to attack the player so directional spells were nerfed because of that. And I really doubt they will get changed. The coders and Molly will need to discuss this farther.
Prometheus
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I thought I read somewhere the directional spells used a check to see if the mob can track back to player, and if no, you can't fire the directional spell?
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Just a suggestion for Prom to put the multis for all the spells that need changing. We can see which will need tweaks from there.
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Tier 1-----------------------------3--------------------------4---------------------Arena
Fire Burning touch Fireball Flame Arrow Inferno
(Short Snare random?) (Stronger burning)
Elect Shocking Grasp Lightning Bolt Call lightning Chain Lightning
(random disarm) (random bash)
Ice Chill Touch Cone of Cold Ice Spear Hail Storm or Ice Storm
(slows speed by 50 1 min) (confuse) (blindness)
Water Acid Touch Water Blast Acid Arrow Tidal Wave
(Sets poison 2 for 4 min) Only useable in water rooms (knocks off 20 ac) with chance to bash
Tier 1 are all in room and t3+4 will be ranged (if that ever gets fixed)
Also base damages and base multis for the spells should be equal.
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What about having "psionic" (or sonic) energy spells for those Espers?
"Vision" (like infravision)
"Energy Missile" (like magic missile just energy form)
"Energy Ray" (stronger form of Energy Missile)
"Mind blade" (creates a temporary weapon of type: energy)
"Mind Barrier" (creates some sort of energy shield)
"Mind Leech" (drains hp from victim)
Just some ideas.
Kvetchy
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Very much agree with Hayato's posts. Spells in general are just ridiculously willy-nilly these days and elemental stuff means nothing. I also dislike the random elemental strengths and weaknesses each race gets. I think that might be taken care of in the skill tree system though, Horus?
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This is pretty much on hold till the skill tree system is put in. Once that is done I will work on spell damage / Multipliers as well. Horus can work on the skills and I can tweak the spells.
Prometheus
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Cool, good idea Prom. Though I do believe spells will be incorporated into skill trees too, but yeah that shouldn't really change much of what needs fixing that you said you'd tweak so.. ;D
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I'd like to see one of the classes get polymorphing as a spell. It could be quite fun.
(http://www.icanhasmotivation.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/bearcavalry.jpg)
Sorry for the obnoxious picture. I had to. ;D
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Polymorph sheep :) Sorry Warcraft game reference. I will put it on the list but I can't promise I can code it but it will be on the list :)
Prometheus
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Okay since I have some time on my hands I'm going to start working on this again.
I'm already looking at chain lightning.
I made a tweak to it but I will probably make more tweaks to it since it hits x targets and if you are the only target and botch your saving you get full damage times x.
So if people have ideas and suggestions post em or nothing will get changed :)
Prometheus.
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Does this post still need to be stickied, or is it pretty much wrapped up?
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This post needs serious looking at. Spells are totally fucked up and none of these things have been fixed yet, things like protection from cold, evil, fire, good are all different tiers, mind water, ice, electricity are all different tiers. The spells as Hayato pointed out all need tweaking. It would be awesome to add some kind of fire/ice/etc mastery that gives a more dynamic bonus than just mind ice, water, fire. Could be similar to how weapon proficiencies should be: you get better through use but inactivity sees decline.
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Still on my list of to-do tweak / fix / modify.
1) Should all of the protection spells be same level and tier?
2) Should all of the mind spells be same level and tier?
Remember to input otherwise I will do as I feel best :)
Prometheus
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Things like the protections should probably all be the same tier and level, because they're essentially all the same thing for different classes. Estidn and Hayato both have good posts in this thread you should focus on. There just needs to be some more consistency.
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Maybe we should do a little rough plan here, re: the Game Design thread.
What is the goal we're seeking to accomplish here? To bring further use of the elemental system? To create new tactics? Or just to make the spells feel different?
What sort of modifiers are we thinking of for spells?
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I would like it if spells included more than just BUFF, DEBUFF, DAMAGE, HEAL.
e.g., most spells fall under the categories above, sanctuary, armor, bless, steelskin etc are all BUFFs that do essentially the same thing. Make you last longer in a fight. Slowness, corrupt armor, blindness, etc are all DEBUFFs that essentially do the same thing, make your opponent easier to kill. Fireball, burning hands, cone of cold, demonshreak, are essentially all DAMAGE spells, and then you've got your HEALs.
This is quite hard, but I can forsee spells such clone doing more than just creating a clone of yourself, what if you could order your clone to keep walking slowly in that direction so if someone was following you down west trade route, you could sneak into Troll Forest and leave your clone walking down the road, then the followed can become the follower.
Basically though I would at least like it if Priest, Mage and Esper all had their own damage spells, their own buffs, their own debuffs, that meant that no class was left out, but that gave a at least a little variation.
One goal should DEFINITELY be to restructure the elemental system. Adding elemental masteries that get better through use would be a great idea. So that if you spend a lot of time casting fireball, you will be better at fire spells, but if you start casting too many ice spells, your fire mastery goes down and your ice mastery goes up. Then, instead of just randomly assigning classes elemental strengths and weaknesses, it could be done through the elemental system.
Let's say characters have a total of 100 points that alter naturally through an elemental system. If I cast only fire spells for a few weeks, I might be able to get my fire mastery up to 90-100, but my ice mastery and spirit and death and whatever else might drop to -20 each. The only way I can improve them would be to use them, at the expense of my fire mastery.
That's just one idea, but the only real way of getting spells interesting is to incorporate elements properly.
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I picture Priests as having a wide array of BUFFS and HEALS available to them. Their strategy should be to amp up their defense to supreme levels, and heal whenever necessary to get through fights.
Mages on the other hand should have a good variety of DAMAGE spells to end the fights quickly without taking too much damage.
Espers should have lots of DEBUFFS and BUFFS, to both confuse/slow/blind the foe as well as increase their own speed to the point of being almost impossible to touch.
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Right now my goal is to tweak what we have and not add something new into the elemental system. Ie for example more acid based spells. I don't think that tweaking would step on any future game designs.
Prometheus
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If you want to do tweaking I suggest you follow Hayato's suggestions closely.
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You mention elemental proficiencies.. why not group say the good BUFFs and HEALs together with the weak DAMAGE and call them priestly, or spirit, or something, so that they work together.
Then mages get the strong DAMAGE ones, group them under mage or fire or whatever. Then if you're trying to both BUFF up hard and use your best DAMAGE spells their groupings aren't going to be very compatible, so it doesn't do you any good.
Give each class an element maybe, use the same system with skills and have skills and spells all interlinked linked together in that fashion. Maybe priestly spirit spells are more compatible with a warrior's rock skills, so it's not a bad idea to incorporate bits of both when the appropriate situation arises, assuming you have both trees.
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That is a great idea. I have always wondered exactly HOW to implement a good elemental system but that right there would do it.
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Okay I'm more than likely going to add a couple of water ie acid spells.
1) Acid touch I like so I'm going to get that in soon. Which would be a t1 spell.
2) Acid Rain I like too but I'm not sure about the restrictions. I might do something like acid ball an acid based fire ball which would be a t3 spell.
3) If I do acid rain it would be a t4 level spell. But the acid touch and acid ball will be added.
Prom
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I'm going to unsticky this thread since someone else has been doing spells and spell multipliers.
Prometheus