Game Design

[Jaros]

Now, as far as involvement in battle goes, it should be a way of altering the fight: eg, speeding it up, slowing it down.

If a Priest BUFFS themselves up and is ready to use HEAL, they should be able to fight stronger mobs, face a potentially longer fight duration, but be in for a larger bonus at the end for doing more than just fighting their own level.

A Mage can fight above their level by ending the fight much faster, they need to be able to supercharge spells to do huge DAMAGE and end the fights before they take too much damage, if any.

An Esper should be able to make it virtually impossible for the mob to know what to do, as well as making it very difficult to be hit.

I like this approach.  You would just have to make sure that overall kill-rate across the board is the same.  So a priest kills tough things by being defensive, which takes longer; a mage kills them by being aggressive, which is faster, but takes longer to recover from.  So ultimately they should take the same amount of time to kill the same 10 mobs, all other things being equal.

From there you could still open up the barriers as players grow, so that if you feel like using a priestly style today you can, but you can still throw on some other spells and start using a mage style if you want to later, assuming you've expanded through both trees.  What shouldn't help however, is just throwing on all your priest and all your mage spells and then trying to fight something bigger than you.

This means if I want to go through Punt with kill all on, and I am strong enough and of the same level as the mobs, I should be able to not think about it.

Yes.  Cruise-control grinding!  Hands on for the tricky bits.

[Virisin]

Exactly, grinding should be absolutely cruise-control. Involvement should only be when necessary.

[Jason Orsini]

Buuuuuu! 

[Jaros]

Buuuuuu! 

k... to what?

[Jaros]

Also if we can work out what we want the basis of our core gameplay is to be, then we can work out what stats are actually necessary to that end and start stripping away the others.  The simpler we can make SCORE, the easier the game will be for new players to pick up.

[Virisin]

Imagine if the Drow Necromancer was a badass mage. He had his fire mastery as good as it could get, and he super-charged all his spells (which would be facemelt, fireball, meteor shower, inferno, etc.) so they were doing so much damage it'd kill anyone one hit. The only way to fight him would be if you were a Priest spending all your mana on keeping your BUFFS going and on consistent HEALING. Or if you were a Thief and managed to sneak in unseen, and super-charge a back-stab good enough to kill him in one go.

Super strong, one-hit-kill, fire-mages would be difficult to kill. Beating their style of play would require either NEVER getting hit by them, or making yourself strong enough to withstand taking a hit from them, or beating them before they got a hit in. The only other option would be a group, a priest dedicating some of his mana to BUFFing a Warrior with good tanking capabilities, and a Hunter or Ranger or some kind of Mage to deal the damage to take out the mage.

For this to work, it would need to be necessary to have ELEMENTAL MASTERIES, which I envisage as very similar to WEAPON PROFICIENCIES. They are both types of fighting. You are good at fighting with short weapons, or you are good at magic with fire. They would have to be zero-sum equations so as you get better in a mastery to the detriment of other mastery's. Or you get better at weapons to the detriment of other types of weapons.

For this to work it would also be necessary to be able to determine the amount of EFFORT you wanted to put into a spell or a skill. It should be possible to super-charge a skill or spell by determing the percent of your STAMINA or MANA you want to dedicate to it. If you put 100% of your mana into one spell, it will do 10x the damage it would if you put 1% of your mana in it.

[Prometheus]

Get over yourself Prom.  I'm not bashing immortals, I'm asking why they need to be involved in something like this.  All it achieves is an unnecessary intermediary.

Um because most Immortals also play as mortals and we do have an input on things. And it is the way you come off that gets on my nerves. We as Immortals and / or Mortals will be dealing with fallout and other things. So I am going to be involved so at least give us a little respect when we post or make suggestions. Don't dismiss us because we don't fall into your view on things. I'm trying to give my input and so are other Immortals who once again have mortals so we have a vested interest as well. So stop dismissing us. And don't tell me to get over myself. I'm pointing out you don't seem to like "Immortal" input even from Immortals who have mortals. So the sooner people stop bashing our input the sooner we can discuss these changes as a group and not us "Mortals" vs "Immortals"

*mutters*
Prometheus

[Prometheus]

@ Virisin -> Been watching the clips for Elder Scrolls: Skyrim?

Supercharging a spell sounds interesting. But I think you also should lose a lot of your stamina after you cast the spell nor should you be able to vitalize yourself. So you get to do a super nasty fireball but you are tired after it so you couldn't keep casting it.

Just my 2 cents.

Prometheus

[Jaros]

You have completely misinterpreted me.  I mean why would we need an imm making TP exchanges.  Letting us pass them around would be much easier.

[Prometheus]

^ ah okay I misunderstood. So much input and not enough output energy to process it I was talking about a stop gap measure till it can be coded in with limits Or discussed in detail

Prometheus

[Xeriuth]

Why should there be limits on how many tps can be traded? You can trade limitless gold and tokens, why not tradepoints. Trade is part of its name after all. By definition should they not be points that can be traded?

[Virisin]

@ Virisin -> Been watching the clips for Elder Scrolls: Skyrim?

Supercharging a spell sounds interesting. But I think you also should lose a lot of your stamina after you cast the spell nor should you be able to vitalize yourself. So you get to do a super nasty fireball but you are tired after it so you couldn't keep casting it.

Just my 2 cents.

Prometheus

Yeah for it to work we need mana to work like Stamina does.

[Xeriuth]

So I'll have to give up my limitless mana supply? Just about the only benefit from high remorts? Well if it's for the better of the game, why not.

[Jaros]

I think allowing some spells and skills to be charged up and bringing mana into line with stamina would be a good option that could be worked on immediately.

From there it's a matter of dividing them up more appropriately between classes so that each class functions best at a different battle-pace.  I don't think we need nearly as many spells (or skills to a lesser degree) as there are.  Instead we should look at the groupings and styles they need to cover and then narrow down the selection to those that can actually serve a unique purpose.

Here's a suggestion for the skill/spell grouping:

AGGRESSIVE (high damage, fast kills, longer recharge on attacks)
Mage
Hunter

AGGRESIVE-EVASIVE
Thief

EVASIVE (high evasives, strong debuffs, medium recharge)
Esper
Gypsy

DEFENSIVE-EVASIVE
Ranger

DEFENSIVE (low damage, strong buffing, short/zero recharge)
Priest
Warrior

These would be the kinds of skills associated with a new player in that class.  Over time I think those boundaries should vanish as you grow, so you can switch between styles and incorporate bits of each as you see fit.

I think crafty skills like tinker and woodsing should be acquirable by anyone, since we can't count on our economy being worth much.

[Jaros]

As Viri has said, cruise-control grinding should be like a default pace of battle that anyone can maintain without having to do much as long as they're fighting their own level or below.

That would only have to change when taking on bigger foes, like the Necromancer described above.  In those cases a Mage or Hunter would put all of their energy into a fast kill, and then wait to recover afterwards.  A Priest or Warrior would buff up and try to grind the thing down.  They would end the battle and be ready for the next in the same time a Mage or Hunter would take to kill it and then recharge.  An Esper or Gypsy would fight at the same pace, but would put their energy into avoiding hits and weakening/confusing the opponent, so their kill and recharge times would be somewhere between the other two groups.  Then AGGRESSIVE/DEFENSIVE-EVASIVE--Thieves and Rangers respectively--I figure would fit into the remaining gaps.  Pretty self-explanatory.

It could probably be thought of as a sliding scale with FAST-KILL/LONG-RECHARGE at one end and SLOW-KILL/NO-RECHARGE at the other.

I want to say a Priest should be able to charge up a potent heal just like a Hunter can charge a devastating behead, and there's no reason why not as long as the costs and recharge times are balanced such that in the end the same 10 mobs are going to take the same time to kill across all classes, all other things being equal.