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Magic & Combat  

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  1. 1. Do you believe combat magics (magics that focus on combative spells) should exist?

  2. 2. If you voted N or O above, do you believe that magics should have combat spells at all?

  3. 3. Do you believe that the current parameters (found below) for a spell are good?

    • I believe the current parameters are good.
    • I believe the current parameters are bad, they are too harsh on combat spells.
    • I believe the current parameters are bad, they are not harsh enough on combat spells.
  4. 4. Do you believe magics should be able to create interesting roleplay outside of combat?

    • I believe a magic should be able to create interesting roleplay in any major niche, such as day to day rp or in combat.
    • I believe a magic that focuses on one niche, such as a combat magic, is fine.
    • Other (reply below).
  5. 5. Do you believe that a magic should have a distinct purpose for existing?

    • I believe that a magic is fine if it’s being used by people, purpose or not.
    • I believe that a magic should have a purpose that the mage must carry out to ensure RP is created.
    • Other (reply below).
  6. 6. Do you believe that enchantments should be rarer/limited?

    • Yes, I believe that enchantments should be rarer/limited.
    • No, I believe enchantments should be more common.
    • No, I believe enchantments are fine as is.
    • Other (reply below).
  7. 7. Do you believe that the number of enchantments that a person can use in a combat encounter should be limited?

    • Yes, I believe a person should only be able to use 1 enchantment per combat encounter.
    • Yes, I believe a person should only be able to use 1-3 enchantment per combat encounter.
    • Yes, I believe a person should only be able to use 1-5 enchantment per combat encounter.
    • No, I believe a person should be able to use as many enchantments as they can carry in-game.
    • Other (reply below).


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With the lore games coming up, one of the major points of contention is magic and combat. Many of the problems that a lore piece has is made apparent in combat due to a spell or creature being broken. This is why a majority of the issues we've noticed pertaining to lore stems from a combat situation. As such, I wish to tackle this problem and intend to nerf/limit combat magic in some manner. The question is how far to go and how to go about doing it. For this purpose I am doing a your view to gather opinions and see how the community feels. Below are the new parameters for how a spell should be balanced, which pertains to a question above. They have been broken up into sections for easier reading if you are not familiar with them.

 

Current Spell Parameters (Timing)

Spoiler

How long does it take for the ability to be used? This is primarily for combative abilities, as it’s imperative for the caster to understand how to emote it out. For combat situations, you should refrain from using IRL time as a means of timing the ability as it’s not uncommon for a situation to be drawn out due to L-OOC confusion or other problems. For example, a channeling fire spell stating that it “lasts 5 minutes” is not good as replies to RP can be drawn out, but something along the lines of “lasts 5 emotes” would suffice as even if problems arise, you can track the emote counts. 

 

Using IRL time as a cooldown after the combat encounter ends works though as the combat has ended. For example, if you write that the above ability can only be used once an hour, you can easily track that once the encounter ends and there’s no potential issue of things getting dragged out.

 

If it is an out of combat ability, an emote count OR length of time can be provided. For example, brewing a complicated alchemical concoction could take longer than a day, so there’s no need for exact emote counts.s

 

Current Spell Parameters (Effects)

Spoiler

What the ability does must be described as detailed as possible, otherwise it becomes hard for the user to convey how people should react. For example, a spell that disorients someone should describe how it is doing so. Dizziness, inability to think straight, loss of depth perception, et cetera are all different ways that disorientation could be done, so you should be clear in order for the victim to RP it properly when hit. The severity and length of the effect should also be described. Does it last for a few emotes? A day? Etc.

 

When coming up with effects, you also need to account for existing lore and their playerbases. If your ability targets plants, you should account for it going against druids and balance it. Reaching out to these playerbases to discuss the lore is not a bad idea to ensure that both sides are happy with the results.

 

Current Spell Parameters (Counters)

Spoiler

Any ability that can affect a person or area should have some kind of counter. It does not necessarily need to be a magical counter either. For example, if you have a spell that is cursing someone with an illness, you could write in the counter to be a type of alchemical/mundane medicine. Counters should not be a niche thing either unless the effect is minor. For example, if your cursing spell can result in someone’s death, the counter for it should not be some obscure herb that only a small handful of people have access to. Or if it’s some magical entity, the only weakness should not be thanhium. 

 

Current Spell Parameters (Lethality)

Spoiler

Ability targeting: How your ability targets people is very important and something to keep in mind when writing your ability. The target/opponent should have a chance to dodge or react to the ability being utilized.

  • Short Range (Physical Contact): Abilities that require physical contact between the user and the target shouldn’t allow for someone to walk up, place their hand on someone, and invisibly gank them. Instead, the ability should be visible to some extent or should have some build-up that can be felt to allow for the target to react.
  • Medium Range (Attacks within /rp distance): Abilities that harm people from afar should give the target a chance to dodge or react to the ability in some regard. Projectiles should be visible when being fired at someone. Any ability that involves a tether or connection to their target should also have some method of neutralizing the ability prior to connection, beyond just making the target flee the effect radius.
  • Long Range (Attacks coming from outside of /rp distance): Any ability that allows you to target people from long range can not be lethal or near-lethal and should have a few different ways to counter it. This should be reserved for things like mild curses (e.g. giving someone an illness or minor pain).

 

Vs players: These spells are meant to impact things such as characters or event monsters. When designing these, you need to balance the emote count vs the severity of the spell. Emote counts below will be including connection emotes.

  • 1 emote ability: This should be reserved for very minor non-combative abilities. It also should not be applied to any magic/creatures/etc that need to connect/focus to use their magic.
  • 2 emote ability: Factoring in connection/focus/loading times, the 2 emote ability is essentially the bare minimum most things will take. Damage for a 2 emote ability should be low. Something that can knock a person down or bruise them, but not much else.
  • 3 emote ability: This is the standard emote time found in a lot of pieces, often structured as “focus/load, aim, fire”. Broken bones or large gashes are examples of the damage that a 3 emote ability could cause. In most instances it won’t be fatal, but will still be something to be wary of IRP.
  • 4 emote ability and above: At the 4 emote mark, the abilities can start to be lethal. However, these spells should be highly visible and not something you can hide by mumbling for 4-5 emotes and then unleashing some giant spell. In addition, while the emote count can go as high as you want theoretically, spells that do widespread damage (e.g. blasting everyone in a 10 block radius) will be highly scrutinized and should come with heavy downsides.

 

Vs environments: These abilities are the ones that directly target the environment, such as tainting land or polluting masses of water.

  • Anything major that messes with the build itself requires PRO approval should it be within a regioned area owned by a player.
  • Any negative impact to the environment that lingers (e.g. taint) should be balanced. Walking into the area shouldn’t spell instant death for the adventurer.

 

 

Any comments that do not have to do with the thread will be removed.

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Magic should be more rare to find. Every other person I have encountered knows some sort of Evocation or Magic.

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Just now, Tornado_ said:

Magic should be more rare to find. Every other person I have encountered knows some sort of Evocation or Magic.

 

I agree, LT doesn’t.

But then again it depends on the magic, voidal magic for example should be widely accessible since it’s designed to fill that classic wizard/mage niche.

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I believe magic is fine where it is, because if your just a plain ole’, for example, fire evocationist and you run into a olog-Or anyone- that is proficient in combat, they are probably going to get to break your concentration before you can finish the spell, dispersing the spell at that.

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Here’s a 200iq idea – Work to fix lore instead of trying to shelve everything and letting the players figure it out. Looks like combat magic’s up on the chopping block now.

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2 minutes ago, drfate786 said:

 

Edit: Punish the players not the magic, stop with the guides, stop with the stripping of all magic lore on the server.. Just start slapping people who abuse their magic because they think their character is so special and unique and important.

Agreed.

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Maybe instead of nerfing everything to the ground, consider working with current lore-holders instead of holding their magic and work hostage with the threatening of shelving. If there is a glaring issue to a magic (not that I don’t think this is you just trying to gak all combat magic because for some reason you seem to want to do that) then you should discuss that with the lore holder instead of just saying ‘fix this or ur magic byebye’. It really makes it disheartening for anyone trying to write lore, knowing that at any point in the future it could be gutted or destroyed by your whims and your own personal opinions. The poll has shown that for the most part, the server is fine with how magic is. About the only thing I think should be changed is making sure people don’t walk around with 5000 artifact enchantments to make them effectively unbeatable.

 

Stop trying to gut magic into slice-of-life. Work with the loreholders instead of holding them hostage.

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You all know the bigger problem is all the people that shouldn’t have magic are rampant. But you won’t do anything about it.

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Ok, now onto an actual big brain comment pertinent to the thread and not diverting to the other problems 

 

First and foremost I’ll have to completely agree with @drfate786 and @ForeverGinger. We keep blaming the magics, shelving them and slapping them across the cheeks, putting legitimate, good lore pieces on the bench whilst **** like Naztherak and homsexual demon children run rampant (No offense @Vindicant). We shelved Muun because it was too OP, but we had no efforts – from the LT, that the community could see, to fix it.

 

We keep blaming the lore for being somehow badly written or in need of tweaks, but the last Magic blacklist I saw being put to effort was on Luv for powegaming Necromancy and Blood Magic – way back in 2017, I believe. Really, what good is it shelving the magic and blaming the lore itself, and not punishing the people that use it poorly, that conduct themselves the way they conduct themselves, and quit shelving stuff? 

 

Besides that, onto the point;

 

Magic CRP is completely fine, as long as the player casting is properly doing so, and the player that is suffering the casting or casting back is not a **** in L-OOC and comprehends that sometimes a magic can one-shot them if they are dumb enough to allow the mage to cast. A simply thing as throwing a pebble onto a voidal mage to try and disconnect them is something possible, but instead people go about and either screech in L-OOC about powergaming or call PvP.

And why?

Because instead of fixing how the players act, we blame the lore, because the playerbase apparently has no clue how things function. We’ve had so much time of bad lore management that it’s come to the point that players can’t be assed to go out and look for information pertaining to magic, and would much rather avoid it entirely and jump straight into PvP, knowing that most Mages are RP elitists.

 

Is that a proper response, @FlamboyantTyrant?

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7 minutes ago, Vindicant said:

Maybe instead of nerfing everything to the ground, consider working with current lore-holders instead of holding their magic and work hostage with the threatening of shelving. If there is a glaring issue to a magic (not that I don’t think this is you just trying to gak all combat magic because for some reason you seem to want to do that) then you should discuss that with the lore holder instead of just saying ‘fix this or ur magic byebye’. It really makes it disheartening for anyone trying to write lore, knowing that at any point in the future it could be gutted or destroyed by your whims and your own personal opinions. The poll has shown that for the most part, the server is fine with how magic is. About the only thing I think should be changed is making sure people don’t walk around with 5000 artifact enchantments to make them effectively unbeatable.

 

Stop trying to gut magic into slice-of-life. Work with the loreholders instead of holding them hostage.

 

I have to agree with my boy Kary on this one. The threat of being shelved really makes being involved in rewrites, or just practicing a magic, feel like your life is in the hands of whatever the ST feels like doing that day. 

 

I personally think that most magics are more or less fine and balanced. Yes, some could use minor tweaks, but complete rewrites for every single magic is an unnecessary step. The issue is the abundance of magic RPers, and the overall quality of the RP, not the lore. Make getting an MA harder, just like getting a TA is harder now. If we cut down on the amount of people with magic, and actively work towards improving the quality of magic RP, we achieve a similar goal without directly stomping on players. 

 

Perhaps this is something that also needs to fall on moderation shoulders, but lets hold magic users more accountable. Players need to report blatant abuse so that the proper means of punishment (Warnings/Blacklists/Bans/Whatever) can be followed through on.

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I honestly thing back then for example, you and I can definitely speak about this alot. 

 

Soul Puppetry was a magic meant to create stories and make characters develop on them, it was meant to be a magic that was albeit vague- left the users with common sense, to curse someone and not have them balling their eyes out with roaches digging under their skin. It’s purpose was that intention other than the Lore of Soul Puppetry and it’s upbringing.

 

Magic now has so many restrictions in my opinion, not that it is a bad or good thing. There are people who like to make minae and to make minae they make enchantments, that is not okay. As someone who has powergamed magic, as someone who has meta-gamed knowledge like most of us here, I know how someone can think. Alot of people start of with the intention or implication that magic is pretty rad, and it might be to some and might not be to others. Some might want magic through role-play intention and some might want it through OOC means whether it be circle jerked between friends or be given because someone of high reputation wants it. 

 

I had a revolting talk with an unnamed person that they go for the very boundaries of magic, and I thought that was just disgusting. I would always undergame my magic, atleasst nowadays when I have a brain to spare. I never do the bare minimum for anything, I never kill- because it is just not going to help out with developing characters stories. If you took the time to realize you were being such a coward for letting someone go because “I am scared they are going to tell others and I’ll kill them so they won’t remember”  then there would be less problem with people being on the roads with dumb spooks going about the roads and doing this sort of thing. It is not just them mind you, but this post is primarily on magic not Orc banditing.

 

Another point that I’d like to make is that magic once was like it was now, and there was a point last map where Lore Team gave free reign on how one person could create an item. If you took the ******* time to log your ****, and role-play via self and not complain there is nobody to here your emotes yatta yatta,

do something like this..

there are no ******* good teachers in this god damn server other than spare few.

https://tinyurl.com/DamascusLOTC

 

When I teach my students, I always tell them to log their stuff so it isn’t as hard to deal with when Lore team asks for it. It isn’t a pain for them to work out the numbers of genus to ritual ratio for blood magic for example or if naztherak rituals are this or that. It is not only that, I am definitely sure creations of subtier mART’s  can get as complicated without having to make an actual app, however the majority of people do not help out with the team Flamboyant has. The reason why I tell people to log their stuff is because it’ll help the majority of the people who do it, to remember what the hell they are doing. It is also something someone can easily recall and pull from the cloud and show the LT or people that need evidence.

 

 

 

 

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18 minutes ago, FlamboyantTyrant said:

Current Spell Parameters (Timing)

This section in my opinion makes sense, use emotes, not irl time, and who does use irl time?
 

 

19 minutes ago, FlamboyantTyrant said:

Current Spell Parameters (Effects)

This has always been a thing, explaining the parameters.
 

 

20 minutes ago, FlamboyantTyrant said:

Current Spell Parameters (Counters)

There have always been ways to get around some forms of curses and stuff.

 

21 minutes ago, FlamboyantTyrant said:

Current Spell Parameters (Lethality)

 

22 minutes ago, FlamboyantTyrant said:

Ability targeting: How your ability targets people is very important and something to keep in mind when writing your ability. The target/opponent should have a chance to dodge or react to the ability being utilized.

  • Short Range (Physical Contact): Abilities that require physical contact between the user and the target shouldn’t allow for someone to walk up, place their hand on someone, and invisibly gank them. Instead, the ability should be visible to some extent or should have some build-up that can be felt to allow for the target to react.
  • Medium Range (Attacks within /rp distance): Abilities that harm people from afar should give the target a chance to dodge or react to the ability in some regard. Projectiles should be visible when being fired at someone. Any ability that involves a tether or connection to their target should also have some method of neutralizing the ability prior to connection, beyond just making the target flee the effect radius.
  • Long Range (Attacks coming from outside of /rp distance): Any ability that allows you to target people from long range can not be lethal or near-lethal and should have a few different ways to counter it. This should be reserved for things like mild curses (e.g. giving someone an illness or minor pain).

 

This section is fine in my opinion, save for the “Long Range”, if I am given time to cast a blue fire in /shout I should be able to send the heat at them.

 

27 minutes ago, FlamboyantTyrant said:

4 emote ability and above: At the 4 emote mark, the abilities can start to be lethal. However, these spells should be highly visible and not something you can hide by mumbling for 4-5 emotes and then unleashing some giant spell. In addition, while the emote count can go as high as you want theoretically, spells that do widespread damage (e.g. blasting everyone in a 10 block radius) will be highly scrutinized and should come with heavy downsides.

If I knew this a while back? I would have won so many more fights...

So basically, nothing is wrong with these magics, yes some may have some loop-holes and be stronger than others, but it not the magic, it is the abusers.

 

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16 minutes ago, Vindicant said:

Maybe instead of nerfing everything to the ground, consider working with current lore-holders instead of holding their magic and work hostage with the threatening of shelving. If there is a glaring issue to a magic (not that I don’t think this is you just trying to gak all combat magic because for some reason you seem to want to do that) then you should discuss that with the lore holder instead of just saying ‘fix this or ur magic byebye’. It really makes it disheartening for anyone trying to write lore, knowing that at any point in the future it could be gutted or destroyed by your whims and your own personal opinions. The poll has shown that for the most part, the server is fine with how magic is. About the only thing I think should be changed is making sure people don’t walk around with 5000 artifact enchantments to make them effectively unbeatable.

 

Stop trying to gut magic into slice-of-life. Work with the loreholders instead of holding them hostage.

 

This.

But really – as a lore holder myself, this is what I hope to see. But what annoys me is that when I asked about if a particular lore myself and a community I wrote will be asked to take part in the lore game (despite our rewrite came out within the two months). Story team wasn’t sure themselves, Delmodan tried to get us an answer (appreciate it big time) and still no reply from Flammy Boy since I sent a message his way on the 22th of April.

 

It’s kinda hard as a lore holder to work with the Story Team and its admin if you’re not getting any direct answers to a question you need an answer of or if there’s a strong lack of communications between the lore holders and Story Team.

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Tbh magic seems like it’s everywhere. Almost everyone you meet has some sort of magic, and if you’re in a busy square while there’s a battle (sutica for example) chances are there’s gonna be at least a 102 fire evo mages, 74 arcanists, 9 dark mages, and 8 people with some enchantment on their weapon. Don’t take that seriously but you know what I mean-- it’s something that seems too easily obtainable. 

Another thing I wanna talk about is “voidal weakening”. Yeah, this stuff does nothing to put a mage at a disadvantage in combat since they’ll just use their magic anyways, lets be real. And not a lot of people RP it as weakening their character either. There needs to be something more than just ‘physical weakness’, something that will actually affect the mage in their day to day life and will create interesting RP. 

Combat magic. Yeah, there’s way too much magic that can be used in combat. One way or another, magic can be used in combat and it just makes people want to go after magic so they can be a mfing tank or w/e. The only magic I can think of that can't be used in combat is that yeu stuff. The thing I liked about mental magic was that I’ve done a lot of RP outside of combat with mental magic and it was a lot of fun, and I feel like that’s the kind of magic that we need. A magic that creates a lot of RP outside of combat and does little to help in combat. 

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