>all kinds of abilities that make up for having magic as a tert skillset - otherwise magic prime is just better

I'm curious, but why do you think that magic terts need special abilities to be made up to match magic primes?

In what other skillset do non-primes get "stuff" added so they "match" the primary guilds?

If anything, primes need more stuff. Because they SHOULD be "just better" at their primary skillset.

I have bets on all the horses in the race, so it's all the same to me.

Kaeta Airtag

"I have faith in the current crop of GMs to not screw people over"

>>Actually an opinion cannot be changed or corrected. Nice try back of line.-VERATHOR
>>But it can be wrong.-Starlear

> I'm curious, but why do you think that magic terts need special abilities to be made up to match magic primes?

> In what other skillset do non-primes get "stuff" added so they "match" the primary guilds?

> If anything, primes need more stuff. Because they SHOULD be "just better" at their primary skillset.

For one, it's hard to balance, or have the perception of balance, especially if we're trying to move past the distinction of combat vs noncombat guilds. If Guild A has significantly fewer "levers" to pull than a Guild B, but has parity in combat or is more successful, Guild B players start to wonder, "Why am I pulling all of these levers when I could just be awesome in Guild A?" And if Guild A does not have parity, the players will thing, "Man, Guild A sucks. I should have been Guild B. Why can't I just change guilds?"

There's a school of thought that says that some of your options need to be easier to play than others to satisfy people who don't want complication, but I rather disagree with it in the context of online games. Your game has its niche and is going to attract (or not) players that want a game with that niche. There are SO MANY other options. I rather doubt there are many Ranger players who are thinking, "Man, it's a good thing we don't have more useful abilities. I just couldn't handle that."

More than that, though, it's more fun to have an ability that lets us feel like we triggered it at the right time for more damage. Negotiating the system gives us a feeling of mastery when we're successful. More than that, sometimes it can grant the illusion of mastery and can cover up flaws while still delivering a satisfying experience. Outside of a narrow band, when I'm facing off against a ton of creatures in an invasion, if I could do it "fast" by juggling all my forms of damage dealing, I could probably do it "slow" by just swinging my sword for 20 minutes. But it feels so much more fun to talk about how I used Fire Rain, CL, Magnetic Ballista, and was swinging the whole time!

If you ask most people's favorite stories about the game related to mechanics, they'll tell you something about how the chips were down and they made the right choice and it totally saved the day. Its usually not, "Oh, man, I totally had more ranks of evasion and couldn't be touched."

When there's uneven complexity between character options, even when you attempt to balance it, most of the time things will end up favoring the option with more complexity with sufficiently skillful players. In many cases, the players end up knowing the game better than the designers. Thus we end up with endless complaints of "DR is MageRealms."

- Saragos

>> I'm curious, but why do you think that magic terts need special abilities to be made up to match magic primes?
>> In what other skillset do non-primes get "stuff" added so they "match" the primary guilds

I am also curious to the answers to these questions. But from my experience logic fairly helps do anything but raise ire, and were pretty much banned from comparing guilds.

>> If anything, primes need more stuff. Because they SHOULD be "just better" at their primary skillset.


I agree. I think having secondary and tertiary guilds magic as potent as primary guilds is just a kick in the teeth in general. They need less ranks to cast their magic well because most spells are 1-2 slots and basic, which means learning slower doesn't hurt as much cause they can cap most spells with less ranks than primary guilds. And they need fewer spell slots, which makes having fewer slots less important. Also being a magic prime doesn't mean anything as far as potency. In some cases spells from non primary magic guilds are better than primary guilds magic and able to do things with magic that are impossible for a primary magic guild. Everyone knows the sports car performance guilds are the survival prime guilds. For whatever reason, mostly because its "cool" probably.




"An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells; If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught else. No! you won't 'eed nothin' else"

>>Will that make Cleric's PoM (Persistence of Mana) obsolete?

PoM increases Attunement skill and mana regen. It shouldn't be in any way obsoleted by this change.

>>But from my experience logic fairly helps do anything but raise ire

Logic is good. We like logic. Inflammatory statements like that are less good.

>>and were pretty much banned from comparing guilds.

Because Guild vs Guild arguments inevitably degrade into a giant arguments, usually filled with personal attacks.

This doesn't mean you can't compare guilds and ask how things impact one guild vs another. It's about tone and intent ("Guild X has a tool that lets them do Y. Is that something Guild Z could have? I think it'd be useful for them because of A, B and C." That's potentially a helpful post. "Guild X's AoE is terrible, just look at what Guild Y get! Why don't we get that?" That's not a helpful post.)

>>I think having secondary and tertiary guilds magic as potent as primary guilds is just a kick in the teeth in general.

They are not. Also if you ever find yourself using the phrase "kick in the teeth" in a post or similar language, you likely need to step back, relax, and rephrase what you're posting if you want any chance of your argument being given any consideration.

>>They need less ranks to cast their magic well because most spells are 1-2 slots and basic

This is both not true and undermines the above statement that they're equally potent.

>>which means learning slower doesn't hurt as much cause they can cap most spells with less ranks than primary guilds.

This is a complete misunderstanding of the learning model.

>>And they need fewer spell slots, which makes having fewer slots less important.

If I have a tea cup it'll take less water to fill than a 55 gallon drum. That doesn't mean I have an equal amount of water at the end of the day as the guy with a 55 gallon drum.

>>Also being a magic prime doesn't mean anything as far as potency.

You'd need to clarify what you mean by potency here. Because potency has a specific meaning in the magic system that, no, Magic Primes do not get a bonus to but I don't think that's what you mean.

>>In some cases spells from non primary magic guilds are better than primary guilds magic and able to do things with magic that are impossible for a primary magic guild.

This is an extremely broad and ill-defined statement that, barring bugs of which I'm unaware, is generally not true when comparing effects both Primary and Secondary/Tert guilds.

Do Magic Secondaries and Terts sometimes get to do things with Magic that Magic Primes do not? Yes (particularly the Secondary guilds)

Empaths have exclusive access to healing. Bard Magic is kind of weird. Invisibility is a Survival Prime feature (That Moon Mages have access too for a variety of reasons.)

>>Everyone knows the sports car performance guilds are the survival prime guilds. For whatever reason, mostly because its "cool" probably.

This is the perfect example of why we tend to shut down Guild vs Guild arguments. It contains no facts, no supporting evidence, no useful observations. It's a personal opinion stated as fact and phrased as an attack.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

>>Advanced and Esoteric spells require more ranks to cast at cap. Meaning guilds with mainly basic spells...

Sure. Let's take a look at some numbers though. We'll use Warrior Mages and Paladins to pick two random guilds.

For Warrior Mages:

https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Category:Warrior_Mage_Spells

That's (roughly speaking):
18 Intro/Basic
15 Advanced
11 Esoteric

For Paladins:

https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Category:Paladin_Spells

12 Intro/Basic
9 Advanced
5 Esoteric

So, by percentages, Paladins have a few less Esoteric spells - but that's by design. Esoteric spells are capstones you grow into. They're not your bread and butter every day spells. (A slight aside: it's possible one of those Warrior Mage AoEs should slide down from esoteric to advanced to give the guild earlier access to AoE magic. This is something that's more enticing to do under the new slot model.)

>>Last time I counted, most secondary and tertiary guilds did not have more spells available than slots for them.

This is something we'd like to fix for all guilds - but also keep in mind a lot of slots tend to get eaten up by feats and not everyone is in the end game where they have all their slots.

>>Magical Sniping, healing and combat pets, to name three.

If we're going to list things specific to classes you might as well say Magic Primaries have exclusive access to resurrection, teleportation, and a slew of oddball unique TM effects (DB/BG/MaB).

>>Guild vs Guild

If you're trying to avoid these arguments for keeping the thread civil and production you need to rethink your approach.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

>http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-cup-of-tea

That tea cup would not take less water to fill than a 55 gallon drum and thus wouldn't meet my carefully worded criteria.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

>That tea cup would not take less water to fill than a 55 gallon drum and thus wouldn't meet my carefully worded criteria.

I thought 4000 Liters was roughly equivalent to 1000 gallons. Did I mess up the math?

>>>>>Advanced and Esoteric spells require more ranks to cast at cap. Meaning guilds with mainly basic spells that require 600 or less ranks in general will CAP their guild magic with less ranks. Its not like you can hit in combat with weapons with less ranks because you learn them at tertiary rates. Making spells that cap sooner is essentially that for guilds who learn magic ranks slower.

Esoteric spells are, generally, better and more comprehensive than basic spells. This means that magic primes generally get better spells than magic tertiaries.

Compare:
Starlight Sphere to Partial Displacement (both one slot spells)

>>>>Last time I counted, most secondary and tertiary guilds did not have more spells available than slots for them. Currently off the top of my head I know its still true for most non prime guilds. By this logic, its easy to say they need less spell slots than Primary Magic Guilds, who have more spells to use slots on, and are therefore are minimally affected by being granted fewer spell slots as they progress because they end up needing less at the end.

There is no way I would trade the spell book of my Moon Mage for those of a Paladin or Ranger. Even with the fill spell book at their disposal, the magic tertiaries don't hold a candle to the magic primes.

Good luck with the balance and I appreciate your hard work on this project. You guys get it done and I will look forward to trying it out. I am sure some tweaking it expected but it sounds like solid logic


Cadderrly

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is the additional small bonus to attunement regeneration that Clerics get over and above that of other primes. Is this currently still a thing, and if so will it still continue to be a thing?

Just a note that probably needs fixing:

With the change in how mana regen is working, the incremental change on Moon Gate probably needs looking at. Testing it with over 1k attunement at max mana, I couldn't keep it up for more than a minute because of how quickly the drain goes up to some big numbers (the last tick took at least 30% of my attunement).

So how does this affect the Barbarians' abilities Mana Torment? Or for that matter Mage's Lash. Are these now pretty much moot when facing a magic primary opponent?

Does this mean magic primary guilds now regen mana faster than previously and can cap their spells faster then previously?

Rhadyn da Dwarb - Blood for fire!

>What can the different skillsets do? Blah blah blah

And so the answer is to give more stuff to other skillsets, tiered out by skillset ranking. Not "The Magic skillset does so much, so we need to keep piling on new stuff that is powered by it".

>But the magic skillset can do so much, and magic primes have mechanical advantages beyond just learning rates. They have larger attunement pools, they have more slots to spend on these cool spells, the spells that are developed for their guilds are generally better.

They also have more spells that fill more slots. So far to the best of my knowledge 2 of the 3 magic primes are the only magic guilds that have more spell slots to take than they even can get for just their guild specific spells, let alone add in all the magic feats and analogous spells to throw in as well. All the magic secondaries and tertiaries haven't filled up yet. They've got room to grow, which given the latest spells to be released, means more cool stuff.

>>http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-cup-of-tea

I'm amused that not only is it a big damned tea cup (I guess, I didn't see a picture of it, just a description of its dimensions), but they thought to put in motors to stir the water and electric water heaters in it to keep it hot.

Kaeta Airtag

"I have faith in the current crop of GMs to not screw people over"

>>Actually an opinion cannot be changed or corrected. Nice try back of line.-VERATHOR
>>But it can be wrong.-Starlear

The tea discussion is throwing us a little off-topic; let's keep this to constructive discussion about Raesh's changes to magic, please.

Helje
DragonRealms Senior Board Moderator

If you have a question about the forums, please email me Senior Board Moderator Helje at DR-Helje@play.net or Message Board Supervisor Annwyl at DR-Annwyl@play.net

>>I don't disagree with this in theory, but in reality I've never had an issue with mana management once I had enough attunement under my belt. So while I agree that it's a benefit, it seems a bit hollow.

When you're hunting and you can work out a sustainable rythym and go with it, it's not an issue.

When you're PvPing or fighting in a hard invasion and you can't control the pace and location of events it can definitely be an issue.

Mazrian

>>Have you tried taking Maz into Test to see how things feel? I'm curious about how things feel for high level magic primary characters with spell costs as they currently are in the prime instance.

I was over there a couple of days ago. In good mana areas, I can hunt the way I do in Prime and maintain my mana at a high level. In some bad mana areas where I could still do it in Prime, I'll run myself dry eventually. As costs are now I think I'd have to pay a little more attention to my room - feels like it did when Maz was more mid-level except that there are fewer bad rooms due to more attunement skill.

Using the mana costs as they are in Prime, PvP would probably feel worse because when I PvP I'm usually dumping so much mana that I run down to the low end of my bar. I feel like I'd eventually get myself down there and have to contend with the slower regen rate. If Debil and TM get cheaper that will change the analysis a lot, natch.

Getting the costs balanced is going to be key. I'm especially interested to see what happens to AOE and heavy TM spells.

Mazrian