TheProgress

Join Date 04/2008

+43

[suggestions] Magic system / spell research revamp (plus quests) !

Oh my, so much text so little time.

Frogboy was asking for some specific suggestions regarding the magic system in another thread, so here goes.

Sovereign creation:

Right now while creating my sovereign, I get no clear indication on the spell books. There is no information on their purpose, or how significant / insignificant it is to choose a spell book. Spell books should probably be given their own separate page on the sovereign creation screen to outline just exactly their purpose is. Similarly to MoM, players should be able to dictate the number of spell book volumes they wish to have from the start (see the spell book volume section below for more info).

Importance of unique spell book spells:

Spell books should be significant, game-altering objects. Choosing the fire spell book rather than the earth spell book needs to directly change how the game ends up being played. Each spell book needs to provided possible access to original and unique spells to that book - spells that provide the same function but operate under different names shouldn't start appearing in all spell books. An example of what shouldn't end up happening: Earthquake (earth spell, slows down enemies), Gusting Winds (air spell, slows down enemies), Icy Ground (water spell, slows down enemies), Heat Haze (fire spell, slows down enemies).

Spell book GUI:

As I said above, spell books need to provide original spells - not spells cloned from other books to be then used new names. So if the spell books are to be each so unique, there needs to be a clear way of access the spells from each spell book - and seeing what spell books you have access to. The magic page then logically needs a massive GUI revamp: Either split the existing spell book into sections (similarly to MoM / HoMM) or better yet display a bookshelf containing the spell books you've found so far. Clicking on the binding of a book would expand it to show the player what spells they current have access to. It might be a wise idea to have the first page include some sort of introduction explaining the "mind set" of the book (used mainly for evil purposes? dispelling / protecting against magic? etc). In the interest of convenience, it would be nice to save the last page being viewed - so that when the player goes to re-open the book, he / she is brought to the same page.

Finding spell books & spell book volumes:

So if spell books are to be so unique, game changing and important, then clearly they need be acquired in a far more exciting and dangerous way than just being "researched". Therefor spell books should be in no-way acquirable through research. Spell books need to become physical items that can only be found through conquering enemy civilizations, killing enemy sovereigns (loot) or finding them through goodie huts / quests.

In order to prevent all civilizations from having the exact same magic, spell books need to be split into volumes. To avoid overwhelming the player, this system would be extremely simple (but effective). Using the bookshelf concept from earlier, each spell book would simply expand in width upon finding another related volume rather than actually adding another book to the shelf. On an important note, volumes would not be numbered, (ie, the player would not find volumes I, II, V) but instead would simply be greeted with the message "You've found another spell book volume for _____ further increasing your potential knowledge of ____ magic".

So how would spell volumes somehow prevent all civilizations from getting access to all of the same magic you ask? Quite easily since spell book volumes will be limited. As said before, sovereigns need to be customizable with the desired number of starting volumes of a specific spell book. Sovereigns shouldn't be able to start will all volumes ideally (for example if the fire spell book consists of 6 volumes, the sovereign should be limited to at most 3 during customization). Upon starting a new game and creating the world, X number of spell book volumes will be placed throughout the world for each spell book where X will be calculated (based on the # of starting sovereigns) to provide only 25% - 50% of the starting sovereigns access to an entire spell book's set of volumes. Of course that doesn't mean that 25% - 50% of the sovereigns will be able to complete their sets due to the fact that other sovereigns will be wandering the world as well.

Bonus points: let player customize the number of spell books / spell book volumes available when creating a new world.

Double bonus points: create spell books consisting of just 1 volume that contain extremely advanced / destructive magics. Imagine being the only owner of the "Daemon Mastery" book.

Spell / spell book research:

As mentioned above, spell books need to be found, not researched. But once you've found a spell book, how do you get access to it's hidden knowledge? Instead of spending spell points on researching specific spells, players will be able to focus their spell points on researching one of their current spell books. The research system will function like the technology system: upon reaching the required number of spell points to learn a new spell from a spell book, the player will be presented with the option of selecting one spell from a small selection of spells from that specific book (based on spell difficulty). Obviously the more spell book volumes that the player has collected, the more they'll be able to research from the book in the long run (with each volume adding more powerful / rare spells that can be researched).

Spell books / volumes as a resource:

Since the world will be filled with a limited number of spell book volumes, wouldn't it be nice to be able to do something with unwanted / excess books? Players should be able to use spell book volumes as diplomatic resources (selling, trading, w/e) with other civilizations.

It doesn't make a 100% amount of sense, but since we're already informed on other civilization populations / powers it would be fun to be able to see the number of available spell volumes in the world as well as well as being able to see specifically what spell book volumes other civilizations have access to. If one civilization has an entire library worth of books, the other civilizations in the world may feel a need to form a temporary alliance to deal with the situation.

Overview:

Since there is a lot of text above, I've reduced the core concepts to a small list to re-iterate through the primary ideas:

Spell books need to be important and contain access to unique spell trees. No spell clones!
Spell books need to composed of a set number of volumes. The more volumes a player has, the more spells they can learn from that specific field of magic.
Spell books need to be a limited resource to prevent civilizations from all ending up with the same magic by the end of the game.
Spell book volumes need to be found through quests / conquest rather than research.
Spells should be learned by spending points focusing on specific spell books and then selecting 1 spell from a small set of randomly selected spells from the appropriate book.
Spell book volumes need to be usable as a diplomatic resource.
Let players see what spell books are available in the world, and see what other civilizations have found.
Make a separate page for sovereign creation that focus on spell books to ensure the the player fully understands how important they are.
Allow sovereigns to be customized with varying numbers of starting spell book volumes.

The above bullet points is just a quick run down to add some clarity, I'd urge any developer reading this to go through the actual text.

Hopefully my ideas and concepts outlined in this post will be of some help.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2423

Good feedback!

I have a few questions regarding your Spellbook UI:

The main concern I have has to do with accessing spells readily. I don't want to, in the middle of a battle, open a virtual bookshelf, pick a book, and then pick a spell. That's too many clicks.

Similarly, even if it was just one book but with different tabs for different spellbooks you could end up with a scenario where players are having to do a lot of clicking.

Re Researching spell books.

I don't see how researching a book and then selecting a spell is any better than just researching a spell directly. It just seems to be an extra step.

Also, I like the idea of being able to find individual spells out in the wild rather than everything being tied to a spellbook per se. I.e. if you find a whole spell book, that's awesome. If you find a piece of a spellbook (i.e. a single spell or group of spells) that's pretty good too.

Re clone spells

I don't think that's really possible while keeping the game fun. For instance, only 1 ranged direct damage spell? That doesn't seem fun to me.

While I do totally agree that you shouldn't have Fireball, Iceball, Stoneball, Airball that are basically the same spell, at the same time, I would expect to have plenty of direct damage spells at my disposal.

The problem in Beta 4 is that the spells are interchangeable (i.e. Target unit gets up to the caster's intelligence in damage) and they're all the same. That obviously isn't acceptable.

Re points of agreement:

I'm not satisfied with the current way that spellbooks just glomb together. The UI isn't what I'd like it to be. I just haven't seen an alternative that doesn't involve the player having to click a lot.

In Master of Magic, the player could just open their spell book, pick a spell and cast it. That's the way it is in Elemental as well.

I don't really have a problem with the casting part, it's the research mechanism I don't like. I've gone back and forth on it a dozen times over the past couple of years.

For instance, this screen:

https://www.elementalgame.com/images/Screenshots/Elemental_Spellcraft_Life.png

isn't a mockup. It was fully realized. It was a very very different system than what we have now but we felt it was too researchy.

Being pragmatic, what we'll likely go with is a much better balanced/implemented version of the current system and then revisit it again post release.

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The UI isn't what I'd like it to be. I just haven't seen an alternative that doesn't involve the player having to click a lot.

You could always have a system that's similar to how RPGs do it. You're never going to have a system that has 200 spells and not require some clicks to get at every single one of them. But what you could do is create some "Spell slots" (will work with abilities as well for non-spellcaster units) where the player can assign an x number of his most-used spells. This would appear on the main GUI. Heck, it could even be a bunch of circle icons around the top of the Sovereign's portrait (lower-mid of the screen) when selected. On the strategic map, the strategic spells would go there. On the tactical map, tactical spells will.

This way, the most used spells will only need one click to select the spell, and another click to cast at the target. The rest will have to be accessed normally.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2423

True but it's really the spell researching part that I think is the most problematic. Spell casting (to me) seems pretty solid.

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As far as UI, some ideas::

a) Separate out the tactical from the strategic spells.

If I'm on the strategic map, I don't see the tactical spells, and vice versa. They take up too much space.

The downside of this is the potential for player confusion: "I just researched this spell, where did it go?"

b. Have some categories; either magic book (fire, air, etc.) or effect types (cities, enchantments, summons, offensive, defensive).

If you don't like clicks, how about tool-tip like menus?

For example. I am on the main screen in the strategic game. I press the cast spell button; it opens a screen that lists Cities, Enchantments, Summons, Sorcery.

I move the cursor over the cities icon; it brings up a panel to the right that shows me Blight, Brilliance, Sloth spells. I can either move the cursor right, click the spell, and then have the box disappear while I click a spell target.

Or I can move the cursor off the Cities button to the Enchantment icon; the right panel changes to display the Stoneskin, Arcane Weapons and Haste spells.

c) Separate the "my current spellbook" from the "spells I can learn".

This makes the research screen much clearer, you don't have to be leafing past all you

And limit the number of research availabilities, or create some kind of tree; to research a level 5 fire spell I must know a level 3 or 4 fire spell. Fewer options at once.

d) Reduce the number of spells. If you can only ever learn 30 different spells (maybe 3 per level - and you could open another slot by "forgetting" one of your current spells) then you have to both think more strategically in selecting spells, and we reduce the visual complexity.

Anything that reduces clutter.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Re click overhead and the current spell book UI, maybe it would help to make it context-sensitive--only show all spell info during a 'choose research target' moment, show only strategic spells outside the tactical combat view...

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 1

Good feedback!

I have a few questions regarding your Spellbook UI:

The main concern I have has to do with accessing spells readily. I don't want to, in the middle of a battle, open a virtual bookshelf, pick a book, and then pick a spell. That's too many clicks.

Similarly, even if it was just one book but with different tabs for different spellbooks you could end up with a scenario where players are having to do a lot of clicking.

Re Researching spell books.

I don't see how researching a book and then selecting a spell is any better than just researching a spell directly. It just seems to be an extra step.

Also, I like the idea of being able to find individual spells out in the wild rather than everything being tied to a spellbook per se. I.e. if you find a whole spell book, that's awesome. If you find a piece of a spellbook (i.e. a single spell or group of spells) that's pretty good too.

Re clone spells

I don't think that's really possible while keeping the game fun. For instance, only 1 ranged direct damage spell? That doesn't seem fun to me.

While I do totally agree that you shouldn't have Fireball, Iceball, Stoneball, Airball that are basically the same spell, at the same time, I would expect to have plenty of direct damage spells at my disposal.

The problem in Beta 4 is that the spells are interchangeable (i.e. Target unit gets up to the caster's intelligence in damage) and they're all the same. That obviously isn't acceptable.

Re points of agreement:

I'm not satisfied with the current way that spellbooks just glomb together. The UI isn't what I'd like it to be. I just haven't seen an alternative that doesn't involve the player having to click a lot.

In Master of Magic, the player could just open their spell book, pick a spell and cast it. That's the way it is in Elemental as well.

I don't really have a problem with the casting part, it's the research mechanism I don't like. I've gone back and forth on it a dozen times over the past couple of years.

For instance, this screen:

https://www.elementalgame.com/images/Screenshots/Elemental_Spellcraft_Life.png

isn't a mockup. It was fully realized. It was a very very different system than what we have now but we felt it was too researchy.

Being pragmatic, what we'll likely go with is a much better balanced/implemented version of the current system and then revisit it again post release.

How about having the spell book tabbed or separated into different spell books, so people can have it laid out and get more detail, but for combat/map use a hotbar similar to other RPGs that people can set up? This way people have all of their spells at hand, but don't have to click much (or at all if you can bind keys to the hotbar), while still having full access to their spells for the more situational kind of stuff.

Or at the very least you could have a way to favorite them in the spell book again, but have them show up in the UI bar separated into a few categories like "offensive, defensive, support" or something along those lines. Maybe I can come up with some concept art to show what I mean if it's not clear

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I don't think that's really possible while keeping the game fun. For instance, only 1 ranged direct damage spell? That doesn't seem fun to me.

Its definitely possible if you give spells secondary effects. Fire spells might set them ablaze taking damage over time. Ice spells might freeze them in place for a turn, or slow them down for a few turns. Lightning ignores armor, or stuns for a turn. Earth spells reduce armor values (for the rest of the battle; rust, or just breaks them physically).

They can have different shape area of effects; firestorm might happen in a 2x2 box, while lightning bolt goes in a 6x1 row.

And not every elemental spell line need be good at direct damage.

See here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/389683

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True but it's really the spell researching part that I think is the most problematic. Spell casting (to me) seems pretty solid.

Well, my main issue with researching now is that first you have to flip pages through the stuff you already have, to find stuff that you don't have to research. The spell research screen should only show what's Available, and what's Not Available. There's absolutely no reason for it to show what you already know.

Alternatively, you can treat magic a bit like you do regular research. When you unlock, say, Book of Fire, you don't pick each individual spell to research. You just research Book of Fire and through repeated iterations you pick up spells from that book.

But to be honest, I think casting is a bigger issue. Once you unlock a bunch of spells you only need to open the research once to queue them all, and it can easily last 50+ turns before you have to do it again. To cast, you have to open the book every single spell cast.

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Quoting Annatar11,

reply 8

The spell research screen should only show what's Available, and what's Not Available. .

yeah agree

spell reserach should have 2 tabs, one default with available research and 1 optional to watch with future research

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@ Frogboy:

Spellbook UI:

I agree that selecting a spell to be cast during combat could get a bit tedious. It would be roughly just as efficient as HoMM however: open book -> select desired category -> select spell. I can't speak for everyone, but I prefer having information organized by category rather than having to flip through page upon page to find something.

You could use a radial menu similar to Never Winter Nights: right click on enemy, available spell books appear as icons evenly spaced about the center of the enemy. Selecting the desired book would open an outer layer of the menu with all available spells. Or you could do a simple hot bar (again found in NWN as well as many other games) where you just drag your favorite spells to the hot bar for quick use.

Researching Spell books:

I was trying to maintain constancy with the existing research system where you currently select a category and then (once you've collected enough points) you select 1 technology from a presented list of available technologies. The same was for the spell books: select a spell book (that you have already found) and then once you've collected enough spell points, select a new spell from a presented list of available spells from that book.

Also if you wanted to allow the player to find just single spells, you could present them as "scrolls". Where a scroll would just represent a single spell from a specific spell book volume (and hence belong to a spell book).

Clone spells:

I agree that all spell books need some basic offensive / defensive spells. I was speaking generally about trying to avoid clone spells wherever possible to give each book a unique feel.

Spell craft screen:

I obviously haven't used that UI so I can't comment from experience, but it does look sexy.

Shards:

O ne thing I did forget to touch on before were shards. Right now even still I'm not exactly sure what they do or why they're needed. Shards and their relation to magic / and whatever else needs to be far more clear and structured.

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Homm has enough spells that it requires page-turning, but you're only ever at most casting 1 spell per round,

But it does both, you can either page through your spellbook to find the right spell, or click on one of the bookmark tabs to the right of the book that limits the displayed spell to just the relevant category (so there might be Earth, Fire, Air, Water, All; or Life, Death, Chaos, Nature, Enchantment, All).

Another possibility; how about if you cast a spell, the cursor automatically changes to a wand icon, and if you press it again then the hero casts the same spell again?

So suppose I have 3 movement points and want to cast fireball three times; I click cast spell, the book opens and I click fireball, the book closes and then I click on the enemy, shoots 1 fireball, then I click on them again, shoots second fireball, then again on a different enemy, shoots 3rd fireball at the new target.

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no i don;t like that idea either scooter. the problem being that there is chance for a misclick, or a misfire. the thing is, is that as it is now, its not to bad. however when you get so many spells, as is what will happen, not to mention that the mod community will have crap loads of spells, is that without some way to organize 100 or more spells its just gonna be page after page of searching for a single tactical spell. there needs to be a way to categorize them.

either by spell type: defense, offense, summons, alteration etc.

spell book: fire, ice, air, summon, dark. etc

level: 1, 2, 3, 4 etc.

as far as worrying about to many clicks, i would rather click 3 times to get to spell quickly, than have look at each spell over 5 pages to find the one i want to use.

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the problem being that there is chance for a misclick, or a misfire.

So what? Its just one spell. And you'll learn the system easy enough, after a couple of misclicks you'd have it figured out.

Very small risk of mis-casts for significant UI streamlining in terms of saved clicks.

there needs to be a way to categorize them.

Yes definitely, as I said above.

is that without some way to organize 100 or more spells

I think this would be a dire mistake. The game will be a mess if you ever have anything like access to 100 spells at a time. That would just make it frustrating to choose between, and a UI mess, and it will be hopeless to have hundreds of different spells that are meaningfully different.

You should never have that many spells accessible; I would go more like 30 spells max that you can cast, and maybe ~60 all game that you'll have the choice of researching; so you can pick half the spells on offer, but not get all of them.

Sometimes less is more. If you have a handful of different spells, then you can think much more clearly about which effect you really want.

Another possibility is that more advanced spells could just replace weaker ones.

If I have a Fire Lord, I'm never going to need to summon a Minor Fire Elemental again. If I have Improved Lightning bolt, I'm never going to cast Basic Lightning Blast again.

If you structure the advanced spells so that they have the same mana cost, then you can have the advanced one overwrite the basic one, which leads to a big saving in space/clutter reduction.

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@ Scooter

100 spells would not make the game a mess. Having at most 60 spells in the game would limit each "core" (fire, water, air, earth) books to 15 spells a piece resulting in an extremely shallow selection of spells.

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I personally think that the magic system is the most important part of the game. It is after all called Elemental War of Magic. I have some suggestions on changes to the magic system. Essentially, I'd like some more aspects of MOM in the game. MOM's magic system (at least mechanically speaking) was perfect IMO. It wasn't balanced and the AI didn't know how to use the spells effectively, but the way spells were researched and cast, and the way access to the various spells was determined was done real well. [kiss up] With Elemental we have one of the best strategy game AI programmers out there working on it [/kiss up] so it would stand to reason that we could see a robust MOM-like spell system work and be used effectively by the AI. Here's some suggestions.

- I agree with the OP about making the spell books unique.... but in MOM they were TOO unique. Remember how overpowered Life magic was? Remember how Chaos magic had nearly all of the direct damage spells? Nature had lots of buffs and debuffs but little direct damage? Remember how Death Magic was nearly useless? In an effort to make unique spellbooks, it wound up severely unbalancing the game. What I'd like to see from elemental is that each spellbook have a good balance of direct damage, AoE, buff, debuff, city and unit enchant (and hopefully global enchants)... but the spells be sufficiently different from one another as to not seem like clones. An earlier poster made a good point in that adding secondary effects would make them unique. A fire attack would have a DoT effect, Ice would have a rooting effect, etc...

- As for the number of spells... MOM had over 200 spells. I'd say Elemental should at least have 150-200 spells. I realize that it's going to be easy to mod spells in, but I think to have deep, well rounded, and fun to play spellbooks you need to have a large number of spells. Of course having them AI usable is an issue, but once again Brad's an AI master

- I think the spell research system in MOM was near perfect and I would love to see Elemental's system closer to that of MOM. It doesn't need to be as complicated, but I like the idea of using points during sovereign creation to pick multiple books (retorts) of each spell school. The number of books you have in a particular school would determine how much of that spell book you have access to research. MOM also had a system of spell levels like Elemental (except they called it Common, uncommon, rare, and very rare). Each book purchased will allow you to access a certain portion of each spellbook to research... for example (I don't know the exact numbers) one book in say nature magic would allow you to access 4 common, 3 uncommon, 2 rare, and 1 very rare spell. If you have the maximum amount of books then you can access all (or near all) the spells in the book. MOM also allowed you to find books (or individual spells) through exploring ruins and such. I don't think it's right to just select the spell book and be able to research every spell in that sphere. It's just feels way too simplistic and dumbed down as it is now. It also goes with the post-apocalyptic story that you would need to explore to find the spells, not simply be able to just research any spell if you have the one book for each sphere. You could limit the number of books per sphere to like 4 or 5 rather then the 10 or so for MOM...

- I have seen posts before about this, but I am definitely for paying some kind of maintainence for summons and enchantments, other then simply using an enchantment slot. Since there's no accumulated mana pool like MOM, I don't know how it could be done here, but as it is now it's too overpowered to have the only cost being an enchantment slot.

- Last but not least... where are the Global Enchantments? Every game in the MOM-family including the AoW series and Dominions had global enchantments. Is it too tough to get the AI to use them effectively?

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I like the idea of differentiating spellbooks.

Elements should really feel different...and this might be a silly reference but:

In Avatar: The Last Airbender (the Cartoon, not that awful movie) The different Elements as combat styles were characterized by different focuses.

Air: Almost entirely Mobile/Defensive.

Fire: Almost entirely Mobile/Offensive.

Water: Stationary and Fluidly moves between total Offense and Total Defense

Earth: Stationary and maintains a balance between Offense and Defense at all times.

If each Spellbook had a different collection of enchants and abilities, it'd definately differntiate them.

Say, the Earth Spellbook has a bunch of defensive spells and attack and terrain modification, very little movement.

The Air Spellbook has a bunch of buffs for Agility, Defense, Movement, and Teleportation spells, very little attack.

The Ice Spellbook has a bunch of terrain modification, attack, enchantment and movement spells, very little defense.

The Fire spellbook has a bunch of attacks spells and very little terrain modifcation.

Etc.

First of all different spell-books would categorize different strategies for combat as well as for Factions. A Faction with a sovereign who has Ice as a focus would be different from a sovereign who has Air. I could easily see a Mongol or Gypsy type people with very little attack, or the Magnar Empire with a ton of attack spells.

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as mentioned the easiest thing to do would be to only show what spells I have researched when I go to cast a spell

however, when i go to research a spell it should only show what spells i can research given my level, not show me spells I can research 3 levels from now

that simple step would free up a lot of clutter with out really changing anything

And some of these guys have some incredible ideas about spell variations that could really spice up the magic and separate the schools

also, creatures like dragons and golems and such that are gigantic are kind of annoying as they block half the map (expecially when they are cruising around in your party), Constantly having to pan the camera around my pet dragon so i can click the ground to move my party is a pain, I know the dragon is supposed to be gigantic but he needs to be scaled down on the world map or at least when he in my party, on the tactical map the size is fine its only a pain when a giant creature is in your party

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tesb

Join Date 03/2008

+302

there is good alternative for an spellcaster ui:

neverwinter nights:

right click on a tile -> choose spell -> done

of course it should be a bit improved in comparison to nwn

-the first circle is spellsbooks (i.e. water, earth etc.) the second circle is the actual spells of that spellbook

-only spells that make sense to cast on that tile you right clicked on are shown (i.e. no buffs are shown if your right click on an enemy and no offensive spells are shown if you right click on an ally and so on)

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I wouldn't vote for the NWN system - it was a bit of a pain as you had to hold the mouse down and fiddle about and often 'dropped' the menu. Most people ended up using the quickslots instead. I think the lesson there is that quickslots for casting sound like a winner.

I am personally in favour of a much more organised set of spellbooks, with tabs by either book or spell type, and the removal of spells not availbe. As someone pointed out, you tend to queue 3 or 4 spells each time you enter the research, so the extra click or two here is worth it; and it is also more interesting to be able to look through your spellbooks than have them all jumbled together as currently. Now, when I get a new book, I'm not really sure what's in it. I see 4 ways of organising them:

i) by spell book

ii) by level

iii) by where you can use them (strat or tact)

iv) by type (damage, creature buff, city buff, creature curse, etc)

I'd personally favour by default a system of sorting by spellbook by tab, and within the page, by type.

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100 spells would not make the game a mess.

I did not say that 100 spells IN THE GAME would make a mess. I said that 100 spells in your spellbook that you can choose from would be a mess.

I think, like in MOM (unless you had all 10 books) you should not get access to every spell of a school each game, and you shouldn't be able to simultaneously learn every spell that you are offered the ability to learn.

I could easily imagine the possibility of 3-4 spells per level per school per game, but each time you play you'd only be offered the chance to learn two of them (selected randomly, but with heavier weighting towards thematic spells for the school, like offense for fire, protection for earth, etc.); and you'd only get to learn 3 spells per level across all the schools you have access to [maybe increasing to 4 with a magic tech].

That way, you can still have 150 spells in the game, but you'll never be faced with the massive clutter of having to select from such a huge array. And you have to think more carefully about your research, because you can't have everything; you have to tailor your spell selection somewhat to fit your needs.

I agree that shifting closer to the MoM system for spell availability is good.

I disagree that NWN offers a good alternative; too many clicks are needed if you have lots of spells available.

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tesb

Join Date 03/2008

+302

well i would not advocate a direct translation of the nvn system, but an adapted version of course.

it has not to be radial, but the main point is that you can access the spells by simply right clicking on a tile while having a spellcaster selected is much faster then to open up a spell book choose a spell and then target the spell where you want to cast it.

the main advantages in comparison to a generic spellbook like HoMM3 or Kings Bounty are:

1) open up the spell the book and choose the target with one click (instead of two)

2) it also reduces the available spells by only showing you spells that make sense to cast on that tile (much more oversight)

what you choose to do this with: a radial system or a spell book or what have you is secondary

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i would really like a MoM like approach where there are a massive pool of spells, but you are only given a random few that you can research. i really don't want to be able to get every spell in every game. it was one of the fun things in MoM that you didn't always know what you were gonna be given access to.

so i say only show a handful of spells you can get, based of the books that you chosen. just like MoM have the sov spend points on multiple same books, it takes 3 books in a single element to get all the spells of that element.

this way the devs and modders can put as many spells as they like and each game would be different. you wouldn't get the clutter.

make the UI set up to make spells of a higher level that you have not researched not be shown. for example, if you have not researched level 3 spells, then level 3 spells won't be shown. split the book into 2 tabs, known and research. when you click the tab, all your spells are there, segmented by level.

have a different UI for casting spells. when you click on your sovereign and then click cast spell, there is a different UI for that. it will not show the spells you are researching.

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Quoting Stmorpheus,

reply 22

yeah id really like to have multiple books to gain additional spells

also would solve the problem of some sovereign having too many spells

a jack of all trades would get all schools but not till the top tier

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Another Mom thing I would like to see is spell specialization. I don't like how in the current build all the Sovreigns have all 4 elements, and elements are very cheap to buy in terms of points (a single attribute point).

I think Sovs would be much more interesting if they were required to specialize in magic types. So, one game I play a Fire Mage with Enchantment. Another game I play a Life and Earth wizard. And these have different playstyles; one is about damage spells in combat, another is about enchanting my units.

Some possible ways to do this; increasing incremental costs for each book, so the first book costs 3 points, the second 6 points, the third 9 points.

And have each school more unique. So that playing a fire mage actually plays differently than playing an earth mage. Different types of spell access, different strengths and weaknesses.

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Regarding cloning spells:

In MoM, each spell school had direct damage spells, and they were all different. Even though chaos magic had many different direct damage spells (from the top of my head: lightening bolt, fire bolt, fire ball, doom bolt), they each had a unique effect to make them better at specific niches. Lightening is armor peircing, so I use it against heavily armored units, while fireball does its damage to each unit in a stack, making it superior against groups.

I think Elemental should go in this direction. We have only four spheres of magic. In my opinion, the spheres need to be as different as possable from one another. Each sphere should have a distinct *style* of spells. Water spells specialize in protection and healing, while air spells specialize in mobility and (mis)information (for example). I tend to build my civilizations with specific playstyles, and having magic spheres that adher to specific styles would help a lot when I choose my specialities.

That is not to say you can't have direct damage spells in water or a cure spell in fire, but rather that they are more generalized (and thus weaker).

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