Wow: I've never gotten so many negative responses about ANY idea. Seriously though, I was worried about this part of my game, so I re-posted it in order to find out whether it was as potentially frustrating as I had feared. Therefore, after my initial disappointment ends, I will be grateful to all of those who took time to post here, so please accept my thanks in advance.

HOWEVER, some of my points were not entirely understood, mostly due to a severe lack of detail in my post. Hopefully the following topics can be somewhat elucidated:

quote: The problem here is with your ratios - you're happy to have some spells cost 50 times less than some others - and it appears that you are adding in an extra point scale instead of just fixing the ratios.

"Ordinary" spells in my game cost from 1-19 MP, in direct proportion to their worth. However, there is a separate class of spells that costs 20 MP and up, to a maximum of 50 MP. There are only two spells in the current DME system that actually cost 50 MP, one of which transports a large group of people from any point in the world to any other precise point in the world, ignoring any barriers. (Normal teleportation in my game will go any distance, but only in a straight line, and not through substantial solid objects.) The other will shift the caster to a previously visited alternate reality of his/her choice. There are five such realities in my game, and each can normally only be accessed from specific "contact points" around the world, making cross-dimensional travel somewhat difficult; thus the high MP cost and long casting time for such spells.

quote: Assuming users are able to grasp the concept, you'll either have people afraid to use their cheap spells in fear of not having the spell points available that they need later on in the quest, or you'll have Final Fantasy-style questing: go out for 30 seconds, blast the bejesus out of everything, go back and rest.

quote: I know this sounds silly, but always pretend that the end user is a complete nimrod. If that doesn't seem very kind, pretend that your end user is a 6 year old with Attention Deficit Disorder. Complexity makes balance a pain, and makes testing more difficult than it should be.

All very well and good, but the second quote is the REASON why most console RPGs play the way you stated. I repeat: FF-style dungeon-scathing is a direct result of assuming users are idiots.

quote: i bet people would find something this simple and redundant a big hastle.

The best point in this entire thread; I have no alibi.

quote: Is it even possible to get such a ridiculous number of magic points in the first place?

Average Level 1 Wizard: 9 MP, 9 SP, most powerful spells cost 3 MP
Average Level 10 Wizard: 180 MP, 45 SP, most powerful spells cost 7 MP



Finally, Sandman, the point of being able to restore your MP is to allow restoration of MP without using Ether/Mana Potions/Energy Potions/etc. If there's one non-gameplay factor in RPGs that disgusts me, it's being able to DRINK something to get more magical energy. Aside from the bathroom-related problems that will inevitably arise after your character has downed 50 doses of Beer of Mana Restoration (or whatever), magic-drinking is just flat-out a disgusting practice. When fighting the final boss in any Square game, my spellcasters spend all of their turns guzzling magic, whenever they're not firing salvos of fireballs. My energy restoration system is at LEAST as balanced and twice as aesthetic as this abominable practice.



All things considered, I'll try to come up with another limiting factor to make spellcasting less monotonous and abusive. Perhaps I'll just put a limit on how many times in an hour an individual spell can be cast...

EDIT:
Inmate2993: My final magic system may very well look something like that, since that's already how my weapon technique system works. Thank you for your advice.

[edited by - DuranStrife on September 13, 2002 9:56:01 PM]

quote: Original post by DuranStrife
...magic-drinking is just flat-out a disgusting practice.

...particularly when you find a potion that''s been lying around a dungeon for 4000 years.

quote: Original post by Beer Hunter
...particularly when you find a potion that''s been lying around a dungeon for 4000 years.

... which you´ve taken off a decomposing body.

quote: Original post by Hase
... which you´ve taken off a decomposing body.

... Not to mention that the seal is broken and it appears to have been half consumed... backwash.. eugh!

quote: Original post by DuranStrife
"Ordinary" spells in my game cost from 1-19 MP, in direct proportion to their worth. However, there is a separate class of spells that costs 20 MP and up, to a maximum of 50 MP. There are only two spells in the current DME system that actually cost 50 MP, one of which transports a large group of people from any point in the world to any other precise point in the world, ignoring any barriers. (Normal teleportation in my game will go any distance, but only in a straight line, and not through substantial solid objects.) The other will shift the caster to a previously visited alternate reality of his/her choice. There are five such realities in my game, and each can normally only be accessed from specific "contact points" around the world, making cross-dimensional travel somewhat difficult; thus the high MP cost and long casting time for such spells.

I still don''t see why this means you need to be able to get over a thousand points if a 50 point spell is some super work of magic. And since players can restore their spell points anyway, why do they need such high totals? You have to balance the system as a whole, and I don''t see that the large numbers you''re using are doing any good.

[ MSVC Fixes | STL | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost | Asking Questions | Organising code files | My stuff ]

quote: Original post by Kylotan I still don''t see why this means you need to be able to get over a thousand points if a 50 point spell is some super work of magic.

How about if magic points can be shared or used for some other purpose?

What about spells that have a constant effect, and therefore need a constant supply of magic points?

Then the ratios are still wrong! If you need loads because they''re used for another purpose, it probably makes sense to have different points for that ''other'' purpose rather than trying to combine it all into the spell points. And as for ongoing spell maintenance costs, if they are going to be so inconsequential that you need thousands of points in order to have the correct granularity, then the average ''weak'' spell should probably cost something like 10 points anyway.

[ MSVC Fixes | STL | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost | Asking Questions | Organising code files | My stuff ]

As I understand the other side of the argument, you want to have accurate ratios to the magic use, I.E. Their MP usage corresponds to their worth, and it has to be uniform in both systems. A 30MP spell using 1SP and a 10MP spell using 1MP makes the 30MP spell more economical than 3 10MP spells.

Another solution which doesn''t kill the economy of spells, is breaking them into categories and giving each category it''s own independant SP system. Or whatever. For example, thing FF1 with this idea. The character has MP. Every spell detracts from it. Then, each spell also has some level or elemental category. Elemental would probably sound more sane. So, we have Fire1, Fire2, and Fire3. MP usage is 10, 20, and 30. However, the player''s Fire SP is 2. So, he may have the Mp to cover using all, his fire restriction gives him 2 uses.

Now, if this is some MMOARPG, you could abstract a bit and make the elements a property of the environment. However, this usually encourages people to spend all of the environment''s SP so as to keep the other players from doing the same.

-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.

I developed a little Qbasic RPG a long time ago, in which the player''s character was a vampire.

The whole game revolved areound two stats...a "Lifeforce" and "level" stat.

"Lifeforce" was a combo of magicpoints and hitpoints...when it reached zero the character died...the only way to "heal" was to find a victom...and with each victom your level increased and your max Lifeforce increased by 100.

so by your tenth victom you would have 1,000 lifeforce points and have reached level 10.

Each spell had a level rateing...so a level 1 spell like "fireball"...would cost different amounts basied on a simple formula:

spell_cost = spell.level * (player.level - spell.level)

so if the player is at level 10 then a level 1 spell costs 9 lifeforce points....while a level 2 spell costs 16 points.

if the player was at level 30 then a level 1 spell costs 29 points while a level 2 costs 56 points.

the penelizes players for casting lower level spells as they gained victoms...but then a level 30 vampire would have 3,000 lifeforce point to a level 10 vampire with 1,000 lifeforce points...so the overal cost percentage is different.

additionaly when a spell is cast a random number in the range of the player level is calculated (random number from zero to players level)...if it is greater then the spell level then the cast was considered successfull.

The game didn''t have a lot of spells in it (I think there were 40 max...with the highest level spell being level 432...or some such)...not every level had a spell associated with it (you could only cast spells if they were equel or below your current level...a level 9 vampire could''nt cast a level 10 spell, for example)

in addition to this every 5 minutes or so...the players lifeforce would drop by the number of levels they had attained (lifeforce = lifeforce - level)...this was to account for "vampire hunger".

needless to say it wasn''t "good" to be a vampire

What if I included a separate, constantly charging SP value for each TYPE of spell?

For example, damaging spells of any element (including multiple elements or non-elemental) would have an SP value, as would healing spells, mind-influencing spells, teleportation spells, and so on.

This would not only be as un-cliched (Is that a word?) as elemental division, but would allow for a modified form of D&D-style school information. (After ditching the "penalty" school rule for specializing of course.) Of course, for some people on this forum, any computer RPG even vaguely resembling D&D is a bad thing...

Anyway, this has to get a better response than DME, right? Right!?

EDIT:
WAIT A DAMN SECOND!!!
What if, instead of giving my characters X SP per day, I gave them a "Caster Stamina" gauge that empties 1/Xth of the way every time they cast a spell and refills at a CONSTANT rate 24-7, instead of only during sleep? Would that be good enough?

Kylotan:
When characters get up to high levels, they will have a bit more MP than they strictly need. This is the joy of leveling. An example mildly high-level (Lvl. 40) Wizard has 753 MP and 168 SP under the DME system. A low-level (Lvl. 1) Wizard has only 9 MP and 9 SP. I'm sure that you'll still dislike DME and all, but I fail to see how you can determine that it is unbalanced just by looking at my original post. If you can, please tell me how in a definite way. If you can't, then I can't see how my system is "unbalanced". Boring, yes, AD&D-ish, yes, arbitrary, yes, but unbalanced!? Please explain.

MSW:
I like your system. Perhaps I need to spend more time in front of computers, but I don't think I've seen anything quite like that before. I especially like the prolonged time limit-like downside to being a vampire.

[edited by - DuranStrife on September 15, 2002 8:24:20 PM]