Hello, I'm in the beginning of designing how magic works in a mmorpg (fantasy theme: warriors, thieves, rangers and magicians). I've been following this forum, and reading blogs and websites, but now I'm stuck and hope that someone has a good suggestion :) The most common way I've seen for characters to use magic when fighting is: * select target * cast spell * cast different or same spell * repeat casting until target is dead * get experience and loot * Now repeat N more times until level up, then go to a different mob and repeat again What I'm trying to find is a way so that the outcome of the fight is affected also by the player skills/knowledge of the game, not just by the character stats. For example there could be 5 different gestures associated to spells (every gesture assigned to a key), and casting a spell requires the player to press the keys in the right order with the right timing; the issues with this would be: - it's still just repeating the same sequence over and over (unless the server sends a different request every time), and mostly... - lag/connection issues would play a too big role (same reason why I've put no twitching/reflexes in the melee fighting system) So... any suggestion on what could be a magic system where the actual skill of the player could play a role?

Sadly, there doesnt seem to be a lot of room for skill in my opinion, in todays MMOs. From what ive seen, combat in MMOs take these as opposed to "skill":
1. Memorizing complex skill/spell rotations
2. Knowing enemies weaknesses to certain types of spells
3. Being able to adapt when things go wrong (such as a previously unseen mob joins the battle)
4. Doing "tricks", such as placing a rather useless buff on a target so that when an enemy mob negates a buff, it will take away the useless buff instead of a valuable one.

I would really like to see other peoples ideas on this as well as I dont see much of a way of putting "skill" in either.

You're looking for a way to get rid of the "grinding" aspect of role-playing games so that doing magic, in particular, is more fulfilling for the player.

The most natural solution is, I believe, not introducing artificial gimmicky mechanisms in hope of keeping the player busy, but rather rationalizing the world and its rules.

Why does a mage get more powerful (or even worse, acquire new spells) by repeating again and again the same spell on a target? Sure, it could be argued he may get more proficient at the spell in question as he uses it, but he should become pretty quickly proficient and then not get much better, since that's how learning curves work.

I believe the solution lies in modeling properly discovery, learning and experience based on how it works in the real world.
That's no easy task, of course, especially since magic discovery is something you'll have to invent yourself.

I think it would be awesome to make some kind of skill based magic system.

One idea i've pondered in the past is to make magic be controlled by player defined "scripts". IE the player gets some basic magical effects such as fireball, iceball, chain lightning, and then they can build a script somehow (probably some kind of visual interface you'd hope). Then you could make scripts such as...

* weak fireball - put 2 points of mana into a fireball that shoots forward (costs 2 mana to cast)
* strong fireball - put 20 points of mana into a fireball that shoots forward (costs 20 mana to cast)
* Homing fireball - put 10 points of mana into a fireball that shoots forward, and put 10 points of mana into the homing modifier (costs 20 mana to cast and if it hits, it would do the same damage as a 10 mana fireball)
* fire nova - put 4 points of mana into 16 different fireballs which shoot in 16 different directions (costs 64 mana to cast cause there are 16 fireballs at 4 mana each)

The benefit of this method is that people could make REALLY custom spells and each person can be a unique style mage, creating spells to match a battle strategy. The downside is you'd have to understand how scripting works and the basics of program flow to be able to make good spells (maybe not a bad thing tho!)

Unfortunately with my examples it assumes there is no autoaiming (which all MMO's have since real time realistic FPS style combat is not really possible with current tech), but it might be able to work in standard MMO style games as well.

But, something else to think about...

Sometimes players want to be lazy.

If a warrior class takes a bunch of skill to play, and a mage just does repetitive stuff that isnt so difficult (until the tank screws up and then you die), that is a different type of game play.

That's actually really good cause if someone gets bored of playing their warrior and then wants to go play their mage, if playing a mage is substantially different from a warrior in game play, that will keep your players from getting bored as quickly, which keeps em hooked longer and you get more money (;

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Original post by ShadowBit What I'm trying to find is a way so that the outcome of the fight is affected also by the player skills/knowledge of the game, not just by the character stats. For example there could be 5 different gestures associated to spells (every gesture assigned to a key), and casting a spell requires the player to press the keys in the right order with the right timing; the issues with this would be:

Age of Conan tried that, and it resulted in promoting the use of keyboard macros. Those who had the hardware, or knew how to program their function keys won the combats. Those who didn't experienced sequence stalls and fizzled combos, and so lost their fights.

Suggestions! These may not be remotely useful, but they might at least be food for thought.

-Use ritual magic. You could go with the standard pentacle/candles/athame/cauldron route, or make up a magic system for a different world. Ritual magic would emphasize the need for other people in casting, which would certainly make different classes play in different ways - casters would develop a tighter social network than thieves would.

-Rethink how you want the caster to interact with his/her enemies. The current target-and-fire magic system in most MMOs is based on needing to make decisions quickly. There's no time for elaborate gesture sequences, especially considering lag. If you want to make a magic system differently, this is part of it.

-Consider who the caster will be fighting. If the caster is fighting goblins, that system definitely supports target-and-fire play. But if the caster is fighting other casters, you have more room to be creative. Or perhaps your game is about facing the gods - then you could really amp up the strategy component. Speaking of components...

-Use spell components/ingredients. Runescape did this, although I never played it long enough to find out if it worked well or no. If you're not feeling creative enough, there are plenty of websites with real (depending on your beliefs) spells that you can nick and edit the spell components of. D&D books are also useful for this; the 3.5 books at least have a small material component line on the bottom like "a twig and a piece of barley," etc. For your perusal:

Spells
http://www.spellsofmagic.com/index.html

More spells
http://spellsandmagic.com/page2.html

D&D 3.5 spell list, tons of stuff here
http://www.crystalkeep.com/d20/rules/DnD3.5Index-Spell-Summaries-byName.pdf

-Use the less-emphasized (in games, anyway) domains of numerology, tarot, astral projection, voodoo, a number of other divination methods (aeromancy, hydromancy, palm reading, the like). How divination would work in a game situation is an iffy thing - perhaps as it is predicted, it occurs, at least with enemies, so having a diviner in your party is a good thing. Perhaps enemies are given randomly generated names, and a numerologist could determine who and what is the best fit for each enemy.

-Explore, experiment. Look at the magic systems for different games and books, like Discworld, Mage: The Ascension, etc.

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Original post by Atrix256 One idea i've pondered in the past is to make magic be controlled by player defined "scripts". IE the player gets some basic magical effects such as fireball, iceball, chain lightning, and then they can build a script somehow (probably some kind of visual interface you'd hope). Then you could make scripts such as... ...

Now that's a cool idea. Combine with a limit on the amount of mana you can push into one spell for example. Perhaps you could push some mana into making it a faster to cast spell as well. Would require a VERY good user interface to work out well for most players though.

A good article about magic systems came out some years back that might be of interest to you. I love incorporating some of it's principles into game concepts, and they really do set your game apart.

With respect to your post, the article has a good example for you: "hidden" variables that effect the efficacy of the spell (See Section 5, example 2 for a good example of this).

For instance, using a fire spell near fire spirits (which might be hinted at by tiny flickers or some other easily unnoticed thing) might quintuple its damage, but dissipate the fire spirits. Perhaps an open flame causes fire spirits to congregate over time, and players fighting nearby can let them build up before casting a fire spell and dispersing them again. Now suddenly it's a competition for who can read the environment to cast the most effective spells at the most opportune moment - or perhaps casting a spell that will ruin an opponents opportunity if you yourself can't take advantage of it (A magician who focuses on water might cast a pathetically weak fire spell just to dissipate the fire spirits so the fire user can't nuke him with them later). If there are a lot of variables and they have complex interactions, then magic use against one another becomes as much strategy as it is level and relative power. One has to be able to think on the fly and to adapt to the current circumstances as their opponent changes them all the while developing some kind of grand strategy to deliver a final blow against their opponent.

Now, this exact system would probably not work, but you may be able to expand it with things like counter spells that prevent the spirits from being dissipated, or amplification spells that subtly increase the effectiveness of a spell type without broadcasting it to the opponent. A magician might use all water spells to appear to be a Water user while secretly building up earth spells in preparation to nuke the Fire user with his real specialty*. Perhaps a water spell cast at a fire spell prevents either from working, so a fire user who has water spells can stop their enemy from dissipating all their spirits.

Another expansion would probably include limited resources, so that you really have to out maneuver your opponent before you burn out.

You could get some really complex fights, with lots of mind games and psyche-outs that would require quite a lot of talent to succeed in, and quite a lot of knowledge about the world if the tell-tales aren't obvious.

*A very interesting idea to go along with this "hidden spell casting" might be to disassociate animations from spells. Sure, every spell should have some sort of animation, but a player should be able to use the "fireball" animation for a wind effect or whatever they may want. In addition, perhaps spell effects should stack. So a user can, like the example above, cast "waterball" and deal water damage, but simultaneously have the hidden effect of amplifying the field's earth spirits. A skillful user will notice the tell-tales that hint that earth magic has become more powerful, while a novice will focus instead on the water spells and try to counter those. It would be quite interesting to see how many feints within a feint one could achieve: A water user casting earth amplifying spells to get the fire user to see the feint dispell earth and empower water, only to have the water user turn out to be a very powerful water user who was only feinting a feint! If that's not at least a version of skill, I can't see what is.

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Original post by DvDmanDT Quote: Original post by Atrix256 One idea i've pondered in the past is to make magic be controlled by player defined "scripts". IE the player gets some basic magical effects such as fireball, iceball, chain lightning, and then they can build a script somehow (probably some kind of visual interface you'd hope). Then you could make scripts such as... ... Now that's a cool idea. Combine with a limit on the amount of mana you can push into one spell for example. Perhaps you could push some mana into making it a faster to cast spell as well. Would require a VERY good user interface to work out well for most players though.

Yeah I agree, it might be hard to get right, but if you did it would be awesome.

Also consider the possibility of letting a player set up their stats for having either faster mana regen, or a larger mana pool.

those with a slow regen but large pool would have to jump in, kick a lot of ass, and get out of there before they went OOM, maybe reserve a little of their pool for escape aiding magic like faster run speed / more jump power. Then they'd have to hide from / stalk their adversaries until they had enough mana to attack effectively again.

Those with high mana regen but smaller mana pools might not be able to burst as much damage but could sustain combat for a longer period and leave at their leisure.

You could even imagine having HP regen spells, shield spells, invisibility and other "stat spells" that you devoted a portion of your mana regen to (player adjustable) that would eat into your regen (possibly making it go negative if you used too much, which would be ok for people with large mana pools).

Could be pretty sweet eh? (:

I thought about making every character a "spell caster", because lets be honest magic is going to be the science of a battle field. When science provided guns we used them, when magic provides guns we're going to use them. The system is also set up so that each "class" of magic can do everything another class can do to different power levels, and in different ways.

As for non-magical abilities any class can pick up anything, and the system would probably work best if magic is best left to be a "trump card" type tool rather than "this is my weapon" type tool.

Type one: cleric type magic.

Outside of combat the cleric will be using various types of mini games to charge their favor faster, their maxium amount, how accurately they can gauge their current favor, and which lessons they preach affecting which abilities they can access.

inside of combat a cleric has a massive range of skills and abilities they can use. However at the same time they're very limited because their favor recharges very slowly and provides the percent chance they'll successfully cast something. Maxed out cleric has starts with 170 favor which means that they have 170% chance of casting something(some spells have bonuses at +100%). If they then use 80 favor to cast a spell which puts them down to 90 favor which means all spells have 90% cast chance(on fail favor isn't taken away).

The playstyle of a cleric is someone who can feel/predict where their favor level is instinctively. They must also know when to use their spells for the best effect. Basically imagine a poker player who knows when to fold, bid, and similar.


Type two: ley magic

outside of combat the mage will be going from various areas withing their play area to tap into ley lines. After they tap into a ley line they form a link with that line that reduces their mana regean based on how far they are from it, and if they get too far from all of the ley lines they've tapped into their mana eventually goes to zero and magic is unusable. A mage can basically choose to tap into a small handful of ley lines(or rather points) and freely go anywhere on the map, or they can tap into every ley line in the immediate area meaning if they move too far from that area they'll have no mana but inside that area they have a huge range of spells.

Also out side of combat the mage must form their abilities from mixing 2-3 ley lines, similar to how TES alchemy system works.

inside of combat the mage may be a "spammer" of sorts if they have a small handful of near by ley lines tapped because they have a massive mana regean factor. Or they may cast the occasional spell at the benefit of having a wide range of spells that they have access to.

the playstyle of a mage is someone who will explore with different combinations of ley lines and someone who is willing to spend time figuring stuff out.


type three: Spirit warden

a spirit warden is basically someone who every week or so can make a contract with 2-3 spirits. These spirits can be casted into different forms: Into a normal 'blast' type spells(fireball, healing bolt, ect), into the casters body(self buff), into the air(buff for everything in area), or into some environment features(sacrifice, Spirit quest). Each spirit has the ability to be casted into each form.

The spirit warden does the best job at duplicating any other spell class's effects. However at the same time the spirit warden will have a much slower time at changing their abilities, and likely have access to the fewest at any one time.