I have a basic design idea for a magic system I'd like some criticism on. It would work as follows: Each player would get to choose 2 'basic' magic skills from a list of 10-20. These basic skills (or tier 1 skills) are the starting path for a small line of more elite skills. As a player levels, he may either choose to try to climb the ladder of a certain skill set, or diverse amongst more common skills. For example... Inferno may be a tier 2 skill that requires 5 points invested into the tier 1 skill of fireball. A user would have to choose early in the game to either invest each of his points into fireball to make Inferno available, or to spread the points around to other 'tier 1' skills, such as heal, poison, quake, etc, which would put Inferno out of reach for some time. The idea would be to have a total of 80-100 magic attacks with the average user only getting to train 10 skills by the end of the game. In a multi-player, online environment, it should create a lot of uniqueness from player to player.

Although it may make players more unique online, offline it would deprive players or seeing and playing with the of the spells.

It basically sounds like you are describing a "skill-tree" system, like the systems used in Diablo II, WoW's Talent Tree, Ragnarok Online, Dungeon Siege, etc. Perhaps you left out a bit of the details that set your system apart.

Another thing to consider:

Why would I want to spread out and have options of lots of little, puny, low level spells at a weak power, when I could focus on one or two to deal more damage at a time? Jack of all trades usually means you're a dead man in most games.

This sounds similar to an idea I have played around with, and if it is, I believe the striking difference between this system and say, WoW or D2 skill trees is this:

Those games have a few deep trees filled with barely related skills and lots of levels to dump points into for each skill. This idea seems to be about having a broad range of trees each with only a few tightly related and well themed skills, essentially making a skill tree out of each skill.

ps. ill mention that in my idea, the 2nd and 3rd of 3 levels or the 3rd and 5th of 5 levels alter the skill into something very similar but more effective, such as a fireball gaining explosiveness or residual immolation of the area. Hope that proves to be an interesting idea for the OP to play with.

Quote:

Original post by Talroth Another thing to consider: Why would I want to spread out and have options of lots of little, puny, low level spells at a weak power, when I could focus on one or two to deal more damage at a time? Jack of all trades usually means you're a dead man in most games.

Only if you design the game with lots of advancement in each skill, and balance the game to require it in the high levels. But that is a choice the designer makes, just like the choice to allow many options instead of deeply entrenching a player's initial choices.

What if there were no levels and your only advancement was how many skills you had to choose from? You'd be singing a different tune my friend. You would say of games like WoW, "Why would I want to put so much time into so few skills when I could have so many cool spells to use?"

Plus there's a problem of balance. It's hard to encourage players to focus on one particular skill because specialization is weakness; it limits flexibility. It'd be like playing pokemon with only one element (like one of those crazy gym leaders). This can be balanced though, so don't worry too much about that.

The one scenario I can imagine where this would work well is in a short-term game like Team Fortress or one where you can change class without necessarily clearing your progress in the game. Players will want to explore the possibilities no matter what, but players can become pretty loyal to their class if they find something that suits their fancy. And that will be be luck more than anything.

Quote:

Original post by JasRonq Quote: Original post by Talroth Another thing to consider: Why would I want to spread out and have options of lots of little, puny, low level spells at a weak power, when I could focus on one or two to deal more damage at a time? Jack of all trades usually means you're a dead man in most games. Only if you design the game with lots of advancement in each skill, and balance the game to require it in the high levels. But that is a choice the designer makes, just like the choice to allow many options instead of deeply entrenching a player's initial choices. What if there were no levels and your only advancement was how many skills you had to choose from? You'd be singing a different tune my friend. You would say of games like WoW, "Why would I want to put so much time into so few skills when I could have so many cool spells to use?"

Yes, but it is still a key issue of balance.

You have spell trees A B C D E and F.

What you need to be careful of is getting into the situation where things become "Overly optimal". If pumping ALL your points into a single tree will ALWAYS make your chance of winning higher, then why will you spread your points out?

If spreading out ALL your points into every tree will ALWAYS your chance of winning higher, then why will you ever put lots of points into a single tree?

There is no reason that you can't use many trees at once. It can easily be the optimal choice in fact. If the trees are tightly themed, such as fire spells, then they present obvious potential weaknesses. Not only might they be weak in some situations, there may also be things they just don't do, so another tree is needed to fulfill that role. Take for instance a Fire tree. All the affects will catch the wood hut you are in on fire if you start shooting those spells off, so you need something else. Maybe you know the enemy is in there and can afford to burn the place down, but maybe you were ambushed or can't draw attention to yourself by using that set of spells.

The key to it is to not pump up the power of the spell with more points but to put points into a tree to get to new spells.

Well, I'm glad this topic has generated some discussion. I was afraid I wouldn't get any attention.

Imagine a character class in Diablo II that had access to all the magic trees (ie, barbarians, sorcerers, paladins, etc). Now, imagine the total magic points it was feasibly possible to obtain throughout the game would cover 2, maybe 3 trees at max. Do you focus on one tree? Or do you try to diversify amongst several? Some trees may have good 'base' skills, but poor upper level skills, while others may have poor base skills, but excellent high-level skills. From my experience in playing DII, there was very little uniqueness from paladin to paladin, or barbarian to barbarian. Most players went for similar builds in each class. But by giving access to all trees, the builds should be wildly unique (especially with a large number of skills).

Someone also brought up the problem of balancing such a tree set. For this, I believe I have a solution. In WOW, there is the idea of a magic cool-down time. Ie, you can't cast heal but once ever 15 seconds. I believe I have devised a good variant of this idea. Instead of cooldowns being related to a single magic attack, what if your spell casting ability was tied to your history of magic use? For example, cast fireball 3 times in a row, and you trigger a cooldown timer for all magic. However, if you keep mixing things up (fireball, ice, poison, quake)... your cooldown timer takes longer to trigger. My theory is, even if there does exist an imbalance in the game such that one attack is superior to all others, its use will automatically be limited. This will force players to search for a good combo, rather than a good attack.

The other advantage of having such a system would be gameplay sustainability. It would take many rounds of play to cover all the skills, which may give the game some staying power.