quote: Original post by Wavinator
A thought on balance: If mages are powerful enough to raze cities or entire lands, other mages could very simply serve to balance against them. Sort of a "Mutually Assured Magical Destruction."

I think thats what would happen. People on MMORPGs are childlike
even children in most cases. I know this very well being a
former Evercrack addict. If anyone has the power to destroy,
rest assured they WILL destroy. Well, in the case of offline,
why give someone the power to do this if doing this will cause
bad things to happen? I mean it would be kinda more realistic,
but I think it wouldnt be as fun...

-=Lohrno



Edited by - Lohrno on February 21, 2002 12:13:55 AM

Lohrno-
I am genuine american.
The language is loosly based on the few spanish and latin words I know. I thought about Welsh or German, but I thought that a romance type lang would be cooler.
But it should e diffivult to be a mage.
Otherwise every dork can be a mage.
In most fantasy books, becoming a mage is a long ardurous process, and most people are not mages.
So, it would be logical to suppose that to be a mage in a game, it would be hard.
I havn`t played any mmorpg(im not paying for a game i bought once)
But I think that if it took- say a month in RL to achieve any real power, it would neatly balance things out.
Or maybe 2 months....
Mages get alot of power, but it takes forever to get it.
Warriors don`t get much power(maybe a word or two, perhaps a amulet), but they can cut heads off earlier.

Controlling destructive impulses..hmmm...the more you destroy, the more your power becomes uncontrollable ?
Kinda like in the star wars books, where luke becomes really powerful, but eventually finds out that it leads to the dark side...

If you blow the top off a mountain, because you needed so much
power to do it, maybe your power would constantly leak.
Like when you were walking along, all of a sudden bushes would ignite, or a tree would suddenly grow in front of you.
So if you were really powerful and constantly used it, spells would constantly emanate from you.
But if you were not using all that power, you would be more controlled.

That aura idea looks nice...
ill check back laterz...
gotta run !

Bugle4d

Wavinator pretty much summed up what I wanted to say on some points.

Everyone must fight ridiculously large amounts of monsters and the mage, not having melee abilities, has to fight as if he did, except with magic.

How do you avoid ridiculous mage combat?
1. Try to avoid combat altogether. The mage may cast fewer spells to be secretive and mysterious and take special roads (or no roads at all).
2. Limit a mage as he should be limited. Don''t allow endless blasting. Tire a mage out, especially if he''s casting large spells. And perhaps don''t allow mana regeneration. You can play with that too (like maybe only certain plants in the world allow mana rejuvination but they wither after 3 days if picked ).


How should a mage learn spells?
The mage is supposed to be the most intelligent class, right? How do you get intelligence? From experience. How do you get experience? From being in contact with as much as possible as often as possible.

In other words, the mage learns by exploring. He, in essence, finds magic. Different parts of the world can expose him to different spells and magical items (which only he, as a magic user, could recognize). Once he finds magic he can attempt to learn or acquire it, failing in things which are above his intelligence and magic skills.


How do you avoid hundreds of mages in a game?
Simple. Give a good mage only to someone who is dedicated enough. In most stories mages are powerful because they''re old. Start a mage off weak and have him be weak for a while. He won''t be able to fight. He won''t be good at magic. He''d have to avoid most encounters. Most people would think the mage is a weak character and so not play him. But those that are patient, those that explore and those who are clever (intelligence via puzzle solving) will be rewarded over time.

quote: Original post by Vlion
Lohrno-
I am genuine american.

I never said you weren''t but Italian and Spanish people are also
Americans. Since you took the words from spanish, I felt that
I could grasp the language way too easily for some reason.
Maybe it was all the spanish I took in high school hehe. Just I
don''t know, I understood the origins of the words, and my
immersion level fell instantly heh. I think it should be a
totally original language...not borrowing so heavily from RL
languages. Or if it does, make it something like Macedonian,
or Mayan or "The language from the people who inhabit the rain
forest in brazil in the valley of the monkey gods." Just don''t
make it so easy to learn.

As far as balancing power...it might work for offline games.
People just dont care I think. If power leaks, people will be
like ''Cool! everywhere I go stuff burns, and trees grow, and
the sky turns itself upside down.''

I like GameCreator''s ideas. HOWEVER...people who play mages in
MMORPGs now are more likely to like the chain fireball type
mages. Just because me and you and most people HERE like the
idea of being able to figure out problems, and become the quiet,
yet superpowerful mage instead of the chain fireball guy, doesnt
mean that thats the average mentality I think. People have
somewhat short attention spans. I think whoever implements this
kind of system for an MMORPG first is going to receive a lit
oil barrel of flames. "Why arent there any mages like in
AoC/EQ/AC/UO?" Then someone in charge of PR will have be busy
all day taking care of that. I personally like the idea but I
don''t think thats representative of the community. I reccommend
an experiment if you dont think thats the case...Post that idea
on the official boards of some already existing MMORPG. (Maybe
a little bit annoymously if you know what I mean though hehe)

-=Lohrno

yeah, i know what ya mean.

As for inventing a language, thats no big deal.
I just used spanish/latin as a base cause thats what I know best.
Maybe I`ll use Hopi. its reelly different !

It might be nice to implement in a demo.
Grab a free/easy 3d engine, a network engine, spend a month-2 months coding the interface/spell lang, and release it.
Fine tune the idea in-demo, and go from there.

Hmm...down the road...I may...


~V''lion



Bugle4d

I''m not sure everyone .. or anyone will agree with me.. but there is no answer to the question of magic in games.. there never CAN be an answer.. too many people.. too many styles.. and no technology that can read brainwaves.

Now... despite the fact that I believe there is no true answer .. for a game I am working on that is currently in development I believe I had found a patch.. or bandaid for this gaping wound in gaming.

We have designed a player developments system that would allow for both types of player to exist.. those who chose the chain cast.. kill everything etc. method can.. they can chose their abilities.. work up their associated elements and learn spells of destruction.. however they wont have time to research the truly great spells.. the ones that can.. as previously mentioned.. sink a continent. Those who pick a sagely role will have a smaller selection of spells.. longer casting times.. but we will help them remain mysterious by giving them abilities and larger spells, however this person will have to actually spend time doing research etc... so they grow into the part. This way players know well beforehand what their limitations will be depending on the role they take.. or perhaps they''ll walk the middle road.. ALMOST stupidly powerful.. but with enough quick magic to defend themselves.

I didn''t have long to type this so this only represent 1% of the plan.. but I hope the basic idea is there.. and I would love to hear comments.

That sounds cool.
Can you elaborate ?

Bugle4d

Overuse of ellipses is much worse than underuse. Full stops/periods are still fashionable, you know, as are commas, semicolons, colons and hyphens.

I''m not just bitching. It is much easier to understand and discuss what you write (and more pleasurable too) if you express yourself succinctly. As game designers communication is a critical skill. Without it you might as well daydream.

[ GDNet Start Here | GDNet Search Tool | GDNet FAQ | MS RTFM [MSDN] | SGI STL Docs | Google! ]
Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

I''m surprised nobody''s mentioned that the original poster was paraphrasing from Mu''s Unbelievably Long and Disjointed Ramblings About RPG Design, a pretty good read for aspiring game designers. His historical references are not unusually accurate, nor will most people agree with everything he says 100%, but it''s an interesting perspective on most aspects of game design and evolution.

Mu seems to strongly dislike directly linking to subpages on his site, so here''s the root link.

--
Eric

Sorry about the punctuation in the previous post. It was 5:00 am and I simply wanted to get my idea out before I slipped into a coma. Now that, that is taken care of I'll try to elaborate some.

The game system that we are designing seems to fall midway between may other game's approaches, and yet somehow becomes origional in it's own way. The system does not handle just our mages but everything a player will be able to do. In the case of EverQuest you are forced to pick a role and you may never change that role without starting over. On top of that once in that role, you are esentially forced to play like everyone else in that role, be it mage, wizard, fighter or bard. I think everyone will agree with me when I say that every player enjoys being an individual. Now, with my ranting aside (for now at least) I'll try to explain what we are working towards.

There are simply no levels in the game. Don't get me wrong, you can become more experienced at something but I feel levels are restrictive and force a player to reamin in a role even if they come to hate it. Now, seeing as this subject relates to magic I'll stick to that section of the system, and I'll be using extreem cases to make points (I may also refer to a character with levels even thou there are none, just to give the proper reference). We have our newbie character, fresh of the creation list. Now, this charater starts off without any affiliation to any role at all. We will assume this character is me and has a fasciantion with magic in all regards, so naturally I try to work towards becomming a mage. Here is where the problem begins. The player wants to be useful and, as we all know, powerful. But how do we prevent the "magic machine gun with optional grenade launcher" effect which turns mages into weapons with the lable "magic" attached to them? Well, simply put, we don't. However, logically this mage will not have the time to research and tamper with the rawest forces of the universe so, despite thier battle prowess they may lack more useful spells, like flying or transportation. This lifestyle is also much more flashy and physically draining, so there may be a few reprocussions on mana stores as well. I am not punishing the player for choosing this style, in groups they will be terribly efective, fast casting, and terrible forces to come up against. As for the opposite side of mages, the recluseive sage, this type of character will be posible as well. Once again, logically this form of mage has time to work on skills, dabble in a wider area of spells, enchance their power and amass knowledge. Like our favorites such as Gandalf, these character may not sped much time in battles but they may become people that other players seek out for enchanments, portals to other planes or places, or perhaps knowledge of a specific area. They will have stronger spells, more variety of spells and perhaps even gain some inherent abilities, but they will have less battle experience and will not be able to react to a sudden situation as well as our other mage.

Hopefully I haven't lost anyone yet. These types of options are made available by offering ALL the skills that make them up to ALL characters. In this simple case we will call the skills research, power, interumption and battle experience (although our product is many many times more complex). The whole process comes down do how these skills/atributes are linked. Let us assume that research and battle experience are opposites and that by advancing in one you decrease the other ( this is not quite like UO where a skill would diminish because it wasn't used. I found that to be terribly frustrating and seemed like a forced upkeep of the most mundane things) and we also assume that power and reseach are linked, so that the more research you have the more power you gain and that battle experience and interumption are linked, it being harder to interumpt your casting when you have experience casting in hostile situations. By setting two on opposite ends that increase and decrease in a linked fashion we make sure that someone cannot become as powerful as Gandalf, while being able to use those spells in a changun like fashion. We also open up avenues for balancing the two, so in theory depending on the persons atitudes and wants.. their character can sit anywhere in the magic world as a unique person, and still remain balanced. Mind you this is a very dumbed down version and much of it's success depends on the actual skills given by the developer and the balancing of these skills. To allow the middle ground you must make sure that the skills can mix and that those players dont feel weak and usless. Once again.. this middle ground is crucial, but can only be achieved with a solid game that allows for their players to solve problems creativly.

Anyways.. this was another late night installment so I hope it makes sense.. and remeber this is just the basics of how it should work. Ask questions if you have any, poke holes in it until your hearts content, or agree with me and give suggestions of your own. Just don't give me garbage ranting like the post about grammer (although I agree with the overall message it had) that doesn't better any of us and diverts our creativity into childlike arguments.

Thank for reading this guys. lol.

Edited by - astrum on February 24, 2002 11:22:15 PM