Magic system balance issues

[Crush]

[Thread split from http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 12&t=12328 in Player Talk]

The problem here is not the personality of a certain player (The whole purpose of PvP is giving people the opportunity to be dicks to each other - no matter how you turn it around, that's the reason why there is PvP in an online game and the reason why people enjoy it). When you assume that the fact that a game is not enjoyable for certain participants is because of the players and not because of the game system, you are mistaken. A game which can be either played for fun or played for winning is broken. A good game system has to be fun for everyone, no matter which agenda individual players have.

The problem of TMW in PvP is the horribly broken magic system which is unusable without client modifications and makes those who build their characters for it too weak in PvM and too strong in PvP. In my opinion all combat spells should be removed and a combat magic system should be completely redesigned by someone who actually has a clue about game balance and who has the technical expertise to make the client-sided interface feasible.

[skipy]

i strongly agree with Crush on this.

---skipy

[DarkWater]

In my opinion all combat spells should be removed and a combat magic system should be completely redesigned by someone who actually has a clue about game balance and who has the technical expertise to make the client-sided interface feasible.

I have built magic systems before, pen and paper, this would be a walk in the park. If you wish I can start to work on this?

[Crush]

I have built magic systems before, pen and paper, this would be a walk in the park. If you wish I can start to work on this?

My wish is irrelevant. I am not involved in tmwAthena development directly anymore. The go-to people are Wombat, Kage, MadCamel, Freeyorp, Jaxad0127 etc.

But when you want to do this, keep in mind that there is also a technical side. You won't get very far unless you interact closely with the tmwAthena and client programmers. When you don't design your magic system together with the programmers, you risk that 1. your system is too difficult to program and 2. no programmers are standing behind it and volunteer to program it, even when it is simple to do. The best way to get in contact with the programmers are the IRC channels on irc.themanaworld.org.

[Freeyorp101]

My involvement with tmwAthena these days is purely administrative (barring extreme circumstances) on account of creative differences and various communication problems (long story), so I'm not really part of the list in this case.

I wonder if there is anyone still around working on the technical side of tmwAthena.


---Freeyorp

[Crush]

According to the tmwAthena git log on http://gitorious.org/tmw-eathena/mainline/commits MadCamel and Remoitnane were very active during the second half of last year. The most active developer at the moment is Stefan Beller, who I don't know or at least can't associate with any nickname I know.

[Freeyorp101]

I believe Stefan Beller is PjotrOrial.


---Freeyorp

[Crush]

Ah, Stefan Beller is Argul and PjotrOrial. Good that Wombat updated the developers page http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/Developers on the wiki. Oh by the way, Stefan/Argul also had some thoughts regarding magic: http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/ ... gic-system - although I don't think that this proposal will really solve the problem with magic users being too powerful in PvP and too weak in PvE.

[River]

Since no one has jumped in one this topic for a while, I would like to take a crack at it. Here is my idea, I need to clean it up a lot. I also need to figure it would.
Attached it as a document, because it is like 4 pages long with tables. I can have some rough coding drawn up too.

https://sites.google.com/site/tmwguide/home

Please feel free to add and tell me how I can improve it. Just trying to help.

River

[Zutan]

Some interesting suggestions there.

The item consumption is a bit confusing. I am not technical so I am not sure, but what you are suggesting may work. I would have thought that something along the lines of

10% effective shot = (magic happens+1 item set consumed) or (magic happens+timed items reduced by 9)
20% effective shot = (magic happens+1 item set consumed+1 timed items created) or (magic happens+timed items reduced by
30% effective shot = (magic happens+1 item set consumed+2 timed items created) or (magic happens+timed items reduced by 7)
40% effective shot = (magic happens+1 item set consumed+3 timed items created) or (magic happens+timed items reduced by 6)
50% effective shot = (magic happens+1 item set consumed+4 timed items created) or (magic happens+timed items reduced by 5)
60% effective shot = (magic happens+1 item set consumed+5 timed items created) or (magic happens+timed items reduced by 4)
70% effective shot = (magic happens+1 item set consumed+6 timed items created) or (magic happens+timed items reduced by 3)
80% effective shot = (magic happens+1 item set consumed+7 timed items created) or (magic happens+timed items reduced by 2)
90% effective shot = (magic happens+1 item set consumed+8 timed items created) or (magic happens+timed items reduced by 1)
100% effective shot = magic happens

This makes it effectively, check if enough timed items are present, if not then consume an item set which creates 10 timed items(fire bolt essences or some such) then takes away the required amount of the items to make the spell happen. This would require and inventory item to be able to be timed so not sure if this would help or hinder implementation. If this is possible then 20 timed items could be done with the increments being up to 20 in difference, providing 5% increments.

See if someone technical like Crush mentions can be brought on board.

[Zutan]

Player Magic Level (PML) as suggested could be determined as follows.

=(rounddown(int/10)^2)/2+(roundup(level/10)^2)/4

so for every 10 points of intelligence or 10 levels gain you go up in magic power and astral soul maybe add 10% per skill level

Still not sure of technical viability of the whole thing but it had me thinking so there it is.