Open testing on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice (MAGIC!)

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Jaxad0127
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Open testing on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice (MAGIC!)

Post by Jaxad0127 »

This latest testing period includes magic! All supported clients are welcome, though newer ones are preferred. So point your client to enigma.dy.fi and cast some spells!

The spell invocations will be different when magic is put on the main server.
Last edited by Jaxad0127 on 10 Mar 2009, 23:53, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Testing period on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice

Post by octalot »

Extra mauve plants would be appreciated. Even with the 3.3x drop rate boost that it already has, there seems to be a lot of grinding for mauve involved.
Retired from TMW; incomplete projects looking for a dev:
Cave foliage (plants up the walls): http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5659
Cave wetwalls (water down the walls): http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5816
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Re: Testing period on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice

Post by bigglesworth »

Please add more herbs to the maps and keep the higher leaf drop rate when this moves to the official server.
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Re: Testing period on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice

Post by radiant »

Thoughts on magic:

With herbs drawn as having three leaves, making all three drop at 100% has stylistic merit...then again, that would lead to a case for having lots of other items drop at 100% which I'm not sure the game would take very well. If you're not ready to go that drastic, at least doing something about the situation where better than one in three plants drops absolutely nothing would help...100-30-10 would be fine.

The "grind for mauve" is pretty much just the setup for learning the magical repertoire in the first place, and it's tolerable. Once you get over that barrier to entry, you won't be needing leaves so much.

So we have this restriction "M. Attack must be more than 0 in order to magic to do anything". With equipment as it is right now, that poses a problem, because it basically says "You can either use magic, or you can explore the rest of the game, but don't even think about trying to do both because any of the armor that's good for anything is going to deliver a fatal blow to your M. Attack." So few items manage even a +0 magic bonus, particularly outside the realm of headwear, that you get such comical spells as N11: you can set up a short-term resilience to damage! Or you could have had that resilience in the first place just by putting on the equipment you gave up to get above 0 M. Attack! Really, the bonuses ought to be reexamined.

Let's see, what's said about items inhibiting magic? "Living things = good, rock and metal = bad." Now I'm pretty sure that none of the equipment we can wear right now is still alive, so unless that's a subtle goading toward "You're a living thing, aren't you? If you'll just strip down for us right now, we'll bribe you with the power of MAGIC!", it seems that should still apply to things made of formerly living materials, such as fluffy fur (Winter Gloves) and wood (how about the wooden shield goes to +0, rather than -70, to provide a usable niche compared to the steel one?) I could see a case for materials that originated from living things but are heavily treated, to start receiving a penalty (particularly leather, and maybe cotton to a lesser extent). For that matter...how about dyed clothing loses a point or two to reflect this "added treatment"? As long as there exists equipment that can hold up for decent figures on defense without suffering ruinous loss of magic ability, magic might actually be used on occasion!

Speaking of that, will M. Defense ever count for anything before the server is scrapped?

W11 seems rather powerful. Whatever's on the arrows' landing spot is taking damage, accuracy be damned. Granted the oh-so-flavorful restriction conveniently stops you from going crazy in the snake pit with this, but it's conceivable that someone could fight primarily with this, and not put anything into STR or even DEX. Say, doesn't INT 99 give you M. Attack of 755? And isn't that the primary source of spellpower? That'd be one hell of a lot of arrows. And then when we get the level 3 update and W22...

There isn't any way of checking your "magic XP" at the moment. The best you can do is check with the seed which will, provided you know exactly what the inner workings are, tell you one of five ranges. Could we have a G01 "measurement" that'll tell the caster just how much magic XP they have?

I take it there won't a be "summon black scorps" spell anytime soon just because the main purpose it'd be used for would probably go against everything Sagatha teaches? (And unlike the trick-or-treat snakes, these monsters don't have time-limited lifetimes!)

And finally, will bot searches now have to extend to people just sitting in towns? Who knows, they might have a macro to cast G12 and L00 in alternation, using up thousands of bug legs to grind away at the 6800 "magic XP" needed to be all set for level 4 before that method no longer does anything for them!
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Re: Testing period on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice

Post by octalot »

How do players feel about the puzzle difficulty?

Perhaps I'm just missing the hints, but I feel that avoiding fustration has too much reliance on developer knowledge (or the HMC walkthrough, when it appears). I think the entire quest set needs to be edited by someone asking themselves "Does this rely on developer knowledge? Will attempting to solve it without that knowledge lead to a solution that doesn't work, but which is so logical that the player will become fustrated trying to use it?".

For example:

At one point in a quest series, these three all unlock, given by the same NPC:
1. The druid-tree quest
2. Rain spell (with hint that you aren't skilled enough to cast it)
3. Find people' names spell (dev knowledge: can't cast this either)
This NPC gives the quest in a way implying that you can do it now, and that it is the next step towards magic apprenticeship.

So player knowledge is:
1. Magic quest, for doing now. Find a tree NPC, greet him as you would another player (note that his name isn't visible when you find him), water him.
2. Rain spell, not available yet
3. Names spell, can't seem to get it to work

If you have dev knowledge of how the quest is actually done, please compare it to the viewpoint above.
(If you don't; be warned the viewpoint above leads to fustration.)

Currently I've avoided looking at the source, so there's a lot of known unknowns for me. However, I expect there will be many similar situations.
Retired from TMW; incomplete projects looking for a dev:
Cave foliage (plants up the walls): http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5659
Cave wetwalls (water down the walls): http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5816
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Re: Testing period on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice

Post by Jaxad0127 »

radiant wrote:With herbs drawn as having three leaves, making all three drop at 100% has stylistic merit...then again, that would lead to a case for having lots of other items drop at 100% which I'm not sure the game would take very well. If you're not ready to go that drastic, at least doing something about the situation where better than one in three plants drops absolutely nothing would help...100-30-10 would be fine.
Remember, drop rates on enigma are 10x platinum. Normal EXP is also 10x. Magic EXP is 5x what it would be.
radiant wrote:So we have this restriction "M. Attack must be more than 0 in order to magic to do anything". With equipment as it is right now, that poses a problem, because it basically says "You can either use magic, or you can explore the rest of the game, but don't even think about trying to do both because any of the armor that's good for anything is going to deliver a fatal blow to your M. Attack." So few items manage even a +0 magic bonus, particularly outside the realm of headwear, that you get such comical spells as N11: you can set up a short-term resilience to damage! Or you could have had that resilience in the first place just by putting on the equipment you gave up to get above 0 M. Attack! Really, the bonuses ought to be reexamined.
There are many pieces of equipment which give both def and spell power.
radiant wrote:Let's see, what's said about items inhibiting magic? "Living things = good, rock and metal = bad." Now I'm pretty sure that none of the equipment we can wear right now is still alive, so unless that's a subtle goading toward "You're a living thing, aren't you? If you'll just strip down for us right now, we'll bribe you with the power of MAGIC!", it seems that should still apply to things made of formerly living materials, such as fluffy fur (Winter Gloves) and wood (how about the wooden shield goes to +0, rather than -70, to provide a usable niche compared to the steel one?) I could see a case for materials that originated from living things but are heavily treated, to start receiving a penalty (particularly leather, and maybe cotton to a lesser extent). For that matter...how about dyed clothing loses a point or two to reflect this "added treatment"? As long as there exists equipment that can hold up for decent figures on defense without suffering ruinous loss of magic ability, magic might actually be used on occasion!
Anything that restricts hand use should inhibit magic.
radiant wrote:Speaking of that, will M. Defense ever count for anything before the server is scrapped?
Maybe. What would you like to see?
radiant wrote:W11 seems rather powerful. Whatever's on the arrows' landing spot is taking damage, accuracy be damned. Granted the oh-so-flavorful restriction conveniently stops you from going crazy in the snake pit with this, but it's conceivable that someone could fight primarily with this, and not put anything into STR or even DEX. Say, doesn't INT 99 give you M. Attack of 755? And isn't that the primary source of spellpower? That'd be one hell of a lot of arrows. And then when we get the level 3 update and W22...
Part of this enigma testing is balance testing.
radiant wrote:There isn't any way of checking your "magic XP" at the moment. The best you can do is check with the seed which will, provided you know exactly what the inner workings are, tell you one of five ranges. Could we have a G01 "measurement" that'll tell the caster just how much magic XP they have?
Working on things.
radiant wrote:I take it there won't a be "summon black scorps" spell anytime soon just because the main purpose it'd be used for would probably go against everything Sagatha teaches? (And unlike the trick-or-treat snakes, these monsters don't have time-limited lifetimes!)
We might add one that's given out by another NPC.
radiant wrote:And finally, will bot searches now have to extend to people just sitting in towns? Who knows, they might have a macro to cast G12 and L00 in alternation, using up thousands of bug legs to grind away at the 6800 "magic XP" needed to be all set for level 4 before that method no longer does anything for them!
There are safe guards in place against repeated use of the same spell.
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Re: Testing period on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice

Post by kinwa »

first of all, i really like the complexity and the background stoyline of the new quests.

as a noob i'm stuck now finding out how to ever train your magical skills. at least, there should be any hint. i tried one more mana potion, but it seems to have no effect - and on tmw server such things could end up even more frustrating by wasting so much effort and items.

another thing is, that i have no clue how to find out any ancient "tritan" name of a creature.
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Re: Testing period on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice

Post by radiant »

jaxad0127 wrote:There are many pieces of equipment which give both def and spell power.
Sure there are...the point is, those that do are utter junk compared to full-on battle armor that actually lets most players stand up to what they would want to fight.
-The state of headgear is fine, with the ability to keep a positive Mbonus up to +13 defense thanks to out-of-print items. A quest resurrecting at least one of those +10 or +13 items back into print may be merited.
-Moving to shields, anything with any power is going to cost you at least -35, with the top end at a debilitating -200. The scarab armlet uses the shield slot and provides a bonus equal to the circlet, which is also made of metal, but provides no defense at all. This sounds a lot like the archer's quandary: "You want to use a bow? Give up 20 defense (or so they say)." "You want to use magic? Give up 20 defense." Oh, and on top of that...
-Any gloves in the game will inflict at least -10 magic. If the monster skull hat is positive, at least the winter gloves ought to be positive too. What material are miner gloves suppposed to be made of, anyway?
-Boots seem fine, with the low-end cotton boots providing a small boost (though you did say that ought to be a penalty instead, even with the all-cotton composition). The rest of the boots give tolerable (if dubious) penalties, up until the black boots which again get into tradeoff land. That part is reasonable.
-Everything for the lower body gives a penalty. What sense does that make? Even more strangely, the assassin pants penalize at 1xDEF, as opposed to the 2xDEF penalty applied to everything else in the slot when it seems like it could be the other way around. Actually, the jeans probably should be up with the higher penalty too.
-...And then the upper body makes the deficiency even more glaring. The robe lets you break even at +5, and then getting to 6 or 8 requires a penalty of 12 or 16 (it would be 18/24, except someone decided that using dye on those items makes them slightly less anti-magical.) Then you run into a huge void, and the next upgrades are to 20/25/27 with penalties of 120/150/170. If you can get your hands on one-of-a-kind items, the last two penaties can be alleviated, but they're still untenable. So forget giving up 20 defense; right now you're looking at at least 47 just to have a decent stab at magic. Instead of enemies being limited to 22% damage, they'll be dealing 59%. But of course, you get to use magic (provided you have a constant supply of the components) so that makes up for everything. Right?
-Perhaps weapons could have Mbonus values? I'm not sure what to think of the bone knife or bows, but short sword and the setzer it's processed into probably want to be negative. Staff of ____ should probably all be positive and introduced to the game as a quest at the same point you get around to figuring this one out.
-When TMWserv comes around, having different types of equipment conduct different schools of magic would be a nice addition. Once-living materials like the monster skull and fur gloves might conduct nature magic, but transmutation would be conducted by something else--metal might come in handy there. This would also help to provide unique identities for Staff of ____.
(on uses for M. Defense) Maybe. What would you like to see?
Maybe some enemies that strike with elemental attacks? This would be more tenable if items could actually boost M. Defense, as opposed to the stat simply being equal to INT, but that's probably another TMWserv thing.
There are safe guards in place against repeated use of the same spell.
What I've been able to discern is that it only checks against a 1-length history, and consecutive uses of one spell won't provide any XP. Other than that, I see no safeguards, so that G12 (maggot slime or bug leg -> lifestone + 1MXP) and L00 (lifestone -> gain HP + 1MXP) would work as long as there's items to fuel it and the player waits for MP to replenish and the spell timeout to expire.
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Re: Open testing on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice (MAGIC!)

Post by niels.ellegaard »

I think it is cool to have some difficult quests in tmw, but perhaps it should be easier to get started as a wizard.

I tried playing a bit yesterday (name=beatme lvl=40 int=45) and I think I have a problem that the mana seed will not accept me. The real problem is that I don't know how I should spend my remaining status points if I want to be able to proceed. If I have to solve the transmuters quests then I need to improve my strength a lot and that may spoil my character build if I want to play a mage. (I try to play without redistributing points), but if I just need to raise my int then I should just stick to killing maggots and scorpions. Maybe I am doing something wrong, but this was my testing experience.

If I need a certain level or stat-value to be accepted by the seed, then if would be nice with a clearer hint. How about someting like "You have certainly grown more powerful since first time you touched the seed, but are you still not powerful enough to hold it". Perhaps the transmuter could say something like "Even if you had the magic in you, you would be far to inexperienced/unintelligent to start training"

But after all it will be supercool to have magic in tmw, and I like the prospect of new quests. Judging from the beginning the magic quests seem to have a really nice atmosphere.

PS: Feel free to delete this post if it is too much of a spoiler.
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Re: Open testing on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice (MAGIC!)

Post by kinwa »

perhaps it should be easier to get started as a wizard.
thats what i thought too. it seems, there are no effective training- spells for beginners - dont know how much you have to train until you get war-spells and this, but it certainly is much.
even the healing seems rather useless for beginners since you have to unequip all the armor to use it (talking about robes, you have to finish the fur-quests first, thatll take very long), so its more effective to do without healing and equip all your armor or heal just after a fight or in groups. (but, a healer- char would never gain any exp this way.)

hybrid classes are possible, but here too: raising your int seems to decrease your up-leveling-speed very much, and since the level is also important for magicians, it comes to the decision: first gaining high level - then switching to magic.
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Re: Open testing on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice (MAGIC!)

Post by niels.ellegaard »

I got a little help and now I am doing magic. It is supercool. It's fun to learn all the spells, and I really like the graphics, especially the maggot spell. I like all the idea of finding hidden magic places.

It looks like you cannot be a succesful wizard unless you are already a fighter. At some point during the magic quests you need a mana potion and that requires you to kill a sea slime. Later on you need a piece of cloth. I think this requires you to kill a mouboo. Mouboos aren't strong, but you can't kill them i you spend all your status points on intelligence. Transmutation also seem to require lots of components (200 kills so far). Or course you can buy quest items from others, but that is cheat. It is also cheat to create a fighter and change his stats into a wizard once he has all the quest items.

Perhaps players could get a clearer warning that they cannot expect to become great wizards if they haven't alreay got some normal fighting skills. This way players will not be confused whether or not they are advancing their character in the right direction.

Small details
* I would like to be able to ask the healing teacher "what was the spell again?"
* The item named "iten" may or may not be misspelled.
* The transmuters spell does not work for me. I think he meant to say #T00 rather than kular.
* I have a skill called magic. Is that general magic (as in #G00) or does it apply to all uses of magic.
* I fear that the herb creation spell will lower the herb prices so much that the only herb with nonzero cost will be mauve. (but I may be wrong)
* I met a player who had used all his skill points on the skill called basic. Maybe this skill should be a maximum level.

Don't be discouraged by the responses. The magic system is supercool even if it needs a little tweaking.

Niels
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Re: Open testing on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice (MAGIC!)

Post by Crush »

Be assured that any feedback is encouraged and valued.

The reason for doing an open testing period before putting it on the real server is to find balance issues and other problems. So please keep the comments going and don't be afraid to accentuate the negative.
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You might have heard a certain rumor about me. This rumor is completely false. You might also have heard the other rumor about me. This rumor is 100% accurate.
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Re: Open testing on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice (MAGIC!)

Post by Jaxad0127 »

niels.ellegaard wrote:It looks like you cannot be a succesful wizard unless you are already a fighter. At some point during the magic quests you need a mana potion and that requires you to kill a sea slime.
There are a few different ways to make mana potion. Not all require a pearl.
niels.ellegaard wrote:* I would like to be able to ask the healing teacher "what was the spell again?"
You were told by several of the NPCs to keep a notebook of your magic discoveries.
niels.ellegaard wrote:* The item named "iten" may or may not be misspelled.
It's intentional.
niels.ellegaard wrote:* The transmuters spell does not work for me. I think he meant to say #T00 rather than kular.
Will fix.
niels.ellegaard wrote:* I have a skill called magic. Is that general magic (as in #G00) or does it apply to all uses of magic.
All. Each school also has it's own skill. Spells generally require minimum level in magic and their school (if they have one).
niels.ellegaard wrote:* I fear that the herb creation spell will lower the herb prices so much that the only herb with nonzero cost will be mauve. (but I may be wrong)
Remember that drop rates on enigma are 10x what they will be on platinum.
niels.ellegaard wrote:* I met a player who had used all his skill points on the skill called basic. Maybe this skill should be a maximum level.
Magic skill don't advance like that. You advance in magic through quests.
niels.ellegaard wrote:Don't be discouraged by the responses. The magic system is supercool even if it needs a little tweaking
That's why we test through enigma.
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Re: Open testing on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice (MAGIC!)

Post by kinwa »

some little points:

[*] the particle effects during the druid tree quests seem to have a life of its own: if you water it, its sometimes burning in orange or pink flames (like with iron or conc potion), the white glare is also not following the player and can appear serval times.

[*] after doing the tree quest i mentioned, that i cant move until relogin. another player had this issue too.

[*] once i had the issue, that i couldn't change my weapon after i did the knife-spell (it was #W12 i think) until relogin.

[*] it seems not so coherent that the nature rain spell is possible in closed places like houses or mines while the arrow-rain spell is not.

[*] also not coherent seems, that through astral magic invocated maggots and normal scorpeons do attack other monsters, while red scorpeons doesn't.

[*] there seem to be no hints for the existence of some spells (like invocating maggots or herb plants)

[*] it would be useful if items had also a description of their effect on magic.

[*] i don't know if it is so coherent, that sagatha teaches you a spell (#N11) that needs a drop from a monster, that you should not kill in her opinion.
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Re: Open testing on enigma.dy.fi untill further notice (MAGIC!)

Post by Jaxad0127 »

kinwa wrote:[*] the particle effects during the druid tree quests seem to have a life of its own: if you water it, its sometimes burning in orange or pink flames (like with iron or conc potion), the white glare is also not following the player and can appear serval times.
A few don't. Like the summoning spells.
kinwa wrote:[*] once i had the issue, that i couldn't change my weapon after i did the knife-spell (it was #W12 i think) until relogin.
Many war spells take time to wear off. Until they do, you'll be stuck with the weapon they give you.
kinwa wrote:[*] it seems not so coherent that the nature rain spell is possible in closed places like houses or mines while the arrow-rain spell is not.
Will fix.
kinwa wrote:[*] also not coherent seems, that through astral magic invocated maggots and normal scorpeons do attack other monsters, while red scorpeons doesn't.
Your level or spell power must not be high enough.
kinwa wrote:[*] there seem to be no hints for the existence of some spells (like invocating maggots or herb plants)
Invoking maggots is given out by a non-magic NPC. The herb spells are a recent addition.
kinwa wrote:[*] i don't know if it is so coherent, that sagatha teaches you a spell (#N11) that needs a drop from a monster, that you should not kill in her opinion.
You can always buy from other players.
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