Currently with the continuous development of magic and other mechanics around it, several issues have arisen further pushing the need to adress these issues old and new.
Many players feel that magic has negative effect on the pvp gameplay due to its ability to bypass defences without any direct way to counter it with skillful gameplay [as is parrying with melee] which arises more often now mainly because the damage of spells keeps increasing over time due to addition of new effects that boost damage further.
Many players have different opinions on the matter and also there were many very good suggestions on how to adres magic and whichever issues it might have , thus I decided I also would provide further feedback on how I think some of the issues with magic and systems around it could be adressed.
Some of these changes will be minor adjustments to the current systems, others involve addition of either new systems or rework of the current ones.
Also please take note that the idea is that the game would be healthier if all of these were added into the game at the same time, for example one of the changes would be major reduction in damage of majority of the damage dealing spells but that alone added today wouldnt be a healthy change if it happened by itself, it could be good for the game if the other changes would be added as well.
So here are my suggestions:
- Magic damage of many spells is too high and needs to be either lowered or rebalanced in other ways
Currently, magic damage can be stacked to very high amounts dealing damage [in a single hit] to majority of footie focused builds with nearly non-existent investment on the mage's part. Thus some changes could be done here such as:
⦁ Binding damage multipliers for magic damage to gear and at the same time adding magic defences to currently existing armors so that the gear difference isnt as drastic [this would be very demaning solution as it would require massive amount of balance changes to ensure there are no armors in the game that make the user ''immortal'' or makes the damage insane on the mages part]
⦁ Reduce the magic damage of all spells by flat amount and buff mages in other aspects to make them able to fend for themselfs [for example addition of staff magic allowing mages to properly fight a footie in a melee 1v1]. This change would also include mana reductions on the mana cost of all the damaging spells as well.
⦁ Rework the current magic schools to be more focused on continuous damage and other utility effects insted of instant burst damage [which are all of the current meta spells for all magic schools], for example, elementalism should be focused around comboing debuffs on the enemy targets before casting the damaging spells, necromancy would need large buffs to the utility spells and ecumenical + spiritism would need new effects to all of the current spells [such as new kinds of usefull debuffs] to make the spells still good even with lowered damage.
- Change how the parrying works so that the difference in strenght is no longer a factor. In other words, to be able to parry [a well timed parry resulting in 0 damage] the only factor that decided if damage goes through or not [of any damage type] is the blocking skill. If any character, no matter how their attributes or any other skills/clades are distributed, the only factor for a proper parry is having 100 in blocking skill.
- Rework the psyche stat to still give mana as before but completely remove the magic defence so that psyche plays no role at all in affecting magical damage and at the same time the ''resisted'' effected will also be completely removed as a base effect that can happen randomly [as randomness in pvp of this kind is very bad design and insted it will only be tied to the human warcry].
Insted psyche will have a new effect of reducing the duration of debuffs and increasing the duration of buffs by x% amount [for example, at 100 psyche you woule benefit from 20% reduction on all debuffs and 20% increase to duration of all buffs, or any higher amount that would be balanced]
You could say this is large increase in damage to all the mage spells if psyche no loger provides any damage reduction againt magic, thats why this rework of psyche could only ever happens if the damage of all the magic spell got a toning down first, otherwise this change would be terrible for the game but if that hppened, removing the RNG elements that psyche cause would be very good the the games pvp.
- Rework tower shields to have a strenght requirement [tower shield require strength between 90-110, round shields between 40-60, kite shield in the future would be 60-90] and removal of mana on equipment hit [10 mana lost per hit]. Tower shields reward lazy gameplay of switching to shield when attacked and hugging walls / spinning to force the attacker to hit the shield with no other options. This kind of gameplay is unfortunately forced on mages as it is the ''optimal'' way to defend onself currently due to the blocking issues mentioned above.
This is probably the most important change that could happen instantly today and have no negative effect on the game by itself, tower shields need fixing and the first step towards making them balanced is removing the passive gameplay that mages currently use them for. So if by some chance any developer reads this, please rework the tower shields asap as they are not healthy for the games pvp in the current iteration.
- Additon of either staff magic or magical weapons
In terms of offence, mages rely on either beiing able to outdistance [kiting and magebanging ] or outlive [stacking defences and magebanging the enemy footie upclose killing them faster before they can kill the mage] the opponent as when faced with a footie upclose, the mage can only parry [and be hit through perfect parries] and are unable to return hits as there is no weapon that would deal reasonable damage back to the properly geared footie. Thus there need to exist weapons that mages can use to fight back, either addition of the staffs which would scale of inteligence to deal melee damage or add a new version of all the current weapons that scale of inteligence.
- Fixing the buffs/debuffs displayed below players health,stamina,mana. Currently when you apply mainly magic reflect, you can not see on other players that it is applied to them, this needs to be changed so that its not hidden and everyone can see all of the buffs/debuffs on everyone else.
- Addition of spellpower bonus displayed on the character screen. This would include base spell power affecting all spells and individual spellpowers for each magic schools when hovered over. It would also display spellpower from equipment once the rework of effects on armors made it into the game that would cause some armors to boost spellpower [ofc after damage of all spells was rebalanced to appropriate levels]. Also the other effects should be added here at that time, a magic resistance and all other resistances to heat and cold would also be displayed.
All of these changes together imo would improve the pvp gameplay loops for both sides, if mages wished to continue with their current gameplay loop of only using magic to do damage, they still can do so but the damage would need to be more gradual and whenever a footie would get close to them they would have tools to defend themselfs upclose and have option to express more mechanical skill while still having all of their previous options.
I know this is a lot and its a massive amount of changes that would take most likely years to implement but some of these could be added fairly quickly today and have positive effect on the game.
Many players feel that magic has negative effect on the pvp gameplay due to its ability to bypass defences without any direct way to counter it with skillful gameplay [as is parrying with melee] which arises more often now mainly because the damage of spells keeps increasing over time due to addition of new effects that boost damage further.
Many players have different opinions on the matter and also there were many very good suggestions on how to adres magic and whichever issues it might have , thus I decided I also would provide further feedback on how I think some of the issues with magic and systems around it could be adressed.
Some of these changes will be minor adjustments to the current systems, others involve addition of either new systems or rework of the current ones.
Also please take note that the idea is that the game would be healthier if all of these were added into the game at the same time, for example one of the changes would be major reduction in damage of majority of the damage dealing spells but that alone added today wouldnt be a healthy change if it happened by itself, it could be good for the game if the other changes would be added as well.
So here are my suggestions:
- Magic damage of many spells is too high and needs to be either lowered or rebalanced in other ways
Currently, magic damage can be stacked to very high amounts dealing damage [in a single hit] to majority of footie focused builds with nearly non-existent investment on the mage's part. Thus some changes could be done here such as:
⦁ Binding damage multipliers for magic damage to gear and at the same time adding magic defences to currently existing armors so that the gear difference isnt as drastic [this would be very demaning solution as it would require massive amount of balance changes to ensure there are no armors in the game that make the user ''immortal'' or makes the damage insane on the mages part]
⦁ Reduce the magic damage of all spells by flat amount and buff mages in other aspects to make them able to fend for themselfs [for example addition of staff magic allowing mages to properly fight a footie in a melee 1v1]. This change would also include mana reductions on the mana cost of all the damaging spells as well.
⦁ Rework the current magic schools to be more focused on continuous damage and other utility effects insted of instant burst damage [which are all of the current meta spells for all magic schools], for example, elementalism should be focused around comboing debuffs on the enemy targets before casting the damaging spells, necromancy would need large buffs to the utility spells and ecumenical + spiritism would need new effects to all of the current spells [such as new kinds of usefull debuffs] to make the spells still good even with lowered damage.
- Change how the parrying works so that the difference in strenght is no longer a factor. In other words, to be able to parry [a well timed parry resulting in 0 damage] the only factor that decided if damage goes through or not [of any damage type] is the blocking skill. If any character, no matter how their attributes or any other skills/clades are distributed, the only factor for a proper parry is having 100 in blocking skill.
- Rework the psyche stat to still give mana as before but completely remove the magic defence so that psyche plays no role at all in affecting magical damage and at the same time the ''resisted'' effected will also be completely removed as a base effect that can happen randomly [as randomness in pvp of this kind is very bad design and insted it will only be tied to the human warcry].
Insted psyche will have a new effect of reducing the duration of debuffs and increasing the duration of buffs by x% amount [for example, at 100 psyche you woule benefit from 20% reduction on all debuffs and 20% increase to duration of all buffs, or any higher amount that would be balanced]
You could say this is large increase in damage to all the mage spells if psyche no loger provides any damage reduction againt magic, thats why this rework of psyche could only ever happens if the damage of all the magic spell got a toning down first, otherwise this change would be terrible for the game but if that hppened, removing the RNG elements that psyche cause would be very good the the games pvp.
- Rework tower shields to have a strenght requirement [tower shield require strength between 90-110, round shields between 40-60, kite shield in the future would be 60-90] and removal of mana on equipment hit [10 mana lost per hit]. Tower shields reward lazy gameplay of switching to shield when attacked and hugging walls / spinning to force the attacker to hit the shield with no other options. This kind of gameplay is unfortunately forced on mages as it is the ''optimal'' way to defend onself currently due to the blocking issues mentioned above.
This is probably the most important change that could happen instantly today and have no negative effect on the game by itself, tower shields need fixing and the first step towards making them balanced is removing the passive gameplay that mages currently use them for. So if by some chance any developer reads this, please rework the tower shields asap as they are not healthy for the games pvp in the current iteration.
- Additon of either staff magic or magical weapons
In terms of offence, mages rely on either beiing able to outdistance [kiting and magebanging ] or outlive [stacking defences and magebanging the enemy footie upclose killing them faster before they can kill the mage] the opponent as when faced with a footie upclose, the mage can only parry [and be hit through perfect parries] and are unable to return hits as there is no weapon that would deal reasonable damage back to the properly geared footie. Thus there need to exist weapons that mages can use to fight back, either addition of the staffs which would scale of inteligence to deal melee damage or add a new version of all the current weapons that scale of inteligence.
- Fixing the buffs/debuffs displayed below players health,stamina,mana. Currently when you apply mainly magic reflect, you can not see on other players that it is applied to them, this needs to be changed so that its not hidden and everyone can see all of the buffs/debuffs on everyone else.
- Addition of spellpower bonus displayed on the character screen. This would include base spell power affecting all spells and individual spellpowers for each magic schools when hovered over. It would also display spellpower from equipment once the rework of effects on armors made it into the game that would cause some armors to boost spellpower [ofc after damage of all spells was rebalanced to appropriate levels]. Also the other effects should be added here at that time, a magic resistance and all other resistances to heat and cold would also be displayed.
All of these changes together imo would improve the pvp gameplay loops for both sides, if mages wished to continue with their current gameplay loop of only using magic to do damage, they still can do so but the damage would need to be more gradual and whenever a footie would get close to them they would have tools to defend themselfs upclose and have option to express more mechanical skill while still having all of their previous options.
I know this is a lot and its a massive amount of changes that would take most likely years to implement but some of these could be added fairly quickly today and have positive effect on the game.