Illarion.org

I want to alter the idea "Mana Stones" raised in the other topic and will post it here because it takes a quite different approach and to separate the two ideas so we dont have to talk about both ideas in one thread:

Maybe you could alter that idea the following way...

By introducing a rewarding system simmilar to the treasure hunt with the maps now in game but for mage players...

Make it extremely unlikely (a very low encounter ratio) for a mage player to find a description of a generic ritual while reading in the library
(In comparison to the fishing for treasure maps).

The things generic about the rituals should be:

Yield of "power" (the reward) ,
Objects needed to perform the ritual,
required initial skill to perform the ritual (As you need better digging/mining for harder treasure maps?),
type of ritual ("good" "evil" "neutral"),
difficulties that might occur during the ritual ( i. e skeletons are being raised because something goes wrong while performing a bad ritual,),

and also make it that the mage has to find a particular place on the island suitable for the ritual (as you have to find the spot you have to dig out your treasure at); maybe even have it set that the ritual needs a special daytime to be performed (an evil ritual in the middle of the night; some at dawn etc.)

I will try to write down some examples so you know what I mean:

"Small evil ritual of the skull"
Yield of power (small like a little immediate mana boost 1/4 of the mana bar?);

Skill to perform (commotio, pervestagio w/e magic skills apply I dont know that I dont play a mage character to a "beginner" extend)

Things needed: skull, lambleg, ink, ornate dagger

Type of ritual: Evil

Difficulties: A single skeleton might be summoned and will attack the caster when he does something wrong; he might actualy LOOSE mana by performing the ritual wrong; an astral voice starts to laugh at him and his inferior understanding of the mana;

You can add difficulties like "needs two/three/four mages to be performed" to make it a "social" activity and opportunity for roleplay and teaching

(somebody complained about the only way to raise ones magic skills is by spamming spells around, this way rp would be encouraged (interaction with other mages, maybe your master witnessing you perform a lesser ritual... I dont know).

How about it?

(Maybe (once the other types of magic are introduced) a simmilar system for priests and bards too)

Just the pure fact it makes mages stronger than they already are is enough for me to dislike this proposal.

I would very much enjoy an opportunity to RP with other mages.. as far as making them "stronger" it is so hard to do now... a mage char would have to be ig approximately 6 times more then a fighter for the same up in skill. Having a mage and a fighter char, it is easy to see the difference in the skill ability. If there are powerful mages.. these chars are rewarded for their length of time ig.. a lot of the most powerful fighers no longer play.

As far as a "ritual" to obtain a "stone" to "help" a mage in their mana.. IMO it would just make for some hard feelings for those chars that did not get it. I may be misunderstanding your post though.

I like the idea of the rituals et cetera. The reward however needs to be tweaked IMHO.

What about giving anyone at the ritual the chance to gain temporary mana boost (more essence) for a day or so, or an increase in a particular spell skill for a day...

That would make it interesting...

Rituals are for rp, not engine.

If you really want your ritual to do something, ask a gm to help.

Nice idea, but IMHO too much effort and the benefit might be limited. Category "nice to have".

Something general on proposals. It is nice that all of you think about new features that can improve the game. Complex features, special features, nice features - but I see two problems: First off, most proposals are like "Let's have feature xyz. It could roughly work like this and that.". Considerations about the benefit for the overall gaming experience, the gaming balance and the motivation of players to use this feature are oftenly not included. Also, a real concept is not included, this can be later on, of course, but not even an outline is given. Just as an example, the current version of the bard magic concept has meanwhile 31 pages and it's not completed...

Another thing is that our devs do not lack ideas. And Illarion does not lack features. In fact, we have alot of features that are totally unbalanced. Just as an example (Nitram will kill me), the best mudane sword can be crafted with 10% smithing skill and the best mudane helmet needs 23%... The two armors that are most difficult to craft (>90% in smithing, I doubt many have that) are useless scrap. Does nobody notice such inbalances? Also, almost everytime I try something "new" with my player characters, I notice at least some minor bugs or serious inbalances. How comes I seem to be the first one to notice?

So, do not be content with inbalances and bugs and propose to add new stuff to the game instead, this will just result in a complex game that is totally smiled up. Sometimes, minor changes can lead to much more fun with little to no effort for the devs. Please use flyspray to report bugs, you can find it here:

http://illarion.org/flyspray/

We don't need such rituals. We have rp-rituals ig (that's one of the reasons a teaching from player to player is GOOD before you can get runes: ig-knowledge ) and if you want to reach a special aim with them, f.e an attribute raised or whatever, you can ask a GM how he likes the idea and blah. F.e. Taeryon currently has his cons lowered from 16 to 3 because he made some magix ig that is very strong.

I like the complex, bugged crafting system.
There are many chances to loose items by handling it wrong.
But you can also influence it, by approach alteration, to lessen effort while keeping the output -economically safe-.


For rituals it might be to say..maybe.. its a imptant matter for a game of name and taste.

Rituals enable, lesser -talented. pupils to participate on much stronger aetherial exchange or transformation.



To say it with the tongue of a worker:
If i give boiled sausages, a pan, a spoon, a bucket of water, a hatchet, wood, -and several edible ingredients- to someonexyz,
this person should also be able to cook food under my attention, he/she would normally not be able to.



We have a well worked out crafting/mage system, based on making experience on ones own.

What i miss is the chance of a -learning -system-, where a skilled char is able to submit (engine-dependant) knowledge to a lesser skilled char, by sharing the learning process.






BARDSYSTEM!!!!!1!11!???
Music really gets better by beeing performed by several skilled persons.

@Estralis; I not dare to deny the need for extensively prepared work, yet i think 31 pages are a bit much for a first step.

Please do not change the consisting magic-system. Add some new, overall features.

My proposal for this, needed, system has a lenght of two lines:




-Encourage the musicians simply by triggering a %al skillbonus in a 5tile radius around a "successful" attempt of playing music.

-Means the more skilled a musician is, the higher is the bonus all participants, inside the 5tile radius, get.


. .so much for playing together.*goes PGing salmonsausages*

I *thought* the efford for this system would not be too high because there's a simmilar system already out there so you don't have to start from scratch
at least.

Regarding the reward thing:

I might have to point out I was using "Hausnummern" (numbers subject to change) for how high the reward should be and yes I do believe it shouldn't be any "permanent" reward such as skill-gain or attribute change.

(The thing I suggested should be merely a refill of 1/6 th or w/e of ones mana bar (depending upon the difficulty of the ritual) which would be simmilar in effect to an mini-instant mana potion.
Based upon the low chance of finding such a ritual in a library (same as the treasure maps now, I dont know if the game is really being flooded by them),
the fact that there still is a skillcap even for mages,
and the fact that it will take a mage TIME to prepare and look for the spot to perform a ritual in which he actually has to do things,
you can't realy call this powergaming.
(Or is a fighter, who digs out treasure maps a gold farmer now just because the treasures usually yield more reward than "normal" hunting?)

Oh and yes there ARE roleplay rituals in-game and I do not want to abolish them with this idea, although there could also be roleplay treasure hunts, roleplay fights, roleplay crafting which would in your argumentation make pretty much every new feature Illarion has seen looking back from the start obsolete and uncalled for, Tayron.

...wait, so you want someone to have to a) find the ritual b) find the spot and c) DO the ritual to get the mana refill?

I think your mana will have refilled by then.

Yeah exactly... that's why i suggested a more fruitful reward.

Mana bar doesn't take THAT long to fill...

Well I dont know what you mage players would see as a decent reward,

so I leave that up to others to work out reward details.

Er.. hello? Mages don't need rewards?

Hi!

Fine, your opinion was noted and I am glad it will influence this discussion.

Your authority however has to be neglected as you can't decide that yourself.

Oh c'mon, magic is already insanely powerful. A high skilled mage with proper attributes takes a low amount of mana to annihilate stuff. The reward for magic is the raw power.

AlexRose wrote:Oh c'mon, magic is already insanely powerful. A high skilled mage with proper attributes takes a low amount of mana to annihilate stuff. The reward for magic is the raw power.

And this is for low-skilled mages in order to become a high-skilled mage to be able to annihilate stuff with low mana.

The whole point is that they don't become powerful fast. We don't WANT people to be able to pwn immediately. Give it a few more months and you'll be a decent mage. It's just a case of patience.

AlexRose wrote:The whole point is that they don't become powerful fast. We don't WANT people to be able to pwn immediately. Give it a few more months and you'll be a decent mage. It's just a case of patience.

Yes and then we got people who have commotio up to 60 and more percent in a few days, sorry but a powerfull mage has nothing to do with any good rp just pure powergaming, having any other way around to actually gain a skillinfluence would be quiete nice.

Pellandria wrote:

AlexRose wrote:The whole point is that they don't become powerful fast. We don't WANT people to be able to pwn immediately. Give it a few more months and you'll be a decent mage. It's just a case of patience.

Yes and then we got people who have commotio up to 60 and more percent in a few days, sorry but a powerfull mage has nothing to do with any good rp just pure powergaming, having any other way around to actually gain a skillinfluence would be quiete nice.

By the end I had 40 decisio, 51 commotio and 59 pervestigatio. The only three spells I couldn't cast were SIH YEG DUN, JUS ANTH FHEN QWAN and IRA TAUR LUK. Over a period of a few months, that is not hard to get. You just need to be active. I got my pervy through healing and decisio through teleporting, both of which I barely pged if at all; just healed friends when they needed it and teleported whereever I needed to go. I did a bit on commotio to get from about level 30-40 but the rest I got from just using it. That was only a few months, and I could do practically anything. I don't see any reason why the system is bad.

I don't understand what you people argue about and what it has to do with my idea...

That's because you don't play a mage.

We're arguing why a mage would need bonuses.

(However, looking back, the student->teacher system started in january, which means I've had magic that long o_O . Regardless, I guess if you practiced you could get the skills I had quite easily, considering someone got 50 commotio in 2 days (and got skills reduced for it)).

Alright so let's put suggesting to a stop on topics like priest or bard magic too because nobody plays either characters and knows what they're all about.

You're too smart, we should stop thinking on things we do not do ourselves altogether, why did nobody else think of that before?

(Maybe because we'd all sit in caves still because nobody tried to think about things that weren't there or did not affect them directly at that time).

Don't be so anal about having to play a mage to make suggestions regarding magic, oftens the "blinkered specialists" (Fachidioten? How does that translate?) overlook things that others discover more easily because they try a different approach to the subject.

Faladron wrote:You're too smart, we should stop thinking on things we do not do ourselves altogether

Sounds good to me.

I didn't say you have to be a mage; I said the reason you're the only person here who doesn't understand what we're talking about is because you aren't one.