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Post by Reia on Mar 4, 2015 2:30:59 GMT -8
Thank you. ^^
The growing material might be hard to balance though. I would imagine that each rank could increase the max size in Magic-meters, but I am unsure about changing both negative and/or positive effects with the ranks.
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Laddo D
Magicmaker Developer
Magicmaker Maker
Posts: 215
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Post by Laddo D on Mar 4, 2015 10:47:47 GMT -8
Balance is always an uphill climb, especially in Magicmaker! Ideally, you'd only want positive effects to increase, to reward higher material grades.
Personally, its always been my experience that theorizing about balance is too difficult before you prototype it and see how it is in game. That's just my philosophy though, probably just because I'm bad at balance, haha! There are a lot of people who are good at simulating this sort of thing in their head.
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Post by John on May 25, 2015 6:47:22 GMT -8
Not hearing/reading any current news since the last update or is the studio dead? but I have a material idea
Static Ball
Spell: Enables the spell to charge when button is hold up to 3 seconds, increasing its effect.
Robe: Charges for 3 seconds, next spell has increased effect
Focusing Lens
Spell: Reduces spell's fire rate but increases its effect
Robe: Not firing for a short duration causes the next spell to have increased effect
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Post by Kami-sama on Aug 4, 2016 15:01:23 GMT -8
Syringe:
The Spell's initial effect is lowered but reapplied over time. So if it's simply damage, the enemy would get it in doses. And while yes, that would be simply another damage over time effect, it gets much more unique with other materials.
Lightning rod: everytime the damage gets reapplied an enemy in range gets "infected" with the same effects.
Fire/poison: Dot is refreshed/stacked on every dose.
Miniature sun: enemy carries the damaging aura.
Explosive poweder: enemy explodes in regular intervals
necromnomicon: enemy spawns your minions
wrench: hmmm.... Turret might just spawn on each dose, but it would be cooler if it follows the enemy, eh... too much hassle to program.
So except for a few cases where it might be more interesting to add in something special, this sems easy to program: projectile sticks to enemies hit, can't hit other enemies anymore (except if diamond is used) and continues to "hit" that one enemy in regular intervals. Any secondary effects the bullet had (suction/aura) is then centered on the enemy. It might be good not to let that enemy die, even at 0 hp, untill the spells duration is over.
combinations like these might be interesting:
Feather+Syringe+explosive powder+fire:
the victim gets hit back while exploding repeatedly igniting all the enmies it flies by. maybe suck them in with vacuum too? nice carnage!
Ice+vacuum+mini-sun+lightning rod+explosive powder+syringe:
explosive powder and lightning rod combinations spread spell effects onto multiple enemies quite well already, but with this the slow would be applied repeatedly on anyone in zap- or exploding range. Of course, due to the nature of the material, the slow percentage would be lowered.
It's not wasted on bosses either:
since the syringe makes the spell hit additional times, green belt would be a wise choice, maybe enchanted.
if you use attack speed and any sort of projectile multiplying the greenbelt effect will go off like a machine gun
OR use it with ice and the boss might be slowed for the rest of the fight, depending on your damage and the Syringe rank.
you get the idea, on to the robe effect:
Damage you take is suspended and reapplied to you over time.
So you cannot be instakilled and have enough time to lifesteal yourself up instead, if you use soulcontract and the spell costs more than your hp, this robe lets you cast it regardless, but you will pay the price in installments, maybe killing you in the process. it'd probably not let you cast it if you cant even take one dose of the pain though.
So it'd basicly collect all the damage from various sources into one pool and inject it into the player on set intervals, delayed and split up. no interaction with debilitations though.
this would rule with lifesteal, but suck with any defensive measures that are at a disadvantage when taking more hits instead of more damage.
Now, one thing is still verry iffy: what would the spell effect do if you combine it with owlbear trap? the enemy might leave a trail of traps. Instead,the spell might linger inside of the enemy until antoher one comes near or the trap duration is over. Or maybe the enemy is held in place? Maybe the trap trait is applied before the syringe one in the first place and doesn't really interact, it might just be a regular trap that THEN sticks to an enemy.
Honestly, no matter how you guys would handle it, the syringe is such a simple idea that would add really interesting possibilities!
Imo, it even feels like a hole would be filled.
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Post by Kami-sama on Aug 4, 2016 16:17:15 GMT -8
Speaking of holes, I feel like the damaging field niche isn't properly filled with just the miniature sun. It bugs me that it doesn't apply other spell effects. and while the fact that the verry same aura could potentially hang around the projectile of any spell may make it versatile on one hand, I feel like we would be better of if we had the ability to determine what the aura does. We could still make a "miniature sun" by mixing it with fire for example, and it would be even cooler, because a sun should set things ablaze.
So here my proposal:
Field Generator:
Makes the projectile slow and non-solid but covers it in an aura that applies spell effects (including damage) in regular intervals which would be slower than those from the miniature sun, but faster than the doses of my syringe suggestion above.
Radius might be proportional to spellpower, and since projectile speed is in this case pretty useless, the gear might increase duration or maybe the other way arround, I dont know, you are the number-wizards here ^^
other than this, i guess this one is pretty self-explanatory.
you have your miniature sun-esque aura and enemies inside it are repeatedly "hit" with the spell you made, as if the projectile hit them. the projectile itself shouldn't be able to hit enemies though. The extent of change this material brings would be akin to the optic lens, well, maybe a bit more.
The point is, the aura benefits from other variables than a projectile would, so instead of "speed" and "penetration" we have things like "damage interval" and "aura radius". But there's no problem here, since any of these values can be fixed, scaled with spell power, or changed by other materials, so it's basicly the same process in the end, like with the lazors length instead of speed.
with that considered, i don't think there's any material that would combine in an exceptionally weird or useless way and I think it's an addition that is long due, since anything to do with magic benefits from Area effects.
maybe now if we suck enemies into a black hole they might stay there as well?
Now that i think about it, these materials open up a path to a whole new cathegory of spells each
We have projectiles by default
then:
Laser: optic lense
Trap: Owlbear Trap
Summon: Omnom, wrench
Field: Field generator
Curse: syringe
Oh and i almost forgot
Robe effect:
enemies within a certain distance from yourself take some of your damage for you.
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Post by Whoa Constrictor on Aug 10, 2016 16:09:17 GMT -8
Syringe: The Spell's initial effect is lowered but reapplied over time. So if it's simply damage, the enemy would get it in doses. And while yes, that would be simply another damage over time effect, it gets much more unique with other materials. Lightning rod: everytime the damage gets reapplied an enemy in range gets "infected" with the same effects. Fire/poison: Dot is refreshed/stacked on every dose. Miniature sun: enemy carries the damaging aura. Explosive poweder: enemy explodes in regular intervals necromnomicon: enemy spawns your minions wrench: hmmm.... Turret might just spawn on each dose, but it would be cooler if it follows the enemy, eh... too much hassle to program. .. Now, one thing is still verry iffy: what would the spell effect do if you combine it with owlbear trap? the enemy might leave a trail of traps. Instead,the spell might linger inside of the enemy until antoher one comes near or the trap duration is over. Or maybe the enemy is held in place? Maybe the trap trait is applied before the syringe one in the first place and doesn't really interact, it might just be a regular trap that THEN sticks to an enemy. As you pointed out, there's a lot of special cases with this material that radically increase its complexity. A majority of material interaction bugs have dealt with laser (optic lens) which we had to special case nearly every material interaction. It set a bad precident and we kidna regret that. Ultimately it comes down to would casting a spell once and having only some of its effects trigger several times be more interesting than casting the same spell several times, where you can reselect targets and have greater overall effect? I'm not sure, but my gut reaction leans towards repeated casting, especially since I wouldn't have to worry about what materials this effect does and doesn't synergize with. We try to avoid materials that can potentially do nothing. I like the imagery of repeated electric shocks and explosions, though. robe effect: Damage you take is suspended and reapplied to you over time. So you cannot be instakilled and have enough time to lifesteal yourself up instead, if you use soulcontract and the spell costs more than your hp, this robe lets you cast it regardless, but you will pay the price in installments, maybe killing you in the process. it'd probably not let you cast it if you cant even take one dose of the pain though. So it'd basicly collect all the damage from various sources into one pool and inject it into the player on set intervals, delayed and split up. no interaction with debilitations though. this would rule with lifesteal, but suck with any defensive measures that are at a disadvantage when taking more hits instead of more damage. You pretty much covered all the bases. It has positive synergy with seashell robe, dustpan artifact, as well as last-second lifesteal. Coolest combo I can think of is this + soul contract + philo stone on robes, so at low health you rapidly regen mana for the mana shield. Beyond that I'm not seeing much else. It does sound cool, though, and its effects neatly tie in with the theme of the spell effect, which is very appreciable. Speaking of holes, I feel like the damaging field niche isn't properly filled with just the miniature sun. It bugs me that it doesn't apply other spell effects. and while the fact that the verry same aura could potentially hang around the projectile of any spell may make it versatile on one hand, I feel like we would be better of if we had the ability to determine what the aura does. We could still make a "miniature sun" by mixing it with fire for example, and it would be even cooler, because a sun should set things ablaze. So here my proposal: Field Generator: Makes the projectile slow and non-solid but covers it in an aura that applies spell effects (including damage) in regular intervals which would be slower than those from the miniature sun, but faster than the doses of my syringe suggestion above. Radius might be proportional to spellpower, and since projectile speed is in this case pretty useless, the gear might increase duration or maybe the other way arround, I dont know, you are the number-wizards here ^^ other than this, i guess this one is pretty self-explanatory. you have your miniature sun-esque aura and enemies inside it are repeatedly "hit" with the spell you made, as if the projectile hit them. the projectile itself shouldn't be able to hit enemies though. The extent of change this material brings would be akin to the optic lens, well, maybe a bit more. The point is, the aura benefits from other variables than a projectile would, so instead of "speed" and "penetration" we have things like "damage interval" and "aura radius". But there's no problem here, since any of these values can be fixed, scaled with spell power, or changed by other materials, so it's basicly the same process in the end, like with the lazors length instead of speed. with that considered, i don't think there's any material that would combine in an exceptionally weird or useless way and I think it's an addition that is long due, since anything to do with magic benefits from Area effects. maybe now if we suck enemies into a black hole they might stay there as well? Now that i think about it, these materials open up a path to a whole new cathegory of spells each We have projectiles by default then: Laser: optic lense Trap: Owlbear Trap Summon: Omnom, wrench Field: Field generator Curse: syringe Oh and i almost forgot Robe effect: enemies within a certain distance from yourself take some of your damage for you. If we were to redesign the spell system in a way where laser was one of several spell "styles" rather than a material, paradigms like these could be really cool avenues to explore. I don't dislike the idea, but my first concern is the level of complexity presented for a single material. As far as recasting effects like diamond and gear into other scaling factors for the aura... this goes way beyond the scope of a material and the ways these things affect the aura start to be fairly unintuitive. Speed into laser length was the special case we made for lasers, but that makes intuitive sense because projectiles normally expire after a certain time/distance, which is extended with the gear material. I think an important question to ask about the field generator is "what can this do that nothing else can", and what makes the things it can do fun and interesting. The "non-solid" properties you describe can be achieved with the rock, diamond, or both. Applying side effects to multiple enemies can be done with Explosive Powder and Trick Bullet. If the goal is to apply an effect over area over time, sticky slime, bouncy ball, and owlbear trap are good at that as well. Regarding the robe effect, monster health vs player health are tuned on very different scales. This could be solved with ratios, and with a certain lifesteal/health regen build that could be supplemental damage, but even then I'm not sure it has more appeal than existing damage conversion passives. Paradigmatically, it overlaps with seashell (I take damage, nearby enemies take damage). Another similar effect is explosive powder (I die, deal massive AOE damage and if I get a kill, I revive) which has a unique minigame surrounding its effect. There's a lot of creativity here and I'm always happy to see people this invested in the game. Thanks for taking the time to covey your thoughts on the game- feedback and suggestions like these help us gain insights into what players like about and want from our games. |
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