Casting inconsistencies; Looking for a way to make sense of it

Suggestions
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#1

I don’t honestly know where this post belongs. Bugs? Not enough information to say. Suggestions? I don’t know what to suggest. For lack of a better option, I chose the latter. I know this is a wall of text, but I ask that you please give it a chance.

This post is from the perspective of a new player. I’m a little over 10 hours in (lv 4 ranger, lv 6 mage), and there are some things that are really bothering me about casting as a mage. I can accept that I’m a bad (or otherwise inconsistent) artist. I can even accept that the game is a pile of trash and request a refund. The problem is, I don’t really believe either of those.

I don’t exactly know how to present my thoughts, I’ve never been very good at essays. When I’m not doing freelance 3D modelling, I’m a systems admin, so I’ll lean into my skillsets. Regarding the earlier, you’ll have to trust me, for now, that I have good spacial awareness, an understanding of sketching in 3D space, and reasonably consistent artistic ability (I’ll have videos to show that later). For the latter, a series of lists;

General Observations

  • One session, I can cast, say, Affliction II, with my eyes closed. 10, 20 times in a row. Even sloppy. The next session, I can’t cast it to save my life (literally).
  • I’ve never gotten Frostbolt I to cast, ever. I can’t drawn an M? Conversely, I have never had a fizzle when attempting a portal or resurrection. Not once. They’re much more complicated, you’d think I would?
  • I’ve seen videos/posts with good runes but similar complaints/results to my own
  • I’ve seen videos where people draw sloppy crap and get nearly 100% cast rates
  • I’ve seen casters up-close with a nearly perfect, and extremely fast, casting abilities. So perfect that it made me start wondering if they were using some kind of macro (not an accusation, just an illustration).
  • I’ve drawn runes that produce completely different spells. Most often, Frost II turns into Fireball I (guessing based on a damage).

Attempts to correct

  • Tracing the book (all kinds of orientations, including straight up and down in 3D space, and in relation to my HMD). Everything from slow and careful to quick swipes. (Fun fact, long drawings start to disappear on the originating end, not sure if a timing thing or a point registration thing).
  • Looking in different directions (straight forward, down, sideways, etc).
  • Initiating the spell with the wand tip touching, or away from the drawn rune
  • Holding the wand in different orientations (while drawing, or initiating the spell)
  • Tracing runes on the wall of my play area (or the floor)
  • Trying all the variations and shortcuts for runes
  • Trying completely random things (random squiggles, super tall, super wide, etc).
  • Trying the same thing many times in a row (like 50 times). Different runes, different speeds, even with my eyes closed.
  • Switching connection methods (normal vs websocket)
  • Reconnecting
  • Resetting SteamVR
  • Rebooting
  • Reinstalling
  • Sitting
  • Standing
  • Putting the HMD on a stool and using a water-level on it
  • Tiny drawing
  • HUGE drawing

None of the above had any meaningful (reproducible) effect.

  • Backward and upside down drawing (this one is the only one that consistently failed)

Spells that have never worked for me, no matter what

  • Any frost spell (Including ice lance)
  • Fireball I / III
  • Arcane ray (actually, this one worked twice early on, but never again)
  • Polymorph
  • Fireworks

Spells that /always/ work, even when I try to mess them up

  • Decurse
  • Teleportation (the whole ritual)
  • Resurrection (the whole ritual)

Spells that work intermittently (including good casts with bad runes, and bad casts with seemingly perfect runes

  • Fireball II
  • Mana Shield
  • Pushback
  • Affliction I

Spells that work every time in some sessions, and never in others (no apparent relation to each other, sometimes both, sometimes one, sometimes neither)

  • Affliction II
  • Light

Possible causes

  • The runes in the book aren’t the same as the gesture we’re being graded against.
  • The rune we see drawn from our POV isn’t the one that’s being graded.
  • Network latency (the only system stat on my end that I can think of that has any variability). Ignore if the runes were graded locally rather than on the server.
  • Server vs client differences (I have auto update enabled, and I’ve only owned the game 2 days, so probably not)
  • A rune is being detected, but for the wrong spell, so the accuracy grade isn’t using the right template
  • Some of the runes may be too similar (mathematically), so the system is getting confused (could account for my ability to cast much more complicated ones, since they’re not rubbing up against other spells).

Ideas for feedback from the system, or other possible modifications thereof (The reason I’m posting in “Suggestions”)

  • Binding the orientation of the casting “canvas” to the play area, rather than the HMD or the world (would make casting while moving possible, like on the airship, and removes the mystery of where the head is pointing when casting)
  • Giving the casting line some color (indicating depth or speed, to compare against the drawing plane, and identify bunching in draw points).
  • Having some kind of movable, semi-transparent casting frame (would allow for 3D runes, but still give an idea of where the base plane is)
  • If the success of a spell is at a high percent, but the recognition is at a lower percent, some kind of message would give a caster hope that they’re heading in the right direction. Like “Frost III failed”, show a percentage or pie graph of accuracy, etc.
  • Some kind of training mode that shows the rune for the spell you want to cast (select it from the book maybe?), but while training is enabled the spell doesn’t have an effect (but still shows whether it was a perfect cast, shoots, etc). Maybe it still works on training dummies, that would give a better, visceral feeling of accomplishment and positively re-enforce learning and muscle memory.

If any of these is considered “cheap”, limit it to some kind of practice area. Maybe a practice dummy in the player house? Even if it were 100x harder in the “real world”, at LEAST we would know that we can draw the right shapes, and wouldn’t want to punch a training dummy in the face (and break our hand on a wall or TV in the process).

In closing, as far as I’m concerned, the mage is the most interesting and engaging class to play. Sure, I like bows and arrows (and the firing mechanic feels nice and responsive), but I like being a glass cannon, and the notion of drawing the runes to cast is intriguing. Despite that, every time I get a fizzle on a well drawn, axis-flat, perfectly oriented, previously successful rune, it makes me want to throw my hands up, submit for a refund, and leave a bad review. Not because it’s hard, but because as a player I feel no sense of validation, or progression, or have any faith in a system that doesn’t behave consistently.

But I really don’t want to.

If the skill floor is a matter of concern, from my point of view, I would rather have an esoteric, complicated, intricate, multi-step pattern that has some forgiveness and actually works (see teleportation, which is a joy to cast), over simple patterns that require high or impossible accuracy (literally the letter M, which is f**king impossible).

For reference, I’m connecting from Seattle WA using a 100/100 megabit connection (FIOS) and using the Vive on a gaming rig that sports an i7-7700, GTX1070, 32GB RAM, and Windows 10. I’m /more/ than happy to do any kind of play-testing you want, get on Twitch/Skype/Discord to show my screen, search through logs, be a QA monkey, submit reports, whatever. Even if it segregates me from the live servers. I want this to be a great experience. It’s not impossible that there’s something on my system that is screwing everything up, or something on other systems that’s highly optimal.

– AlexESmith, n00b Mage (but not for lack of trying)

P.S., for the love of god, please give us a casting button option other than pressing the track pad. The flexor muscles in my right forearm are begging you, and not being able to snap-turn with right and strafe with left (or vice versa) unless I put my wand away is a huge pain.

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#2

Welcome to Mage. As the vets will tell you “get guud”. /s

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#3

Afraid I can’t say more then ”You’ll get there, promise” :joy:
Been/Are there sometimes, best advice I can give, train by the dummies in Highstep, most likely some lvl.20 will give advice if you ask or mess up too much.

Or you can msg me and I can come and give a hand to some extent, only lvl.14 so not mastered yet.

#4

@Mike_F I knew that was coming.

Here’s the thing though; I’m trying to learn a new written language with a blindfold and broken hands. I need more data, more feedback from the system. Guessing is not fun, which is what a game is supposed to be.

#5

@CaineHollow That’s a kind offer. When I record my video follow-up, I may take you up on that.

#6

I know, me and a few others have complained and were told the same thing. I got to level 17 and quit.
I found most of the inconsistencies were graphical. I found when I practiced in my house everything worked. But outside was always tedious.

#7

Okay… so… the OrbusVR Unofficial Discord server sent me here to report my findings. I’m a bit sleepy but hopefully this is coherent enough. SteamVR quietly implemented a scaling function which will do its level best to max out your GPU at 100%. The problem is that it’s mostly designed with well-optimized VR games in mind and I have yet to play an MMORPG that I would accuse of being “well-optimized”. At any rate, you need to go into SteamVR settings and under the Video tab select Manual Override and try setting the resolution to the actual per-eye resolution of your HMD. For the Vive it’s 1080x1200 and the Vive Pro it’s 1400x1600. Now, I have an Intel Core I7 7700K and SLI 1080 FTW so this shouldn’t be a problem with my system… when I checked initially it suggested to run at 190% which according to their scaling puts me at a per-eye resolution of 2095x2328. Just to give you a comparison, 4K resolution is 3840x2160… which means that both eyes accounted for, this SteamVR scaling is trying to render my VR at higher than 4K resolution. Thanks for the effort, but now I know where my reprojections are going to. I manually set the resolution to my HMD spec, turned off Interleaved Reprojection and Advanced Supersample Filtering in Developer settings (Leave Asynchronous Reprojection on) and casting Runemage spells went from Nightmare Mode to Easy mode. My comfort level at the FPS increase was enough that I was grinding three hours, casting Affliction 2 like a breeze and casting Fire 3 in combat with about 90% success rate. All this was on the tail of finding out that running DisplayPort to the Vive box then HDMI to the Vive was yet another cause of my slowdown because then it has to convert between the two standards instead of just treating the HDMI as a pass-through. Try both of these and see how your Runemage spells do afterwards. Your quality will take a dive, but your Runemage casting will be pain-free and your comfort level should be much better.

Edit: I hadn’t thought about the fact that some people may not understand why performance would cause such inconsistency in spells. Well… please understand that with any networked game, there’s a large amount of uncertainty involved. If this were a single player game the client could just take you at your word that you drew what your computer said you drew and award you a shiny Frost 3. Because this is an MMORPG they can’t do that. The Orbus VR devs already had one hacker brazenly cheat their game and that one went to court, so… skipping all that, you need to understand that several things have to happen in a game before it can agree that you’ve done what you did. In a game like this where you’ve got fiddly drawings in midair to take into account beyond the usual player placement which already is approximated and not exact… on top of fiddly VR stuff that’s still in beta… your performance smooths out any translation errors between “I did a thing!” and the server saying “I saw you do the thing, have a spell.” Hence, performance, reprojection, etc.

2 Likes
#8

@Tohn Whoa. Your reply is fascinating for several reasons O_O

I’ll try the settings or ASAP. I’m already using HDMI from the system, I assume that’s sufficient?

1 Like
#9

Hey buddy! I can assure you i had EXACTLY the same feedback when i started… it really is just a muscle memory practicing thing that takes weeks not days. I totally agree it is very tough to get the initial casting of spells down.

My affliction 2 is not like how others cast it and neither is my frost 3, fireball 2, frost 2 etc. I also still struggle with frost 1 (although the only use case i have found are bells on boss 4 of the raid and the runemage tournament)

It took me 3 weeks to get consistent with affliction and probably just as long for frost 3. It is tough for sure! Runemage is probably the toughest class to play consistently. I think warriors also have a tough time with recognition too by the way!

If the dev team want to make this somehow more accesible to newer players, they would have to lower the difficulty a bit or add a handicap mode whereby maybe damage is reduced a bit? Really there is quite a few solutions here i believe.

Getting good at runemage right now takes tips and tricks from other runemages and lots and lots of chit chat and practice.

3 Likes
#10

I appreciate you taking the time to write up your feedback. I don’t have the ability to go through point-by-point right now, since I’m a bit busy with the new server rolling out, but a few general things based on your post to follow. Also, just to be sure, a lot of these topics have been broached in much more depth by me in previous posts, so be sure to read those if you haven’t already for in-depth explanations on how the rune detection system works, what it’s looking for (proportions are a big factor), etc.

In general, if you draw the rune the exact same way every time, you will get the same result every time. I think that’s a lot of where the “practice more!” comments come from. This is a real, actual skill, which is not something you see a lot of in a typical 2D game, and as such it’s going to take a lot of time (like, 50+ hours of practice) to get all the spells to work most of the time. I’m not dismissing your other concerns, but I just want to point out that if you are 10 hours in to the game, and you are seeing what seem to be inconsistent results, that is expected and normal. Just like you can’t pick up a guitar and start playing it perfectly the first day even if you “know” what notes you want to play or how you “want” your fingers to move on the strings, you have to keep at it until you can literally do it just through muscle memory.

My other advice is to practice just the core spells to start. Fireball 2, Frostbolt 2, Affliction 1, Ice Lance…if you can get those down pat that will get you a long way, really.

I agree that we need to add some more “training wheels” type of systems to the mechanic to help make practicing easier. Coloring the line differently based on the Z-plane depth is something that’s been on my list for way too long, and I will see if I can put some time in on that soon. We have a lot of new players joining the game due to the Steam and Oculus sales going on right now, and honestly “beginning instruction” has kind of fallen lower on the priority list than it probably should have.

Finally, reprojection (meaning your headset is running at less-than-90-FPS because it’s GPU or CPU bound) can play a big role in spell casting. The recognition of the spell rune is done server-side, but the tracking of what you’re drawing is done client-side. So latency actually doesn’t affect casting accuracy, but having a low framerate, or lots of frame skipping, definitely can, because it means we can’t sample the position of the tip of your wand accurately/smoothly. So if you are seeing large swings in your casting consistency, that’s certainly a good place to look.

Hope that helps!

1 Like
#11

Oh boy this is a big one
General Observations

  1. Yeah that is normal and happens to me sometimes as a 20 runemage.
  2. You’re drawing the M wrong; follow the book not the pillar.
  3. Happens with not enough practice.
  4. Happens with a lot of practice.
  5. Macros do not exist for this game but its just an insane level of practice.
  6. That happens if your spell is too close to another; draw them more precise.

Attempts to correct

  1. Tracing your book helps with some but not all spells.
  2. 2 and 3 don’t matter.
  3. Can help with frost 3.
  4. Does not matter.
  5. Some shortcuts are harder.
  6. Does not matter.
  7. That is just practice.
  8. Heard websocket makes one runemage unable to cast spells; have not experienced myself.
  9. 10-18 Don’t matter.

Backward drawing will never work; it is not the rune. Upside down drawing only works if the top half is a mirror of the bottom half.

Spells that never work

  1. Practice these spells.
  2. Neither of these spells matter.
  3. Practice for arcane bomb.
  4. Draw a really wide but not tall hourglass for the shortcut.
  5. Practice for a party.

Spells that work intermittently

Just practice all of these spells.

Spells that work every time in some sessions, and never in others

Just practice these two spells.

Possible causes

  1. As far as I’m aware this is true but the runes in the book are correct.
  2. That is the rune being graded, what else would?
  3. Latency only causes your drawing to be submitted weirdly but won’t affect the drawing.
  4. Agree here.
  5. This can happen with pushback where it thinks you draw fire 2 instead, just be more precise.
  6. Probably not as I can get spells that are similar to others with precision,

Suggestions

  1. 1-3 are okay
  2. The recognition is the success…
  3. I hate crutches. You just have to learn them yourself
#12

I just want to chime in here, both @Riley_D and the rest of the “just do it over and over again” crew. Even the pros have noted that there are times where rune casting just breaks down. I’ve had way, way too many people (Decoy that I can recall specifically) stick their head straight into my runes and not be able to tell me what I’m doing wrong. I’m okay with practice, but with all the emphasis I can add without being rude or explosive PRACTICE WHAT?!?! The game doesn’t give you any idea what you did wrong. If you don’t make the rune drawing one shred easier, even a flashing red line that shows what it thinks I was trying to do is a night and day improvement over the current situation. It’s the pure trial and error that’s the largess of the issue, not the difficulty, and the OP is going out of his way to show that there are clear inconsistencies even on runes where you mostly know what you’re doing. Practice is garbage if you’re practicing the wrong thing.

Then there are times when game performance (CPU,GPU, and Net as a whole entity) creates errors and all of the sudden your perfect chaincasting becomes a muppet show, even when “you draw the same rune over and over again”. Adding to that again, even when everything is running great fatigue is a thing in VR, and even though you think you’re on track your arm can induce errors. These two issues are both observable from the outside, but there’s nothing in the spell fizzle to tell you to do anything different then “Wrong. Guess again!” So you keep grinding against something that is in once case outside your control and in another counterproductive.

Further, and most egregious in my opinion, is there’s no way to teach another player beyond “Fake it till you make it, friend” You can’t compare runes, or even see what another player is doing even when you might be able to point out the error in 2s in your own drawing. Even if there was some kind of toggle just for when you’re in a group to see the other player’s drawings, that’d be some eyes on the issue rather than just “Keep trying that wrong thing until it comes out right.” I don’t feel like the game needs training wheels, it just needs some lights on the road so you know if you’re running into a curb or a parked car. I don’t need it to be easy, I just need to know what I did wrong to correct it.

2 Likes
#13

image

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#14

I think the spell casting system is 80% of where it needs to be. In boss fights your spell lines will disappear at times and spells will be very inconsistent depending on your fps no matter how great of a caster you are. The system needs to account better for this. If you are in your own instanced area, it is very easy to cast all spells provided you put in the practice. Having your head tilted a bit also messes with the spell consistency. I think having the system go off the z plan of your wrist/hand when you first start drawing instead of going off your head might fix this.

#15

@Oun The first thing I wanted to mention in reply here is that I have found a vendor in the starting town that sells a potion that allows you to see what other mages runes look like as they’re drawing. I’ve never used a potion of any kind, so I have no idea how long it lasts, or really ever how/that it really works.

I agree with your points of “practice is garbage if you’re practicing the wrong thing”, and " ‘Wrong. Guess again!’ ". That’s pretty much how I feel at this point.

I just want some feedback from the system other than FZZT.

#16

I think I addressed both of those in my post already, but just to be absolutely clear:

  • FPS changes absolutely can affect things negatively, and we’re working on massive overhauls to the game to make performance much more consistent across the board which will help with that, for example.
  • I agree that there are some more “running lights” that are needed and there are things on the roadmap which fit that bill.

I don’t think the amount of practice needed to do the spells correctly should be discounted or brushed aside, because even with those things in place it’s still going to take a lot of time and practice to be able to consistently perform spell casts in all situations.

But at the same time, I am absolutely not saying “nothing else needs to be done here, it’s fine as is”. I’m just trying to give information to give the whole picture. Obviously it is possible to work with the system as-is since some folks have done it, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be improved or made more approachable with additional features or tweaks.

#17

Wanted to address this. I believe what you’re referring to is the Runesight potion, which is used for artificing and shows you the runes related to the actions a person is performing, not the runes a person is drawing as a mage.

#18

@Riley_D in response to both of your posts;

I appreciate you reading my avalanche of text that effectively amounts to criticism (well meaning as it may be, it’s not always taken well).

You recommendation for core spells is appreciated. Oddly, I can cast Affliction II about 80% of the time, so I don’t even need to start with Affliction I (which, hilariously, doesn’t succeed nearly as often, which is why I started trying it’s big brother). I really wish I could get Ice Lance even once.

You hit the nail on the head; I bought the game as a result of seeing it on sale in my wishlist. I don’t want to say that the system will turn away new players (assuming they aren’t drawn (HA!) to one of the other classes), but… well, actually it might. Like I said, it’s not bad, it’s just mysterious, and that’s not fun. By all means, make it hard. Make it nearly impossible if you want. Just make it attainable, you know? Show me that >I’M< the problem, because I can /accept/ that problem. I can /fix/ that problem. I can’t fix a black box.

I tried the steps that @Tohn suggested (I was already using HDMI natively, and turned off Interleaved Reprojection and Advanced Supersample Filtering). For the first time, I was able to cast Fireball III, but nothing else felt particularly different, so it was probably just a fluke (it only worked the once anyway). Apparently, I still can’t draw an M. Anyway, I mention the tech suggestion as a response to your thoughts on reprojection. To both of you I would offer that I don’t really see frame drops, and the things that I’m drawing look exactly like I intend them to (regardless of whether they’re actually correct), so I’m not 100% sure this was really ever a problem for me. If the draw points that render the lines that I’m seeing are the same points that are being sent to the server, then I’m willing to write off engine-lag as a factor (and you pretty well explained away network-lag, so there we are).

Anywho, yeah. I don’t know if the training wheels are 100% necessary (ex: showing the target rune, etc), but I would say that some kind of visual cue for the grading plane orientation, or the multi-colored line, or even the notice for “hey, you failed to cast Frost II” would be great. Hell, if the only thing that changed was that the plane was always straight up/down, maybe even playspace bound, that would go a LONG way. At the very least, I wouldn’t be craning my head in all kinds of ways to see what works best :[ .

#19

@Richleth Good lord your response is hard to parse.

General observations

To sum up what I think of your responses here; They aren’t helpful. That shouldn’t be normal, you have no idea how I’m drawing the M, and you’re making guesses at my abilities in general.

Attempts to correct

If directly tracing doesn’t work, then the book needs to be updated. The rest boils down to “doesn’t matter”, and I already gathered that empirically.

Various spell successes

Looks like this boils down to a polite version of “git gud”. Again, not helpful without context.

Possible causes

YOU LITERALLY JUST SAID “Tracing your book helps with some but not all spells”, and now “the runes in the book are correct”. Which is it?

As for what might be graded, I was allowing for the possibility that both the local client and the remote server were tracking my movements. If they were at all desynced, it could cause me to think I was drawing perfectly locally, but on the server side it was just a bunch of jumbled lines. @Riley_D pretty much confirmed that this is not the case, so it’s a non-issue.

Suggestions

Your responses are effectively “meh, figure it out”. Not only not helpful, but not directed at you. And having basic instructions are not crutches. I’m not asking for easy-mode, I’m asking to be able to learn without guessing, and in non-combat conditions.

#20

@Damage_Da_Mage Derp, you’re almost certainly correct. Thanks!