Woo! Woo! All Aboard!

#10

Yes, the idea I suggested would be a lot of work and probably not a great one. It was an example of the trouble in finding a solution. I was brainstorming, its why I asked if anyone else had ideas. Do you?

I tend to ramble so I might not have been too clear in my first post. xD But this is an MMO; it’s going to attract certain a type of people, the type that are likely to optimize their characters, take the shortest path to leveling, and so on. The natural conclusion of this is that at some point, someone is going to make a quick guide listing all spell locations, it probably won’t even be hard once everyone has been exploring the world for a few months.

Now you could say that a person could choose to not look at the guide and continue to play the purist way of finding everything on their own, but that’s not what the majority will do. And once the majority have access to all the spells by default (because the spell locations have become common knowledge or through spell trading), everybody will be expected to have them, purist or not. It’ll become the new standard to have all the spells at max level or whenever and people who don’t have them will be less effective than those who do. This would heavily discourage purist behavior.

Why would I just cast my frost-bolt over and over when my buddy next to me is casting Super-Scary Death Beam, Fire of a Thousand Suns and Make My Enemy a Chicken all while telling me to just look at the guide and go to this temple so I can do it too?

Everyone going to look at a guide then running through a puzzle to get a spell could be the natural conclusion of this system, which is fine. But it would be interesting to examine other possibilities at least.

#11

This is a concern that has been tossed around a couple different times and no one has really come up with a good solution that I can think of. I believe it has been asked to keep these sort of secrets off the wiki, but that wouldn’t prevent any third party sites from covering the content.

One idea I’ve mulled over that may work particularly well in this situation is an apprenticeship system. It doesn’t have to be anything overly complex, maybe just allowing for the creation of a spell scroll that would teach another player the known ability.
The scenario would play out something like this:

  1. Player A finds cool new spell out in the world.
  2. Player B learns of the discovery and wants to know how to learn the spell.
  3. Player A creates a spell scroll that Player B can use to learn it.
  4. Player A trades the spell scroll to Player B for x amount of coin, sheep wool, dragon dung, etc.

This offers the typical master/apprentice relationship found in a lot of games, but allows other players to be the master instead of relying on NPCs to fill that role. It also allows the apprentice access to someone who can help them practice the drawing of the rune and give tips on how to improve.

Obviously this doesn’t actually solve the problem, but it does discourage the free sharing of this information. Anyone who was lucky or dedicated enough to find these abilities on their own would be choosing between a potential gold mine and being a “good” person. I’m banking on people being greedy :smile:

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#12

Awesome! I’m looking forward to playing Runemage more! I finally started to get a hang of casting spells in the first Alpha test. Never could successfully cast spells during the stress tests. It was amazing being in a party of runemages just learning how to cast our spells, then going out to take down more difficult enemies as time passed!

I think that it would be interesting if new runemages needed either see the runes in the world (Find a scroll/book in a hidden library, or to actually look at the teleport totems), or be taught how to cast the spell by another runemage. Like what @Damage_Da_Mage said above, also much like how players have been learning the runes during the stress tests & Alpha test.

The big downside of requiring players to find the runes for certain spells in the world / requiring a teacher/tutor to show them the spell would be that players wouldn’t be able to find those spells just by trying out different symbols, which would really suck, though it would probably make the runemages do more exploration.

Maybe have some spells that can only be learned by the above methods, and also have some spells that aren’t listed anywhere, and will only be found by trying different runes/combos of ruins?

In the end, the methods on how to learn the spells will end up online, the methods of learning new spells will just change what the guides say. One upside of VR, following a guide is more difficult here than following a guide for games like WoW, where you can have the guide on a secondary monitor. In standard SteamVR, you will need to keep on opening the dashboard to see a web browser if you were following an online guide. Not too difficult, but it is a little slower. :stuck_out_tongue:

On another note, I agree with @Draven, Will there be any places that Runemages may have trouble, due to the fact that the Runes aren’t exactly legal in order controlled lands? Or is it more of a ‘You aren’t allowed to write this rune on paper & pass it around. Destroy that paper now.’ type of scenario?

#13

I don’t want to give away too many surprises. It’s not going to be addressed to the point where like walking around as a Runemage makes you an outlaw, but we are planning to address it.

Honestly, my thought here is that we in the community can keep things fairly clean in terms of official sources, and that’s probably good enough. If someone wants to go out of their way to spoil the game for themselves and read a 3rd party site, then that’s their decision. My main goal is just to make it so that you have to make a concerted effort to spoil it for yourself, rather than it being really easy to stumble across without meaning to.

I had thought about having the system actually “enforce” this in the sense that you would need to “see” another Runemage cast a spell before you could successfully cast it, or “see” it in a book or on a ruin or something. But I think that would be quite a lot of work for a system that would be at best a moderate deterrent. The type of player who would look up every spell on a 3rd party site is the same type of player that would just gather in a group and quickly have a single mage show them all 20 spells in rapid succession. I’m not saying that’s the “wrong” way to play, if that’s your cup of tea that’s fine. I’m just saying, it seems like a lot of work that wouldn’t actually be more than a minor speed bump.

I kind of like the idea honestly of the Runemage being a class where the what you can cast isn’t artificially restricted by the game. If you yourself can draw the spell correctly, then you can cast it. If that means you know 25 spells at Level 1, so be it. Of course, that would make you a savant, haha. And honestly even as the person who came up with these runes, knowing them is really like 20% of the battle. Your skill as a Runemage really comes from your ability to consistently, quickly cast them. Even if you know what they should look like because you looked them all up, if you don’t have any practice at them, it’s a moot point – you probably won’t be able to really utilize them well.

3 Likes
#14

Also, watch while I Polymorph this Wererabbit into a chicken! Haha.

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#15

There will be…at least 5 new spells in the next test, plus all of the runes in the game have been re-worked to their (hopefully) final forms. Fireball, Frostbolt, Mana Shield, Arcane Ray, Polymorph, Arcane Explosion, Affliction, Pushback, Ice Lance, and Decurse will be the ones that will definitely be in the next test. All of those are considered “basic” spells so the runes would be easily attainable in-game once the quests are all in, and for now the runes will be given out for those on the Wiki.

Fireball, Frostbolt, Mana Shield, Arcane Explosion, Affliction, Pushback, and Decurse all have more than one level to them. The Level 2 (and in some cases Level 3) versions of those spells will not be given out.

6 Likes
Runemage for Alpha 5.19
#16

Question. would it be posible to put in a spell book that we can Write in?
that way we can keep a personal record of spells we learned and how we cast them.
and if we need a reminder we can look into it .

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#17

Huh, Wererabbit… TIL. Players were calling them the ‘Strange frog things’. :stuck_out_tongue: It’s nice to know the actual name of that creature.

I really like that there’ll be some backstory / Lore for the runemage discipline. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out for the other 3 combat disciplines as well.

The final question is: Will you be able to polymorph other players?

2 Likes
#18

I like the idea of putting spells into scrolls and trading to other players.

Instead of (or in addition to) using scrolls to teach other players spells, how about creating an economy by selling spell scrolls to players?

You could create a scroll parchment, draw the spell onto the parchment to create a “closed scroll” and name it (or the scroll takes the name of the written spell), and then sell the scroll to a player.

The buyer would not be able to see the spell as written; they would just be able to see the close scroll and the name of the spell. To use the scroll, a player could transfer the scroll to their non-wand hand and then presses the activate spell button to cast the spell.

1 Like
#19

Not currently, no. I’m going to wait and balance some of that PvP stuff until we have all of the combat discipline abilities in. For example, the Ranger is also getting a “Sleep” arrow, etc. So the question is really, will we allow hard CC (as opposed to just “slow”/“stuck in place” style CC) in PvP, and I’m not sure what the answer to that question is yet. I’m leaning towards no, but we’ll see.

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#20

I can’t wait to see the spells written down in game, from the developers, because I was under the impression the fireball was suppose to be an F like symbol. You were drawing a Y like symbol and casting fireball.

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#21

Also does polymorph agro other creatures in the vicinity? If there are two wererabbits nearby and you polymorph one does the other attack or does it just stand there wondering why his buddy is now a chicken?

No answer is really needed I’m just having Orbus withdrawls. One … More … Week.

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#22

@Chrondar, I believe that is the reworked fireball glyph.

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#23

Riley, I didnt sign up for alpha to be tortured by you. D: Also:

Decurse

The WoW mage part of me is triggered.

1 Like
#24

I am trying to wrap my head around the Arcane Explosion spell. Is it a single rune that puts out an AoE from the wand? Is it a 360 degree Explosion or does it hit the enemy and explode after a set amount of time and hit other enemies in the process. I am sorry if this question has already been asked.

#25

Haha, all will be revealed in a soon-to-be-published blog post about all the Runemage changes.

4 Likes
#26

…or did you?

#27

I hope you do allow for hard cc, just make a cd on it and have something that can break you out of it, whether it be a skill or item. It makes it easier to take down more than 1 person at once if your trying to kill a team of people.

#28

Generally speaking hard CC on players can be fun for the casting player, but is really not fun for the target, even at relatively short durations with breakout options in traditional types of games. I suspect it will be even worse in VR. That being said, it may be worth exploring regardless, though I can only imagine how lame it would be to be stuck as a chicken in a PvP situation, watching helplessly as my friends are slaughtered.

#29

There is certainly a strategy to it. In WoW I could take out a group with as much as 4 or 5 members sometimes as a warlock. I could cc the others long enough to start picking them off. Without cc, it makes it difficult to kill even 2 vs 1. If your going to take the bandit life, you have to be able to take out groups of people who will come after you.