Magic rare but powerful?

nariusseldon

Kyleran said:

nariusseldon said:

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

What method would you use to keep magic a powerful force but relatively rare?  Or at least full magic users relatively rare.  

I wouldn't. Why would you implement fun combat mechanics and then don't let most players enjoy them?

nariusseldon said:

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

What method would you use to keep magic a powerful force but relatively rare?  Or at least full magic users relatively rare.  

I wouldn't. Why would you implement fun combat mechanics and then don't let most players enjoy them?

All depends if you are playing a game or living in a virtual world .

Playing a game, of course. Why would I want to live in a virtual world when I have a real one?

nariusseldon

Archlyte said:

If the game life has no tension then it becomes boring fast. If the reward is given on a random shedule you will see behavior that lasts much longer. 

So have tension. You don't need to make some gameplay rare to have tension.

In fact, look at any good single player game, like Deus Ex. All the mechanics is available to every player (not rare at all), and it has tension, and the game is good. 

nariusseldon

Kyleran said:

Is it wrong to limit some portion of the game play to only those who qualify? 

Not "wrong" but inefficient use of resources in game design. And while wasting resources on stuff that only entertains a few people is not wrong, it is clearly undesirable for companies.

Vermillion_Raventhal

nariusseldon said:

Kyleran said:

nariusseldon said:

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

What method would you use to keep magic a powerful force but relatively rare?  Or at least full magic users relatively rare.  

I wouldn't. Why would you implement fun combat mechanics and then don't let most players enjoy them?

nariusseldon said:

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

What method would you use to keep magic a powerful force but relatively rare?  Or at least full magic users relatively rare.  

I wouldn't. Why would you implement fun combat mechanics and then don't let most players enjoy them?

All depends if you are playing a game or living in a virtual world .

Playing a game, of course. Why would I want to live in a virtual world when I have a real one?

You can do magic in real life.   That explains everything. 

nariusseldon

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

Playing a game, of course. Why would I want to live in a virtual world when I have a real one?

You can do magic in real life.   That explains everything. 

I don't need a virtual world to do magic. A *game* will do. In fact, i just play one .. called D3 .. it has magic and no virtual world. 

Antiquated

SpottyGekko said:

No, it's not "wrong" to limit access to some specific aspects of game play.

So you're good with premium subscriptions getting access to stuff that otherwise isn't available?

Antiquated

nariusseldon said:

 it is clearly undesirable for companies.

Unless marketed and sold as a luxury commodity. Which has certainly been done.

SpottyGekko

Antiquated said:

SpottyGekko said:

No, it's not "wrong" to limit access to some specific aspects of game play.

So you're good with premium subscriptions getting access to stuff that otherwise isn't available?

How did you leap to that conclusion ?

The context of my reply is important. It cannot be used in isolation.

I was replying to a post that was trying to equate the "restricted use of Titans in EVE" to "restricting the general use of magic in an MMORPG".

Perhaps you should consider a career in politics ?

nariusseldon

Antiquated said:

nariusseldon said:

 it is clearly undesirable for companies.

Unless marketed and sold as a luxury commodity. Which has certainly been done.

Sure .. if some whales is willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for it. Otherwise, why bother? 

Axehilt

Kyleran said:

Is it wrong to limit some portion of the game play to only those who qualify? 

Perhaps 1% is too small, but then I wonder how many EVE players can fly a Titan, bet its a pretty low percentage as well, and if so, is this a bad thing?

One might even argue that every EVE player should desire to fly a Titan, but then again, it comes with a terrible cost atm, once you put a pilot in the ship, he can never leave to fly something else.  (unless the recent citadel changes finally rectified this)

So there is a great cost to flying the "best", which equates in this example to the most powerful "magic" in the game.

Also, if you lose said ship, it's a staggering cost in terms of ISK that you've lost, so the punishment for failure is extreme as well.

It's fine for some parts of a game to be cordoned off, if they're the right parts.

Titans seem like a very bad design for many reasons, but sure it's more the surrounding awfulness than their rarity that makes them so bad.

If a League of Legends champion took 3 real years of constant playing to unlock but was balanced, that actually wouldn't be bad.

If a League of Legends champion took 3 years to unlock and was 10x stronger than the next-best champion, that actually multiplies how bad it already is to have a champion so blatantly overpowered in the game.  That's not a problem that's fixed through a deliberate and significant reduction in quality-of-life (by forcing the player to ONLY play that overpowered champion from that point forward.) 

Mendel

Deivos said:

"Obviously Jedi are Space Wizards and so directly applicable to the discussion."

Or for a different and distinctly applicable discussion we can point out Lord of the Rings as the elephant in the room for magic wielding powers and how, while pivotal and capable of large changes, their magic use was an exceptionally finite element of the narrative.

Casting a big spell every 2-5 minutes isn't "rare" either. You only need 12 mages in the world at that point for those abilities to be going off non-stop.

Yes, LotR (the novel and movies) had characters with massive potential for magical impact on the world.  What the readers didn't see was a progression of power that build from the Gandalf level 1 version to the Gandalf level 100 version.   We didn't see how ineffective and powerless the great characters were in the beginning, or at various stages of development.  LotR (the online MMORPG, and other computer versions) skipped the whole Gandalf at level 1, showing only the mega Super Gandalf edition.  Any progression of the character undergoes starts from the high end.   Most of the computerized games choose (rather wisely, I think) to keep Gandalf and the like out of the players' control, using them as elaborate NPCs and story-telling mechanisms.

It's that progression, the cumulative increase of abilities, that drives an MMORPG.

Loke666

Axehilt said:

The most powerful spells/items/etc are already rare in these games.  Can you spam your best ability in WOW, or can you only use it every 2-5 minutes?  Can you spam your ultimate in ESO or can you only use it every 2-5 mins?  Is that green "magic" weapon actually powerful, or is it outright crappy compared with epics, which are in turn crappy compared with high-end epics?

So in some respects this is already true -- genuinely powerful things are already rare in games.

If you're talking Star Wars without Jedis, then yeah that's a terrible idea.  Our experience with Jedis in the original SW trilogy is (a) they're onscreen almost all the goddamn time and (b) they're a centerpiece of the storyline.  This means one of the core expectations of the IP is that Star Wars is playable Jedis.  (and "playable" here doesn't mean hiding them so that less than 1% of the playerbase can access them.)

(Obviously Jedi are Space Wizards and so directly applicable to the discussion.)

I don't think attacks/spells you use at least once in every battle could be considered "rare", a spell most character of your class have and can afford to use every 5 minutes is hardly even "uncommon". 

So I don't think that is what OP is after, and as I said before, the easiest way to solve it is by using spell components. Or making the skill hard to get, like some of the elite skills in GW1.

Dagon13

Flyte27 said:

You could go back to a D&D style system and make spells cast per day.  You have to rest at a certain point to regain your spells.  The rest of the time you have to contribute with something like a sling or dart.  In addition there was a spell slot limitation and spells were hard to acquire.  The trade off was that spells were quite powerful.  Especially as you get higher in level.

I feel like D&D answered this question for us a long time ago.  Possibly the answer could even pre-date D&D.

Wizardry isn't a class, it's a profession.  There should be an exhaustive crafting system behind the art of spellcraft that requires significant time and resources to progress through.  Only the simplest spells could be learned by those who don't personally invest themselves in the craft.

You shouldn't be learning Chain Lightning because you've been casting Fireball at wild boars for the last 5 days.  You should be learning Chain Lightning because you've been investigating "lightning type magic" for months and you should be getting faster/more accurate at casting Fireball because you've been casting Fireball at wild boars for days.

xyzercrime

How to make magic users rare?

Simple. Make the magic classes so much harder to play while relatively as powerful as physical ones.

Axehilt

Mendel said:

Yes, LotR (the novel and movies) had characters with massive potential for magical impact on the world.  What the readers didn't see was a progression of power that build from the Gandalf level 1 version to the Gandalf level 100 version.   We didn't see how ineffective and powerless the great characters were in the beginning, or at various stages of development.  LotR (the online MMORPG, and other computer versions) skipped the whole Gandalf at level 1, showing only the mega Super Gandalf edition.  Any progression of the character undergoes starts from the high end.   Most of the computerized games choose (rather wisely, I think) to keep Gandalf and the like out of the players' control, using them as elaborate NPCs and story-telling mechanisms.

It's that progression, the cumulative increase of abilities, that drives an MMORPG.

My LOTR lore is rusty, but as I understand from others and wiki pages Gandalf basically doesn't undergo a level 1-100 grind, as "not a mortal Man but an angelic being who had taken human form."  He's literally 'born' as an old man with incredible wizardly powers.
 
What players want from a LOTR-like gaming experience is to be all of the party members that interest them (and there's likely to be far more interest in playing characters like Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and Gandalf than in characters with weaker portrayals.)

A game can either figure out a way to serve that interest, or it can suffer the ill effects of failing to serve it.

Dagon13

Kyleran

Axehilt said:

Kyleran said:

Is it wrong to limit some portion of the game play to only those who qualify? 

Perhaps 1% is too small, but then I wonder how many EVE players can fly a Titan, bet its a pretty low percentage as well, and if so, is this a bad thing?

One might even argue that every EVE player should desire to fly a Titan, but then again, it comes with a terrible cost atm, once you put a pilot in the ship, he can never leave to fly something else.  (unless the recent citadel changes finally rectified this)

So there is a great cost to flying the "best", which equates in this example to the most powerful "magic" in the game.

Also, if you lose said ship, it's a staggering cost in terms of ISK that you've lost, so the punishment for failure is extreme as well.

It's fine for some parts of a game to be cordoned off, if they're the right parts.

Titans seem like a very bad design for many reasons, but sure it's more the surrounding awfulness than their rarity that makes them so bad.

If a League of Legends champion took 3 real years of constant playing to unlock but was balanced, that actually wouldn't be bad.

If a League of Legends champion took 3 years to unlock and was 10x stronger than the next-best champion, that actually multiplies how bad it already is to have a champion so blatantly overpowered in the game.  That's not a problem that's fixed through a deliberate and significant reduction in quality-of-life (by forcing the player to ONLY play that overpowered champion from that point forward.) 

The goal of the OP was to make magic rare, but powerful.  Titans in EVE are many times more powerful than their closest competitor (but not invincible) yet are limited in the game world by multiple factors including high cost, long and expensive training times, and as mentioned, penalty of having to only fly said ship which actually has limited situational use.

In fact, all 3 of those things are why I don't fly a Titan, though with 6 characters and 9 years of game time I could easily have done so at any point.

So I forgo the extreme power of a Titan because I'm not willing to pay the "cost"associated to wield that special "magic"

So again, is this a bad thing?  It definitely keeps them rare and special, and not everyone is flying them.

Deivos

Mendel said:

Deivos said:

"Obviously Jedi are Space Wizards and so directly applicable to the discussion."

Or for a different and distinctly applicable discussion we can point out Lord of the Rings as the elephant in the room for magic wielding powers and how, while pivotal and capable of large changes, their magic use was an exceptionally finite element of the narrative.

Casting a big spell every 2-5 minutes isn't "rare" either. You only need 12 mages in the world at that point for those abilities to be going off non-stop.

Yes, LotR (the novel and movies) had characters with massive potential for magical impact on the world.  What the readers didn't see was a progression of power that build from the Gandalf level 1 version to the Gandalf level 100 version.   We didn't see how ineffective and powerless the great characters were in the beginning, or at various stages of development.  LotR (the online MMORPG, and other computer versions) skipped the whole Gandalf at level 1, showing only the mega Super Gandalf edition.  Any progression of the character undergoes starts from the high end.   Most of the computerized games choose (rather wisely, I think) to keep Gandalf and the like out of the players' control, using them as elaborate NPCs and story-telling mechanisms.

It's that progression, the cumulative increase of abilities, that drives an MMORPG.

That has very little to do with the topic, if anything at all, seeing as the subject in question was the scarcity of elements like magic, not how long it took Gandalf to learn it.

Progression is a separate issue, and one that can exist perfectly fine with magic being a scarce or difficult to master/obtain element.

Axehilt

Kyleran said:

The goal of the OP was to make magic rare, but powerful.  Titans in EVE are many times more powerful than their closest competitor (but not invincible) yet are limited in the game world by multiple factors including high cost, long and expensive training times, and as mentioned, penalty of having to only fly said ship which actually has limited situational use.

In fact, all 3 of those things are why I don't fly a Titan, though with 6 characters and 9 years of game time I could easily have done so at any point.

So I forgo the extreme power of a Titan because I'm not willing to pay the "cost"associated to wield that special "magic"

So again, is this a bad thing?  It definitely keeps them rare and special, and not everyone is flying them.

Yes, the goal of the OP was to blindly pursue the goal of rare-but-powerful, without consideration of whether doing so would be wise.

Yes, Titans are one such implementation.  I explained how it's not the trait of being rare-but-powerful that makes it unwise, but rather the surrounding details that make it so. One might argue it was only those surrounding details which cause it to be a bad design; while that's mostly true, the rarity actually multiplies the problem to be worse than it would otherwise be (because at least when everyone has the overpowered thing, there's still some potential left for deep gameplay if using the OP thing involves depth.)

While minor quality of life reductions (slow move speed) obviously work as balancing factors, extreme quality of life reductions tend to just be a bad idea (at the point where you've created something so powerful that the game needs to be excessively un-fun to use a certain thing, you should back up and ask whether it should've been that powerful in the first place.)  BFRs used them in Planetside 1 and they were awful there too (in part because BFR's actual combat capabilities weren't particularly overpowered between high-skill players; it was only low-skill players where there was a problem.)

waynejr2

Axehilt said:

Kyleran said:

The goal of the OP was to make magic rare, but powerful.  Titans in EVE are many times more powerful than their closest competitor (but not invincible) yet are limited in the game world by multiple factors including high cost, long and expensive training times, and as mentioned, penalty of having to only fly said ship which actually has limited situational use.

In fact, all 3 of those things are why I don't fly a Titan, though with 6 characters and 9 years of game time I could easily have done so at any point.

So I forgo the extreme power of a Titan because I'm not willing to pay the "cost"associated to wield that special "magic"

So again, is this a bad thing?  It definitely keeps them rare and special, and not everyone is flying them.

Yes, the goal of the OP was to blindly pursue the goal of rare-but-powerful, without consideration of whether doing so would be wise.

Yes, Titans are one such implementation.  I explained how it's not the trait of being rare-but-powerful that makes it unwise, but rather the surrounding details that make it so. One might argue it was only those surrounding details which cause it to be a bad design; while that's mostly true, the rarity actually multiplies the problem to be worse than it would otherwise be (because at least when everyone has the overpowered thing, there's still some potential left for deep gameplay if using the OP thing involves depth.)

While minor quality of life reductions (slow move speed) obviously work as balancing factors, extreme quality of life reductions tend to just be a bad idea (at the point where you've created something so powerful that the game needs to be excessively un-fun to use a certain thing, you should back up and ask whether it should've been that powerful in the first place.)  BFRs used them in Planetside 1 and they were awful there too (in part because BFR's actual combat capabilities weren't particularly overpowered between high-skill players; it was only low-skill players where there was a problem.)

You don't like it so you are calling it a bad idea?

XxPriestxX

And then we come to 'entitlement' in this generation. Used to be, we played the games we were given and we enjoyed the hell out of them. Games were much higher quality and quite a few of them exist to this day over a decade after they released. One factor to this is that the devs did what they had in mind to do, because they didn't have a thousand websites full of whining people yelling about how THEY want the games to be made. When you start something with a vision, and then break that vision into hundreds of pieces so that each special snowflake gets a taste of their rant put in place, there's no longer a vision, just the feeling of "Let's make this F2P, toss in a bloated cash shop, and make as much as we can before the ship sinks."

Deivos

waynejr2 said:

You don't like it so you are calling it a bad idea?

Kind of what he always does. His opinion apparently = truth above reality.

Antiquated

SpottyGekko said:

Antiquated said:

SpottyGekko said:

No, it's not "wrong" to limit access to some specific aspects of game play.

So you're good with premium subscriptions getting access to stuff that otherwise isn't available?

How did you leap to that conclusion ?

The context of my reply is important. It cannot be used in isolation.

I was replying to a post that was trying to equate the "restricted use of Titans in EVE" to "restricting the general use of magic in an MMORPG".

Perhaps you should consider a career in politics ?

I simply raised an analogous example contrary to your absolute statement.

So is limiting access to advantages via cash (pay to win) also a great thing?

Mendel

Axehilt said:

Mendel said:

Yes, LotR (the novel and movies) had characters with massive potential for magical impact on the world.  What the readers didn't see was a progression of power that build from the Gandalf level 1 version to the Gandalf level 100 version.   We didn't see how ineffective and powerless the great characters were in the beginning, or at various stages of development.  LotR (the online MMORPG, and other computer versions) skipped the whole Gandalf at level 1, showing only the mega Super Gandalf edition.  Any progression of the character undergoes starts from the high end.   Most of the computerized games choose (rather wisely, I think) to keep Gandalf and the like out of the players' control, using them as elaborate NPCs and story-telling mechanisms.

It's that progression, the cumulative increase of abilities, that drives an MMORPG.

My LOTR lore is rusty, but as I understand from others and wiki pages Gandalf basically doesn't undergo a level 1-100 grind, as "not a mortal Man but an angelic being who had taken human form."  He's literally 'born' as an old man with incredible wizardly powers.
 
What players want from a LOTR-like gaming experience is to be all of the party members that interest them (and there's likely to be far more interest in playing characters like Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and Gandalf than in characters with weaker portrayals.)

A game can either figure out a way to serve that interest, or it can suffer the ill effects of failing to serve it.

Sorry, @Axehilt, but you seem to have missed my point.  Without progression from normal to super normal, there isn't any basis for game play in the current incarnations of MMORPGs.  Gandalf starts super powerful and stays so.  You can't grow such a character in meaningful ways, and have any interaction with the 'normal' humans, elves, dwarves and hobbits have any significance.  So, because Gandalf doesn't go through a 1-100 level by level progression, he isn't suitable for a playable character in any progression based game.  He would be alright as an NPC appearing to push a story along, like LotRO or an e-novel, just not in the player's hands.

(To a large degree, Gandalf circumvented rules that applied to everyone else.  Can't have a game where 1 player has a different rule set.  Imagine the whining.)

That interest to play uber-powerful legendary characters already exists in every MMORPG, only players have to develop them from 'normal' to 'legends'.  Otherwise, everyone would start at max level, and a lot of the appeal that progression provides would be discarded.

So, people want to play the legends, but existing MMORPGs require characters to start at level 1.  I'm failing to see the ill-effects that these games are suffering by failing to fulfill that desire.

Vermillion_Raventhal

waynejr2 said:

Axehilt said:

Kyleran said:

The goal of the OP was to make magic rare, but powerful.  Titans in EVE are many times more powerful than their closest competitor (but not invincible) yet are limited in the game world by multiple factors including high cost, long and expensive training times, and as mentioned, penalty of having to only fly said ship which actually has limited situational use.

In fact, all 3 of those things are why I don't fly a Titan, though with 6 characters and 9 years of game time I could easily have done so at any point.

So I forgo the extreme power of a Titan because I'm not willing to pay the "cost"associated to wield that special "magic"

So again, is this a bad thing?  It definitely keeps them rare and special, and not everyone is flying them.

Yes, the goal of the OP was to blindly pursue the goal of rare-but-powerful, without consideration of whether doing so would be wise.

Yes, Titans are one such implementation.  I explained how it's not the trait of being rare-but-powerful that makes it unwise, but rather the surrounding details that make it so. One might argue it was only those surrounding details which cause it to be a bad design; while that's mostly true, the rarity actually multiplies the problem to be worse than it would otherwise be (because at least when everyone has the overpowered thing, there's still some potential left for deep gameplay if using the OP thing involves depth.)

While minor quality of life reductions (slow move speed) obviously work as balancing factors, extreme quality of life reductions tend to just be a bad idea (at the point where you've created something so powerful that the game needs to be excessively un-fun to use a certain thing, you should back up and ask whether it should've been that powerful in the first place.)  BFRs used them in Planetside 1 and they were awful there too (in part because BFR's actual combat capabilities weren't particularly overpowered between high-skill players; it was only low-skill players where there was a problem.)

You don't like it so you are calling it a bad idea?

He doesn't like bad ideas and he is the Minster of Idea Quality.