Required reagents, astrological alignments, runic words and all sorts would have an awesome lore and feeling behind it. And the gameplay would be awesome for more patient people who enjoy learning and feeling immersed rather than instant gratification via hitting fireball.
So it isn't just lore that I'm talking about it is better gameplay, but only better for people who like that kind of stuff.
Well that makes it hard to discuss anything if you insist "it's the lore I'm describing, except with awesome gameplay" and then when someone points out that a lot of this magic (fictionally) is ritual spellcasting which wouldn't be done in combat and your response is "but I said it'd be awesome gameplay!"
We could ask WOW Hunters if they felt having reagents (arrows) for their basic spells (abilities) was more or less fun than classes who didn't have to jump through an additional hoop.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, I'm not saying lets follow the EXACT rituals to a T, there won't be any 2 hour ceremonies or dances. It's possible to loosely base a game off of a certain theme.
You could perform these rituals before you get into combat, it would be a delicut procedure, taking maybe 2-3 minutes, if a mistake was made the mystic forces could backfire and harm you, but if successful for the next few hours or so you'd be attuned to a certain element, or a certain astrological alignment, or deity, in contrast to WoWs sitting down and drinking water for 10 seconds.
Not sure if you played AoC but the spellweaving on it was a kind of neat idea, albeit pretty useless most of the time. But that kind of gives a glimpse of how these rituals and attunements would work in game.
Once again I'm not making this game, I'm just giving a general concept for people out there do toy around with to hopefully inspire people to want a more complex magic system, so I don't have every single technical detail to it.
The whole idea is to make magic actually seem like a powerful and delicut force, not something you can do just as easy as shooting a bow by clicking a button.
See, when you mentioned the whole "WoW hunters" thing, you prove you're not about immersion, you're more about quick action and flashing lights. You wouldn't see doing a magic ritual in game to grant yourself magic powers via aligning to stars or dieties as cool, you'd see it as a pain in the ass. Which is fine, you're just on an entirely different wavelength when it comes to games.
I think in a fantasy world where there was magic, over time people through a process of natural selection would develop resistences or immunities to certain kinds of magics as a means of survival. We see examples of this in our own world, where different races have changed do to environmental factors. Hence, it is not necessarily a given that magic users would rule the world.
Magic in fiction essentially does everything that technology does for us in the real world.
(It creates, it destroys, it heals, it gives us knowledge, etc.)
Hypothetically speaking, it would rule the world just like technology does. It would probably be mandatory for everyone to learn basic magics in school. So people trying to do things without magic (swinging swords, blacksmithing etc.) would be like people today trying to do things without technology. We call them natives and Amish people.
See, when you mentioned the whole "WoW hunters" thing, you prove you're not about immersion, you're more about quick action and flashing lights. You wouldn't see doing a magic ritual in game to grant yourself magic powers via aligning to stars or dieties as cool, you'd see it as a pain in the ass. Which is fine, you're just on an entirely different wavelength when it comes to games.
Well it's not about me -- my previous post suggested you ask other players their thoughts. Ammo (and warlock soulshards) were generally not popular features because they introduced a tedium other classes didn't have to deal with.
You've kind of already conceded this, since it's the underlying reason your feature wouldn't be very popular.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If you are refering to H.P. Lovecraft, then I have to say this: ...first, I am surprised a lovecraft inspired MMO hasn't shown up, second, ...creepy...awesome...creepy...I can't decide...
Right now the closest MMO in development is The Secret World.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
sigh...well, the idea of basing a games magic system off of actual historically recorded traditions of times long passed (hopefully) would be interesting, but you used the unfortunate spelling of "Magick" which is as far as I know, currently associated with a man named a British occultist named Aleister Crowley. As far as I can tell, "Magick" isn't the best way to describe traditional magic beliefs and given the imaginative nature of fiction, people can do just fine with creating their own magic systems. All the little details aren't really important, unless you are trying to fill out the lore in a game and that just doesn't seem to be important in most games without a preformed lore (duh) that would work with this kind of system.
I am all for making combat more intellectual but don't try tying it with actual (hopefully archeic) beliefs. I think it is just asking for too much trouble (and I know for certain that people still believe this occult stuff... so my hopefullies in earlier parentheses aren't really worth anything to the argument.)
having trouble figuring out what I am really getting at?...irl science rules, not creepy occultist mumbo jumbo (and no, this wouldn't be the argument if you had left out the "k" at the end of "magick"). in game, magic is fine.
I'ts amazing how close minded and dismissive people are,those who are poisoned by modern popular thought and opinion thus becoming thoughtless defenders of the materialist pardigm.It's easy to dimss something and another to fully investigate it before dismissing it as you so easily have done.There is a lot of depth to the occult,and it is very much alive sorry to inform you.As i said it's easy to dismiss something because it's the modern and popular thing to do.You'd be surprised to learn that moden magick is actaully very scientific,lol.
sigh...well, the idea of basing a games magic system off of actual historically recorded traditions of times long passed (hopefully) would be interesting, but you used the unfortunate spelling of "Magick" which is as far as I know, currently associated with a man named a British occultist named Aleister Crowley. As far as I can tell, "Magick" isn't the best way to describe traditional magic beliefs and given the imaginative nature of fiction, people can do just fine with creating their own magic systems. All the little details aren't really important, unless you are trying to fill out the lore in a game and that just doesn't seem to be important in most games without a preformed lore (duh) that would work with this kind of system.
I am all for making combat more intellectual but don't try tying it with actual (hopefully archeic) beliefs. I think it is just asking for too much trouble (and I know for certain that people still believe this occult stuff... so my hopefullies in earlier parentheses aren't really worth anything to the argument.)
having trouble figuring out what I am really getting at?...irl science rules, not creepy occultist mumbo jumbo (and no, this wouldn't be the argument if you had left out the "k" at the end of "magick"). in game, magic is fine.
I'ts amazing how close minded and dismissive people are,those who are poisoned by modern popular thought and opinion thus becoming thoughtless defenders of the materialist pardigm.It's easy to dimss something and another to fully investigate it before dismissing it as you so easily have done.There is a lot of depth to the occult,and it is very much alive sorry to inform you.As i said it's easy to dismiss something because it's the modern and popular thing to do.You'd be surprised to learn that moden magick is actaully very scientific,lol.
Without straying too far off into this subject, I will say that I believe the occult is a beautiful art form. Me being Kind of a deist, I don't take any offense to "magick" because I'm not religious. Christians think it is satanic and materialist/atheists think it's just creepy mumbo jumbo and fail to see how it is a form of symbolism, representing the human mind. I don't practice it or consider myself an occultist, but I agree that it is an interesting subject and a beautiful art form.
Which is why I was baffled at why there aren't more games based on the occult/mystic traditions. It kind of boils down to impatient people, and sensitive people who get offended too easy.
sigh...well, the idea of basing a games magic system off of actual historically recorded traditions of times long passed (hopefully) would be interesting, but you used the unfortunate spelling of "Magick" which is as far as I know, currently associated with a man named a British occultist named Aleister Crowley. As far as I can tell, "Magick" isn't the best way to describe traditional magic beliefs and given the imaginative nature of fiction, people can do just fine with creating their own magic systems. All the little details aren't really important, unless you are trying to fill out the lore in a game and that just doesn't seem to be important in most games without a preformed lore (duh) that would work with this kind of system.
I am all for making combat more intellectual but don't try tying it with actual (hopefully archeic) beliefs. I think it is just asking for too much trouble (and I know for certain that people still believe this occult stuff... so my hopefullies in earlier parentheses aren't really worth anything to the argument.)
having trouble figuring out what I am really getting at?...irl science rules, not creepy occultist mumbo jumbo (and no, this wouldn't be the argument if you had left out the "k" at the end of "magick"). in game, magic is fine.
I'ts amazing how close minded and dismissive people are,those who are poisoned by modern popular thought and opinion thus becoming thoughtless defenders of the materialist pardigm.It's easy to dimss something and another to fully investigate it before dismissing it as you so easily have done.There is a lot of depth to the occult,and it is very much alive sorry to inform you.As i said it's easy to dismiss something because it's the modern and popular thing to do.You'd be surprised to learn that moden magick is actaully very scientific,lol.
Without straying too far off into this subject, I will say that I believe the occult is a beautiful art form. Me being Kind of a deist, I don't take any offense to "magick" because I'm not religious. Christians think it is satanic and materialist/atheists think it's just creepy mumbo jumbo and fail to see how it is a form of symbolism, representing the human mind. I don't practice it or consider myself an occultist, but I agree that it is an interesting subject and a beautiful art form.
Which is why I was baffled at why there aren't more games based on the occult/mystic traditions. It kind of boils down to impatient people, and sensitive people who get offended too easy.
Agreed,for someone to say the occult sciences are all just a bunch on mumbo jumbo just display's their ignorance on the subject. Magick is very deep and complex area of study and takes an above average intellect and mental capactity to approach it. That said i'm not saying there isn't some garbage mixed in,it depends on what tradition you pursue. Though i'm not a defender or a follower of Crowley, the man was brilliant and had the knowledge of a scholar.Reading his material is no intellectual slumming I assure you.mumbo jumbo?? hardly
sigh...well, the idea of basing a games magic system off of actual historically recorded traditions of times long passed (hopefully) would be interesting, but you used the unfortunate spelling of "Magick" which is as far as I know, currently associated with a man named a British occultist named Aleister Crowley. As far as I can tell, "Magick" isn't the best way to describe traditional magic beliefs and given the imaginative nature of fiction, people can do just fine with creating their own magic systems. All the little details aren't really important, unless you are trying to fill out the lore in a game and that just doesn't seem to be important in most games without a preformed lore (duh) that would work with this kind of system.
I am all for making combat more intellectual but don't try tying it with actual (hopefully archeic) beliefs. I think it is just asking for too much trouble (and I know for certain that people still believe this occult stuff... so my hopefullies in earlier parentheses aren't really worth anything to the argument.)
having trouble figuring out what I am really getting at?...irl science rules, not creepy occultist mumbo jumbo (and no, this wouldn't be the argument if you had left out the "k" at the end of "magick"). in game, magic is fine.
I'ts amazing how close minded and dismissive people are,those who are poisoned by modern popular thought and opinion thus becoming thoughtless defenders of the materialist pardigm.It's easy to dimss something and another to fully investigate it before dismissing it as you so easily have done.There is a lot of depth to the occult,and it is very much alive sorry to inform you.As i said it's easy to dismiss something because it's the modern and popular thing to do.You'd be surprised to learn that moden magick is actaully very scientific,lol.
Without straying too far off into this subject, I will say that I believe the occult is a beautiful art form. Me being Kind of a deist, I don't take any offense to "magick" because I'm not religious. Christians think it is satanic and materialist/atheists think it's just creepy mumbo jumbo and fail to see how it is a form of symbolism, representing the human mind. I don't practice it or consider myself an occultist, but I agree that it is an interesting subject and a beautiful art form.
Which is why I was baffled at why there aren't more games based on the occult/mystic traditions. It kind of boils down to impatient people, and sensitive people who get offended too easy.
Agreed,for someone to say the occult sciences are all just a bunch on mumbo jumbo just display's their ignorance on the subject. Magick is very deep and complex area of study and takes an above average intellect and mental capactity to approach it. That said i'm not saying there isn't some garbage mixed in,it depends on what tradition you pursue. Though i'm not a defender or a follower of Crowley, the man was brilliant and had the knowledge of a scholar.Reading his material is no intellectual slumming I assure you.mumbo jumbo?? hardly
What OP really is suggesting is a new combat system. Eg Magic as something intelligent to do based on anticipation or observation or learning? So eg astronomy you need to be checking what the heavens are up to and what magic you can use eg alchemy where you need some chemistry to make something or create symbols where you travel that reinforce some action or other in a pattern etc etc... but I think to add to it: With power comes responsibility and this magic could be costly if not used carefully!
It's a good start and different from normal high fantasy. As for occult, well it's best to separate the game idea from the book idea but a bit of history of the subject in the lore would be a fun setting.
I've read through most of this thread, and I've come to a certain conclusion, let me know if I am correct or off base...
It seems like what you are getting at is that magic in MMORPGs is focuses so much on the effect of the spell to the point where the actual art of the magic is almost completely omitted, taking out the part of magic that makes it well...magical. For example, in an MMORPG a fireball spell is executed by simply clicking a button and then watching the fireball fly. Sure it's easy and effective, but where is the art? Where is the flavor?
The effect of the magic is not what attracted most of us to magic in the first place, it was instead the art and mystique of the magic that we found interesting. Nearly all fantasy novels with magic systems capture this. For example, a well known fantasy novel would describe a spell something like this: "Elayne embraced the true source, crafting a delicate weave from flows of fire and air that crashed against the Trollocs, burning them to ashes." The "spell" described here clearly is the result of some kind of mysterious art, and I would argue that, that is what makes it interesting. The MMORPG equivalent would be: "Elayne casts fireball killing the Trollocs."
So if this is your point, then I agree. Magic in MMORPGs has been "simplified" to the point of becoming completely mundane. Developers need to add things to give flavor to their magic systems. For example, maybe creating spells would be like mixing paints from primary colors to achieve a new color. Players would be able to only cast the "primary color" (base element) spells, but they could blend them in different orders to create entirely new, though logical, effects. In this system, a player could create a "buff" type spell by combining the base spells of "fire" and "life."
I've read through most of this thread, and I've come to a certain conclusion, let me know if I am correct or off base...
It seems like what you are getting at is that magic in MMORPGs is focuses so much on the effect of the spell to the point where the actual art of the magic is almost completely omitted, taking out the part of magic that makes it well...magical. For example, in an MMORPG a fireball spell is executed by simply clicking a button and then watching the fireball fly. Sure it's easy and effective, but where is the art? Where is the flavor?
The effect of the magic is not what attracted most of us to magic in the first place, it was instead the art and mystique of the magic that we found interesting. Nearly all fantasy novels with magic systems capture this. For example, a well known fantasy novel would describe a spell something like this: "Elayne embraced the true source, crafting a delicate weave from flows of fire and air that crashed against the Trollocs, burning them to ashes." The "spell" described here clearly is the result of some kind of mysterious art, and I would argue that, that is what makes it interesting. The MMORPG equivalent would be: "Elayne casts fireball killing the Trollocs."
So if this is your point, then I agree. Magic in MMORPGs has been "simplified" to the point of becoming completely mundane. Developers need to add things to give flavor to their magic systems. For example, maybe creating spells would be like mixing paints from primary colors to achieve a new color. Players would be able to only cast the "primary color" (base element) spells, but they could blend them in different orders to create entirely new, though logical, effects. In this system, a player could create a "buff" type spell by combining the base spells of "fire" and "life."
Yes, that is the core of my argument. Magic should be complex, magic should feel mystical. I mean, it's warping the fabric of reality at your will to destroy, create, alter, and heal, that should be no easy task. In most games it is, making magic feel just as important as swinging a sword. Nowadays it seems like you're not "casting" a fireball, it seems like your hands are a "fireball gun". Just launching fireball after fireball, with ease and little to no preparation. Just as easy as shooting a bow or gun.
However, of course there were a couple of other things I suggested that slightly vary.
Like I think a game with a more complex magic system should be based on actual magic traditions (With some slight variations and fine tunings to make it work, of course). There are plenty of games based on mythologies, and historical accounts, why not a game based on what the actual occultists and mystics of history believed. This goes hand in hand with a more complex magic system.
Also I don't think in a game like this, it would be a very practical option to be a "knight" or some sort of fighter that uses no magic at all. There would be many different flavors of magic, many ways to customize your path in the use of magic, but you probably wouldn't be a "barbarian", for if you were, the only thing you'd kill is an unprepared spell caster. Like I've said in previous posts, I don't buy the idea of lard-heads running around without magic and being any more than a laborer or something in a hypothetical world where magic exists.
Magic = supernatural technology, it would rule the world and anyone running around lobbing peoples heads off with sticks that have sharp pieces of metal attached to them, probably wouldn't be doing so for very long.
Going to have to disagree that this idea would not work that well, there has been plenty of games that are so differant in a magical sense that grew very popular very quickly, first comes to mind would be some of the games that had voodoo in them like darkman for 64 and of course some pirate games had voodoo like stuff, then you have god of war, I am sorry but before these games came out no one was really famaliar with this kind of scenery and not all mmorpg players read fiction or even sci fi.
But to be honest druidism, wizards, voodoo priests or even necromancy are based off real beliefs and legends.
Ignore the people taking it to seriously they just want to try to make everything logical in there views as what beliefs actually where back then.
Sounds promosing and very very interesting but they really need to fix the website some first.
Actually, there's nothing wrong with the website; funcom is playing it close to the chest on this one. You have a couple videos up on the first page, and some active forums, but don't expect a ton of information to appear until The Secret World is much closer to release.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
Oh and if I cut a lock of someone's hair, they'd totally have to be my beetches.
Then again, would PVP consist of burning witches at the stake? Anyone ever read "Good Omens" by Gaiman and Pratchett? Strapping pipe bombs on witches would be a great tactic.
I wonder how much of the World of Darkness magic system will make it into the MMO? Because for a dice roll/role playing game it used a lot of history, lore, and tradition in it. Probably be the closest thing we'd get.
Yep thats something i have defended for years, real world magic inspiration in mmo magic, every time i participated in the development of a possible "intelligent" mmo, a mmo that was from the dev words something more than a pew pew mmo. But they all failed, more or less. Implementing "traditonal" magic in a mmo like shamanism for exemple would need a lot of imagination, both from design as well as coding perspective, something obviously no dev can effort today, from monetary point of view if anything else.
The only mmo game that approched a more traditional magic, was UO. If you look at the bards skills, you can see the obvious relation with the real life bardic power, like morpheus had, for those knowning a bit about this. Same with the "talking to death" skill in uo, totally useless skill, but still you could see that the development of a mmo had at this time a relation to "role playing". Something definitly buried since a long time, not only from a player perspective, but rather developers perspective.
Its so much easier to have fire ball goes out of a toon staff, than having magic user dream, having relation to the other world, music that hypnotize and so on.
The worst part of all this is that the mmo developers have burried themself so much in that pew pew crap, than even the players most of the time wouldn't even undertand something else is done. You can definitly see it for any mmo which have some main features different from the usuall mmo. Let say, manual targeting, look how much that feature is spit on by most players, where any normally constitued player would undertand its better to aim by yourself than having an automatical aim. No manual aiming is bad for most mmo gamer, i think mmorpg.com followers is yelling it loudly enough, they want their traditional crap, and don't make it too different please. Same with magic, its so easy to have a fireball, why should you even bother to have some complicated magic?
Since the mmo market won't plit from the usual "kids game" and "adult games", you will never see something interesting hapening. Just the same thing as it was for the strip carton market, in the US there is still not much of an adult strip cartoon, as it is in europe for exemple where the market really splited since '70. Untill this kind of split doesn't happen i really see nothing about "intelligent" mmo happening. And this won't happen in US, becaus ethere is no adult market there, its all about teenegers, as you can see it for movies industry which totally eat up the adult movie industry. It can only be done in Europe i guess. You can see a sign with Darkfall, but alas europeen designer are very weak, so there isn't much hope there either. And i don't see asian doing anything either, but maybe they will, you never know, they already are much more creative than US and Euro market together.
First of all -- I'll admit, I skimmed. So if I repeat something, apologies to whomever I missed.
Second -- This started off as an effort to address the OP, but in hindsight, it's.... well, blossomed, into a response basically to the whole thread and to thematic elements in the thread far, far beyond the scope of the OP's original inquiry. It tends to get a little preachy (not on religion--on game design).
Here's the TLDR: MMO based on historical magic either keeps the rote and loses the fun or keeps the fun and loses the realism. Real magic can't be simulated.
There are a number of reasons this isn't practical, and least of them are the financial and religious ones. As a devoted Christian I have no problems whatsoever with someone else having the ability to simulate their religion in a video game. No one's stopping me from simulating mine, and Christianity is already a juggernaut when it comes to injecting its symbolism into fantasy religion and priestly magic, so I'm not going to pitch a fit, and I'd like to hope the rest of the Church would feel the same way--those of us that actually know something about games and gaming, not the crazy talking-heads who can't tell the difference between radical right-wing politics and religion: you know the ones I'm talking about. Maybe game developers fear the far right as a lobbying wing, but as others have mentioned, if that was really going to stimy development, I can't help but wonder why it hasn't already.
Along with that, I'll also concede right off the bat that the developer of such a game can handle criticism when it comes to whether different systems are portrayed accurately or fairly.
Money is also not as big, at least from my perspective, a concern as I can imagine. I'll concede that this is not a strong point for MMO's traditionally, but it's fresh ground with a lot of income potential, so there's got to be somebody with a little capital out there who at least has it on his radar. Someone earlier also mentioned M:tA, and anyone whose even flipped through one of those books would be hard-pressed to suggest a system that more thoroughly approaches the OP's aspirations. But there's the rub. I can do a lot with my friends around the table that I can't with an automated system that has to be programmed and operate without my supervision.
But let's assume that those two hurdles are dispensed with. I'll assume, hypothetically at least, that making a system that embraces a historic, lore-centric system of magic and magic-like arts can actually be accomplished. That is, I'll assume the technology can handle it and someone is out there who is motivated to make it.
But why would you do it? I am not a game developer, so I certainly cannot speak from personal experience, but I would be willing to venture that in game design as elsewhere, necessity is the mother of invention. A robust treatment of ritual magic is not necessary unless it is a story element or a representation of some function in the player's arsenal. Assuming the former, one can't be too critical, because in games where story has been a significant component of the game development (e.g., FFXI), magic has been treated with reasonable consideration, albeit restrained by the history of the IP.
The latter, however, goes more toward an area that I think could distinguish one game from another. If we make the same old Fireball, but call it Wrath of the Green Man or Heavenly Judgment, give it a two-minute animation, and have a bunch of NPC's spawn around the PC and chant something in Latin or Gaelic before the cast completes--well, at the end of the whole ordeal, we've still got a fireball for all functionality consideration. We've just got a fireball with a long cast time that puts a big Roman-sounding target on the caster's head.
So that's no good. Let's say, instead, we're going to deal more broadly with our magic. Make it more versatile. A stanza system like Ryzom--or for that matter, anybody ever play Rudra no hihou? I don't speak Japanese, but I know the system in that game allowed some more variety in the casting. Nevertheless, let's assume that our ritual magic can do a lot of things. This ups our budget, but if we're containing the game's entire allotment of player activities within the magic system, that's a concern we can lump in with the rest of them. We've got character's doing everything from the most mundane imaginable stuff to the most bizarre with our magic system: it's a RPer's wet dream.
Eventually, though, we reach a point where the realism of the magic system crosses a threshold. And that threshold is why I think this game hasn't been made. We can throw all the rest out the window. We can do everything else, no problem, but as long as this issue is left, the game won't work.
The more realistic your magic is, the less your engine becomes a simulation of reality and the more it becomes reality.
What I mean is, there comes a point where you have to draw the line and say that this is good and elaborate, but if we make it more elaborate, it's not fun anymore--it's work. This is why grindy, detail-oriented crafting in MMO's is (as a general rule, anyway) on the decline. No one wants to spend the same amount of time teaching a video game avatar a skill that it would take to learn it in real life. If I have to memorize the Book of Common Prayer in order for my PC to be able to function in the virtual Anglican Church, I don't need a game for that. I can just enroll myself in seminary. If my character has to relearn how to cast his spells every time the moon cycle changes, the game has created a timesink that has no payoff (nevermind the balance problems).
If we distill our mechanics down to make them more approachable, though, we discover that the happy medium we're looking for is an illusion defined not by mechanics, but by taste. If I need to get three people to stand in a circle for an hour in order to get an effect, I've basically required them to do work for that effect. If it's a really nice effect, and we can do some RP for that hour or something else entertaining, I'm sure people would be interested, but I'd be left asking, why not just let the RPers spend the hour doing what they want, and cast the thing at the end? People who don't want to stand around shouldn't have to to play this game. For that matter, while you could make a character learn new things to remain viable in a changing magic ecology, so to speak, is that an element of the science of alchemy that we want to make players go through, or is it possible that some people are playing the game specifically because they don't want to do that? [I for one still have a few hours of CLE I still have to get in this year to keep my license current, and I can testify personally that I do not want to simulate that particular experience.] Are we going to advocate developing a game that enforces the virtual equivalent of in-service?
[If you're actually advocating making people stand around for an hour, I think that's a different issue from the thematic one, which I'm treating because it's more genuine. "Games aren't grindy enough" is an argument people make, but I'm hoping it's out of scope, so I'm leaving off treatment of this issue here.]
If we distill the cast time to deal with that issue, then we have Ritual of Souls, a WOW spell available right now. Add some bells and whistles, but functionally it's the same.
Someone else made a thinly veiled reference to the Wheel of Time, something very near and dear to fantasy readers. And I'm in wholehearted agreement: being able to touch saidar or saidin as a game mechanic would be awesome. But how do you demonstrate on a computer screen and through computer speakers an effect that is inherently spiritual, internal, and insubstantial? No one sees Egwene tie off a dozen weaves and leave them. Egwene knows it happened, and the woman standing next to her might, but it all happens inside Egwene. A weave-tying mini-game might be amusing, but it's a far cry from the soul-wrenching, mind-blasting power of the One Power. That kind of thing you can't represent in a game, the same way Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 can't capture in a cinema the same emotional supernova that comes from reading the book.
Ultimately you're left with the non-spiritual, the non-meaningful things to represent in game. Your alchemist has to gather x plus y plus z times a thousand components, spend an hour in the lab evaluating them, then read a dozen scrolls looking for a way to implement what he wants, and finally attempt to administer the procedure he's decided on with a minute chance of success and a will-to-live-shatteringly dismal chance of failure (including, of course, the ruining of all his components and the wasting of all his time and effort). If you play your alchemist in such a system, and succeed, and actually put your heart into it, then you have not played a game--you have in effect become an alchemist, but you have traded the tools of the alchemist for your computer, and your real results (a, let's assume for argument, 100% chance of failure) for virtual results (a 98% chance of failure).
Everybody wants games to be more immersive, more in-tune with our desires for a good gaming experience. A game based on MtA would be a great undertaking, and stupendously difficult to implement. But even if it were implemented, it could never capture the depth of the pen and paper system, because even if the technology could handle so open-ended a system of mechanics, no technology likely to be available in our lifetimes can simulate the companionship of a friend at a table giving creative feedback.
Magic is religion--and I don't mean it's inseparable from a belief system; I mean that what is magical and complex and intuitive about it is the reflection it has of the human spirit--the way James Oliver Rigney, Jr., wrote magic was powerful because it spoke to the way the characters felt--not what they saw. We can't make MMO characters with feelings, because the feelings we're interested in are the player's. A set sequence of behaviors that causes a reaction may be a ritual, and it might be fun as a game mechanic, but it is not a ritual, and it is not magic, unless it means something to the person doing it.
You can't make a realistic alchemy system in a video game because it demands philosophy, and philosophy belongs to the player, not the avatar. You can RP a character as having a philosophy, and the game can give you hoops to jump through that have a philosophic label on them, but you can do that with all the gaming systems in place now just by changing some words and icons around. Alternatively, you can force player's to adapt to an ever-evolving, unpredictable system of combinations and requirements in order to actually manage magic, and then you've created a grind. Either way you've made a game that might be fun, but you haven't made anything that has magic in it.
Xhieron i think you are making a big deal about something that can be very simple.
I gave you the exemple of barding skill in old school Uo that are so close to the morpheus bardic power, which is also very closely related to the power of music in shamanism. There is nothing strange, difficult, or uneasy in those Uo badic skills. One was called "provocation" which made 2 targets fight each other, one was "enticing" which would entice mobs to you so you could lead them, and the third was "calming" (or whatever it was called) so it stoped your target from fighting and made them loose target for a short time. Those skills are straight forward, simple and funny to use, lot of old school Uo player know barding was the most fun pve class in Uo. Yet this definitly kept some very strong link with real life magic, no need to make an essay about it. If you don't know where this come from read a bit about morpheus and google it.
Xhieron i think you are making a big deal about something that can be very simple.
I gave you the exemple of barding skill in old school Uo that are so close to the morpheus bardic power, which is also very closely related to the power of music in shamanism. There is nothing strange, difficult, or uneasy in those Uo badic skills. One was called "provocation" which made 2 targets fight each other, one was "enticing" which would entice mobs to you so you could lead them, and the third was "calming" (or whatever it was called) so it stoped your target from fighting and made them loose target for a short time. Those skills are straight forward, simple and funny to use, lot of old school Uo player know barding was the most fun pve class in Uo. Yet this definitly kept some very strong link with real life magic, no need to make an essay about it. If you don't know where this come from read a bit about morpheus and google it.
I'll assume for sake of argument that everything you say is true with respect to the abilities in UO and their basis in real life magic.
That being the case, where an ability in a game has a relationship to a real world magic or magic-like system, and is accurately named to give it such a lore basis, that fact in itself does not wholesale dispense with the OP's concerns or the whole of my reasoning.
Let's suppose that in one of the Arthurian legends Merlin conjures fire from thin air and hurls it at an enemy. One could then argue that Fireball, the quintessential example used by the OP, has a basis in real world magic (at least insofar as the basis would be similar to the bases of similarly credible magics) and so our arguments are moot. Of course you would miss entirely, however, the crux of the argument--namely, that the traditional Fireball spell, with its origin (if not its implementation) in D&D, does not convey the feel of Merlin's fireball, and the resulting discourse on whether it could or should.
If this is a question of changing the names of our mezz spells to things that sound like psychoanalysis terms, renaming our conjuration spells or transmutation spells to alchemy terminology, etc., then this thread shouldn't exist at all. I think the issue is more complex than that. UO's mechanics were groundbreaking perhaps, but not beyond the approach of similar mechanics in its contemporaries. One could make an argument that "fluff" abilities that generated character depth, personality, and flavor have been on the decline (and I'd agree), to the detriment of the genre, but whether you call it calming, sleep, harmony, or anything else with any particular basis in real, fantasy, or no lore, an aggro wipe is an aggro wipe. Putting a real world lore veil on the same mechanics and calling it a fix seems disingenuous, but I won't speak for anyone other than myself.
My condolences if you had a hard time with my prior post; if it's any consolation, though, I didn't feel like I needed to write it any more than I'm sure you felt you needed to read it.
Its not fluff at all, yes some skill were fluff like the skill that let you talk with ghost, but the bardic skill where all but fluff, they where very strong pve skill, and even in some extend in pvp, bard was know not only as an interesting class pve wise, but one if not the most powerfull class pve wise. And the power of bard wasn't about buff/debuff/damage related stuff like in usuall mmo magic. the provocation skill was really what morpheus did in the death plan to defend himself from "monsters".
In don't say fire ball is stupid it certainly have some relation with real magic where fire is one of the main domain in any type of magic around the world, at the age where fire wasn't just lighting a lighter, but have a very long tradition and principals behind it, just because in fact lighting a fire was very hard and demanding to do, you'll know it if you ever try to light a fire without a lighter. So yes having fire going out of your hand or a staff sure was something special.
But in usuall mmo fire ball are all but special now, that s for sure. Maybe if in every damn mmo since uo the bard had provocation maybe provocation would also be a stupid thing, i don't know. The point isn't here, they are really all you need to make generations after generations of in game magic that have some meaning, without making of it a endless repetition who lost any kind of meaning, there really is enough material for the dev to pick something esle that this overmade fire ball, buff/debuff/damage based stuff we have.
You can't make a realistic alchemy system in a video game because it demands philosophy, and philosophy belongs to the player, not the avatar. You can RP a character as having a philosophy, and the game can give you hoops to jump through that have a philosophic label on them, but you can do that with all the gaming systems in place now just by changing some words and icons around. Alternatively, you can force player's to adapt to an ever-evolving, unpredictable system of combinations and requirements in order to actually manage magic, and then you've created a grind. Either way you've made a game that might be fun, but you haven't made anything that has magic in it.
I know this thread of mine is old, but I just got around to checking some of the newer posts and figured I'd respond.
To Xhieron: The object of this was not to make a completely grind-proof mmo. Of course there will be a grind of some sort. But in this grind you are expirementing, not mindlessly slaying the same mob over and over or doing quests that are always empty and way too familiar, which is the typical grind.
I'll try to simplify... Here are the three main aspects I'd like implemented into magic:
1. The spellcaster has a say in the matter.
All that this means, is you will rarely ever see two spellcasters casting the same spells. The only similarity would be archetypes (Those that specialize in light magic, nature magic, or dark magic, or jack of all trades casters.)
In this type of game, it may be more appropriate to call them spellcrafters. But it's not like I'd be adding some sort of scientific formulas, it would still be easy enough for the average joe to craft and perform his own spells. But the more powerful the spell, the more difficult it is (E.G. to summon a greater demon you'd need 3 dark wizards to be aligned to the right stars and chant in sync.) I invision this system to be easy to learn, difficult to master, you decide how far you want to take the complexity of the magic. I don't have the exact blueprint on how this would work, but I'm sure a system could be made.
Why do this?: Yes it might turn into a grind that may eventually get repetitive. But all games get repetitive eventually, I'm not out to make the "perfectly flawless game that you could play forever." At least when your grinding you would be learning a system and creating rather than being able to robotically grind whilst talking on the phone or watching TV.
2. Artistic
A more artsy feel to magic. A sort of musical or symphonic feel, like your actually weaving a spell rather than ordering a virtual avatar of yourself to quickly and generically cast it.
Why do this?: If you've played a game like NoX, UO, early EQ, or Sacrifice back in the day, you'll noticed how the magic was a little more unique and not quite as boring. I'm only arguing that we take it a step or two beyond those games.
3. Deeper roleplay and "realism"
Nobody can deny that heavy roleplayers would enjoy this type of game. The more detailed these kind of things get, the more a roleplayer could actually bring their roleplaying into the actual mechanics of the game.
One thing that could be done is the ability to advance in the game without the need for combat. For example, just by successfully healing others and recieving their thanks (maybe a /thank *playername* system after they get healed) would increase both your characters strength in healing and you would become more familiar with the way healing spells operate. So you could just live your life as a healer that cures disease, blesses and heals the injured. There could be a nature spellcaster that spends his time manipulating nature, growing new plants with new properties. Altering weather in small areas could also be a way to help these plants grow. A dark magic caster would spend their time creating contagious diseases and crafting curses that could be used indirectly to cause damage, etc...
So this wouldn't just be over-complicating the same old thing. A more diverse view of magic would allow for a much more interesting community. It probably would become unfair at times (Going to a town that a group of warlocks just infested with a plague that kills an innocent player.) But it would still be interesting, and different.
-- And the idea of incorporating actual occult and mystical traditions was just a suggestion that may inspire lore and new concepts to accompany something like this.
You know, there is actually a MMO in development that might add something similar: CCP/White wolfs "World of darkness online".
CCP have stated that they start with vampires but that they will try to add mages and Werewolfs later. The mages from WWs "Mage" should at least be something a bit similar to this.
Of course it all depends on how well WoDO actually does, if it sells badly the chances of them adding such huge expansion is unlikely.
Of course if you would be any "realistic", a magic user would be much more powerful than anyone else. There are a couple of stories out there that describe exactly that, like Harry Potter.
But why would you, in a MMORPG, want to limit the options for the player ? Only allowing mages wont increase the possibilities of what you can do.
Theres plenty of MMOs who already do it without being on purpose. Darkfall turned into a mage combat zone in the end, or so I heard.
Comments
I've said it before, I'll say it again, I'm not saying lets follow the EXACT rituals to a T, there won't be any 2 hour ceremonies or dances. It's possible to loosely base a game off of a certain theme.
You could perform these rituals before you get into combat, it would be a delicut procedure, taking maybe 2-3 minutes, if a mistake was made the mystic forces could backfire and harm you, but if successful for the next few hours or so you'd be attuned to a certain element, or a certain astrological alignment, or deity, in contrast to WoWs sitting down and drinking water for 10 seconds.
Not sure if you played AoC but the spellweaving on it was a kind of neat idea, albeit pretty useless most of the time. But that kind of gives a glimpse of how these rituals and attunements would work in game.
Once again I'm not making this game, I'm just giving a general concept for people out there do toy around with to hopefully inspire people to want a more complex magic system, so I don't have every single technical detail to it.
The whole idea is to make magic actually seem like a powerful and delicut force, not something you can do just as easy as shooting a bow by clicking a button.
See, when you mentioned the whole "WoW hunters" thing, you prove you're not about immersion, you're more about quick action and flashing lights. You wouldn't see doing a magic ritual in game to grant yourself magic powers via aligning to stars or dieties as cool, you'd see it as a pain in the ass. Which is fine, you're just on an entirely different wavelength when it comes to games.
Magic in fiction essentially does everything that technology does for us in the real world.
(It creates, it destroys, it heals, it gives us knowledge, etc.)
Hypothetically speaking, it would rule the world just like technology does. It would probably be mandatory for everyone to learn basic magics in school. So people trying to do things without magic (swinging swords, blacksmithing etc.) would be like people today trying to do things without technology. We call them natives and Amish people.
Well it's not about me -- my previous post suggested you ask other players their thoughts. Ammo (and warlock soulshards) were generally not popular features because they introduced a tedium other classes didn't have to deal with.
You've kind of already conceded this, since it's the underlying reason your feature wouldn't be very popular.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Right now the closest MMO in development is The Secret World.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
I'ts amazing how close minded and dismissive people are,those who are poisoned by modern popular thought and opinion thus becoming thoughtless defenders of the materialist pardigm.It's easy to dimss something and another to fully investigate it before dismissing it as you so easily have done.There is a lot of depth to the occult,and it is very much alive sorry to inform you.As i said it's easy to dismiss something because it's the modern and popular thing to do.You'd be surprised to learn that moden magick is actaully very scientific,lol.
Without straying too far off into this subject, I will say that I believe the occult is a beautiful art form. Me being Kind of a deist, I don't take any offense to "magick" because I'm not religious. Christians think it is satanic and materialist/atheists think it's just creepy mumbo jumbo and fail to see how it is a form of symbolism, representing the human mind. I don't practice it or consider myself an occultist, but I agree that it is an interesting subject and a beautiful art form.
Which is why I was baffled at why there aren't more games based on the occult/mystic traditions. It kind of boils down to impatient people, and sensitive people who get offended too easy.
What OP really is suggesting is a new combat system. Eg Magic as something intelligent to do based on anticipation or observation or learning? So eg astronomy you need to be checking what the heavens are up to and what magic you can use eg alchemy where you need some chemistry to make something or create symbols where you travel that reinforce some action or other in a pattern etc etc... but I think to add to it: With power comes responsibility and this magic could be costly if not used carefully!
It's a good start and different from normal high fantasy. As for occult, well it's best to separate the game idea from the book idea but a bit of history of the subject in the lore would be a fun setting.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
wow speaking of mumbo jumbo lol
To the OP,
I've read through most of this thread, and I've come to a certain conclusion, let me know if I am correct or off base...
It seems like what you are getting at is that magic in MMORPGs is focuses so much on the effect of the spell to the point where the actual art of the magic is almost completely omitted, taking out the part of magic that makes it well...magical. For example, in an MMORPG a fireball spell is executed by simply clicking a button and then watching the fireball fly. Sure it's easy and effective, but where is the art? Where is the flavor?
The effect of the magic is not what attracted most of us to magic in the first place, it was instead the art and mystique of the magic that we found interesting. Nearly all fantasy novels with magic systems capture this. For example, a well known fantasy novel would describe a spell something like this: "Elayne embraced the true source, crafting a delicate weave from flows of fire and air that crashed against the Trollocs, burning them to ashes." The "spell" described here clearly is the result of some kind of mysterious art, and I would argue that, that is what makes it interesting. The MMORPG equivalent would be: "Elayne casts fireball killing the Trollocs."
So if this is your point, then I agree. Magic in MMORPGs has been "simplified" to the point of becoming completely mundane. Developers need to add things to give flavor to their magic systems. For example, maybe creating spells would be like mixing paints from primary colors to achieve a new color. Players would be able to only cast the "primary color" (base element) spells, but they could blend them in different orders to create entirely new, though logical, effects. In this system, a player could create a "buff" type spell by combining the base spells of "fire" and "life."
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Yes, that is the core of my argument. Magic should be complex, magic should feel mystical. I mean, it's warping the fabric of reality at your will to destroy, create, alter, and heal, that should be no easy task. In most games it is, making magic feel just as important as swinging a sword. Nowadays it seems like you're not "casting" a fireball, it seems like your hands are a "fireball gun". Just launching fireball after fireball, with ease and little to no preparation. Just as easy as shooting a bow or gun.
However, of course there were a couple of other things I suggested that slightly vary.
Like I think a game with a more complex magic system should be based on actual magic traditions (With some slight variations and fine tunings to make it work, of course). There are plenty of games based on mythologies, and historical accounts, why not a game based on what the actual occultists and mystics of history believed. This goes hand in hand with a more complex magic system.
Also I don't think in a game like this, it would be a very practical option to be a "knight" or some sort of fighter that uses no magic at all. There would be many different flavors of magic, many ways to customize your path in the use of magic, but you probably wouldn't be a "barbarian", for if you were, the only thing you'd kill is an unprepared spell caster. Like I've said in previous posts, I don't buy the idea of lard-heads running around without magic and being any more than a laborer or something in a hypothetical world where magic exists.
Magic = supernatural technology, it would rule the world and anyone running around lobbing peoples heads off with sticks that have sharp pieces of metal attached to them, probably wouldn't be doing so for very long.
Going to have to disagree that this idea would not work that well, there has been plenty of games that are so differant in a magical sense that grew very popular very quickly, first comes to mind would be some of the games that had voodoo in them like darkman for 64 and of course some pirate games had voodoo like stuff, then you have god of war, I am sorry but before these games came out no one was really famaliar with this kind of scenery and not all mmorpg players read fiction or even sci fi.
But to be honest druidism, wizards, voodoo priests or even necromancy are based off real beliefs and legends.
Ignore the people taking it to seriously they just want to try to make everything logical in there views as what beliefs actually where back then.
Just fyi ritualist for guild wars possibly one of the more unique magic systems I have seen in mmorpgs.
www.darkdaysarecoming.com
Sounds promosing and very very interesting but they really need to fix the website some first.
Actually, there's nothing wrong with the website; funcom is playing it close to the chest on this one. You have a couple videos up on the first page, and some active forums, but don't expect a ton of information to appear until The Secret World is much closer to release.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
Thread & string magic would be cool to see.
Oh and if I cut a lock of someone's hair, they'd totally have to be my beetches.
Then again, would PVP consist of burning witches at the stake? Anyone ever read "Good Omens" by Gaiman and Pratchett? Strapping pipe bombs on witches would be a great tactic.
I wonder how much of the World of Darkness magic system will make it into the MMO? Because for a dice roll/role playing game it used a lot of history, lore, and tradition in it. Probably be the closest thing we'd get.
Yep thats something i have defended for years, real world magic inspiration in mmo magic, every time i participated in the development of a possible "intelligent" mmo, a mmo that was from the dev words something more than a pew pew mmo. But they all failed, more or less. Implementing "traditonal" magic in a mmo like shamanism for exemple would need a lot of imagination, both from design as well as coding perspective, something obviously no dev can effort today, from monetary point of view if anything else.
The only mmo game that approched a more traditional magic, was UO. If you look at the bards skills, you can see the obvious relation with the real life bardic power, like morpheus had, for those knowning a bit about this. Same with the "talking to death" skill in uo, totally useless skill, but still you could see that the development of a mmo had at this time a relation to "role playing". Something definitly buried since a long time, not only from a player perspective, but rather developers perspective.
Its so much easier to have fire ball goes out of a toon staff, than having magic user dream, having relation to the other world, music that hypnotize and so on.
The worst part of all this is that the mmo developers have burried themself so much in that pew pew crap, than even the players most of the time wouldn't even undertand something else is done. You can definitly see it for any mmo which have some main features different from the usuall mmo. Let say, manual targeting, look how much that feature is spit on by most players, where any normally constitued player would undertand its better to aim by yourself than having an automatical aim. No manual aiming is bad for most mmo gamer, i think mmorpg.com followers is yelling it loudly enough, they want their traditional crap, and don't make it too different please. Same with magic, its so easy to have a fireball, why should you even bother to have some complicated magic?
Since the mmo market won't plit from the usual "kids game" and "adult games", you will never see something interesting hapening. Just the same thing as it was for the strip carton market, in the US there is still not much of an adult strip cartoon, as it is in europe for exemple where the market really splited since '70. Untill this kind of split doesn't happen i really see nothing about "intelligent" mmo happening. And this won't happen in US, becaus ethere is no adult market there, its all about teenegers, as you can see it for movies industry which totally eat up the adult movie industry. It can only be done in Europe i guess. You can see a sign with Darkfall, but alas europeen designer are very weak, so there isn't much hope there either. And i don't see asian doing anything either, but maybe they will, you never know, they already are much more creative than US and Euro market together.
First of all -- I'll admit, I skimmed. So if I repeat something, apologies to whomever I missed.
Second -- This started off as an effort to address the OP, but in hindsight, it's.... well, blossomed, into a response basically to the whole thread and to thematic elements in the thread far, far beyond the scope of the OP's original inquiry. It tends to get a little preachy (not on religion--on game design).
Here's the TLDR: MMO based on historical magic either keeps the rote and loses the fun or keeps the fun and loses the realism. Real magic can't be simulated.
There are a number of reasons this isn't practical, and least of them are the financial and religious ones. As a devoted Christian I have no problems whatsoever with someone else having the ability to simulate their religion in a video game. No one's stopping me from simulating mine, and Christianity is already a juggernaut when it comes to injecting its symbolism into fantasy religion and priestly magic, so I'm not going to pitch a fit, and I'd like to hope the rest of the Church would feel the same way--those of us that actually know something about games and gaming, not the crazy talking-heads who can't tell the difference between radical right-wing politics and religion: you know the ones I'm talking about. Maybe game developers fear the far right as a lobbying wing, but as others have mentioned, if that was really going to stimy development, I can't help but wonder why it hasn't already.
Along with that, I'll also concede right off the bat that the developer of such a game can handle criticism when it comes to whether different systems are portrayed accurately or fairly.
Money is also not as big, at least from my perspective, a concern as I can imagine. I'll concede that this is not a strong point for MMO's traditionally, but it's fresh ground with a lot of income potential, so there's got to be somebody with a little capital out there who at least has it on his radar. Someone earlier also mentioned M:tA, and anyone whose even flipped through one of those books would be hard-pressed to suggest a system that more thoroughly approaches the OP's aspirations. But there's the rub. I can do a lot with my friends around the table that I can't with an automated system that has to be programmed and operate without my supervision.
But let's assume that those two hurdles are dispensed with. I'll assume, hypothetically at least, that making a system that embraces a historic, lore-centric system of magic and magic-like arts can actually be accomplished. That is, I'll assume the technology can handle it and someone is out there who is motivated to make it.
But why would you do it? I am not a game developer, so I certainly cannot speak from personal experience, but I would be willing to venture that in game design as elsewhere, necessity is the mother of invention. A robust treatment of ritual magic is not necessary unless it is a story element or a representation of some function in the player's arsenal. Assuming the former, one can't be too critical, because in games where story has been a significant component of the game development (e.g., FFXI), magic has been treated with reasonable consideration, albeit restrained by the history of the IP.
The latter, however, goes more toward an area that I think could distinguish one game from another. If we make the same old Fireball, but call it Wrath of the Green Man or Heavenly Judgment, give it a two-minute animation, and have a bunch of NPC's spawn around the PC and chant something in Latin or Gaelic before the cast completes--well, at the end of the whole ordeal, we've still got a fireball for all functionality consideration. We've just got a fireball with a long cast time that puts a big Roman-sounding target on the caster's head.
So that's no good. Let's say, instead, we're going to deal more broadly with our magic. Make it more versatile. A stanza system like Ryzom--or for that matter, anybody ever play Rudra no hihou? I don't speak Japanese, but I know the system in that game allowed some more variety in the casting. Nevertheless, let's assume that our ritual magic can do a lot of things. This ups our budget, but if we're containing the game's entire allotment of player activities within the magic system, that's a concern we can lump in with the rest of them. We've got character's doing everything from the most mundane imaginable stuff to the most bizarre with our magic system: it's a RPer's wet dream.
Eventually, though, we reach a point where the realism of the magic system crosses a threshold. And that threshold is why I think this game hasn't been made. We can throw all the rest out the window. We can do everything else, no problem, but as long as this issue is left, the game won't work.
The more realistic your magic is, the less your engine becomes a simulation of reality and the more it becomes reality.
What I mean is, there comes a point where you have to draw the line and say that this is good and elaborate, but if we make it more elaborate, it's not fun anymore--it's work. This is why grindy, detail-oriented crafting in MMO's is (as a general rule, anyway) on the decline. No one wants to spend the same amount of time teaching a video game avatar a skill that it would take to learn it in real life. If I have to memorize the Book of Common Prayer in order for my PC to be able to function in the virtual Anglican Church, I don't need a game for that. I can just enroll myself in seminary. If my character has to relearn how to cast his spells every time the moon cycle changes, the game has created a timesink that has no payoff (nevermind the balance problems).
If we distill our mechanics down to make them more approachable, though, we discover that the happy medium we're looking for is an illusion defined not by mechanics, but by taste. If I need to get three people to stand in a circle for an hour in order to get an effect, I've basically required them to do work for that effect. If it's a really nice effect, and we can do some RP for that hour or something else entertaining, I'm sure people would be interested, but I'd be left asking, why not just let the RPers spend the hour doing what they want, and cast the thing at the end? People who don't want to stand around shouldn't have to to play this game. For that matter, while you could make a character learn new things to remain viable in a changing magic ecology, so to speak, is that an element of the science of alchemy that we want to make players go through, or is it possible that some people are playing the game specifically because they don't want to do that? [I for one still have a few hours of CLE I still have to get in this year to keep my license current, and I can testify personally that I do not want to simulate that particular experience.] Are we going to advocate developing a game that enforces the virtual equivalent of in-service?
[If you're actually advocating making people stand around for an hour, I think that's a different issue from the thematic one, which I'm treating because it's more genuine. "Games aren't grindy enough" is an argument people make, but I'm hoping it's out of scope, so I'm leaving off treatment of this issue here.]
If we distill the cast time to deal with that issue, then we have Ritual of Souls, a WOW spell available right now. Add some bells and whistles, but functionally it's the same.
Someone else made a thinly veiled reference to the Wheel of Time, something very near and dear to fantasy readers. And I'm in wholehearted agreement: being able to touch saidar or saidin as a game mechanic would be awesome. But how do you demonstrate on a computer screen and through computer speakers an effect that is inherently spiritual, internal, and insubstantial? No one sees Egwene tie off a dozen weaves and leave them. Egwene knows it happened, and the woman standing next to her might, but it all happens inside Egwene. A weave-tying mini-game might be amusing, but it's a far cry from the soul-wrenching, mind-blasting power of the One Power. That kind of thing you can't represent in a game, the same way Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 can't capture in a cinema the same emotional supernova that comes from reading the book.
Ultimately you're left with the non-spiritual, the non-meaningful things to represent in game. Your alchemist has to gather x plus y plus z times a thousand components, spend an hour in the lab evaluating them, then read a dozen scrolls looking for a way to implement what he wants, and finally attempt to administer the procedure he's decided on with a minute chance of success and a will-to-live-shatteringly dismal chance of failure (including, of course, the ruining of all his components and the wasting of all his time and effort). If you play your alchemist in such a system, and succeed, and actually put your heart into it, then you have not played a game--you have in effect become an alchemist, but you have traded the tools of the alchemist for your computer, and your real results (a, let's assume for argument, 100% chance of failure) for virtual results (a 98% chance of failure).
Everybody wants games to be more immersive, more in-tune with our desires for a good gaming experience. A game based on MtA would be a great undertaking, and stupendously difficult to implement. But even if it were implemented, it could never capture the depth of the pen and paper system, because even if the technology could handle so open-ended a system of mechanics, no technology likely to be available in our lifetimes can simulate the companionship of a friend at a table giving creative feedback.
Magic is religion--and I don't mean it's inseparable from a belief system; I mean that what is magical and complex and intuitive about it is the reflection it has of the human spirit--the way James Oliver Rigney, Jr., wrote magic was powerful because it spoke to the way the characters felt--not what they saw. We can't make MMO characters with feelings, because the feelings we're interested in are the player's. A set sequence of behaviors that causes a reaction may be a ritual, and it might be fun as a game mechanic, but it is not a ritual, and it is not magic, unless it means something to the person doing it.
You can't make a realistic alchemy system in a video game because it demands philosophy, and philosophy belongs to the player, not the avatar. You can RP a character as having a philosophy, and the game can give you hoops to jump through that have a philosophic label on them, but you can do that with all the gaming systems in place now just by changing some words and icons around. Alternatively, you can force player's to adapt to an ever-evolving, unpredictable system of combinations and requirements in order to actually manage magic, and then you've created a grind. Either way you've made a game that might be fun, but you haven't made anything that has magic in it.
Peace and safety.
Xhieron i think you are making a big deal about something that can be very simple.
I gave you the exemple of barding skill in old school Uo that are so close to the morpheus bardic power, which is also very closely related to the power of music in shamanism. There is nothing strange, difficult, or uneasy in those Uo badic skills. One was called "provocation" which made 2 targets fight each other, one was "enticing" which would entice mobs to you so you could lead them, and the third was "calming" (or whatever it was called) so it stoped your target from fighting and made them loose target for a short time. Those skills are straight forward, simple and funny to use, lot of old school Uo player know barding was the most fun pve class in Uo. Yet this definitly kept some very strong link with real life magic, no need to make an essay about it. If you don't know where this come from read a bit about morpheus and google it.
I'll assume for sake of argument that everything you say is true with respect to the abilities in UO and their basis in real life magic.
That being the case, where an ability in a game has a relationship to a real world magic or magic-like system, and is accurately named to give it such a lore basis, that fact in itself does not wholesale dispense with the OP's concerns or the whole of my reasoning.
Let's suppose that in one of the Arthurian legends Merlin conjures fire from thin air and hurls it at an enemy. One could then argue that Fireball, the quintessential example used by the OP, has a basis in real world magic (at least insofar as the basis would be similar to the bases of similarly credible magics) and so our arguments are moot. Of course you would miss entirely, however, the crux of the argument--namely, that the traditional Fireball spell, with its origin (if not its implementation) in D&D, does not convey the feel of Merlin's fireball, and the resulting discourse on whether it could or should.
If this is a question of changing the names of our mezz spells to things that sound like psychoanalysis terms, renaming our conjuration spells or transmutation spells to alchemy terminology, etc., then this thread shouldn't exist at all. I think the issue is more complex than that. UO's mechanics were groundbreaking perhaps, but not beyond the approach of similar mechanics in its contemporaries. One could make an argument that "fluff" abilities that generated character depth, personality, and flavor have been on the decline (and I'd agree), to the detriment of the genre, but whether you call it calming, sleep, harmony, or anything else with any particular basis in real, fantasy, or no lore, an aggro wipe is an aggro wipe. Putting a real world lore veil on the same mechanics and calling it a fix seems disingenuous, but I won't speak for anyone other than myself.
My condolences if you had a hard time with my prior post; if it's any consolation, though, I didn't feel like I needed to write it any more than I'm sure you felt you needed to read it.
Peace and safety.
Its not fluff at all, yes some skill were fluff like the skill that let you talk with ghost, but the bardic skill where all but fluff, they where very strong pve skill, and even in some extend in pvp, bard was know not only as an interesting class pve wise, but one if not the most powerfull class pve wise. And the power of bard wasn't about buff/debuff/damage related stuff like in usuall mmo magic. the provocation skill was really what morpheus did in the death plan to defend himself from "monsters".
In don't say fire ball is stupid it certainly have some relation with real magic where fire is one of the main domain in any type of magic around the world, at the age where fire wasn't just lighting a lighter, but have a very long tradition and principals behind it, just because in fact lighting a fire was very hard and demanding to do, you'll know it if you ever try to light a fire without a lighter. So yes having fire going out of your hand or a staff sure was something special.
But in usuall mmo fire ball are all but special now, that s for sure. Maybe if in every damn mmo since uo the bard had provocation maybe provocation would also be a stupid thing, i don't know. The point isn't here, they are really all you need to make generations after generations of in game magic that have some meaning, without making of it a endless repetition who lost any kind of meaning, there really is enough material for the dev to pick something esle that this overmade fire ball, buff/debuff/damage based stuff we have.
I know this thread of mine is old, but I just got around to checking some of the newer posts and figured I'd respond.
To Xhieron: The object of this was not to make a completely grind-proof mmo. Of course there will be a grind of some sort. But in this grind you are expirementing, not mindlessly slaying the same mob over and over or doing quests that are always empty and way too familiar, which is the typical grind.
I'll try to simplify... Here are the three main aspects I'd like implemented into magic:
1. The spellcaster has a say in the matter.
All that this means, is you will rarely ever see two spellcasters casting the same spells. The only similarity would be archetypes (Those that specialize in light magic, nature magic, or dark magic, or jack of all trades casters.)
In this type of game, it may be more appropriate to call them spellcrafters. But it's not like I'd be adding some sort of scientific formulas, it would still be easy enough for the average joe to craft and perform his own spells. But the more powerful the spell, the more difficult it is (E.G. to summon a greater demon you'd need 3 dark wizards to be aligned to the right stars and chant in sync.) I invision this system to be easy to learn, difficult to master, you decide how far you want to take the complexity of the magic. I don't have the exact blueprint on how this would work, but I'm sure a system could be made.
Why do this?: Yes it might turn into a grind that may eventually get repetitive. But all games get repetitive eventually, I'm not out to make the "perfectly flawless game that you could play forever." At least when your grinding you would be learning a system and creating rather than being able to robotically grind whilst talking on the phone or watching TV.
2. Artistic
A more artsy feel to magic. A sort of musical or symphonic feel, like your actually weaving a spell rather than ordering a virtual avatar of yourself to quickly and generically cast it.
Why do this?: If you've played a game like NoX, UO, early EQ, or Sacrifice back in the day, you'll noticed how the magic was a little more unique and not quite as boring. I'm only arguing that we take it a step or two beyond those games.
3. Deeper roleplay and "realism"
Nobody can deny that heavy roleplayers would enjoy this type of game. The more detailed these kind of things get, the more a roleplayer could actually bring their roleplaying into the actual mechanics of the game.
One thing that could be done is the ability to advance in the game without the need for combat. For example, just by successfully healing others and recieving their thanks (maybe a /thank *playername* system after they get healed) would increase both your characters strength in healing and you would become more familiar with the way healing spells operate. So you could just live your life as a healer that cures disease, blesses and heals the injured. There could be a nature spellcaster that spends his time manipulating nature, growing new plants with new properties. Altering weather in small areas could also be a way to help these plants grow. A dark magic caster would spend their time creating contagious diseases and crafting curses that could be used indirectly to cause damage, etc...
So this wouldn't just be over-complicating the same old thing. A more diverse view of magic would allow for a much more interesting community. It probably would become unfair at times (Going to a town that a group of warlocks just infested with a plague that kills an innocent player.) But it would still be interesting, and different.
-- And the idea of incorporating actual occult and mystical traditions was just a suggestion that may inspire lore and new concepts to accompany something like this.
You know, there is actually a MMO in development that might add something similar: CCP/White wolfs "World of darkness online".
CCP have stated that they start with vampires but that they will try to add mages and Werewolfs later. The mages from WWs "Mage" should at least be something a bit similar to this.
Of course it all depends on how well WoDO actually does, if it sells badly the chances of them adding such huge expansion is unlikely.
There is no such thing as "actual" magic ...
Of course if you would be any "realistic", a magic user would be much more powerful than anyone else. There are a couple of stories out there that describe exactly that, like Harry Potter.
But why would you, in a MMORPG, want to limit the options for the player ? Only allowing mages wont increase the possibilities of what you can do.
Theres plenty of MMOs who already do it without being on purpose. Darkfall turned into a mage combat zone in the end, or so I heard.