Starting Casters, Magic and the Mayhem of an alpha release

[darkerdreams]

I recently started playing planeshift and have noticed a number of things that I?d like to discuss regarding the status of magic.  First, I have serious concerns as to the handling of starting characters and equipment.  I understand starting characters with little or no equipment, however this cripples starting casters in a way that melee characters aren?t.  With no ability to cast without glyphs a starting caster is forced to rely on his weakest abilities (especially right now while the quests are bugged, down, and virtually impossible to find).  Further, there are no ?starting? glyphs.  By the time a caster can afford their first ?starter? glyph (at 2000 tria) a melee class should have at least a sword, shield, and a significant amount of training.  Not to mention that with low physical stats a wizard isn?t going to be able to carry significant amounts of loot if they can find things they can kill/places to mine.
Further, these glyphs seem vastly underpowered for their price.  While a melee character who ?toys? with magic may be able to get away with casting in close proximity to a monster because they have the HP to soak up some damage a strait-caster type (with physical abilities all below 50) is going to be killed in the process of casting the short- range fire spell, never mind the touch ranged (and bugged) weakness spell.  While a melee character?s survivability is (and should be) measured in HP a caster?s survivability is often measured in feet away they can stand.  A spell which has a casting range well within the distance most creatures can cross in the time it takes to cast seems self-defeating.  There may be considerations that I?m not aware of in the equations for damage and range, but without seeing those I don?t know how to make that assessment aside from personal experience (I would like to see those equations if anyone has them).
Further, it is worth noting that there seems to be little in the way of starter guides or suggestions for new mages.  While Harnquist stands in the main plaza ready to buy looted items and sell melee equipment the trainers for mages are hidden in the library and the glyphs require leaving the city and walking to the Magic Shop (normally, a blissfully uneventful walk fortunately) neither of which have any directions suggested from the plaza.
However, there is also little or no guidance on what abilities the glyphs carry before you lay out your hard earned resources to purchase it.  Even when building a spell Weakness does not announce that it is a touch spell until you try to cast it and are out of range unless the creature you?re trying it on is ready to bite you (if it punches, slashes, or is larger than a rat mages probably shouldn?t be looking at it, never mind attacking it).  While Planeshift is a role-playing game and there is a huge amount of help to be had from friendly players and /advisor sometimes such options feel wrong in terms of rollplaying (?Hi, my name?s Korm and I?m a dark mage who?s looking for the kind of spells who make people feel ill and fall over!?).  While I acknowledge that this is a hard kind of character to work with regardless, the difficulty seems excessively compounded by this state of affairs.
Further, the spells that exist have some startling bugs (weakness, for example, aside from being designed as a touch-range spell, sometimes heals the target back to full, does not always do more damage than the monster?s regeneration, and sometimes does not do ?real? damage and the monster will remain active until beaten to death with physical attacks) I?ve been reporting these to the GMs as I become aware of them, but am unsure what the status of previous action on these issues has been, or when a fix may be anticipated (or if I should be reporting bugs to programmers instead of GMs/how I?d do that).  I look forward to the anticipated release of more glyphs and glyph combos, but I worry that without these issues being addressed (the difficulty in getting even weak glyphs and the relative weakness of the glyphs that are available) that the results will not be significantly more promising than the current state of affairs which, from what I?ve gathered, includes a general apathy towards playing primarily-caster characters and frustration from those who do try to do so.

Now, having finished what may seem like a PS-bashing rant, I want to take this opportunity to thank the number of players who have been helpful and provided much needed aid and support to us new people trying to learn the ropes (both those who have helped me which I am imminently grateful to and those who are just kind souls), and I would like to say that I see PS as an excellent game with great amounts of potential.  If I didn?t think that the game had great promise I would likely ignore the issues and move on to other activities, however I feel that at its core it is a phenomenal idea with a great community.  I look forward to RPing with you all, and discussing the state of the game!

[Scribe]

Hi Darker.  Good points, all to be certain.  I\'ve only been playing for a couple of days, and magic was hard for me to figure out.  I still haven\'t gotten the hang of it.  


I agree on most of your points,but I think you might be looking at the Planeshift magic system from an all too traditional RPG viewpoint.

For instance, and I might be wrong on this (I\'ve only been playing a couple of days, as stated), but from my experience, the experience and skill learning system isn\'t based on a leveling curve.  I\'ve noticed no difference in experience from the very first rat I\'ve killed to the hordes of rats I am now able to smash.  They give me the same amount.

And since there seems to be no experience penalty, if a mage-type character invests in a few basic sword/melee skills just to get started, it will not be a penalty as a later point, down the road.   That might not fit in with the RPG archetype you have in mind, but when entering into an entirely new system, you have to be a bit flexible to the laws and perceptions which govern the world.  After all, a 10 sword skill is still fairly basic and only takes a couple of hours.

As for hit points, HPs don\'t seem to be an issue at current, as all new characters are sadly bugged at 50.

I couldn\'t agree more about spell description, prices and access, particularly starter spells.  You nailed it there.  All these areas require more thought, and it would behoove the devs and mods to write a magic guide.

[darkerdreams]

I agree that learning the skills doesn\'t hurt, however the problem is that characters (like myself) who have a 26 strength don\'t have the ability to carry swords and still carry any reliable amount of loot (that I\'ve found).  it does seem like penalizing characters for trying to persue the \"wrong\" character choice.  I\'m sure this isn\'t intentional, but it is frustrating (as you said)...  I\'m concerned because I\'ve spent a large amount of time working to get my first glyph and (for the time being) it\'s almost completely useless.  It is disheartening to be starting from scratch again and trying to figure out how I\'m going to gain the abilities I \"need.\"

[provisionist1]

I can see where you are coming from darkerdreams, but one of the great things about planeshift is that it is/will function like the real world. I have a couple of points to make:

1.) Yes, the glyphs are very expensive, but then, they are an awesome power once someone is trained in them. Essentially, coming for the first time to Hydlaa is like leaving the farm at the age of sixteen. One has very little experience in the world. In the medieval days what would happen? Well, for the first 10 years you\'d probably be an apprentice to a mage, or alchemist, or blacksmith or whatever. You cannot expect to have access to powerful magic without working very hard for it.

2.) Could the devs implement simple cheap newbie glyphs? Well, they could, but then everybody would practice magic. It loses it\'s uniqueness then doesn\'t it? What they are looking for is a good balance of magic and melee.

3.) Strength of 26? Yeah, that\'s pretty low. They will eventually wipe the characters, I would suggest then that you make a character that would have a little more strength. Remember that although magic is long range, it requires a casting period. If you are terribly weak physically, you\'re not going to survive when a rogue sneaks up behind you.

4.) The game will improve incredibly once they get the quests fixed. There are what now, 10, 11 quests? Yeah, something like that. Good work devs!

Right, don\'t mean to be harsh I apologise if I am. I do understand your complaints, what I said is just my opinion on the subject.

Cheers, hope you stick around,

Xirius

[Zan]

Magic is indeed very costly to train and harder to come by than most other skills. However I agree with Provisionist that it should be like that. Magic should be something for the elite and not something you will pick up right away.

There is still one problem though with magic .. it is weak and in many cases utterly useless. Some glyphs do work and can do some damage but to use myself as an example. I started out with no skills at all, unlike characters now. All I had were my stats but I trained myself up to say 10 in sword skill, bought two swords and then I saved money for some magic. Now I \'m not exactly certain how much that first cost me but lets say about 2600 for the training and swords. With that I could do some decent damage .. then I went to buy a glyph and trained myself to have at least one level in the needed way. This also came down to 2600 trias. Now I could cast a spell ... wasn\'t much fun to discover that the spell doesn\'t do any damage at all and is utterly useless. The spell I got was \'freeze\' by the way. I know there are better spells but still ... With no way of knowing what you \'re buying and seeing that all glyphs are the same price it would be logical to have all spells be equally usefull but in different ways.

Therefor there is one flaw in Provisionist\'s reasoning .. magic isn\'t powerful at all compared to simple melee fighting. Now if my freeze spell could actually freeze the enemy into a solid block for a few seconds I would completely agree with the reasoning.

[provisionist1]

Yeah, I\'ve done about the exact same thing as Zan, I have two Silver Falchions, 7 sword skill, enough stat training to get me up to 90 hp. I decided to get a glyph. I already had 3 skill in the blue way, so I go a freeze one. Well, not too powerful, no, I\'ll admit. However, my intelligence is only 64, and my skill now in the blue way is only 4. I think when/if I had an intelligence of 90 and skill 20, then it\'d be a very powerful spell. Just takes work.

Cool Zan, hehehe.

Xirius

[buddha]

Well, with and Intelligence of 95 and 12 levels of Blue Way, Freeze still pretty much sucks.

The magicians in this game are, at the moment, seriously underpowered.  There is no good way to advance, as there is no money around and it is very difficult to gain progession points without mining a rogue in the arena.  Right now, the world is strongly fighter-biased.

If they want magic to be rare, then they are going to have a lot of unsatisfied customers.  I don\'t play an rpg to get locked into some role I don\'t enjoy.  Also, the diversity makes the games fun.  There are systems like GUPRS which are skill based and everyone can practice magic.  My experience has been that not everyone does.  Few hard core fighters want to spend a prog point to get some low -level defensive wind spell when they can spend that same money on a new shield that does a better job.

But think of this:  If you show up in Hydlaa with tons of strength, you can start your career as a miner right off the bat.  If you show up with tons of intelligence, you have nothing to do and no way to change that.

Still love the game, but the inbalance is very frustrating.

[darkerdreams]

I\'ll start by applauding what buddha said.  I\'ll continue by saying that with a  101 charisma and 8 ranks in dark there is absolutely no value to having a rune of weakness as it stands.  (hoping that changes soon)

provisionist1, not harsh at all.  I\'m looking for debate, discussion, and suggestions.  Change would be nice too.  In that spirit here are my replies.

1.) \" Yes, the glyphs are very expensive, but then, they are an awesome power once someone is trained in them. \" This is, actually, not true.  As it stands niether the fire glyph (int 68 red way 6) nor the weakness glyph (charisma 101 dark way produces significantly more damage than I can deal with my bare hands and a bloody attack (0 melee skill 26 str) in the same amount of time.  In fact, the weakness glyph produces significantly worse results.  As for \"coming for the first time to Hydlaa\" I agree.  However this is the issue that D&D runs into- what is the difference between a starting character and an apprentice?  The character needs to be interesting to play.  Squires were apprenticed to knights for a similar amount of time, however it is much easier to get a sword and shield (and training for these things) than it is to get magic.  Finally, I\'m not looking for \"powerful magic\" for starters.  as I already said the magic that exists is significantly weaker than the melee items which are orders of magnitude cheaper.

2.) I also disagree that everyone would want to be a mage.  For one thing this is not the case in either other MMORPGs or in tabletop games.  Further, what draw does magic have as it stands?  it\'s mystery and mystique?  This exists because there appear to be few or no casters- not because it\'s a difficult path, but because it seems to have no significant rewards.  Finally, I doubt magic will ever loose it\'s uniqueness except among high \"level\" characters (there\'s no way to avoid that).  As for loosing uniqueness; again I find that false.  Even with \"starter glyphs\" or other reductions in difficult and increases in value magic is almost always a more difficult path just because it does require forethought and more consideration than \"charge and attack.\"
I do agree that there must be a good balance between magic and melee.  however it seems that right now magic is relegated to the position of \"useless toy for the insidiously rich.\"

3.) In other words; make a character with melee ability because that\'s what you need.  I repeat that it seems that the current state is that the game is designed to discourage magic and make it virtually impossible to use.  In my experience (remember, fire and weakness) magic, as it stands, is not long range.  In the time it takes to cast a fire spell that creature will reach you and attack repeatedly.  Weakness is a touch spell.
If you are terribly weak physically you shouldn\'t survive when a rouge attacks you.  Frankly, if a rogue sneaks up on you a physically capable character should have issues- otherwise why would anyone play anything but a max-strength/hp beefcake with a stick?

4.) I don\'t know about the quests.  I look forward to them greatly, but the few references that have leaked through the apathy towards their deactivation and the suggested gag order about them indicates that the low-level ones are going to be as slow and painful as beating rats to death with my fists.  I\'ve also only heard that the count goes up to 4-5, but that was a general offhand reference.

Scribe; \"As for hit points, HPs don\'t seem to be an issue at current, as all new characters are sadly bugged at 50.\"
I have 60 hp actually.

[Kiramon]

Well, with and Intelligence of 95 and 12 levels of Blue Way, Freeze still pretty much sucks.

you are aware that the mental stat for Blue way is Will -.- , Intelligence is the mental stat for Red and Azure way...

[Kiva]

Yes, magic is bad and useless as it is, we\'re all aware of that, however the devs have quite a tight schedule, and unfortunately, they don\'t have neither 10 arms or 50 fingers to type with, so they can\'t go any faster than what they\'re already doing. The fact that increasing magic power isn\'t really a high priority at this point also means it will just take longer for it to happen, and constantly reminding them that it is bad won\'t help.

Magic is only for those who have the brains to figure it out, and it is definitely not for beginners. As the system advances, it wont be less difficult - it will only be more, so giving out beginner glyphs to people will not help anyone, it\'ll just cause more distress because people can\'t figure it out, they will think it sucks because they die so much and there will be a flood of \"HELP PLZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzone1!111!1!11one\" threads, and shouts ingame. To play around with magics, you should at least learn the basics of fighting first, and noone is stopping you from doing that. Learning to kill something with a sword first wont make you any less good at throwing spells. Just look at the famous spellcasters like Gandalf from LoTR or Elminster from the Forgotten Realms books. They both know pretty well how to swing a sword, and probably knew even before they started studying magics, so there you have it.

Besides, learning to use a sword will also provide you with something to come back to, if magics doesn\'t appeal to you anymore.

As for the \"everyone wants to be X class so let\'s make that class suxx\", just forget about it. There is always a class that has some edge over the others, and every time it gets changed, there is just a new class that has an edge, and that\'s good, as long as every class has some edge over another class. Yes, mages will eventually be way more powerful than warriors, but they will also be more costly, more difficult to control and way more difficult to build. They will require a lot more time, and they will also have the downside of having to use MP for spells, and they  will most likely not be able to solo a lot, because of their long casting times. So as you see, mages have upsides and downsides, just like all other classes. An archer, for example, is fast, attacks from range, but they\'re killed easily, can\'t carry unlimited ammunition, and they usually look dumb, whereas warriors can take punches and look big and strong, but they need to get up close to attack something. It\'s never the individual players that make a diffrence, it\'s the groups you play in that matters, and let\'s face it, there will never be a game where grouping isn\'t a necessity for the highly leveled people.

I think I answered some of the questions there, but if I didn\'t just post and tell me I\'m a dork, because I\'m tired.

[darkerdreams]

ouch. now I feel smacked down.

[Moogie]

What Kiva meant to say is, we havn\'t yet balanced these systems. First we are focusing on actually added some content. We will worry about making it all fair and equal later.

[darkerdreams]

ok, I can understand that.  up to now all I\'d heard is that\'s the way it is- so I thought I\'d see what I could do to make that not the way it is.
If it\'s on the plate then great.  If there\'s something I can do to help get it done (or done faster, or whatever) well, yeah.

[darkerdreams]

it has come to my attention that flame burst is, actually, a worthwhile spell because there is a bug.
you can fire it 3-4 times before a monster notices it\'s taking damage.

[buddha]

What Kiva meant to say was: \"Look at me, I have a pancake on my head.\" That\'s cuteness right there, folks.

Right now, there is nothing really to do, so the imbalance isn\'t that bad  I don\'t see people forming parties too often, and there is no \"help wanted\" section of the paper. Hopefully, when more gets implemented, we poor mages will have more of a chance.  I don\'t want to waste what few prog points I have on sword skill, though.

(you are right, Kiramon, my Will is eighty something).