Click'n'Boom Vs. Roleplay & Incantations

[Kiva]

Moogy - If you think this thread belongs elsewhere, by all means move it.

Magic in PlaneShift is an open discussion, as them pesky developers won\'t share anything with us about it, thus leaving us to dream and wonder, and this being why this thing has come to my mind.

Click\'n\'Boom:
What is Click\'n\'Boom? Well, CnB, alias PnP (Point\'n\'Press), is the Diablo style spellcasting, where one can simply learn a new spell, assign it to a hotkey, and fire away, as long as the casters mana reservers allow such ruthless waste of spells. Very simple system, thus very boring, and definately not worthy of any MMORPG, yet it still happens that some games use this system. *Sigh*

Memorization & Incantations:
The memorization system removes the need for mana, and slightly enforces the spellcasters to think of what they have available, before jumping headlong into battle, however the small amounts of spells one is able to memorize in games such as Baldurs Gate, and the like, are not nearly enough, should the system be used in a MMORPG, as it is not possible to simply click the rest-for-8-hours button, and refresh ones spells.
In a skill-based MMORPG, the memorization system \'might\' be a disadvantage, as one might need to slay many foes to increase skills, and if one simply doesn\'t have enough spells to do such, \"too bad\" some would say, yet others would tend to say \"FOOCK DIZ GAME SUXX0RZ! FOOK U N00BS!!\", leaving us to read their foul words, however the Diablo-style C\'n\'B system would still be unworthy for a game such as PlaneShift, no matter how unfair it all is.

Incantations written by players to cast spells, add several great aspects to the game, and I\'ll try and give some examples to some of the following:

• Languages
• Enchanted Items
• Personal Spellbooks

It is known to me, that Ultima Online (www.uo.com) has incantations, however they are not playerwritten, and appear as you target a spell. If players were to type in the incantations instead of just keeping an in-game spellbook, it would increase roleplaying, and it would be fun as well. Imaging standing in the middle of nowhere, meeting a giant blob, and you suddenly can\'t find your papers with incantations. It could happen to anyone, and would simply make you want to find your papers and keep them close to you all the time, or at least make you prepare properly before you venture out into the world. \"Yes, that is all very nice, but what about the websites telling people all the incantations?\" Of course there are websites who would love to publish the DragonSlay VII spell, but who says the person who has come to know of this spell actually wants to give it away? Who says he\'s not some greedy old grump, who kill the dragons himself, and keeps all the loot? I would, if I was to have such a spell, that\'s for sure. Besides, using incantations would surely bring some use to Jayose\'s library besides quests, as it might suddenly be possible to borrow a book, containing a spell that noone else has noticed. :)

Now for some of the examples listed above.

Languages:
By using written incantations, it allows the creation of magical languages. While studying to become the wizard number one, you may slowly learn the full contents of this magical language, enabling you to try out incantations that you make up, simply in hope of suddenly encountering a new and powerful spell, however if one has no skill in magic uses, and simply types one useless incantation after another, one might someday find a spell that leaves the caster without body, accidently killing someone, making the guards come for you, and so forth. Only bad things come from being ignorant and inexperienced.
As mentioned earlier, Ultima Online (www.uo.com) uses a magical language. An example: \"Vas Flam Por\". This means somewhat like \"Great Flame - Movement\", and results in a fireball. Besides, having such a language makes it possible to keep curious eyes of silly warriors from reading your spellbooks, scrolls and such.

Enchanted Items:
Imagine being able to magically enchant your own items, not having to lean upon the items made by developers only. \"Yes, well, I have this flaming blade spell, wont it do?\" Of course, making a blade catch fire is a nice enchantment, but is it really necessary to create a different spell for each enchantment? What if it was possible to cast an enchantment spell, and simply target another spell on an item of the users choice, and this item suddenly held one/many charges of this spell? Imagine owning your simple clothing, however this clothing is not as simple as it looks. It makes the wearer able to cast a protective shield which deflects spells, and makes the wearer able to jump very high and change direction in the air a certain amount of times. That is surely something which would make living fun, however enchanting items isn\'t for everyone to do, yet it leaves some ideas for a profession, aye? :D

Personal Spellbooks:
\"Monday

It\'s close, and I can feel it., yet this stupid incantation still has no effect!\"

\"Lakah calloth nohran -
waheth niltrod elebra.\"

\"It still won\'t work, no matter what I do. All I\'ve got from it so far, was a shining ball of light, that vanished after few seconds. I\'m going to look in some of my masters books, now he\'s gone.\"

\"Tuesday

I think I\'ve got it right this time, and I\'m just about to try the new incantation. It goes:\"

\"Lakahre callon nohran -
thener waheth nilit elebra.\"

...

\"This spellbook belonged to Garnath the apprentice, and was found among the rubbles of his masters tower, when he returned later the same week.\"


Such spellbooks could both be fun to read and write, yet I fear they would do no good if there was nothing to learn from them...

Anyways, this is where my thread ends, and I personally believe it leaves many things to be discussed, so go ahead and talk about the thread - Click\'n\'Boom Vs. Roleplay & Incantations.

:)

[dorbian]

i\'d go for the roleplay & incantations,

it\'s way more fun to do and you really can figure out your own spells and have to give your time and effort for it.

the click\'n\'boom is to simple thus newbies can play like crazy and get powerfull spells because the play alot.
so they might overpower the hard working but doing things in his othertime players.
if you need to learn it it is a process in time and not in speed you play thus making it more interesting.

offcourse this is al my oppinion.

[Kiva]

I like your oppinion. It\'s just like mine. Never been much of a powergamer myself, even though I sometimes find myself playing 8+ hours a day. I suppose I just like to take the time I need, not rush it. Probably why I learn more than most powergamers, I simply take time to learn stuff and get it all right, instead of redoing my characters two, maybe three times.

[druke]

i really like this too, but alas i beleive the devs are well at completion with the magic system. we have no idea what it will be like so this idea isn\'t out of the game yet.

[dorbian]

we will see but the idea Gronomist gave us is really a good plan and if it is possible to work it out we really have a RL emulation here you need to study before you know something instead of experience based.

[Watcher]

We could mix them for example you would have to type for a flying purple hippo spell (don?t ask) Wuv and lets say you could do that spell at lv 2 when you get to lv 20 you would just have to type a key so that would reduce on newbies doing it do you get my idea if you don?t I mean weaker spells as you get stronger only require a letter which would make it easier for high lv characters to for example do a simple levitation spell without typing aloth rinlach lonach all the time they would just type L or something like that. What do you think or is it to hard to implement.

[Drachion]

don\'t think so but it might be a bit hard i\'d rather use 2 keys for a spell making it not too easy but easier to memorize

[Moogie]

Roleplay & Incantations sounds perfect for PlaneShift, considering the system the developers have used for NPC interaction... why not take that word recognition system a step further and create such a wonderful casting system with it too?

Great thread Grono. I had fun reading your ideas. You must\'ve spent a long time detailing your thoughts on this.

[Kiva]

Well, I can say that I\'ve spent a lot of hours on making up ideas when I wasn\'t able to sleep, Moogy, and I spent 3 hours in school re-writing the ideas into a useful thread, so you could say I\'ve been thinking about what I\'ve been doing. Not that I have anything better to spend my time with, though.

[Cha0s]

Mmmm... the only problem I see is that you speak faster than you type (i.e. it wouldn\'t be quite as realistic as you think, timing wise, and it would be unfair to slow typers). I think that after you cast the spell for the first time you should be able to hotkey it or use something along the lines of a web browser\'s autofill that fills out the rest of the text after you type the first couple letters. Anyway, my 2 cents on it. I do like this idea over the old point and click...

[I3lack Templar]

What about us who are slow Typers and Bad spellers hmmm.

Edit: I wanna work a spell but i am not good at typing while looking at screen, i am too late and get bl;asted to pieces or mauled by something large. my point is it is a Great system, just dont go overboard with it. It would be a deadly weapon once Fine tuned and Flawless.

[Wedge]

Saying the spells is nice, but I don\'t think it\'s fair to those that can\'t type really fast.  Moreover though, there are just better ways to do it, this isn\'t a MUD, we shouldn\'t have to type what we do.  An incantation system that was more like a mini-game where you have to draw a symbol with your mouse, hit a few randomly generated keys in sequence, or something like that.  Your effectiveness in the mini-game type sequence would affect the spell to an extent, but you should be able to cast the spell with nominal efficiency regardless.  The difficulty of the mini-game can also be relative to your proficiency with the spell Way, and the power of the spell, so spells become easier to use more powerfully as you grow.

However, some people are adamantly against such things, so there still should always be an option for click-boom, but it doesn\'t have the capacity for casting spells with bonus type profciency.

[derwoodly]

I don\'t like it.
I do not want to type /whosawhachamachallit every time I have to cast a spell.  I realize I am not being suportive of your out of the box thinking, but before people start to turn PS into a slash command fest,  I want to squash the idea.

Computer games are repetative by there very nature, but are fun because of things like graphics, sound efects, joysticks, mice, hotkeys, macros, point and click, drag and drop, pop-up menus, drop down lists, and emote buttons.  

With your system I might go insane enought to start typing in caps and numbers.

[Xandria]

I\'m actually quite surprised that no one remembers this thread. *gives Grono a funny look*

Anyhow, my two tria (EDIT: is it \'tria\' or \'trias\'?):

Originally posted by Xandria

I, too, find this idea very interesting. It seems like in some games, wizards can be really powerful with spells like area of affect and ranged spells. For instance, a fighter encounters 5 enemies, and he has to engage them all individually (or maybe with some special multi-attack), and even an experienced character can take a little while to fight them off. An experienced mage would just press a couple keys to select the right spell and *boom* all the enemies are dead.

If you had a system where you had to use words to cast spells, it could balance out game difficulty a little bit. Of course, the spell book is a great idea, but it should be limited in some ways. A great way to do it might be that it could only hold a maximum number of *words*. So players would have to choose whether they wanted to store, say, 10 easier spells, or 3 really complicated, but powerful, spells. It sure would add a lot of strategy!

It would also be great, because then you wouldn\'t have all these high level mages running around casting the same spell, because it\'s the best in the game. And with a word based system, you can be ready for anything. You\'d likely have some spells that would be good against everything, but there should be some words that are very specific.

So say you\'re walking along and you notice some goblins coming toward you. Now you\'ve got a decent spell lined up in your book, but since it\'ll take a little while for them to get to you, you can cook up something extra special. So you think of some good words that correspond to some goblin-effective magic, and you cast a really cool spell that does maximum damage.

[Moogie]

Originally posted by Wedge
Saying the spells is nice, but I don\'t think it\'s fair to those that can\'t type really fast.  Moreover though, there are just better ways to do it, this isn\'t a MUD, we shouldn\'t have to type what we do.  An incantation system that was more like a mini-game where you have to draw a symbol with your mouse, hit a few randomly generated keys in sequence, or something like that.  Your effectiveness in the mini-game type sequence would affect the spell to an extent, but you should be able to cast the spell with nominal efficiency regardless.  The difficulty of the mini-game can also be relative to your proficiency with the spell Way, and the power of the spell, so spells become easier to use more powerfully as you grow.

However, some people are adamantly against such things, so there still should always be an option for click-boom, but it doesn\'t have the capacity for casting spells with bonus type profciency.

Yes! Gesture Recognition Technology! That would be SWEET!

Can our devvies code something like that though? I\'d love to draw a fire symbol on the ground and have the spell come to life and burn stuff.

GRT was developed by Lionhead Studios... wonder if they\'d let anyone else use the idea?