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BattleMaster => Development => Feature Requests => Topic started by: Gabanus family on August 28, 2017, 08:15:25 AM
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I think over a year ago I once started this conversation, and back then it was agreed by many that magic was to be a small insignificant side-thing on islands other than BT, but nothing was done. I find myself in yet the same situation, after having returned for only a week, and do find myself frustrated with it, yet again.
As usual my char Garas was critically wounded with a magic scroll on EC (think this is the 5th time by now?) and some other magic spells where cast as well apparently. Now Oligarch is sieged and by the time Garas is sort of healed again, the realm will have fallen and he'll prob be rogue in the middle of an enemy occupied city. I wouldn't even be surprised if this scroll will be the reason why he's executed about a week from now as seemingly the wounding code hasn't been fixed either.
Is magic to be a high impact thing on islands like East Continent or not? If not, I ask that it's removed completely, or at least greatly reduced. I know this means the advy game becomes less impactfull to the real game, but to my understanding that's what it's supposed to be like right?
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I remember we had this conversation before and that is was agreed that the magical stuff should be downsized on non BT islands.
However, unsure if this has been done or not.
Apart from that, never was frustrated by magic stuff on EC/DWI or Colonies. My chars rarely get in touch with it.
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Blasted Elves with their fairy tales and magic lol :P
I do agree magic should play insignificant role on all other islands than BT. BT where daimon is at least. Those weapons, Unique Items are all good for all islands, there is a good deterioration rate put in place to balance things out. While magic maybe not. I do wonder that at one point in BT island at least we had incidents of spells going off. Can we put the same balance in all other islands where too many scrolls at one hand do us no good? Since we already have the code in place at BT if my belief is correct, do please correct me if I am wrong on this account, we can bring the same code to all other islands, as a balance.
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And please for the love of god remove reviving dead from the game while at it.
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K now they're just trying to piss me off. I realise that for most people magic isn't really a problem because they just seem to be using it on my char specifically, but this is getting rediculous. My char was finally just recovering today and before I could check anything I got this again:
Magical Attack (15 minutes ago)
You suddenly feel a strange force entering your body, and then you see your skin rip and watch in horror as bones break through it from the inside. The rest is a blur of pain and screaming. You have been wounded by magic.
This is the sort of stuff that made me pause for a while, now it just brings me so much closer to rage quitting alltogether.
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The accident scroll is particularly useful in Oligarchs case because of the citizen militia.
Making Citizen militia less important or not summon able by the ruler could also solve this.
I think what we see here is half of the islands magic focused on one character because of the citizen militia.
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I probably should not be suggesting this since my character is on opposite side of war with Garas. But I do see this as problem, so here's my thought.
1) Maybe a cooldown period on the character spellcasting ability? If you cast spell, you unable to cast for let say, 2 days. But I foresee there can be ways to bypass, surely some players will get round the cooldown period.
2) Another way. Maybe make scrolls creation more harder? More difficult to find the items require to create scrolls?
3) Scrolls go off on its own when you carry many scrolls.
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The accident scroll is particularly useful in Oligarchs case because of the citizen militia.
Making Citizen militia less important or not summon able by the ruler could also solve this.
I think what we see here is half of the islands magic focused on one character because of the citizen militia.
That is part of the story yes. But I'd bet it's more than half of the magic and for over a RL year, about almost all the magic has been used for about 80% on Garas and 20% on Catherine or so (now that she's paused, it's just Garas) which is very frustrating to see. I know it can 'win' them the war, but I doubt they realise just what they're doing. If I'm counting correctly, this was the 6th critically wounding of Garas through magic, 6! Of course not to mention the taking away of his hours several times and the equipment damaging of troops and that sorta shannanigans.
Had the magic on all of EC been spread out a bit, I'd still not think it has a place on the island, but maybe I could live with it. But as it stance, all is targeted on a single char and it's just making me mad on an OOC level now as well. This is just purely ruining my ability to even play the char and my fun.
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The accident scroll is particularly useful in Oligarchs case because of the citizen militia.
Making Citizen militia less important or not summon able by the ruler could also solve this.
I think what we see here is half of the islands magic focused on one character because of the citizen militia.
I experienced just this very thing on Belluaterra. Dominorum got wiped out for it. A little annoying and frustrating, but I did consider it a clever tactic.
Perhaps the trick is too powerful and needs to be nerfed somewhat, but I do personally enjoy having magic in the game overall.
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Had the magic on all of EC been spread out a bit, I'd still not think it has a place on the island, but maybe I could live with it. But as it stance, all is targeted on a single char and it's just making me mad on an OOC level now as well. This is just purely ruining my ability to even play the char and my fun.
4) Perhaps priest can heal the wounded by magic character? If let say you have been joining the religion for quite sometime, 1 year? :P
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4) Perhaps priest can heal the wounded by magic character? If let say you have been joining the religion for quite sometime, 1 year? :P
Priest with healing abilities has been requested and rejected for countless times through bm history :)
What I don't really understand about the IG stance on magic, is that most characters seem to be fine with it.
Aren't any of the characters in the Northern realms uncomfortable with the use of Magic?
Maybe after hearing all the stories coming from Beluaterra of daimons feeding on released magical energy in particular, one could expect some cautiousness regarding the use of it.
I remember Selenia being scapegoated for the use of a resurrection scroll on her in the EC.
Apparently death spells are just fine.
True warriors fight with steel, not fairy magic.
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What I don't really understand about the IG stance on magic, is that most characters seem to be fine with it.
Aren't any of the characters in the Northern realms uncomfortable with the use of Magic?
Maybe after hearing all the stories coming from Beluaterra of daimons feeding on released magical energy in particular, one could expect some cautiousness regarding the use of it.
I remember Selenia being scapegoated for the use of a resurrection scroll on her in the EC.
Apparently death spells are just fine.
True warriors fight with steel, not fairy magic.
My character still dislike magic. For portal stones have caused significant starvation in one duchy before. Even Alara Ruler reports to Nivemus Ruler that Niv advy was in the south doing magic or so. I think it all depends on the realm Ruler, for the realm rules are defined by Judge/Ruler.
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There are quite a number of chars who don't like the use of magic, but apparently none of them feels strongly enough about it to do anything about it. Beating the enemy/keeping the alliance in check is considered more important than the anti magic rhetoric.
And Selenia was mostly scapegoated by Perdan and Oligarch (good thing she doesn't seem to remember the latter anymore ::)) if I recall correctly.
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Characters gaining a temporary resistance to magic after being affected by a scroll would seem like a reasonable mechanic. Both ways, too: anyone affected by a scroll cannot be be affected by another in the same week, and has a 50% chance to resist any spell cast on him the following week, whether the spell is harmful or beneficial. Lingering energies interfering with the proper connection of new energies and all. Would help prevent some people from being persistently targeted (which is much easier to do with scrolls than it ever was with infiltrators).
Or the reverse approach, making it so that the more spells one has cast recently, the greater the chance of failure. Again, lingering energies interfering with the proper connection of new energies and all. Or both.
The first helps prevent someone from being taken out constantly from playing the game, or for a hoarder to cast a bunch of buffs on himself like some D&D cleric. The second would help dissuade hoarding into but a handful of people and would prevent hoarders from being able to go full wizard every now and then.
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Characters gaining a temporary resistance to magic after being affected by a scroll would seem like a reasonable mechanic.
That was exactly what I was just thinking.
A strong resistance to magic immediately following, that slowly decays over the course of 2 weeks or so. Possibly even not decaying at all if the affected character is wounded, so as to avoid situations where you're wounded for exactly as long as you have magic resistance.
It shouldn't be too difficult to implement, either.
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I like both of Chenier's suggestions, at least on islands beyond BT and BT can stay the same I suppose.
This would prevent someone from being unable to play the game (like me atm) and it would also prevent someone from playing wizardmaster instead of battlemaster.
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That was exactly what I was just thinking.
A strong resistance to magic immediately following, that slowly decays over the course of 2 weeks or so. Possibly even not decaying at all if the affected character is wounded, so as to avoid situations where you're wounded for exactly as long as you have magic resistance.
It shouldn't be too difficult to implement, either.
I have no problems with magic in general in the game. I actually think it adds a fun dimension to it. I can see that it's a problem when it effectively prevents someone from playing a specific character for a long period, though. However, it should be remembered that a character could also be repeatedly targeted for assassination in the same way. I can remember a time when a Duke in a realm I was in spent about a month being constantly assassinated by different infiltrators. It's actually much more difficult to gather and save a collection of wounding scrolls for a specific use like this than it is to have someone targeted for assassination. That was even more the case when the game had more players and more infiltrators.
It would also be wrong to ignore how deeply this specific case is linked to the vastly overpowered ability to raise the peasants. As someone who's played in several great now-dead realms, I know I'd have loved to have had that ability to use it to save favourite realms. However, frankly, the way it's repeatedly saved Oligarch is ridiculously unbalanced. Basically, the entire united armies of one half of the continent haven't been able to take down one city in spite of having taken the walls numerous times. In my opinion, that's too much and frustrating. I'm all for making it difficult to kill realms, but making it impossible...? As I said, I'd have loved to have had that ability to use it to protect some of my favourite realms, but I can see that it's not actually that good for the game. In this case, months of political deals and negotiations between many characters have to take place to form and keep together a united allied army to siege a city. Then that's negated by one player pressing a button to raise the peasants. And that's happened multiple times.
It's this that's caused the one character to be repeatedly targeted - whether by assassins or magic. The ability to raise a vast defensive force to save a city that would probably have fallen a year ago if that ability didn't exist. The one character has to be targeted for the attackers to have any chance of finishing the job.
The use of magic across the game isn't the problem. I have characters who never hear of scrolls being used. This circumstance around this one specific character is a problem, but it's a problem created by game mechanics that effect both sides in the conflict.
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Firstly, that's not the reason why Garas has been targeted so often. Out of all the times he was targeted, I believe these two latest cases are the only ones where he was the ruler of Oligarch. In the other cases that was Catherine and he was General or Duke in stead.
Secondly, I agree that the peasant raising is overpowered and you'll find statements on this forum for me arguing that it should be either lowered or removed entirely (despite Oligarch being a single city realm).
Thirdly, I disagree with your statement that assasinations are easier. Assasinations are very easy to defend against (not sure if they changed more than just the removal of the invisibility for infils, or also the percentage chances of success) by simply recruiting enough men etc. I speak from experience (have 2 assasins and 1 had 100 fame on both SF and infil for quite a while with skills at at least 80%) when I say that assasination attempts are very risky both in terms of the chance of failure and in terms of the consequences. I have the feeling they made escaping from jail a lot more difficult as well, meaning that capture often results in a ban and well after that it becomes a death trap to even go near the realm. Magic poses no such risk and from what I can tell there's no possible way to defend yourself against magical attacks. And based on how often they used this scroll on me, apparently it's not that hard to come by one.
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Firstly, that's not the reason why Garas has been targeted so often. Out of all the times he was targeted, I believe these two latest cases are the only ones where he was the ruler of Oligarch. In the other cases that was Catherine and he was General or Duke in stead.
From what I've seen in the game, the targeting of both Garas and Catherine has been related to what they can do to defend the city (raise militia; repair fortifications during the enemy refit cycle; rehire fresh defending units for the walls; distribute tax gold from the city; send military orders; etc). But by far the most common reason has been related to the raising of the peasants. I seem to think there was also some confusion about who could raise the militia too (Margrave/Duke/Ruler). I don't think the ability is actually that well understood as, apart from in Oligarch, I'm not sure many people have ever used it.
Thirdly, I disagree with your statement that assasinations are easier. Assasinations are very easy to defend against (not sure if they changed more than just the removal of the invisibility for infils, or also the percentage chances of success) by simply recruiting enough men etc. I speak from experience (have 2 assasins and 1 had 100 fame on both SF and infil for quite a while with skills at at least 80%) when I say that assasination attempts are very risky both in terms of the chance of failure and in terms of the consequences. I have the feeling they made escaping from jail a lot more difficult as well, meaning that capture often results in a ban and well after that it becomes a death trap to even go near the realm. Magic poses no such risk and from what I can tell there's no possible way to defend yourself against magical attacks. And based on how often they used this scroll on me, apparently it's not that hard to come by one.
I didn't really mean the level of effort that goes in to making the magical attack with a scroll, but rather all the background effort that goes into getting the scroll to the point where you can use it. It has to be created, gathered up by someone, carried to be sold or given to a noble (involving agreements to meet by the player of the adventurer and the player of the noble). Basically, there's a lot of background work that goes in to reaching a point where you can use a scroll for this specific purpose. I know there's a lot of effort that goes in to infiltrator training too, but that's largely work undertaken by one player. While the end use of a scroll actually involves a lot of work by several players that goes on in the background.
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Scrolls and unique items are largely passive rewards, though. Lords get some just for being lords, adventurers get some just for hunting or gathering. Every now and then they get the option to create one, but that's still fairly passive: either you have the ingredients or you don't, the option won't stick around for you to get anything you lack. Then, high-ranking nobles are pretty much automatically targeted, and many adventurers just offer it for free or little, there's limited negotiation involved.
So while yea, it's true that a lot of work was needed in the background, most of it would have gotten done anyways, whereas with infiltrators, training your infiltration ability really just goes to one end, else you are wasting your time.
Gabanus rises a point, though. The risk to a failed (or partially failed) assassination attempt is a ban. Magic has no such risk, at most it might backfire I believe. Perhaps a chance of a possibility to place a ban on hostile casters would be legitimate.
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I think a risk of capture as a criminal (which allows judge to banish a char if they so wish) for failed magic usage sounds reasonable.
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Well you can't siege the last city without crippling the ruler anymore. TOs take forever so you need to prevent those peasants from spawning at all cost. The only one who can raise peasant militias is the RULER.
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What are the %chances of a wizard offering a 'pain' scroll compared with the %chance of offering a healing scroll? I see more pain scrolls than healing (maybe coincidence).
If the chances were the same, would that not balance it out a bit? Healing scrolls counter pain scrolls. You can cast healing scrolls on yourself even when wounded.
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What are the %chances of a wizard offering a 'pain' scroll compared with the %chance of offering a healing scroll? I see more pain scrolls than healing (maybe coincidence).
If the chances were the same, would that not balance it out a bit? Healing scrolls counter pain scrolls. You can cast healing scrolls on yourself even when wounded.
That sounds like a reasonable and easy solution to me. If you want protection from pain/wounding magic, collect healing magic. If scrolls that cause wounding are really much more common than ones that heal, then balance it out a bit.
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Healing scroll also can revive dead heroes. So it also counters death.
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I'm reasonably certain its based upon rarity/difficulty of the scroll, but don't take that as absolute gospel truth. Pain and Suffering doesn't wound, it removes all hours from the target. Though there is a roleplay about wounding as an explanation for hour loss, just no actual mechanic wounding. It's one of the most common scrolls by rarity. Healing is slightly more rare than pain and suffering. Accident scrolls, that cause mechanical wounds, are twice as rare. A quick spot check on EC demonstrates that while the proportions aren't exact to above, of the scrolls mentioned, accident scrolls are the least numerous, healing are in the middle, and pain and suffering the most common.
I also recently realized that one's spellcasting skill isn't having as much of an effect upon magic success as I thought it was, which should be increased.
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Pain and Suffering doesn't wound, it removes all hours from the target.
Accident scrolls, that cause mechanical wounds...
Yes my mistake. A mix up of names. Scroll of accident (wounding) is the scroll I was refering to.
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Don't change magic on Belu or Dwillight. I think those are two most "magical" continents. I agree that it can see some change on other continents, it'll be still 3 continents with nerfed (or nearly disabled) magic and 2 left as is. I've never seen much use of magic on BT or Dwi anyhow. Perhaps I'm just unlucky.
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We've got multiple levers available to us, and right now, I'm definitely concerned about the ability of people with scrolls to lock a particular player out of playing their character for long periods of time. Thus, the changes to prevent serial wounding by magic will be game-wide.
We may also adjust the overall availability of scrolls on stable islands, which is something we can do separately.
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We've got multiple levers available to us, and right now, I'm definitely concerned about the ability of people with scrolls to lock a particular player out of playing their character for long periods of time. Thus, the changes to prevent serial wounding by magic will be game-wide.
We may also adjust the overall availability of scrolls on stable islands, which is something we can do separately.
Thank you!
Don't change magic on Belu or Dwillight. I think those are two most "magical" continents. I agree that it can see some change on other continents, it'll be still 3 continents with nerfed (or nearly disabled) magic and 2 left as is. I've never seen much use of magic on BT or Dwi anyhow. Perhaps I'm just unlucky.
You haven't seen magic on BT? In what realm are you? :o
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What about nerfing the citizens militia as well?
It could also simply be an automatic event instead of a call by ruler, iwth a bit of randomness involved, so they don't always show up right away.
The fact that the size of the peasant militia is based on population is also a bit unfair to realms with less populated capitals.
Usually those capitals also have less gold income.
I understand its more realistic like this, but its simply not balanced.
It makes the richest and most populated cities just far more powerful as a capital, while by them selves they already are.
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It's also heavily based upon regional statistics (control, loyalty, morale), and there's penalties to all those stats for calling it, that last quite awhile.
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Wouldn't mind this either, or at least give it a hard cool down value of say a month.
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What about nerfing the citizens militia as well?
It could also simply be an automatic event instead of a call by ruler, iwth a bit of randomness involved, so they don't always show up right away.
The fact that the size of the peasant militia is based on population is also a bit unfair to realms with less populated capitals.
Usually those capitals also have less gold income.
I understand its more realistic like this, but its simply not balanced.
It makes the richest and most populated cities just far more powerful as a capital, while by them selves they already are.
I think this is good, nerfing the citizen militia. Or else so many realms alive when we should have more conflicts fighting over the lands from the dead realm. Oh wait, did Xavax call Citizen Militia before their demise? :o
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I think citizen militias are reserved to some government types?
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I think citizen militias are reserved to some government types?
No.
Also one month is probably too short. For now pros out weight cons so there it is no brainer for now.
Simple: Make the cooldown at least 3 months or maybe once per ruler - calling it should completely ruin your reputation(in BM's case honor and prestige. Currently you hardly lose enough to deter people from using the option.)
Complex: A high chance of peasants ruining infrastructures. After each battle done by peasants, you lose one building. Could be a level of RC or other structures on top of the current penalties.
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Perhaps the discussion about reducing the effectiveness of peasant militia could be started as a separate feature request. It seems like that would be better than doing it here under the magic thread.
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I would be open to adjusting the prestige loss for calling it. Also, requiring a minimum prestige amount, if it doesn't already (I forget, not sure).