Ars Magica 2 - Ideas
Poll: If I were to implement an API, would you make use of it? (able t
Ended May 15, 2014
Poll: If I were to make the code for this mod available on GitHub, wou
Ended May 15, 2014
Poll: What specific mod integration would you like to see the most?
Ended May 15, 2014
Next, I really like the idea that all spells will be adhoc user-made, built purely form component effects.
I also really like the idea of skill trees that you can aim towards and unlock.
So, on the matter of progression, I offer a suggestion for your consideration:
I heartily voice my opinion that the exploration needs to stay a part of the research system, though one can cut on the randomness factor to some degree by making the said world gen re-usable.
Progression system idea
tl:dr: World generation spawn anomolies. You perform rituals (which may include sacrificing items, mobs, or just doing silly things) and gain insights of a specific tier, and stick them into anomolies to get revelations.
A revelation is bound to a specific affinity, the same affinity as the anomaly it was thrown into, and the same tier as the insight that it was made from.
A revelation can be used to progress any research/skill in its affinity that is equal to its tier level.
Since everyone can choose which rituals to perform, and which affinity of anamoly to stick them into, people can control what they research.
However, the (possibly) needed ritual components (mob drops), and the finding of at least 1 anomoly of each affinity (or all those you want), still requires world exploration.
At lower levels research of different affinities do not conflict, but the more advanced/specialised the research becomes, the more it clashes with other affinities.
I propose:
Rituals = Chalk drawn area within which you do and/or sacrifice stuff to get new items called insights. Perhaps limits the creation of high tier insights to rituals in special locations or during specific events, such as sunrise, etc.
Insight = Gained from performing rituals. An insight has a tier. Higher tier insights would need more complex and/or expensive rituals.
Anomolies = Are world gen places (need not be structures, can even hallows, mushroom circles, shrines, etc) that the player needs to turn insights (special items) into revelations (special items). An anomoly has an affinity associated with it. Weak anomolies may not be able to turn high tier insights into revelations.Stronger anomolies might only be found in special locations (such as the Nether perhaps?).
Revelation = An insight (that has a tier) that got an affinity linked to it.
Research/Skill progress = Use a revelation (of the right tier and affinity) to increase the progress on the research/skill item you desire.
Researching the lower tier knowledge in an affinity does not convey any special benefits or penalties. But later, if you want to progress even more, you have to specialise in an affinity, losing access to the higher tiers research and/or suffering penalties in its polar opposite.
If you seek to master a specific affinity, you suffer additional penalties in its polar opposite, and cannot get access to the highest tier stuff in all other affinities.
Wait, what? What do you mean with penalties and losing access?
Let us pretend there are five tiers of skills and spell components in each affinity.
Now, you can do ritual and use anomolies and go crazy as you like, while researching anything in any tier 1 to tier 3, no questions asked, no penalties.
BUT, once you want to research tier 4 of Fire, you will not be able to research anything in tier 4 or 5 of Water, nor use any spells that use spell components from tier 4 or 5 of Water.
And when you research something from tier 5 of Fire, you lose access to all other tier 5 stuff of all the other affinities. (I.e. you master Fire and get the best Fire spell components and Fire skills, but you cannot master another affinity)
Note: There can be more or less than 5 tiers, that is just an example.
But what if I mess up and pick the wrong affinity?
Easy, allow an easy way for the player to 'forget' skills and research of tier 4 or 5 for an affinity.
Then the player can research into a new affinity, essentially changing their choice of 'mastery'.
And while the unlearning is free and quick, the relearning of something new is not. (I.e. material, effort and time cost of rituals and research).
Also, you obviously cannot use things you haven't researched. So if you forgot that Tier 5 Fire mastery, you can no longer use your mega-inferno-ball-of-death.
Wait... what?
In short, anomolies spawn as AM world gen.
Players make insights using rituals. Rituals may cost resources.
Insights are items. Insights have tiers (based on the ritual used to create it). Insights have no affinity.
Players go exploring to find anomolies.
Upon finding an anomoly (of the affinity you want, and that can accept that tier of insight), you interact with it, use your insights, and gain revelations. Revelations are items.
Players open their research/skill tree and use revelations to advance the progress on a research item/skill of the same affinity and tier as the revelation.
Note on Skills and creating spells
Some research items unlock the spell components used to create a spell with.
Other research items are skills and simply give passive boosts (or activated abilities) relating to being a mage.
I envision that you will be able to easily pick the strength of an effect when you make a spell.
(I.e. the effect is Fire Damage, you pick if you want it to do 3 or 50 fire damage).
The trick is that upping the strength of an effect would increase the mana cost, and as an spell passes a certain mana cost, it requires that you have unlocked the appropriate tier in all the affinities that are used within the spell.
That way, a Fire master can still cast really weak water spells, but not strong ones.
Just like a novice can steal a 50 damage fireball spell, but then not use it until the novice gains enough skill.
Note on larger role of affinities
I'd make the passive boosts and activated abilities be as described above, as part of skills in that affinity skill tree.
Then you can have multiple boosts (perhaps even penalties), that the player can pick if they want them, and you can easily make the more powerful boosts exclusive to higher tiers.
Note on gaining magic levels
Perhaps tie this in with the above idea?
Make a 'universal' affinity skill tree, that does not conflict with any others, and can use any affinity revelation for progressing.
This skill tree is how you gain skills that increase your max mana, mana regeneration rate, magic resistence, etc.
Other skill trees can contains skills with similar boosts (like mega fire resistance springs to mind for a Fire affinity master), but the idea is that someone who has fully invested in the universal skill tree have enough max mana and regeneration to do what is needed.
It's the flying cutlery that stresses me out.
Earth would make you fall harder.
Water would make you take extra damage from lava.
Fire would make you drown quicker and maybe be slower in the water.
Air would make you mine slightly slower.
I'm not sure the opposing elements of the other so..
Also, I don't like the idea of a mana rift being the only way to create a nexus.
Actually, I do! I think you should have a mana rift at first but then you could open your own!
It's just that if I do away with items -> essence >- items, the normal nexus needs a new way to function.
As much as I love Ars, I do acknowledge a few of its pitfalls. Below are my concerns and my suggestional solutions to them. I find Ars to be far more immersive than Thaumcraft personally, and I love the path you've taken with spells instead of being so tech-heavy. This mod is certainly as close to home in terms of being everything I've wanted in a magic mod. Below are my opinions on what I think would allow it to improve. Take from them what you believe will best aid the mod.
Balance
Balance has been one of my primary concerns with Ars since I first saw my witnessing of the Fabricator. While I adore the mod, all it stands for, and additionally acknowledge your comment in that you do not want to have to force Ars to play well with other mods, I would like there to be a little more balance.
Of course, the primary balance-breaker is the fabricator. The second is Flight. Currently, Flight becomes completely self-sustaining at about level 17. Other mods require all kinds of effort to achieve flight and its types. If you make an Ars 2, please make it be a worthy feat to obtain the powerful spell. I also think an additional spell type of Activate Buff should be added. It gives you a constant buff, but drains your mana (much like bound weapons do). Flight would play better there instead of constant recasts. Just have it drain you to 0 if you forget to turn it off. It can cut off automatically if you hit 0.
As for the Fabricator, I'd prefer it force the player to meet them halfway. Have a recipe to build a magic matter-bundle, and have the fabricator also require that so it isn't poofing items out of nowhere, it instead would simply be using that amount of matter to assemble it. That should also help balance it further.
Power System
As for machines: If you plan to make magic machines, I'm not sure about a separate mod. I like the machines, and while I do see them as separate (currently), I'd like them to merge more instead of separating further. Require mana to charge up batteries or power certain machines. Give Channel Essence a greater use. Incorporate portable mana cells to fill up in a machine (that you dumped mana into the tank) and have them replace mana potions. What I'd rather see is to use the Nexii as power converters instead of power generators. Have other machines pull power from light, heat, and even a pad that aborbs player's mana on redstone signal.
Nexi can then absorb the mana, and if given certain items, would convert the mana into a specific element's essence. This essence could be stored in chests and used for research, or casting materials. It could also be used by other machines. That way, casters can no longer cast unless they had regents.
Personally, I'd like to see more machines such as Enchantment via Mana Machines that take in raw mana, not Processed into an essence via nexus that will enchant for you. A Rune-Crafting machine to protect yourself/buff yourself would be really nice to have various runes and effects lying around the house that may not destroy on first use. Just have it draw power from a source or give it a specific amount of power and destroy itself if it hits zero. That makes portable runes and permanent ones.
Spell Research
I am in agreement with earlier comments about randomized spell exploration. If you will have puzzles to solve which require magic, I'd like a way to purposely go after those specific spells. Something I think would be more balanced and just cool in general is a "spell-learning" curve to spells. Let's say you combined projectile with fire to make a projectile-fire spell. The spell itself would be stored as that type to the player with the option to rename it, but they would have to start casting it. And depending on affinity, some spells would take longer than others to 'learn'. If you died and lost the spell, the fire+projectile combination would be stored as learned.
As you were in the 'learning' phase of the spell, you would cast it repeatedly, but it would have a chance of backfiring on you. Let's say you were learning Fireball, it may explode in your face a lot at first, and you would gradually have less 'instances' learn it to mastery to where you would no longer have issues and it would cast without issue. If you had a fire affinity, water spells would take longer and vice versa. Things like blink may teleport you to random places and something as powerful as Ender Intervention may kill you a few times to get right. This would put even more focus on casting and affinity-gain additionally.
You could take the spell's attributes (for fireball, Explosion/Destruction + Fire), and use that to calculate what the backfire effect would be (Explosion at your location and fire).
Flight may randomly cut out in the middle to make you fall to your death if you decide to get a little too risky while learning.
As for figuring out spells, I like where you are going with it in the OP. Take certain items and give them attributes. For instance, a netherack could have the attribute of Fire and Nether. Nether + Ender = Nether Intervention. To research, you may have to put in a lot of netherack and ender pearls to finally get the spell, however as you may get a "Failed Spell". Harder spells may fail more often and affinity could additionally help.
At research table, you could pick which attribute of the item you want to use.
Thoughts:
Fire Charge : Projectile, Fire, Destruction
Ghast Tear: Destruction, Life, Air
Lava Bucket: Fire, Target
Potion (Type affects secondary type): Self Buff
Feather: Air
Dirt: Earth, Destruction, Area Effect
Ender Pearl: Ender, Distance Targetting
You get the idea.
The spell combination would have a few features. You'd have an Init effect (Target, Self Target, Target Other, Projectile, Area of Effect around Caster) that would be how spell placement would be handled. You'd then have a Land Effect that is what would happen once area targetted (Init: Projectile Land: Area Well) so if you fired a Projectile Well Fire Effect, it would shoot a fire projectile, land, and create an AoE fire area around the area. Multiple effects could be added to the Effects (the third research entry slot).
Yes, but honestly the randomness is part of what makes Ars Magica so fun. You have to deal with and use what you find. If you have a skill tree system, you will dramatically change that, as with skill trees the player will inevitably focus on making himself as overpowered as possible. Just look at a game like World of Warcraft or any other mmorpg, the devs practically rebalance the skill trees every patch. I'm not exactly sure what you want the players to be able to aim for, but if its magic of a certain aspect, why not just change the current system so that you can somewhat aim for that, but still have some randomness for balance. For example, you could replace the usual chests with something like “Arcane Stashes,” which would need to be unlocked with a certain crafted elemental key. Any key can be used on any stash, but once the key is used, loot of a certain type is generated for the player to access.
So then every spell would be a combination of components, rather then a spell in its own right? I don’t really like this idea, some of the most fun and interesting spells are those which are designed with the intent of a certain use, while the combo spells are a nice feature, but in a lot of cases are buggy, don’t work as one would expect, and feel generally gimmicky and cheaty, as if you are trying to hack the game to your advantage.
I do agree that progression doesn’t exactly feel right in Ars Magica though. So much of what you need to do to progress boils down to exploration in the overworld, it doesn’t really mesh with vanilla progression. For example, sure there should be some Ars rewards for overworld exploration, but spread out some of that content to be unlocked with nether exploration, the defeat of the wither, and the defeat of the ender dragon.
Yes, definitely, it would be necessary for balance, but if you do this, there shouldn't any sort of “general arcane” safe zone where you are a little good at everything with no ill effects, not progressing into an affinity should have the effect of being horrible at everything (magic wise).
I completely agree with this, the idea of a universal resource turning into anything was never a good one, even when it was as limited as it was with essence.
We would agree life and ender are kinda opposites, right? So I think it kinda sounds cool that if you had high ender affinity, you could teleport, have night vision, and be resistant to poison, BUT, hunger wouldn't regenerate HP over time, and you would occasionally take random damage. Or it could be the other way around, if you had high life affinity, you would have higher max hp, heal a lot quicker over time, but get blindness in the dark and any mob has a chance of poisoning you when it hits you. Of course, the negatives could be counter-acted with spells, but it's just a neat little idea.
The way I would work this is to have a craftable book akin to the spellbook which functions as the research journal. The purpose of this is to prevent research notes from jamming up inventory space (similar to how spell recipes can be learnt to clear up inventory space). Research can be aimed at "known" combinations of effects (functionally, pre-made, named spells) or towards specific elements (to improve affinities or specific aspects, ie. projectile).
With regards to affinities, don't get rid of magma! Or if you do, please find something else to fit into that role. It is really cool to have the cardinal elements, and their accents. I don't have a real solution off the top of my head for what would make Magma a useful affinity, but the symmetry that is currently in place is rather cool.
How I would approach affinities, is to juxtapose them. So, Fire opposes water, plant opposes lightning, etc. Have it be possible to gain affinities in any of these interchangeably, but have the casting of a spell that would increase fire affinity also decrease water affinity. Consequences for poor affinities could be cooldown increase or mana cost increase, or damage reduction. This encourages people to either specialize or seek a balance in their spell tree.
Progression wise, having it be based off of exploring, research, and spell use would be awesome. Giving people the option to progress via experience level (perhaps through potion construction of some sort? A potion of affinity could be [craftable item that requires xp] + base potion (as in, anything but awkward potion; there needs to be things that aren't made from awkward potions).
And lastly, please don't scrape the power system! It's really cool! Magic Fabricator could be balanced by increasing the costs a bit, and rather than the current explosion issue (which seems to become an issue after making 8 of anything) have the essence cost at a rate over time, and decrease at a rate over time. Currently the most broken thing I have been able to do with it is create gold or lapis, but it isn't cheap to do so. I would also require them to have either neutral or dark energy, to prevent a light nexus from powering it and making materials creation absolutely free.
- First let me echo several other posters who beat me to saying, please don't implement research-based spell development. This would be far too similar to Thaumcraft. Both AM and TC are great mods in their own right but it's their differences that make them wonderful.
- Please also leave the WorldGen more or less as is. AM has some really beautifully designed mage towers and it would be a sadness to lose them. They also make handy bases early in the game once you've lit the interior and gotten rid of the fool pressure plates on the outside of the doors.
- Keep magma essence or replace it with something to give fire a complementary essence like air earth and water have.
- Have you considered Nether Essences and Affinities?
- I agree that progression is a problem, especially the random aspect of it. You could replace it with the existing spell creation system and a few modifications:
-- Three tiers of spell creation: Lesser Vortex, Vortex and Greater Vortex.
-- The Lesser Vortex is relatively inexpensive (purified vinteum?) and relatively tame (unless you try something foolish, like combining opposing affinities or combining 11 different spells). Hard to destabilize and not very devastating effects if you do. It produces pretty basic spells that can only be cast at diminished level and can't combine many effects.
-- Vortex requires a pricier, rarer reagent (enriched vinteum?) and is less stable but lets you combine more effects and generates spells that can be cast at Normal level.
-- Greater Vortex would be the most costly and least stable but the most powerful, most flexible in terms of combining multiple effects and how you get spells up to Augmented casting. It'd take some pretty rare reagent(s) and would be very touchy and unpleasant if it got out of control.
-- So now you need something to feed the vortex for spell creation. Scattered around the landscape are your mage towers and libraries with a selection of really basic spells. These provide the basic spell types. These go into the vortex followed by the desired essences and out comes the desired spell. Maybe. Maybe you get a close cousin that uses the same type and essences. Too much predictability is dull.
So let's say that VycTim the Apprentice wants the "Dig" spell. Into a Lesser Vortex goes good old "Sense Energy", which gives it the "Block Target" type followed by an Earth essence. Vyc shuts down the vortex and, much to his surprise, finds that he has a diminished version of Petrification, a different block-targeting earth spell.
-- Perhaps a spell or item that helps you find mage towers and libraries? A crystal that glows blue for colder and red for warmer? If their location was based off the seed then they wouldn't have to be pre-generated for the detector to point the right way. Same for the ArchMage tower, though I'd be in favor of disposing of this.
- Advancement by spell-casting and spell-creation sounds like a great idea. The more you use your arcane muscles the stronger they get. You could do away with levels altogether and just increase mana.
- Affinities should follow the same pattern. Casting a lot of fire-bolt spells should make you better at fire spells as well as casting in general.
- Please balance out essence creation. Water essence can be made using nothing more than water bottles whereas air essence requires ghast tears. Perhaps tiered essences? Lesser essences made from more common items (coal, feather, dirt, water bottles) and greater essences from rarer, pricier objects (blaze rods, ghast tears, obsidian, lapis lazuli ore).
I'm not too sure about spell creation and stuff right now, I may think of something later.
Profile pic by Cheshirette c:
That's a very nice signature you've got there. Shame if something were to happen to it. Tsss.
I personally love your rune system. When you play minecraft with 10+ mods, accessability of recipe components is your first line of balance. I've accidentally stopped using Thaumcraft in the last few maps I've played, no matter how much I like the mod in theory, because I don't start it till midgame. The basic spells of Ars Magica make all the difference at the beginning of the game: dig, growth, fire bolt, arcane bolt... I don't have to go out of my way to make this mod useful.
As a general rule of thumb, I like that spell recipes must be discovered by the player. However, giving players access to basic spells from a few schools of affinity means that they can select their affinities ingame instead of on the wiki. Letting players construct (in addition to being able to find) atleast one basic spell from each affinity lowers your mod's barrier to entry.
Spellcraft
Your plans for custom spell construction are awesome. It reminds me of the Diablo 3 ability rune system in that you get to make a spell exactly what you need it to be. But Summon Battle Chicken is not just a sum of spell descriptions. Consider some unique uncraftable spells that can be imbued with affinity through ritual. Or take the 'knowledge fragment' route and make a basic ingredient in dungeon chests that fuels advanced spell creation back at base.
Affinity
I think you will run into balance problems giving players permenant affinity bonuses that would probably feel invasive to gameplay as a whole. Consider letting each spell have a chance of temporarily altering the caster, for better or worse, based on the spell's affinities interracting with the affinities of the caster. A player with a lightning affinity might more frequently experience a boost in speed after casting a spell with a lightning affinity, or temporarily decrease the chance of a fraction of the lightning arcing back while casting the same spell.
Magic Level
Try letting players allocate magic levels at the arcane empowerment table to the affinities of their choice (with negative levels bestowed upon the other half of an elementally opposing pair of affinities)
A magic level 15 player might have invested 15 levels in fire affinity and cast fire spells like they're level 30 and cast water spells like they're level 0.
Maybe a player with many levels of water affinity is more likely to set the floor around them on fire while casting firebolt. Whereas, a mage with high arcane affinity frequently begins to take less damage for a short time as they channel arcane beam. These affinity effects could stack and behave much like potion effects.
I guess I'm suggesting a spellpower system in which mana cost, spell effect, and affinity effect are influecenced by player affinities and spell affinities, while player level determines the manapool, spell access, and a base spell level.
and I also don't quite understand how the new future energy system will work.
You could have multiple ways to learn new spells. There's the going out in nature and learning it from plants and whatnot. This would be the light way, which would be difficult to do, since you'd have to hunt for things manually. Then, there'd be the lab research. This would be a bit faster, but be able to be automated slightly, so you'd learn quicker. This would be neutral. Then, there'd be the imprison test subjects method that would be incredibly fast at learning new spells and the spells would be powerful, but at the cost of personal deficit. This deficit would apply things like burning in the sun or constant hunger.
This also makes me think that instead of a dark nexus, a "Channel other's essence" spell would be awesome. Less automated than the dark nexus, so you can get more power per mob, but it seems a lot darker when you have to cast the spell on the target yourself.
What do you think?
I like the idea of learning spells through seeing them. This opens up a lot of possibilities. Getting hit by arcane bolts enough will teach you how to cast it yourself. Also, to go along with my dark experiments theme, there could be a mind read spell that causes one damage every x amount of ticks and has a percent chance to learn a spell the target knows. Maybe each spell has a certain amount of research points to learn, so it's not so easy to learn them all quickly
Each Essence chalk has 10 essences. You can mix essences to achieve multiply effects, but some may negate each other alongside diminished effects.
Effects will be applied on spell block/entity hit (or self if its selfcast)
If the spell cast affinity matches magical circle essence, the effect will be doubled.
Effects of each essence on spells :
Fire : set the target on fire for 1-10 seconds, place fire on where the spell hits, smelt blocks (if its dig spell).
water : drown the target if on water [drains 1-10 air bubbles] or spawn a water block on its head.
air : levitate entities for 10-100 blocks in an area of 1x1 - 10x10.
earth : blinds the target for 8-80 seconds, if its a block it will try to dig, only blocks with hardness lower than 1-10 and blast resistance below than 2-20 can be dug.
ice : freezes the target for 4-40 seconds, freezes water in an area of 1x1 - 10x10 if a block is hit.
life : healing for 1/2 - 5 heart or damage if undead.
ender : teleport the target above/below 2-20 blocks.
lightning : give off a lightning bolt on all entities (players,neutral and hostile mobs) in an area of 1x1 - 10x10
arcane : reduce mana usage of the spell by 2-20%
plant : grows roots below the target, locking it for 2-20 seconds, makes plants grow (bonemeal) in an area of 1x1 - 10x10 if a block is hit.
Pure : Boost the spell effects by 10-100% and reduces mana cost by 7-70%