duvessa wrote:Etheric cage is even more garbage than majin-bo, to the point of being irrelevant to its target audience (spellcasting characters) even when it does generate
Success rates are definitely comparable to Archmagi/enhancers. Both have the same tactical effect in the end: your conjuration spells do more damage/turn, your summoning spells summon more/better things/turn, your hexes apply more often, etc.
The main difference is that because the spell power returns for training skills are godawful, in practice a success rate boost tends to mean that you train spell skills less, whereas Archmagi does not. This isn't an interesting difference (it doesn't introduce any real decisions) and should be looked at as yet another unfortunate artifact of a badly scaling skill system, rather than a way to save a redundant unrand.
I am surprised that the commit message doesn't touch on what, to me, is the biggest reason to remove the hat: it's the only instance of negative wizardry and it would be great to get rid of negative wizardry since negative wizardry is an unnecessary feature.
I'll agree that MP recovery/capacity isn't comparable to archmagi, but only because archmagi is useful everywhere, and MP recovery/capacity is only a meaningful restriction before Lair and in ziggurats.
severen wrote:Charms/trans/hexes etc can only get one enhancer via the chest or possibly the Majn-bo staff.
Why do you need enhancers for these schools?
But let's suppose all this stuff you're writing is correct and the rationale for removing the item was stupid.
You still haven't justified why the item should exist in the first place. If the item doesn't have a compelling reason to be in the game in spite of the complexity it introduces, then it should be removed anyway.
I actually don't care if they remove the hat I was simply stating the justification is extremely poor. They can choose to remove 20 unrandarts that i have absolutely no use for and don't care about and say its because they smell like poo and I would still say that I don't see how they can have a smell when they are computer code in a computer game and that the thinking behind these actions was probably flawed and possibly involved LSD. Unless this game has a smellovision feature I don't know about in which case I would be wrong.
My point is that not that an AM hat is necessary, rather that lumping all the artifacts that help spellcasting into one box is so simplistic as to be actually harmful. I have literally never found the Hat of the High council. Fine remove it all my games are the same.
Enhancers for Hexes do help since the power goes against MR. For charms yes its not a big deal(mostly), for transmutations it matters for a various things but not all (statue form AC, petrify same as hexes, etc), for translocation it often does not matter but for lesser beckoning it determines range.
As a general design principle if a spell has spellpower players should consider an enhancer for its school as desirable. If you have spells that have spellpower in a school but no one cares about enhancers for that school, then you have almost certainly failed to design the spell to have a meaninful effect that scales with spellpower. In practice this does not always turn out (SP is very minor for many charms for example). I would say the spellpower of the spell confuse is fairly important and therefore a Hexes enhancer is important. If an entire schools is designed with the idea that enhancers are not a thing for it, then it would probably be best to design all spells in that school with an upper limit of 150 for spellpower and not 200. Right now as it stands getting discord to 200 spellpower is quite rare as it basically requires two archmagi pieces (barring extreme cases like Ds Augmentation). Why is it so hard to get discord to 200 but so much easier to get glaciate/fire storm to 200?
Now from a practical standpoint it could be the case that going from 150 SP in Discord to 200 means very little because anything that has the ability to affect would rarely make a MR save against it at 150. Does this mean that enhancers shouldn't exist for Hexes, who most certainly very much want spell power in the early game? Or does it mean that the Spellpower max of 200 on an enhancer-less school makes very little sense, given that spellpower 200 is pretty clearly not intended to be achieved without enhancers?
Consider for a moment that Controlled Blink was changed to have the same range based on spellpower that lesser beckoning currently has. Would it matter whether there was a Translocation enhancer? Of course it would. Is it gonna matter for winning the majority of 3 rune games? No probably not. But consider that most people would never get to 200SP for max range cblink. Perhaps it would be wise to have the max range occur at 150?
Why create cases that are basically not meant to happen? As it stands right now with the way the spellpower equation works and the normal practical limits on Int for characters, having any spell in the no-enhancer schools that has a spellpower cap past 150 is essentially pointless. For the most part this is not a serious practical issue in the game, but clearly something not lining up right.
Nor am I arguing that max spellpower is necessary. Almost no one gets max spellpower, the stepdowns after 150 are pretty huge. But there is a max spellpower it exists as part of the game and its possible to get there. I have a character that can get max spellpower glaiciate right now that can do it without archmagi. But that character can't max spell power lesser beckoning with using hat of the high council and majin-bo since he is an Op and can't wear a body slot AM. Why is this? Seems odd to have less beckoning go out to SP 200 and for all practical purposes require two enhancers to get to SP yet have no enhancers. Things don't add up. Do I need lesser bekconing at SP 200? No I have 15 runes and did 27 levels of a zig on that character with lesser beckoning at 100-ish SP.
The justification of the commit basically says they are all roughly the same which is objectively wrong. Without hat of the high council an Op can never get max spell power on lesser beckoning. And there is no effect in the game that can be considered equivalent to adding range onto this effect. When you remove this you make this admittedly almost pointless corner case literally impossible without getting about mmm I think 80 int and having the majin-bo. But an Op can easily get the same effects as ether cage. They can also get a ton of wizardry since that is on rings.
I can see an argument with, for example hexes, where going from 50% to 66% sucess rate is very similar more MP you cast less time for one so its like having more MP (ignoring wasted time for simplicities sake). A similarargument might be made for success rate or damage (again ignoring the extra time issue). But in the lesser beckoning (this is true for flame tongue as well but the spell power is so low it doesn't matter also its fire so it has tons of enhancer options) case above this argument cannot be made. Either they are in range or they are not. No other spellcasting buff can be considered similar in effect.
When you remove the hat of the high council you remove certain game mechanical scenarios from being achievable therefore the justification of the commit is objectively proven to be totally false. These scenarios may not really be that important, but that does not change the fact that the thinking behind this is flawed.
A broader point can be made that the real issues is spellpower's formula and the way the various enhancers are itemized. That is fine with me I have no problem with that line of thing. If spellpower and enhancer itemization worked differently then the commit justification could actually have very well been fine. But it doesn't. One way to look at this is to flip it around and say that those things need to change so that whoever does the itemization changes can actually analyze the effects without going insane.
I am NOT arguing there should be enhancer rings for every school. Merely that stating that because of the item current setup vs spellpower caps/effects there are kludgy issues that are occuring. Personally I think because AM is actually really hard for a dev to cost out on an unrandart. Its value is so highly variable and contextual due to the current mish mash of SP caps and species slots mis-matched enhancers availability that its complete guess work. I am not surprised at all that a dev can easily get bitten in the ass by this.
Monday, 5th December 2016, 19:40 
