Power indication for spells.


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Spider Stomper

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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 14:18

Power indication for spells.

I suggest new system of power indication for spells. I think the exponential one is too foggy and barely usable without additional information about it. It uses the same symbols, but #### don't equals ##+##, which makes the whole system crippled and comparison of several spells very troublesome.
New system may be extended to 20 dots and use # as 10 points markers.
So # would mean 1-10, ## mean 11-20, #### mean 39-40 and so on.
I'm sure it would be more comfortable.
What do you think?

Vestibule Violator

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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 16:29

Re: Power indication for spells.

I have made the same suggestion many times, but have stopped making it because I realized a linear power bar has problems of its own. Same as with spell failure, where the difference between 0% and 5% failure is much more important than the difference between 95% and 100% failure, the difference between 10 and 20 power is much more important than the one between 140 and 150. The only way to adequately show this on a linear scale is by making it very fine, i.e. displaying the actual spellpower number. This is not desired for some reasons that I currently cant remember. Generally spell power is much less important than spell success, so IMO it's not a huge deal. I'm still filled with latent happiness from the removal of the bullshit spell success words, so I'm content for now. :)

One reason to keep the shitty bar: by making the spellpower bar super weird people are encouraged to not give a shit about the spellpower bar, which is better than caring too much about it.

Also the bar has to fit into a tiny console, so wasting 20 characters of width for it is probably just not possible. If you want it to be finer, simply displaying the number is the way to go.

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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 16:40

Re: Power indication for spells.

Galefury wrote:This is not desired for some reasons that I currently cant remember.


IIRC the devs want to avoid cramming numbers at the player unless they have obvious meanings (like percentages) or when every number makes a difference (like AC or stats).
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Barkeep

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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 16:41

Re: Power indication for spells.

The "range" field on the spell info page could probably go away, actually, since it doesn't apply to many spells, can't generally be changed, and is revealed every time you cast the spell anyhow.

But I'm also not sure that making spell power show on a linear scale would be super helpful.
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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 16:54

Re: Power indication for spells.

Actually, I think "range" is fine. Memorising a spell is an action that cannot be undone without a consumable, and therefore it could be important for the decisions of unspoiled players ("which spell do I want? oh, this one has a longer range").
In addition, it varies with spellpower sometimes.

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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 17:04

Re: Power indication for spells.

The current system works well enough, largely because knowing your actual spellpower is mostly meaningless unless you also know several other numbers you have to code-dive to get (and numbers you do not at all need to play the game well). The most important thing the power bar does is show you when you've reached the power cap of less-than-200-cap spells.

Other than that all you really need to know about spellpower is "more power = more damage"; the current system shows you that well enough.

Even if the power meter gave you exact spellpower numbers it would still not be useful for comparing one spell to another ... you need to do that through experience (or source-diving if you really want).
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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 17:28

Re: Power indication for spells.

njvack wrote:But I'm also not sure that making spell power show on a linear scale would be super helpful.

It kinda helpful because it not mislead you. Take for example Flame Tongue with ###### and Fireball #########. This bars suggests that fireball is 50% stronger. But in fact it's 300% or so.

Galefury wrote:If you want it to be finer, simply displaying the number is the way to go.

I think it would be perfect. But I figured that if there is no number till now, there must be some reason for it.

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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 17:33

Re: Power indication for spells.

white_noise wrote:
njvack wrote:But I'm also not sure that making spell power show on a linear scale would be super helpful.

It kinda helpful because it not mislead you. Take for example Flame Tongue with ###### and Fireball #########. This bars suggests that fireball is 50% stronger. But in fact it's 300% or so.

Surely a bit of common sense makes it pretty easy to conclude that spell power isn't comparable between spells.
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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 17:36

Re: Power indication for spells.

Talking about range, what about coloring the different spellpower bars, and coloring the appropriate range at that spellpower the equal color?
For an example:

  • Magic Spell of Destruction
  • Power: ##########
  • Range: #######

This way the bars would be much more readable, and it'd be more informative too. (I mean there's a reason they aren't all monotone, isn't there?!)
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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 17:45

Re: Power indication for spells.

MarvinPA wrote:Surely a bit of common sense makes it pretty easy to conclude that spell power isn't comparable between spells.

Yeah, but it should be perfectly comparable. Otherwise no need making different bars. Or any bars at all. Capped spells can just turn yellow like a skills.
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Barkeep

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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 17:58

Re: Power indication for spells.

It shouldn't. At power X, Fire Storm is going to do a boatload more damage than Throw Flame.

Just because you can get 200 power with a spell, that doesn't mean it'll do a boatload of damage.

The current display works for "am I pretty close to as good as I can get with this spell?" and doing something fundamentally better than that would mean reworking the spell power mechanic in general, I think. And that's just not worth doing -- what we have now is a little odd at times, but generally works well.
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Tomb Titivator

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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 18:18

Re: Power indication for spells.

I would like a percentage system like with spell failure. Just show 45% of max power or whatever.

I find the current system completely useless and had to use wizard mode to figure out how to get up my skills.

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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 19:01

Re: Power indication for spells.

snow wrote:I would like a percentage system like with spell failure. Just show 45% of max power or whatever.

I find the current system completely useless and had to use wizard mode to figure out how to get up my skills.

[Emphasis mine.]

And this is why your input is not taken very seriously, generally speaking.

Some context for everyone else:
1. Percentages for spell success make sense, because it is clear what 75% success means.
2. "completely useless" -- that joke is on you
3. If you have to use wizard mode to figure out how to get your skills up, you're doing it wrong.
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Spider Stomper

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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 19:46

Re: Power indication for spells.

njvack wrote:It shouldn't. At power X, Fire Storm is going to do a boatload more damage than Throw Flame.

Just because you can get 200 power with a spell, that doesn't mean it'll do a boatload of damage.

Really? Then it makes no sence at all. It's like saying "this spell's power is 5 stars, and this one is 7 green parrots. Good luck."
Perhaps it should show dmg as well (or instead of) as power.

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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 20:01

Re: Power indication for spells.

white_noise wrote:Really? Then it makes no sence at all. It's like saying "this spell's power is 5 stars, and this one is 7 green parrots. Good luck."
Perhaps it should show dmg as well (or instead of) as power.


Well I don't know but it seems someone is contradicting oneself here.
First you say you want percentages. This obviously means 100% flame tongue is clearly different from 100% fireball.
Then you say spellpower should be comparable spell with spell.

I say that two spells of the same level and the same school, with the same range and no after effects (something I think devs would not want in the game) should be comparable. Other comparison should take in account these differences. I don't think a fire attack spell should be the same power as an air spell, especially because probably one would be longer range and the other more difficult to resist. I think we definitely want to compare apple to oranges here.
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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 20:27

Re: Power indication for spells.

palin wrote:Well I don't know but it seems someone is contradicting oneself here.
First you say you want percentages. This obviously means 100% flame tongue is clearly different from 100% fireball.
Then you say spellpower should be comparable spell with spell.

Where do I say that I want percentages?
The whole thread is about comparability.
I didn't know what equal power means different damage, though.
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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 21:42

Re: Power indication for spells.

white_noise wrote:Really? Then it makes no sence at all. It's like saying "this spell's power is 5 stars, and this one is 7 green parrots. Good luck."
Perhaps it should show dmg as well (or instead of) as power.

As has been explained to you several times, the power bar isn't meant to be used to compare spells but to show if a specific spell can be improved by training skills or using an enhancer. And given this purpose, the logarithmic scale works well.
Comparing spells cannot be done with numbers, or you need some kind of chart. They have different range and accuracy, some have an area of effect, some do damage over time, some are resistible, others aren't. Putting a damage bar wouldn't really help. You just have to experiment.
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Post Monday, 17th September 2012, 23:08

Re: Power indication for spells.

galehar wrote:As has been explained to you several times, the power bar isn't meant to be used to compare spells but to show if a specific spell can be improved by training skills or using an enhancer. And given this purpose, the logarithmic scale works well..


Unless you're at the final #, in which case who knows if raising a skill or using an enhancer will help you, or if you've hit the spell cap.

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Post Tuesday, 18th September 2012, 00:46

Re: Power indication for spells.

If you've maxed out the bar, all you need to know is the two magic numbers that tell you how much int you need when you want max power at max skills with two or three enhancers.

Of course I don't know them because they don't matter.
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Post Tuesday, 18th September 2012, 03:41

Re: Power indication for spells.

Wizard mode tells you the power of your spells and that allows you to calculate the damage.

This information can be vital especially very early in the game... for example when you're playing an SpWz. Should you get 3 or 5 conjurations? 5 puts magic dart at max power but the damage output isn't noticeably different from just 3... which you could determine by trial and error or by using wizard mode. You can't determine this from the bar though unless you already know all the calculations used to display the bar (and therefore don't need it to begin with).

By testing out different things in wizard mode you can figure out how to optimally get up your skills and this can make the early game a LOT easier... it's pretty much the difference between steamrolling everything and struggling from floor to floor.
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Post Tuesday, 18th September 2012, 07:53

Re: Power indication for spells.

galehar wrote:As has been explained to you several times, the power bar isn't meant to be used to compare spells but to show if a specific spell can be improved by training skills or using an enhancer. And given this purpose, the logarithmic scale works well.

Sorry, I don't buy it. You don't put different numbers of # on different spells and don't label it as "power" if you don't want them to be compared by this values. If spells meant to be compared, the indication can be better. But if spells don't meant to be compared, the indication is plain wrong. It messes with your head and don't gives out any usefull information except capping. "Progress toward the cap" and "actual spell power" is pretty different things. And indicator shows the power. In crazy inhumane way, but it shows it. I wonder why, if it don't matter?


Comparing spells cannot be done with numbers, or you need some kind of chart. They have different range and accuracy, some have an area of effect, some do damage over time, some are resistible, others aren't. Putting a damage bar wouldn't really help. You just have to experiment.

It's a nice chart. I would love to see this "average damage" number in game when I point cursor loaded with spell on target. And at least a hint of some basic damage (based on your char's actual status and before any target's resistances) in spell description before I learn it.
I don't get all the conspiracy with numbers. I think in games like this everything should be perfectly clear. So when you build your character you know exactly why you pick this and that. Not like "let's try this and see what happens". Hardcorish nature of the game makes experiments deadly.

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Post Tuesday, 18th September 2012, 07:56

Re: Power indication for spells.

[quote="white_noise"]Where do I say that I want percentages?/quote]

Linear bars are a visual representation of percentages, unless your indication about using 20 dots really means "I wish to use 20 'slots' and use hashes for test and dots for units, but spells never reach the end of the bar unless I'm looking at firestorm". In this case is just wasting screen estate.
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Post Tuesday, 18th September 2012, 08:00

Re: Power indication for spells.

white_noise wrote:Sorry, I don't buy it. You don't put different numbers of # on different spells and don't label it as "power" if you don't want them to be compared by this values.


Ok, now I think I know. You don't really understand that spell power is not an absolute number. It's relative to the spell. And some spells have more spell power "range", so they can increase more than other spells.
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Post Tuesday, 18th September 2012, 08:15

Re: Power indication for spells.

palin wrote:
white_noise wrote:Where do I say that I want percentages?/quote]

Linear bars are a visual representation of percentages, unless your indication about using 20 dots really means "I wish to use 20 'slots' and use hashes for test and dots for units, but spells never reach the end of the bar unless I'm looking at firestorm". In this case is just wasting screen estate.

No. Linear bars are representation of power, that can be varied from 1 to 200 as far as I know.

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Post Tuesday, 18th September 2012, 11:32

Re: Power indication for spells.

white_noise wrote:I don't get all the conspiracy with numbers. I think in games like this everything should be perfectly clear. So when you build your character you know exactly why you pick this and that. Not like "let's try this and see what happens". Hardcorish nature of the game makes experiments deadly.

The tension between uncertainty and the cost of experimenting to remove that uncertainty are one of the main features of roguelikes. Even if you have perfect information about everything that your character has seen, and know every item and enemy he might see in the future, and know everything about the game mechanics, you still wont know what is around that next corner. If you have an enemy before you and know all the damage ranges and probabilities and everything, the outcome of the fight is still random. You might win easily, or take a lot of damage, or even die. You wont know until you fight it. And how to deal with that is the thrill of playing roguelikes.

In a game that is built on uncertainty and randomness, more information just leads to cognitive overload at some point. Crawl is designed so you don't need perfect information about everything to win, and even to play very well. Giving people information means they will want to use it, and depending on the player this will either lead to boredom, or to hunger for even more information. It's really a lose-lose situation. Of course information helps, but people don't even read the manual. Waving numbers in the face of people who don't understand them isn't going to accomplish anything.


That being said, I can see how displaying the same bar for every spell and labeling it "power" is misleading. I'm sure there is something about this in the manual, which everyone really should read because it is very useful, so I'm not too bothered by it. But if someone came up with a better label for that column that would be nice.

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Post Tuesday, 18th September 2012, 12:14

Re: Power indication for spells.

Galefury wrote:That being said, I can see how displaying the same bar for every spell and labeling it "power" is misleading. I'm sure there is something about this in the manual, which everyone really should read because it is very useful, so I'm not too bothered by it. But if someone came up with a better label for that column that would be nice.


I don't know if this apply only to myself, but to me, spell power is a very definite thing. It's a meter by which you judge how well you cast the spell. It's not the spell efficiency in combat...
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Post Tuesday, 18th September 2012, 12:57

Re: Power indication for spells.

A word that might more precisely describe what the bar actually represents is efficacy.
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Post Wednesday, 19th September 2012, 18:21

Re: Power indication for spells.

I think the general advice that most people give is to completely ignore spell power and just worry about spell success. If you have decent spell success then you have decent spell power. I mean yeah spell power is useful but unless you have intimate knowledge about formulas behind the spell power bar then the bar tells you nothing and you might as well just ignore it.
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Barkeep

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Post Wednesday, 19th September 2012, 19:45

Re: Power indication for spells.

I don't actually think that's good advice -- Spellcasting, Int, and magic schools affect power and success differently -- and Wizardry and enhancers affect only success or power. It's possible to have a good failure rate and quite low spell power, I think, and power does make quite a large impact on damage dealt; there's a reason Wizardry is common and Archmagi is rare. IIRC, it's particularly the case with Earth spells; low power Iron Shot and LCS not only do limited damage, but miss a lot.

There's a vague feeling in my mind that this is more complicated than it needs to be (eg, maybe success and power really should be the same thing) but changing and rebalancing it all sounds like a lot of work for limited benefit...?
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Post Friday, 21st September 2012, 01:24

Re: Power indication for spells.

I would prefer if the spell screen was something like this:

Name == Success == Accuracy == Damage == Range == Duration
Throw Flame == 99% == 90% == 2-20 == 8 == N/A
Conjure Flame == 80% == 100% == 3-15 == 4 == 2-8
Repel Missiles == 90% == 100% == N/A == N/A == 10-30

but my coding skills arent good enough to make it happen, and since the devs are players too and after all this time this is how it is, i can deal with what seems to me like a suboptimal screen since they say such a suggestion would be worse. I don`t get the argument why, but it works, and the game is really fun like this sooooooooooo.....

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Post Friday, 21st September 2012, 03:51

Re: Power indication for spells.

The accuracy and damage numbers depend on the monster you are attacking. You can give pre-AC damage, though knowing the exact numbers is unnecessary. I don't really know how EV works but my guess is you can't display much of a meaningful accuracy number.
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Post Friday, 21st September 2012, 03:56

Re: Power indication for spells.

Also, AFAIK neither monster HP nor damage done to monsters is exposed to players anywhere outside of wizmode, ever.
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Post Friday, 21st September 2012, 05:35

Re: Power indication for spells.

white_noise wrote:
galehar wrote:As has been explained to you several times, the power bar isn't meant to be used to compare spells but to show if a specific spell can be improved by training skills or using an enhancer. And given this purpose, the logarithmic scale works well.

Sorry, I don't buy it. You don't put different numbers of # on different spells and don't label it as "power" if you don't want them to be compared by this values. If spells meant to be compared, the indication can be better. But if spells don't meant to be compared, the indication is plain wrong. It messes with your head and don't gives out any usefull information except capping. "Progress toward the cap" and "actual spell power" is pretty different things. And indicator shows the power. In crazy inhumane way, but it shows it. I wonder why, if it don't matter?


I agree with this - if the spell power bar is only supposed to represent that spell and is not for comparison between spells, then all bars for all spells should be the same length.

Personally, I think that spell level should be renamed to spell power (since a level 1 spell is innately less powerful than a level 9 spell), and the spell power bars should be renamed "spell potential", and should all be the same length.
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Post Friday, 21st September 2012, 06:15

Re: Power indication for spells.

crate wrote:The accuracy and damage numbers depend on the monster you are attacking. You can give pre-AC damage, though knowing the exact numbers is unnecessary. I don't really know how EV works but my guess is you can't display much of a meaningful accuracy number.

Although it also "unnecessary" and very dependant on monsters stats, but we have some basic numbers on weapons. And it helps to show how one weapon is different from another. I don't see any reasons not to show the accuracy/damage predispositions for spells as well. Who cares is it's not exact numbers you get in the end. It would still allow to get the picture of what the spell is capable of.

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Post Friday, 21st September 2012, 06:44

Re: Power indication for spells.

glexus wrote:I agree with this - if the spell power bar is only supposed to represent that spell and is not for comparison between spells, then all bars for all spells should be the same length.

The length of the bar corresponds to the max power of the spell ... changing all spell power bars to be a uniform length actually makes it less useful!

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Post Friday, 21st September 2012, 07:03

Re: Power indication for spells.

crate wrote:
glexus wrote:I agree with this - if the spell power bar is only supposed to represent that spell and is not for comparison between spells, then all bars for all spells should be the same length.

The length of the bar corresponds to the max power of the spell ... changing all spell power bars to be a uniform length actually makes it less useful!


But then what does it mean for one spell to be two ##'s more powerful than another spell?

I ask as one of the types of players who doesn't delve into code detail at all. I've been playing on and off for a while and I still don't really understand spellcasting from just what's in the game info.

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Post Friday, 21st September 2012, 07:10

Re: Power indication for spells.

glexus wrote:But then what does it mean for one spell to be two ##'s more powerful than another spell?


It's to quickly compare, on spells of the same level, how well you're casting them.
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Post Friday, 21st September 2012, 08:18

Re: Power indication for spells.

white_noise wrote:I don't see any reasons not to show the accuracy/damage predispositions for spells as well.

Why not, but then an adjective is better than an arbitrary number.
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Post Friday, 21st September 2012, 09:34

Re: Power indication for spells.

Adjectives are terrible unless the scale is very coarse (about 6 states max). Terrible, bad, average, good, excellent, perfect. Also, we would once again run into issues: power affects accuracy, but it is also different for different spells. So should accuracy never change and represent the relative innate accuracy of spells (should only be in the spell description in that case), or should it be based on current power and just be a mask for the actual accuracy number to wear (could be on II or a similar screen then)? Probably the latter. I think there is no clear EV progression for monsters throughout the game, so at least if a spell has terrible accuracy in the late game it can still be adequately described as terrible accuracy against D:1 monsters.

For damage, adjectives just wont work, at least not if they tell you more about damage than the spell level alone (9 states!). Numbers would often be misleading (e.g. clouds), differentiating damage by adjectives only inside the same spell level would be even more misleading. I think damage is something people can find out easily enough by trying the spell and reading the descriptions, and spell level is already a good indication.

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Post Friday, 21st September 2012, 16:33

Re: Power indication for spells.

glexus wrote:
crate wrote:
glexus wrote:I agree with this - if the spell power bar is only supposed to represent that spell and is not for comparison between spells, then all bars for all spells should be the same length.

The length of the bar corresponds to the max power of the spell ... changing all spell power bars to be a uniform length actually makes it less useful!


But then what does it mean for one spell to be two ##'s more powerful than another spell?

It doesn't mean much, and it doesn't mean anything if the bars are all the same max length (well, one would be closer to its cap, but you can see that anyway with the current display, and in a more useful manner).
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Barkeep

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Post Friday, 21st September 2012, 17:52

Re: Power indication for spells.

When you're done filling the bar, adding more skill/enhancer won't make the spell any more powerful. Spells with fewer #s are cheaper to max out, all else being equal.
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Post Tuesday, 25th September 2012, 22:49

Re: Power indication for spells.

Galefury wrote:That being said, I can see how displaying the same bar for every spell and labeling it "power" is misleading. I'm sure there is something about this in the manual, which everyone really should read because it is very useful, so I'm not too bothered by it.


Lots of players don't read manuals. Those that do often forget some of it by the time they start playing. I fall into this latter category, and when I was just starting with Dungeon Crawl, I thought spell power on a damage spell literally meant the amount of damage it did. I agree that it's not too serious of an issue though - a few dozen games down the line and I discarded the false assumption.

But if someone came up with a better label for that column that would be nice.


How about potency?
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Barkeep

Posts: 4435

Joined: Tuesday, 11th January 2011, 12:28

Post Wednesday, 26th September 2012, 03:29

Re: Power indication for spells.

some12fat2move wrote:
njvack wrote:That being said, I can see how displaying the same bar for every spell and labeling it "power" is misleading. I'm sure there is something about this in the manual, which everyone really should read because it is very useful, so I'm not too bothered by it.


Hey, I didn't say that. It was Galefury! :)
I am not a very good player. My mouth is a foul pit of LIES. KNOW THIS.

For this message the author njvack has received thanks:
some12fat2move

Vaults Vanquisher

Posts: 486

Joined: Thursday, 28th June 2012, 17:50

Location: U.S.

Post Wednesday, 26th September 2012, 03:49

Re: Power indication for spells.

njvack wrote:Hey, I didn't say that. It was Galefury! :)


Sorry, I was putting the quote in manually and couldn't remember the username, so I looked down at the list of posts and must've taken too hasty a glance.

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