Lasty wrote: There are a lot of other spells where the "effectiveness" is even less clear. Here's a very brief list:
* Hexes/agony -- how does investment in hexes affect the effectiveness of hexes? That depends on target MR.
And damage depends on target AC, and accuracy depends on target EV. That the enemy's defenses oppose your offense is not an obscure idea.
* Pain -- deals damage and also needs to overcome MR.
* Summons and anything else where duration isn't the only effect of increased power.
* Bjorgnjor's.
* Charms like Stoneskin and Ozo's.
If we keep the alternate view field, then just pick one of the options; it won't be any worse than displaying spell power!
but presenting your "effectiveness" as a function of spell power would often give you the impression that your spells are performing well below where they "ought" to be.
Hurkyl wrote:which is why this is exactly backwards. Knowing you only have ##.. spell power makes it look like your spell is much weaker than it actually is.
Honestly, that's pretty accurate anyway, since after factoring in AC, you probably are at something closer to half effective damage on that spell.
Not really. Different enemies have different AC, and the relative impact enemy AC has on damage dealt varies a lot with spell. 5 AC takes a much greater huge chunk out of Magic Dart's damage than Flame Tongue's!
But that aside, a person who reasons like you do would look at ##.. and reasonably think the damage roll is only half of what it could be, and thus think that his spells are only doing a quarter of the damage they would do if they maxed it out!
But again, I posit that people understand that enemies have defenses. (although the fact it's AC that protects against magic damage rather than some magic resistance or magic defense statistic might be a surprise to newcomers)
Aside from that, those extra two #s come fast, which means that the period where you're feeling "weak" is brief.
Depends on the character. And the same goes for 50 and 100 power capped spells.
When you can never crack 80% effectiveness on your firestorm -- or even bolt of fire! -- you're going to really feel like you're doing something wrong.
People feel the same way about ########.. too.
Hurkyl wrote:and 2) give the completely misleading impression that it is necessary or even desirable to get spells to their maximum power.
How is this any different from showing spell power, even in its current form?
The sensible response to the current system is to realize that 1) the number of #s increases as various factors increase, and 2) notice that you never really fill up the bars, and thus conclude that 3) it's hard or impossible to fill up the bars, and so you shouldn't monitor them that closely. Looking at percentages makes you feel like you should keep trying to eke out additional percentage points forever.
You can fill up the bars for lower level spells. It seems pretty sensible to think you should be able to fill up the bars for higher level spells too. I don't see how it's any easier to give up when you fail to fill the bars than it is to give up when you never break 75%.
In my opinion, the bars are even worse in this regard. It's far easier to think "Okay, I'll train a little bit more to get to ########.." and then 10 skill levels later "what? I'm still at #######...?" due to the coarseness. You won't have that problem with the percentages.
Hurkyl wrote:The difference is more like 60% versus 96% of spell power for a ###. spell with a 25 power cap, for example. Of course, in terms of damage for Flame Tongue, that's really 80% versus 100% of the possible damage roll (if I've read correctly, you actually get full damage at 24 power for Flame Tongue).
Okay, then explain how knowing the difference between doing 60% and 96% damage with flame tongue (to use your not entirely accurate number) will improve your play.
In any scenario, basing the decision on the damage the spell does will be better than basing the decision on spell power.
One of my main points is that even if you believe that having a display (be it a number, the # graph or something else) based on damage is not actually useful for a player, having a display based on spell power is
even worse. So even for skeptical people who believe nobody in the world could possibly find information useful for making informed decisions, making the change should still be seen as an improvement, as it makes things less bad.
You even made a the very mistake I'm suggesting people make by seeing spell power: you saw the "60% and 96% of spell power", and you mentally substituted "damage" for "power".
Anyways, there are easy examples: if I know I'm only doing 60% of the damage I could be doing with Flame Tongue, I have a pretty strong incentive to train more Fire/Conjurations for a few skill levels, and can plan for it to be a while before I train other skills. But if I'm at 90% of max damage, it's not such a pressing issue.
It's easy to see how I might play worse without these numbers: if I know I have room to make Confuse a lot better, I can reasonably consider training more Hexes. But if I think Confuse is already near its power cap, I might give up on training Hexes to improve its success rate.
This one was actually a big deal for me, as I relied a lot on confuse stabbing as I learned the game... and I gave myself a big handicap because I hadn't realized there was a lot more room to improve Confuse.