Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]


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Snake Sneak

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Post Monday, 2nd March 2020, 15:24

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

The best use of Hailstorm is probably when you're fighting monsters in a doorway. Find a room with monsters. Retreat 1 square, so monsters can come at you 1 at a time. Wait until other monsters get close to you. You will hit all but 1 monster, unless there are enough to form 3+ rows perpendicular to you (plus one).

A Hepliakqana knight may also work very well as an artillery spotter.

Overall I think the biggest flaw of the spell is how tricky it is to target. Targeted spells nicely light up what they would hit. But last time I cast Hailstorm, you get no enemy highlighting, just a quick BAM! It needs either some sort of confirmation prompt so you see what will be hit, or a more forgiving area mechanic (like: hits up to 3 enemies that are not adjacent to you). Maybe you can get used to it but I think there's too much mental overhead in estimating what the spell will hit.

bt

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Post Tuesday, 31st March 2020, 15:56

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

Some feedback after playing several casters in trunk.

1. Foxfire and starting FE book in general

While Foxfire is fairly interesting to use and deals good damage for a lvl 1 spell, the drawbacks make it really awkward to start a run with. You can't use it in melee in a corridor at all. This along with the way D:1 is usually generated (lots of corridors) makes some FE starts especially difficult.

Encountering an early awake adder in a corridor as a non-RPois species leaves you with two options: run and most likely die; melee it with untrained unarmed and most likely die. Adder in a corridor is an extreme example, it can be jackals, leopard gecko, bat or cockroach instead, and the spell is still tricky to use in semi-open spaces, so it's not like completely avoiding corridors (even if it was possible) solves the problem. All the other caster starts have their lvl 1 spell to use in these situations, FE has untrained unarmed.

The clunkiness of Foxfire gets more pronounced when we consider two other early FE spells:
- Inner Flame: Foxfire is auto-targeted and slow (deals damage 1 turn after being cast at best), so makes IF more dangerous (IF'ed monster gets a chance to get closer) and unreliable (can target non-IF'ed monster)
- Conjure Flame: works best to create gaps in corridors... where you can't really use Foxfire.

Overall FE start feels very awkward to play, all three early spells are slow and unreliable. Your Sticky Flame doesn't work well with either Inner Flame or Conjure Flame and those two spells don't work too well together either, and when you get Fireball online everything else besides Sticky Flame feels redundant, and training Hexes for Inner Flame feels like a waste, cause it's the only Hex in a book and you are already training two schools to get Fireball online (compare it with Dazzling Flash/Fulminant Prism combo of Conj starting book where Prism is your main damage spell so you'll naturally get Flash as well). Also a very-very-very minor point, but FE start being so damn weird and convoluted makes for a bit of a flavor mismatch, as fire mages are usually the most generic "kill them with explosions" type of characters.

In conclusion Foxfire seems like an interesting idea, but is a poor lvl 1 starting spell and doesn't synergise well with anything in FE starting book.

2. New Poison book. All spells have a use case. Ignite Poison ties it all together nicely. Great book.

2.5. Never tried Noxious Bog. Even when I did find it, it felt a like waste to train Poison school beyond the level at which Olgreb's Radiance becomes strong, cause there's no other high level Poison spell. Also from description it's unclear whether bog will damage flying mobs, if it won't, then that makes the spell even less appealing, seeing as a lot of late game threats have flying.

3. Airstrike. Like the new version a lot, makes for some interesting situations, luring enemies away from walls and such. Overall AE starting book seems ok.

4. Starfire. Didn't find a use case for this one. It's very unwieldy with allies like all the other large non-targeted AoE spells, but unlike them it can miss and costs 6 MP (also none of the common summons are immune to it). So in pretty much every case I would pick one of Irradiate (not even close with this one), Static Discharge or IMB as my point-blank AoE. I tried using Starfire with FE start and Fireball was more appropriate for a given situation almost every time.

This spell reminded me somewhat of ADOM magic system, where almost all spells are targeted by choosing one of your eight movement directions. So there were bolt spells that shot one bolt down a direction, and greater bolts (or whatever they were called), that worked like Starfire. In practice the greater version was used exactly like the normal version, cause being surrounded is bad. What makes Starfire's case worse is that when you do get surrounded you really want your AoE to not miss.

As an aside, having played a lot of ADOM, I don't miss it's magic system or it's targeting at all, I don't think it can hold a candle to what DCSS currently has. Also such targeting makes for a supremely tedious gameplay and is more suited for simpler floor architecture of ADOM anyway.

5. New Conjurer starting book feels very strong. Progression is smooth, all spells are useful. New IMB with Prism allows you to kite most scary melee threats to death with minimal risk, as long as you have MP and properly plan your pathing and prism placement, feels very rewarding.

6. Didn't play enough with Ice spells to come to any definite conclusion, but: Frozen Ramparts (pre-last-nerf) was fun to use, but felt too strong for it's lvl; Hailstorm felt lacking in visual feedback (what did I hit, how much damage did I do), probably due to the unusual AoE.

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Post Monday, 20th April 2020, 16:49

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

I just had fought through an ice-statue vault in an ice cave with an Ice elementalist.
It was one of the most obnoxious fights I've had in a long time.

I only had the starting spells because I was with Sif, but a bit unlucky with spellbooks. Because I had rC+++ and Ozo's the statues could hardly hurt me at all, but all the IE deal very limited damage: Freeze and Frozen ramparts because the statues are Ice immune (which is reasonable), Hailstorm because the Ice Statues are "Made of Ice" (I guess?) which I find frustrating&arbitrary, and Ice Beasts because after taking Ice immunity into account you have a monster with 5 attack hitting a statue with 12 AC and 70 hit points.

I ended up killing the statues very slowly with an untrained +1 dagger (with a useless brand) and Ice Beast support.

I know you can blame the ice-statue vault, but... :|

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Post Monday, 20th April 2020, 19:34

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

So I've played through a large number of games now with the positional magic, and here's what I have to say about it: It adds a VERY large amount of tedium to the game.

The first six, 50 or even 1000 times you cast a spell that has positional requirements, you have to think about it, and maybe it's interesting puzzle, but you kill literally *thousands* of popcorn creatures in every DCSS game. After several such games I found myself wanting to just *not* have to deal with finding the *right* spot to kill something unthreatening *yet again* It's not like with melee and axes/polearms, where you can be optimal where optimal positioning makes a difference, but you can quite efficiently mow down popcorn with suboptimal tactics, you have to be optimal every damn time, because your many of your spells do *literally no damage* with the wrong positioning.

With the prior incarnation, I could set a 1st or 2nd level spell to automagic, and tab through popcorn fights without any more (player) effort than my melee bruisers do, with this one it's impossible, and I have to get to "the right spot" to kill something unchallenging, simply because my spells are totally ineffective. It may be that spells were very similar to melee or ranged weapons in the past, but an easy interface makes those things much better than the current spellcasting interface, in terms of the sheer volume of things you have to do.

Now it can be interpreted that this is a problem with popcorn, (or easy fights, generally), but the fact is that games where *all* fights are meaningful are as bad or worse in terms of there being an 'effort tax'. If the level of tension is always the same (high *OR* low), nothing is exciting, and nothing is rewarding, so you need some amount of "easy" to contrast with the "hard", but the easy shouldn't come at a high level of tedium (it should be as low-effort for the player as it is non-dangerous for the character) There needs to be a spellcasting outlet that's as easy for the spell flinging player as holding down the tab key is for weapon-swinging one.
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Post Monday, 20th April 2020, 20:53

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

Could you give some specific examples, because I don't really recognise that problem.
Playing as an IE, in the early game I could win most fights by casting Frozen Ramparts, optionally Armour, and then tabbing. In lair if I was too lazy to walk to the nearest wall I could summon a few icebeasts and then tab. Anything that didn't die to these tactics wasn't popcorn. I suppose I was lucky to find Ozo's Refrigeration early enough, and now all popcorn dies to Ozo spam. I know from experience that this will remain true well into Zot.
I could imagine feeling the way you describe on a midgame FE (with starburst), but not in any other situation. I understand you've played more positional magic games than I have, so please enlighten me :)

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Post Tuesday, 21st April 2020, 01:05

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

petercordia wrote:Could you give some specific examples, because I don't really recognise that problem.
Playing as an IE, in the early game I could win most fights by casting Frozen Ramparts, optionally Armour, and then tabbing. In lair if I was too lazy to walk to the nearest wall I could summon a few icebeasts and then tab. Anything that didn't die to these tactics wasn't popcorn. I suppose I was lucky to find Ozo's Refrigeration early enough, and now all popcorn dies to Ozo spam. I know from experience that this will remain true well into Zot.
I could imagine feeling the way you describe on a midgame FE (with starburst), but not in any other situation. I understand you've played more positional magic games than I have, so please enlighten me :)


I've played many games without either Starburst or Ozo's and indeed, walking over to walls (or away from them) gets tedious, and while ice beast spam is indeed a completely safe way to kill things without walls, it's far and away over-MP for say, a pack of orcs when you're a teen-level character.

FE have it worse than IE, certainly both have enough tools to survive, but FE's positional challenges are significantly stricter than IE's.

I also have a looser interpretation of popcorn for this case, it's not really "popcorn" so much as "the set of all things that I can kill with no chance of death at all, given that I start off healed" something like 90-95% of all fights fall into this category, and having to not just pay attention to what my health/MP says I can kill, and my position relative to noise produced, but also where I am standing (or where I have to relocate to, in order to not only avoid noise problems, but also negate a terrain penalty), gets old after a while. If it was the exception, rather than the rule, that would be interesting and fun, having to do it on 90-95% of my fights for a large portion of the game is taxing.
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Post Tuesday, 21st April 2020, 04:57

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

A damage spell overhaul was the perfect opportunity to reduce that tedium by getting rid of manual targeting. But instead the worst cases of clunky manual targeting (fireball, LRD, freezing cloud, bouncing bolts) escaped unscathed, as did magic dart and freeze and sandblast and stone arrow and iron shot and LCS and IOOD and more. And most of the spells that lost manual targeting (flame tongue -> foxfire, conjure flame, icicle -> hailstorm) got other crap attached to them that makes them more clunky to use overall. It's a shame. At least Starburst and IMB are improvements and some of the bad spells got removed...

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Post Tuesday, 21st April 2020, 08:53

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

duvessa wrote:A damage spell overhaul was the perfect opportunity to reduce that tedium by getting rid of manual targeting. But instead the worst cases of clunky manual targeting (fireball, LRD, freezing cloud, bouncing bolts) escaped unscathed, as did magic dart and freeze and sandblast and stone arrow and iron shot and LCS and IOOD and more. And most of the spells that lost manual targeting (flame tongue -> foxfire, conjure flame, icicle -> hailstorm) got other crap attached to them that makes them more clunky to use overall. It's a shame. At least Starburst and IMB are improvements and some of the bad spells got removed...


For me, manual targeting is what makes a caster more interesting to play than a tabber, by a good margin as well, as I find tabbers really freaking dull especially in the late game. Also most of listed spells work fine with already present autotargeting and don't require extra key presses most of the time.

It's strange that you provide starburst as a good example of tedium reduction, since this spell just moves key presses from targeter positioning to character positioning (which makes it tedious to use in easy fights and dangerous to use in hard fights). Adding on top of that not being able to use it in non-straight corridors makes starburst more clunky than any of the listed spells, IMO.
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Post Tuesday, 21st April 2020, 14:15

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

re: duvessa, I think the writing was on the wall when general methods of converting existing spell effects to untargeted variants were categorically rejected. Too much commitment to this shell game with players who cannot accept the truth about manual targeting. It is analytically false that optional targeting automation can replace mandatory automatic targeting and it is empirically false that mandatory automatic targeting impoverishes gameplay -- quite the opposite.

That said, I think the existing reforms are underrated. It's not straightforward to create interesting direct damage spell effects and the crawl spell system (among other crawl systems) has a lot of fundamental errors baked into it that a project like dcss is too bound to tradition and incrementalism to fully address in a reasonable amount of time. The changes are pretty good considering the constraints, however self-imposed, and the timeframe.
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Post Monday, 4th May 2020, 08:23

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

duvessa wrote:A damage spell overhaul was the perfect opportunity to reduce that tedium by getting rid of manual targeting. But instead the worst cases of clunky manual targeting (fireball, LRD, freezing cloud, bouncing bolts) escaped unscathed, as did magic dart and freeze and sandblast and stone arrow and iron shot and LCS and IOOD and more. And most of the spells that lost manual targeting (flame tongue -> foxfire, conjure flame, icicle -> hailstorm) got other crap attached to them that makes them more clunky to use overall. It's a shame. At least Starburst and IMB are improvements and some of the bad spells got removed...


This and again this.
Many changes have this problem but I'll example Airstrike as I'm playing an Air Elementalist and its change is awful.

Before airstrike was one of the less clunky manual spell out here and yet it required double keypress in comparison of o-tab magic. Now it requires an insane amount of backtracking too.

And I want really really really strongly stress it: the change, in most situations, added no strategic\tactic interest, just a lot of tedium.
You wanna backtrack in an open clear space for every non-fast melee only monster - and no, it's not the same to avoid the backtrack, because the monster may be dangerous at melee range so it's obviously better to kill it at max range possible.

No risk attached, no strategic decision, nothing - just a lot more keypress. A tons lot more keypress.

To made this more clear: in this Ae game, this is the use of Airstrike before entering Zot.

  Code:

Airstrike       5 |    17 |   204 |   446 |   417 |   277 |   150 |    40 ||  1556


Even if I'd backtrack only in one third of use of the spell, this is an insane amount of keypress\time wasted in nothing.

The problem are shared among various spells which were reworked, at the point I honestly think the situation, overall, was better before all the overhaul, at least from the point of view of interface, and a big cleaning and tweak could be very good.
What makes the situation worse for this specific spell are:
1) it's good even in late game because it's smited-target
2) dunno if it's because I've airstrike memorized but I've noticed monsters tend to stick to walls. That forces to backtrack even more.
screw it I hate this character I'm gonna go melee Gastronok
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Post Monday, 4th May 2020, 12:16

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

This goes back to things I've been saying for a long time.

The monsters sticking to walls thing is a layout problem. Noise up the straight edges you see everywhere in crawl layouts and open up corridors to at least two tiles wide with irregular walls.

For the rest, removing manual spell targeting is a project of reasonable scale if you're willing to approach it seriously, without compromise. When you add constraints that say you won't automatically target a spell that could conceivably be manually targeted, as happened with this reform, then you have an unrealistic project. Then you have to create a lot of new effects and settle for leaving existing spells unchanged.

There will be future versions of this game. That is the place to chew on a new, untargeted direct damage system. Get the interface advantages now with mandatory automatic targeting and redesign any effects for which this seems unsatisfactory in one way or another over the coming years.
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Post Monday, 4th May 2020, 19:20

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

i don't really agree with the complaint that airstrike became more tedious to use, for the simple reason that the bonus to airstrike damage in an open area is actually not that big and you can pretty much just ignore it
they're right that it's extra complexity that adds no tactical interest though

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Post Tuesday, 5th May 2020, 18:22

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

Maybe I'm reading wrongly the commit message, but it seems to me that the bonus isn't so negligible that you shouldn't use it in open space against dangerous melee monsters - but again, it's possible I'm doing badly the math.

(at 100 spellpower, in relation of number of empty spaces)

  Code:
|     | 0-3  |  4   |  5   |  6   |  7   |  8  |
| --- | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- | --- |
| avg | 15.5 | 16.3 | 17.2 | 18.1 | 19.1 | 20  |
| std | 4.61 | 3.27 | 2.68 | 2.32 | 2.08 | 1.9 |

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Post Saturday, 9th May 2020, 11:25

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

petercordia wrote:I just had fought through an ice-statue vault in an ice cave with an Ice elementalist.
It was one of the most obnoxious fights I've had in a long time.
I ended up killing the statues very slowly with an untrained +1 dagger (with a useless brand) and Ice Beast support.


Happened to me, too. Fortunately I discovered that I had LRD in my spellbooks, and five levels of Earth, because I used Sandblast to kill undead things earlier in the game. So I learned it on the spot and made it through.

But the truth is that no single one spell school will get you through the complete dungeon, except possibly Earth, and you will have to diversify somewhat in order to kill everything.
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Post Saturday, 9th May 2020, 18:47

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

Majang wrote:But the truth is that no single one spell school will get you through the complete dungeon, except possibly Earth, and you will have to diversify somewhat in order to kill everything.
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Post Saturday, 9th May 2020, 20:06

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

duvessa wrote:
Majang wrote:But the truth is that no single one spell school will get you through the complete dungeon, except possibly Earth, and you will have to diversify somewhat in order to kill everything.
Summoning and Necromancy say hi

Yes, I guess I needed to qualify my statement: "no single spell school that doesn't drain any fun out of playing this game". Then it fits.
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Post Saturday, 9th May 2020, 22:07

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

I'm probably a bit late to the party, but I've played a few trunk games since the spell reworks and here are some of my impressions:

Foxfire seems reasonably powered, but fairly annoying to use - mostly because it seems that it's a lot more useful in wider, open spaces, and those aren't really the places you want to be so much as a squishy early caster. I'll not go so far as to say I dislike it, it's different, but I think that the old flame tongue spell was more satisfying from a fun perspective to just blast things in the face with instant damage. I used to use bolt of fire quite a bit, and was excited to find it if I was fire/conj. I can't say that I get excited about starburst. On paper it seems like it should be better, but in practice, I find I am just not using it much, even when I have it. The issue is that while it has this "interesting" positional aspect tied to it, that aspect is not one that makes much sense for a caster--that is, to have enemies up-close, and on all sides of you. Having longer range firepower is more important, and it seems like it lost long range effectiveness.

Ice, I haven't played it much. I used to almost never use it in general. It seems stronger than before. The frozen ramparts spell seems actually way more powerful than many if not all spells at it's spell level range. Hailstorm also seems pretty good. I never liked Glaciate, so putting a spell like Absolute Zero in is an upgrade for me. All in all, I think I should like the ice school better than before, and I'll give it some more tries.

Air, well, it seems about the same to me. Shock is still good, Air strike is better. Is it less tedious? I don't know about that--I do find that I'm worried more about positioning to do maximum damage with air strike. I'm not sure that means it's less fun to play. Air to me has already been about positioning and timing to maximize damage (bouncing bolts), and so needing certain requirements to maximize air strike is in line with that. I guess I'm glad that air strike can do more damage. It feels like an upgrade to air overall. Losing deflect missiles (without even so much as a replacement spell) was a bigger nerf to air than buffing airstrike was though. The sad parts of air are how ineffective static discharge, but especially how freaking-super-terrible lightning bolt feels. I can't say why it's so bad, I just know it is. It's loud, it seems like it misses all the time, and doesn't reliably do much damage. It's the last bolt-style spell (which I previous liked), and it sucks big-time. I wish it were better, but that's nothing to do with recent changes.

Earth... still the same... still the only school you can actually use to reliably complete the game without also being quite a hybrid at the least.

And uh Necromancy .. to complete the whole game? Pfff. There are tons of completely immune to necromancy creatures. I don't know what that's about. It's a good school to compliment a melee character, but that's about it. And summoner? What a horrible mess that is until xp drain is removed. I can hardly count how many times I thought a pure specialized casting summoning should be great, but then it just sucked. I still have nightmares of games with high level mummy summoners in hell channeling mana nonstop, issuing orders to attack nonstop.. summoning over and over and over, and still having to hide out near the stairs to retreat so many times.

All in all, I appreciate the effort to diversity the spells. I think however that larger gains could be made by tweaking other, more serious issues first, but the changes are ok. The changes to ice, making it interesting (and powerful) offset any other issues I listed overall.
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Post Sunday, 10th May 2020, 21:38

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

svendre wrote:Ice, I haven't played it much. I used to almost never use it in general. It seems stronger than before. The frozen ramparts spell seems actually way more powerful than many if not all spells at it's spell level range. Hailstorm also seems pretty good. I never liked Glaciate, so putting a spell like Absolute Zero in is an upgrade for me. All in all, I think I should like the ice school better than before, and I'll give it some more tries.


I also agree that the Ice spells have benefited the most from the overhaul. I never got anywhere before playing an Ice caster, but now it may develop into my favourite school. Ramparts is an extremely useful spell in the early game. The boost to Ozo's Refrigeration even seems overpowered to me, in spite of the no-potions restriction. Standing in a full room with susceptible enemies (such as draconians in Zot), and Vehumet to recharge MP on kills, Refrigeration is a simple and safe way to clear the screen, not unlike Shatter. Even Shatter leaves some opponents standing after a few casts, but it requires three more spell levels! And Absolute Zero - it's a real beauty of a spell, with some interesting tactical considerations to it. For example, it required some thinking to kill the Royal Jelly using Zero. BTW, although TRJ dies instantly, it still spawns all its minions. To see an Orb of Fire go down as an ice cube is a particularly satisfying experience.

But Ice magic still needs a companion school to deal with resistant enemies. And I never used Hailstorm much - something to do with its weird damage area and my desire to keep my squishy character out of range of the attackers.
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Post Friday, 18th December 2020, 13:22

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

Ice spells have received some changes in the current trunk version. Previously, only Ice Armour fell apart when the character moves. Now it is also Ramparts. I can see why this was done, because as it was Ramparts was just too strong. I think the duration has also been cut somewhat, at least that's how it feels to me.

What I don't like about this new change is that another UI hazzle has been introduced, as now you are asked whether you really want to stop your spells whenever you want to move on. This really breaks the flow of the game for those who rely on these spells a lot. If the intention of positional attack magic was to reduce UI stumbling blocks, then here we have a pretty bad regression.
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Post Friday, 18th December 2020, 14:17

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

If Frozen Ramparts needed further nerfs, it could be made into ice/earth. Would make the spell significantly harder to cast and to get to high spell power. And it would be nice (thematically) to have an earth/ice spell.

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Post Friday, 18th December 2020, 16:30

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

Majang wrote:What I don't like about this new change is that another UI hazzle has been introduced, as now you are asked whether you really want to stop your spells whenever you want to move on. This really breaks the flow of the game for those who rely on these spells a lot. If the intention of positional attack magic was to reduce UI stumbling blocks, then here we have a pretty bad regression.


Is the idea that you're intended to just wait in place until it times out. If so, does 'o' do the right thing --- wait, then start moving?
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Post Friday, 18th December 2020, 19:29

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

andrew wrote:Is the idea that you're intended to just wait in place until it times out. If so, does 'o' do the right thing --- wait, then start moving?

No, if you are not healing up, 'o' now triggers a "do you really want to do this?" message. That's what I'm complaining about.
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Post Saturday, 19th December 2020, 14:27

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

Majang wrote:No, if you are not healing up, 'o' now triggers a "do you really want to do this?" message. That's what I'm complaining about.


It looks like it's been fixed now - no more messages when you start moving.
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Joined: Monday, 24th April 2017, 11:46

Post Sunday, 20th December 2020, 10:47

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

Final update - you still get a message when there is a monster in view, which is probably as it should be, and probably even quite helpful, as the screen often is quite cluttered after you are done with Ramparts, and you may not notice the new foe crawling in.
Maɟaŋ

For this message the author Majang has received thanks:
andrew
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