I play in a lot of poker tournaments, and one thing that always keeps the game exiting to the end is the ability for either a dramatic come back or unanticipated catastrophic collapse.
So in order to keep end game exiting maybe the powerfull spells could carry a certain percentage risk of a "backfire", possibly tied to the strength of the caster. If he casts a "Create Volcano" spell maybe there should be 10% chance that it shows up right in the middle of his territory?
This might also be combined with the concept of giving early access to fairly powerful spells, but having a certain risk, higher for lower power casters, of it fizzling and using up spell points and resources.
I am new here, so if those ideas are already implememanted, please forgive the intrusion, but I thought these ideas may keep the game exiting longer, as there is always a risk/reward issue, not just a griding out it in the game end phase.
Mike
The way I see that playing is that if I'm winning I just don't use magic. I get under pressure and have to resort to using a spell, it backfires and I lose the game. Not too happy.
Or if big spells are castable early but with risk of fizzle then I just don't cast them when the chance of fizzle is high to avoid waste. The person that does try and cast them is the player in a weaker position, and the chance of success is low so they waste their final turns trying for that volcano. If there is even a 1 in 10 chance of pulling the spell off then every player will try and cast it multiple times to be the lucky one to pull it off, 1 in 10 is not too bad odds to waste turns on a spell that will result in serious disaster for your opponent. So the odds must be low, thus it very rarely actually has an in game effect. Where it would have an effect is when casters start to rise in skill and the chance of casting it without fizzle rises to the point that players have to try casting it to screw your opponent. Volcano's everywhere.
I feel as if I'm shooting down your idea, what do you think of my evaluation? Do you see it playing differently?
Winning at the river sucks when you get beat but totaly cool when it happens to you going all in with big slick to find your opponent has a pair makes the game fun....every decision should come with risk
Any time you have a massive power that has a backfire chance, you end up with two groups of players. One never uses the spell unless they have nothing left to lose. They consider the risk not worth the reward. The other group casts it every chance they get and trusts to luck.
TBH, i am not a big fan of the RNG being in charge of such an important thing. The only time a spell should have a fizzle/backfire chance is when another channeler is interferring in your casting.
Well, I just got nailed on the river in a poker game. Grrh.
But to me that is why I go back to it. It is a strange combination of skill and luck. They say most battles, and wars, are such also. Therefore I think an element of risk should be involved in messing with magic. I really don't like the works 100% of the time approach to magic.
I like the idea of the chance of success increasing as the caster becomes more powerful, but giving faster access to mid level casters to the cool stuff. It creates much more varied game flow than the "optimal research path" that almost invevitably devlops in TBS games. It would allow a newbie a better, albeit still very small, chance of winning a game, which is pretty important when trying to bring new players into the online community.
BTW, I am a trader professionally who works in the world of probabilities, risk and reward, so that is probably skewing my perception of this. But making careful risk/reward assessements in the long term will lead to positive results, even after having to go through several small heart attacks. On the other hand, if you are way behind, at least you still have a chance to get back in, rather than just quitting.
Just my 5 cents.
I can't think of any game that did well that included the base chance for failure in your spells or ablities. Sure, crafting, enchanting, that kind of thing had failure chances, but casting a fireball? never.
Ah, well my personality is definately the risk avoiding type as a general rule so thats where my perception of your idea comes from.
I know with the technology tree each game will be different due to some techs randomly included, but I'm not sure with magic. The old "path through the tree" with magic will depend on what magic shards you get. Thinking from Master of Magic and Age of Wonders there is no tree as such but rather random choices of what to research next.
Also I guess they will include a difficulty level system so newbies can win and feel proud
I am thinking skill level vs complexity of spell = outcome/power of spell
Example if skill level = 3 and spell level = 12
3/12=.25*100=25% chance spell will work
the if sp = 100 hp damage maximum then maximum hp would be 25 hp if successful.
so conversly if high level caster cast lowl level spell increse in maximum hp possible would increase slightly.
I really like the idea of making the higher level spells more accessable with a larger risk as outlined in the previous post. Particularly in MP this would lead to some interesting situations, with many different approaches and risk profiles. In a way, as a MP player you would have to adjust your style of play depending on what you knew about your opposing players. Kind of like profiling a player in poker.
I have no idea if this concept has been considered by Stardock or not, but I think it could greatly add to the fun factor of the experience.
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