Update #2 & #4 Questions

[Jester_hell_696]

So I was reading though the road map again and I had a couple of questions come to me as I was doing so and since the pinned Roadmap topic says to ask questions that is what I'll do.

I actually have questions going all the way up to the Waterworld pack but following what you said in the Roadmap Topic I'll keep to the "early" updates for now.



With Update #2 The Mage Tower it says "Improved Spell Research" and could't help but wonder what your concept of that is?

My first thought was the Dominions games magic research where you research D&D style spell school eg Evocation, Conjuration, Enchantment and your magical spells are tied to both your level of research in a school and your abilities in a sphere/element.

An examples being that Lightning Bolt is level 2 evocation and level 2 Wind magic.

Update #2 also lists "experimentation system" which makes me wonder, what that is and how you envision it?

Again brings to mind the Dominions only this time Dominions multi-element spells, an example of that being Magma Bolt which is level 3 evocation with both level 1 fire and level 1 earth magic.

So it would be like, select a school (evocation) then select some elements (fire & earth) and hope there is a combination spell from those choices, or do you envision something else?


Update #4 Crime & Punishment lists an "Enhanced Justice System" and I wonder if that will include just fines and prison or more "traditional" punishments like cutting off a thief's hand or enslaving a debtor aka Debt Bondage?

[BuriedCandy]

Great questions! @LordYabo can bring a lot more detail into the spell research and experimentation questions you have than I can (I'm still very new to the team and even being on the inside there's a lot of depth and nuance to the system and how it works).

What I can tell you is that when it comes to experimentation, like a scientist you'll be able to discover and unlock very powerful spells that, in the world, may only be theoretical in nature and it'll be up to you complete and then test/prove your theory to unlock the spell.

@LordYabo can fill in way more info than I can on how it works practically, haha.

In terms of Crime & Punishment, yes it will expand upon the already available jail time / fines. You could be flogged, lose a limb (like a hand, etc), you could face life imprisonment, or be sentenced to execution (the last 2 options there could be a chance of a prison break, depending on how much you've poured into relationships and if you have any loyal friends). There's also the bounty system, so you might find yourself on the run from bounty hunters (or you could find yourself making some coin becoming a bounty hunter yourself).

I hope that at least partially answers your questions! :)

[Jester_hell_696]

Originally posted by philmacnevin:

Great questions! @LordYabo can bring a lot more detail into the spell research and experimentation questions you have than I can (I'm still very new to the team and even being on the inside there's a lot of depth and nuance to the system and how it works).

What I can tell you is that when it comes to experimentation, like a scientist you'll be able to discover and unlock very powerful spells that, in the world, may only be theoretical in nature and it'll be up to you complete and then test/prove your theory to unlock the spell.

@LordYabo can fill in way more info than I can on how it works practically, haha.

In terms of Crime & Punishment, yes it will expand upon the already available jail time / fines. You could be flogged, lose a limb (like a hand, etc), you could face life imprisonment, or be sentenced to execution (the last 2 options there could be a chance of a prison break, depending on how much you've poured into relationships and if you have any loyal friends). There's also the bounty system, so you might find yourself on the run from bounty hunters (or you could find yourself making some coin becoming a bounty hunter yourself).

I hope that at least partially answers your questions! :)

It does indeed answer my questions rather well, so thank you for your answers.

Sounds like with research your character can form a spell hypothesis of "This should work." and then they have to do the experiment to test that hypothesis and make the spell "official" so to speak.


I do like the sound of the justice system, with bounty hunting is it planned to be possible to capture people or is it purely head hunting?

[Logi Geimgengill]

Originally posted by philmacnevin:

Great questions! @LordYabo can bring a lot more detail into the spell research and experimentation questions you have than I can (I'm still very new to the team and even being on the inside there's a lot of depth and nuance to the system and how it works).

What I can tell you is that when it comes to experimentation, like a scientist you'll be able to discover and unlock very powerful spells that, in the world, may only be theoretical in nature and it'll be up to you complete and then test/prove your theory to unlock the spell.

@LordYabo can fill in way more info than I can on how it works practically, haha.

In terms of Crime & Punishment, yes it will expand upon the already available jail time / fines. You could be flogged, lose a limb (like a hand, etc), you could face life imprisonment, or be sentenced to execution (the last 2 options there could be a chance of a prison break, depending on how much you've poured into relationships and if you have any loyal friends). There's also the bounty system, so you might find yourself on the run from bounty hunters (or you could find yourself making some coin becoming a bounty hunter yourself).

I hope that at least partially answers your questions! :)

I hope I am not intruding but the way you worded that reply I must advice you to be careful in how you word promises. Saying all these features are guarantees without such mechanics being in the game can backfire in the long run.

Game development is hard and with my little knowledge over the years tells me one thing, people will remember.
If you promise something now and it wont be on release, people will complain, they will protest. Its just human nature and most people don't realize how game development works.

Maybe wording it a little differently because you are giving people false impressions of a non-existent system that might or might not be what you described.

[BuriedCandy]

Originally posted by Jester_hell_696:

It does indeed answer my questions rather well, so thank you for your answers.

Sounds like with research your character can form a spell hypothesis of "This should work." and then they have to do the experiment to test that hypothesis and make the spell "official" so to speak.

Yeah, exactly! From my understanding of it, it's a 2-step process: there will be specific steps/requirements you'll need to meet to first complete and acquire a Theory, and then once you have the theory, you will need to meet another set of steps/requirements to successfully complete an experiment which will unlock a very high-powered spell.

Originally posted by Jester_hell_696:

I do like the sound of the justice system, with bounty hunting is it planned to be possible to capture people or is it purely head hunting?

Yep! For bounty hunting, each bounty will have a requirement that you'll have to meet, whether they are wanted dead or alive (or either) in which case you'll have to kill or capture the target based on the job requirements.

Originally posted by Logi Geimgengill:

I hope I am not intruding but the way you worded that reply I must advice you to be careful in how you word promises. Saying all these features are guarantees without such mechanics being in the game can backfire in the long run.

Game development is hard and with my little knowledge over the years tells me one thing, people will remember.
If you promise something now and it wont be on release, people will complain, they will protest. Its just human nature and most people don't realize how game development works.

Maybe wording it a little differently because you are giving people false impressions of a non-existent system that might or might not be what you described.

Thanks for the warning! I tend to try to err on the side of caution. I'm always afraid personally of misrepresenting something (honesty and integrity are among my highest values), so I try my best to try to as forthright as I can. Though sometimes that means I can also come off as vague because I don't want to say something that's incorrect, which can create more problems of misinterpretations. It's still something I'm working on, haha!

[kaylo7]

To expand on spell research, as far as I remember you'll also be able to do basic spell school research to gain XP and unlock basic spells you don't know yet - it will be the same as spell research you can already currently do at Conclaves, but the %chance of success will be boosted based on books you've collected for your tower library.

[Jester_hell_696]

Originally posted by philmacnevin:

Yeah, exactly! From my understanding of it, it's a 2-step process: there will be specific steps/requirements you'll need to meet to first complete and acquire a Theory, and then once you have the theory, you will need to meet another set of steps/requirements to successfully complete an experiment which will unlock a very high-powered spell.

That's sounds cool, kaylo7 talks about using xp to unlock basic spells and I can see how say the idea of using fire magic to create a light is not ground breaking by any means, it would be one of the first thing many people would think of with fire magic.

But will it just be high powered spells or will there be some lower levelled spells that just aren't common enough to be considered "basic"?

So, I guess like spell rarity levels.

Common spells just require X amount of XP, everyone knows what a fireball is.

Uncommon spells require you to it learn from a tome or be can research

Rare spells must be researched.

Originally posted by philmacnevin:

Yep! For bounty hunting, each bounty will have a requirement that you'll have to meet, whether they are wanted dead or alive (or either) in which case you'll have to kill or capture the target based on the job requirements.

Is it just legal bounty hunting like "such & such" is wanted for murder or will there be more... shall we say, "private" bounty hunting?

Originally posted by kaylo7:

To expand on spell research, as far as I remember you'll also be able to do basic spell school research to gain XP and unlock basic spells you don't know yet - it will be the same as spell research you can already currently do at Conclaves, but the %chance of success will be boosted based on books you've collected for your tower library.

Nice, I look forward to hoarding magical knowledge, after all, knowledge is power, guard it well.

No conclave, no free mages, just, ME.

[kaylo7]

Originally posted by Jester_hell_696:

That's sounds cool, kaylo7 talks about using xp to unlock basic spells and I can see how say the idea of using fire magic to create a light is not ground breaking by any means, it would be one of the first thing many people would think of with fire magic.

So...this I don't actually know and is just conjecture (never heard this explicitly from the Devs), but originally the plan was for, when a world is generated, some spells to be common knowledge and others lost to history/forgotten. So in the Demo, when you generated a new world some spells were available and others weren't. Spell modifiers (don't exist in the release version) also varied by world seed. So for example in one world Arcane Missile would have Twinned and Blindness modifier upgrades and I'd have the Gate spell available, but in another world Arcane Missile would only have the Weakness upgrade and Gate wasn't in the spell list at all.

So my assumption, and again this is just conjecture, is that the intent was for these "lost" spells to be researchable as well. I don't know if they're intended to be as easily discoverable as commonly known spells in that world, or whether it's a more complicated research tier with more involved mechanics, or whether there was never any intention for those spells to be discoverable. Again I'd assume you CAN because why gate them to world seed, but no Dev has confirmed it that I know of.

[Jester_hell_696]

Originally posted by kaylo7:

So...this I don't actually know and is just conjecture (never heard this explicitly from the Devs), but originally the plan was for, when a world is generated, some spells to be common knowledge and others lost to history/forgotten. So in the Demo, when you generated a new world some spells were available and others weren't. Spell modifiers (don't exist in the release version) also varied by world seed. So for example in one world Arcane Missile would have Twinned and Blindness modifier upgrades and I'd have the Gate spell available, but in another world Arcane Missile would only have the Weakness upgrade and Gate wasn't in the spell list at all.

So my assumption, and again this is just conjecture, is that the intent was for these "lost" spells to be researchable as well. I don't know if they're intended to be as easily discoverable as commonly known spells in that world, or whether it's a more complicated research tier with more involved mechanics, or whether there was never any intention for those spells to be discoverable. Again I'd assume you CAN because why gate them to world seed, but no Dev has confirmed it that I know of.

Does sound cool conceptually, but I would warn against the non world gen spells just not being possible at all, even if they can only be gotten by research or archaeology they should always be at least possible, even if the difficulty of getting them gets raised.

I mean, it is one thing if the spell is not common knowledge and you have to research it yourself or find it in a dungeon, but its a whole nother ball game if your favourite spell just cannot exist at all in a given world.

The game Sword of the Stars 2 did randomised tech trees and sometimes you just would not be able to research certain technologies because they didn't "generate" for you in that game.

I found it quite frustrating to get halfway though the tech tree and find out that tier 3 lasers are just not an option this time, no matter what I did, Stellaris did a better job of randomising tech with Tech "cards" that you draw after each research.


I saw you mentioned a gate spell, does this mean that there was, at least at one point in the demo a teleportation magic?

Gives me a dream of building my mage tower on a secluded island and using teleportation circles to go from my tower to my house in town.

I'm totally not a secret mage, I'm just a hermit that spends months not leaving my house, collecting toe nail clipping and making little figurines from them, you know, totally normal hermit stuff.

Although this does raise another "dev" question.



In line with Update #4 Crimes and Punishments, will it be possible to take a false identity or conceal your identity in someway?

In many games, I would say most in fact, if one person sees you commit a crime from a distance they know it is "you" the play character, even if you're wearing face covering head gear, If the guards are psychic it makes any sort of criminal behaviour just a poor decision.

Maybe some equipment items could have a "conceals face/identity" modifier? so that any crime done with that item equipped are linked to that item rather then the player character.

Then if you get caught putting it on, taking it off or carrying carrying it around when searched for another crime then its dumps its "wanted" status onto the player character.

Could be negated by using other "unique" equipment at the same time, sure you covered your face, but everyone know you own the ancient MacGuffin artefact that was used to assassinate the king.


Edit: double word removed

[kaylo7]

Teleportation was always an intended way to get to and from your Tower, though I believe it was supposed to be a high-tier spell that would require a powerful mage to cast. The base "Gate" spell may or may not have been intended to be used for long-range teleportation, just as the "Fly" spell in the demo wasn't intended as a long-range flight spell - a higher tier version would allow long-distance travel (it was more a "levitate" than "fly" spell).

But the Gate spell in the demo could be used outside of combat in world casting - at the time it was fairly useless as distance didn't appear to scale with spell power (probably just not implemented in the Demo version), and it only teleported you up to 1 tile away.

All the spells that were removed are being balanced before they re-add them, so things may change in the final iteration.

[Jester_hell_696]

Originally posted by kaylo7:

Teleportation was always an intended way to get to and from your Tower, though I believe it was supposed to be a high-tier spell that would require a powerful mage to cast. The base "Gate" spell may or may not have been intended to be used for long-range teleportation, just as the "Fly" spell in the demo wasn't intended as a long-range flight spell - a higher tier version would allow long-distance travel (it was more a "levitate" than "fly" spell).

But the Gate spell in the demo could be used outside of combat in world casting - at the time it was fairly useless as distance didn't appear to scale with spell power (probably just not implemented in the Demo version), and it only teleported you up to 1 tile away.

All the spells that were removed are being balanced before they re-add them, so things may change in the final iteration.

I had heard that a lot of spells from the demo had been removed for balancing but I had no idea what those spells where, got to love teleportation.

Does make me wonder about a netflix's Castlevania style teleportating castle that Dracula used, I've travelled the word from the safety of my tower.


Also it opens up bigger full on expansion packs with D&D styles planes like Planescape Torment, since worship and souls are planed for main game and necromancy for a DLC travelling to the celestial and demonic planes could be a expansion idea.

[LordYabo]

Originally posted by Jester_hell_696:

No conclave, no free mages, just, ME. :reusgreed:

This really made me laugh, thanks!

[LordYabo]

I'm here to serve!

Originally posted by Jester_hell_696:

I'll keep to the "early" updates for now.

Thanks. I still have 85 more posts to get through to catch up since Release

Spell Research

With Update #2 The Mage Tower it says "Improved Spell Research" and couldn't help but wonder what your concept of that is?

I haven't played Dominions, just looked it up. Looks cool, Master of Magic vibe with Total War Shogun looks.

I love research/tech trees and skill trees (Diablo IV is interesting). Civ, Stellaris, Master of Magic, Master of Orion, Total War, it's like my favorite thing. So I designed up a somewhat randomized Research Tree and set some programmers on it.

They built it, I never really looked at it, it went out in the demo.
In its current state it is pretty terrible. Embarrassingly terrible.

Here are the design goals:
1. Players learn knowledge (XP) in spell schools from study, books, and experience. You cash in this knowledge for specific things you want.

2. Spells are always useful. They scale with the player's power. You don't learn Magic Missile, or Fire1, and then later never ever use it because you have Fire3 and it's just better.

3. A spell can be learned at any time, meaning there is no such thing like D&D as 1st or 7th level spells. They are just spells you either know or don't know. Other people on the team hate this because it is so hard to work with. I love the flexibility but recognize it may cause more trouble than it is worth.

4. In spending XP there is supposed to be an interesting choice between increasing Spell School - which improves all your spells - or gaining a new spell

5. Not every spell is in every world, but 95% of them are. The idea is to make each play through different. If you predominantly used Lightning previous play through, and that spell isn't here in this world, now you have to come up with new solutions. Maybe you find a new favorite.

There is a customization UI for new world gen that advanced players can choose which ones appear for sure (perhaps negating the above).

I like the little bit of uncertainty it introduces. I understand the Laser III frustration mentioned. The goal is to make the game not reliant on any spell and interesting with all. Hopefully that solves the Laser III problem?

We argue internally about revealing the whole tree or not. I like not because it is more realistic. You don't know what you don't know. I understand this prevents "builds" ahead of time, but I think that is a good thing. Again, internally, people are against this for reasons.


To answer other's questions:
There are "Omega" spells which are super rare and can only be learned after becoming an expert in that spell school (90+). There are multi-part quests involved with learning them and doing so makes you one of the Greatest of All Time (Archmage) and create a win scenario.

The standard way to get XP is NOT combat but study.
The quality of the Library where you study affects how well your study goes: it boosts XP gains.
It's impossible to reach the highest levels without a GREAT library. So finding them books is a major part of this system.

What we have sucks: 100xp always gets you a new spell school level.
None of the interesting nuances of the tree are there.
It needs not really an overhaul, but just to be finished well. It's like half done right now and frustrates me to no end!
So we'll do the work necessary to making it good by Update #2.
Some improvements (rising cost of spell school points) are coming in today's patch 0.0.9.

Experimentation

Update #2 also lists "experimentation system" which makes me wonder, what that is and how you envision it?

One of the high level concepts for how spell learning works is based on how programming is learned, something I'm intimately familiar with.

There are two ways to learn programming: theory in books & school, and practice.

It's one thing to read Object Oriented Programming or a Design Pattern like Flyweight or Singleton, and another to USE it and see where it fits well and where it doesn't.

I want to give the player the ability to learn by study and/or learn by doing. Combat is one form of doing, but this is not a combat focused game. As Kaylo7 wrote elsewhere
"I'm totally not a secret mage, I'm just a hermit that spends months not leaving my house, collecting toe nail clipping and making little figurines from them, you know, totally normal hermit stuff."

That idea of just hermiting up to study and experiment to become super powerful is part of the fantasy.

In the conclave or player mage tower there will be a "Blast Chamber" which is a room where you can really let loose with all your spells in a non-threatening way (perhaps like a Star Trek Holodeck) and gain school XP. There are strong dispel fields in these rooms to prevent you from levelling the place.

I have thoughts to add a mini-game here but most of the team is against it, it just overly complicates it.

We haven't built the UI yet, but basically you choose a magic school and then it fades out and you get your results.

The difference between study vs experiment is the old risk/reward. Study is expected results, experiment is something less or something better than study. A few, like 1 per school, can only be learned through experimentation. They do not appear in the research tree, but they also aren't totally out of the world.

In both cases you are trading time (life) for XP.

Update #4 Crime & Punishment

Update #4 Crime & Punishment lists an "Enhanced Justice System" and I wonder if that will include just fines and prison or more "traditional" punishments like cutting off a thief's hand or enslaving a debtor aka Debt Bondage?

We built some of the crime & punishment, but it's unfinished and has lots of holes.

From the design docs:

Player crimes are tracked by town, in this order of badness:

1. Debt
   
2. Theft
   
3. Illicit magic
   
4. Arson/Destruction of property
   
5. Assault – attacking but not killing a citizen or guard
   
6. Kidnapping
   
7. Sedition – increasing unrest
   
8. Murder
   
9. Treason

When the player is caught, their sentence is determined by the ruling lord, from these choices

• Fine – costs gold, cost scales
  
• Stocks – reduces fame
  
• Flogging – reduces max hp, greatly reduces prestige
  
• Mutilation – permanently lose a body part:
  
  • deformed – affects persuasion (why so serious? 😊)
    
  • eye – affects scholarship, weapon to hit
    
  • hand – affects craft, can’t equip in that hand
    
  • Tongue – eliminates all dialog options
    
  • Foot – travel time on foot 25%, boots only provide half their stat bonuses
• Imprisonment – costs time, time scales up to life imprisonment, chance of escape by friends
  
• Execution – death, chance of escape by friends, family

The House of the ruling lord matters: it determines the kinds of punishments considered
some never imprison, some never execute, some hand down harsher sentences

Any crime can be pardoned by the King, if relationship is high enough

Laws are enforced by the town guards under the direction of the captain of the guard and the local lord, who also acts as judge in all criminal cases. A house mage may be employed to assist the lord in ascertaining the truth during trials.

[LordYabo]

Originally posted by Jester_hell_696:

I do like the sound of the justice system, with bounty hunting is it planned to be possible to capture people or is it purely head hunting?

Bounties are for capturing or killing. The ol' "Dead or Alive".
I haven't thought through why one over the other.

The bounty system is a cool way to see the simulator at work, because you can do things that bankrupt someone and then see their name come up for bounty for bad debts.

But the most important aspect is bounties on the player!
Bad debts.
Being a jerk to people in town.
Crime.
A scorned lover.

Watch out! Bounty hunters are coming for you!

[LordYabo]

Originally posted by Jester_hell_696:

I saw you mentioned a gate spell, does this mean that there was, at least at one point in the demo a teleportation magic?

Gives me a dream of building my mage tower on a secluded island and using teleportation circles to go from my tower to my house in town.

There is no "gate" spell. It must be "Gale" they were thinking of.
There is a teleportation spell, which through permanence rituals/enchantment creates portals so you can permanently move around the map. Like the towers of high sorcery in Dragonlance.

Because you seem like a pretty swell person, here is the list of spells in various stages of development. It's a work in progress list, not a promise list. Let's just keep it between us :

Phantom Music
Phantom Sound
Prestidigitation
Infusion
Force Push/Pull
Chasm (Spell)
Rain
Gale
Teleport
Arcane Shield
Elemental Armor
Gale
Magic Missile
SandBlast
Daggerfall
Darkness
Fog
Silence
Vulnerability
Banish
Shrink
Polymorph
Mage Weapon
Imbue
Arcane Insight
Invisibility
Dispel Magic
Charm
Fly
Rain
Firespray
Acid Blast
Light
Ignite
Haste
Flamewave
Fireball
Cone of Cold
Blizzard
Lightning Bolt
Scorching Heat
Ice Wall
Quicksand
Thunderclap
Air Pocket
Winter's Wrath
Freeze
Frostbite
Ice Lance
Stone Shield
Rolling Stone
Wall of Stone
Web
Flame Shield
Chaos Storm Shield
Cold Snap
Earth Grasp
Earthquake
Firestorm
Tornado
Lightning Storm
Ice Shield

Then there is the conclave banned list (Free Mages only)
Banned Spells (Free Mages)
Detect
Disguise Self
Disguise Value
Mind Read
Memory Purge
Invisibility
Invisible Item
Invisible Field
Mirror Image
Dream Touch
Polymorph
Charm
Mental Prison

In line with Update #4 Crimes and Punishments, will it be possible to take a false identity or conceal your identity in someway?

Yes? It makes sense and you see invisibility and Disguise Self above. Haven't thought too much about it yet.

But clothing matters in Archmage.

[LordYabo]

Originally posted by Jester_hell_696:

Also it opens up bigger full on expansion packs with D&D styles planes like Planescape Torment, since worship and souls are planed for main game and necromancy for a DLC travelling to the celestial and demonic planes could be a expansion idea.

There are lots of ways of expanding on the base of this game, but I doubt Planes and I'm not following the D&D cosmology. We're doing something different and unique for our world.