New spells with the combat update need a rework badly

[W]

Recently had a chance to try the new combat update, and as it is now it is not an improvement (less fun, more frustrating, somewhat illogical).

As i see it, there was an attempt to make tactical gameplay, but the numbers do not work. Theoretically, to do decent damage in an AP/ara efficient manner, you need to set up various debuffs or accumulate tokens (embers, drenched, etc), which takes a turn while the enemies are essentially smacking you around. These debuffs/tokens can also expire or can have negative effects, so you need to hope that you can actually use them in time. Which also means you need to hope that an enemy isn't using a prepared attack, because you need to interrupt that or you'll be even more screwed. So if you do need to interrupt them, suddenly you're down 1-2 AP and a bunch of ara, so you better hope that your debuffs aren't expiring, or that you have enough resources to kill them this turn, otherwise you're just straight up dead next turn the turn after, and you won't have enough time to re-set up the debuffs. The current defensive spells are pointless, -20% physical damage yet it takes up half a turn of ara? you're better off trying to focus down 1 of the 5 goblins as this would result in a better return on damage reduction and also get you closer to the "win" condition. The only time the spell would be numerically more useful than trying to damage the enemy is if there were more than 6 enemies and you managed to kill them all before the spell expired.

Although it was slow, the previous option of defensive spells actually increased/renewed your armor and could buy you time indefinitely, while you set up or chip away to kill the enemy. Now you are just in a damage race as it's either kill a few enemies quick or be overwhelmed.

So in practice? the "tactical" side of combat doesn't work, because there's no payoff, the multitude of spells are just the illusion of options, they all simply do too little too late.
You're better off just trying to kill them ASAP with raw damage, and hope you can tank the damage they are dishing out. Of course later you have the option of using the slider to boost damage, which is more AP efficient, but with the limited ara you have, the actual difference between a novice mage and an "archmage" is that novice mage can cast the spell twice or the spell once + a melee attack, and the archmage can cast the spell twice at equal power as the novice or once with more damage + a melee attack, and that's the upper ceiling of power. If there was at least damage scaling so your spells passively do more damage as your levels in the elements improved it would allow for a slow grind towards being stronger, but right now there is no getting stronger besides better gear/armor.

as for the different schools now?

Arcane magic: oh cool, you can analyze enemies and dispell buffs and interrupt their attacks (but do no damage) an- oh wait you're dead. Should have used all your ara/ap on spamming arcane bolt.
Fire magic: oh cool you can slowly build up embers that increases your damage to fire with the option of consuming your embers to unleash a more powerful attack to- oh wait you're dead. You should have been spamming firebolt.
Ice magic: oh cool, you can gradually build up a counter that makes them freeze if once you get enoug-oh wait you're dead, you should have been using fire or arcane.
Earth magic: oh cool, you can decrease their resistance to physical attacks and do crowd control by moving them aroun- oh wait you're dead, you should have had a better weapon and play like a fighter, not a mage. That turn you used crowd control to shift them around? yeah you should have been using physical attack.
Storm magic: oh cool, you can increase the probability that damage bounces - oh wait you're dead because the RNG gods decided that it wasn't going to bounce when you needed it to. All those turns increasing the probability of a bounce? literally would have been better off just doing guaranteed damage.

So in terms of combat balance, not good to say it lightly. Either there needs to be a better way to get more baseline AP or ara/turn so that the damage slider is actually useful, or the AP/ara costs are lowered. The "tech" abilities are completely useless if their AP cost is the same as a damage spell while their damage return is less than multicasting those damage spells. Another solution would be to have spells increase in power as the element level increased, which is just a different way of improving the damage to AP/ara ratio.

tl;dr getting stronger should mean that your net damage per ara/AP per turn improves, right now it can only improve in 2 ways, the 1 off "boost" from unlocking the damage slider (which has a cap), or getting a better melee weapon. The new spells etc do not improve this parameter and/or have no situational benefits, and are thus just the illusion of options. Basically most of them are like the true-strike spell from Dnd. As a free action? great. As an actual turn that can be used for something else? waste of a spell slot.

As an aside, In terms of in-universe logic: who would bother becoming a mage? they would be dying left and right all the time to goblins/wolves, they simply aren't powerful. Furthermore, why would mages develop such risky magic that forces them to always fight on the edge of losing. With the current balancing, a skilled archmage with years of practice and experience will basically do as much damage as a novice mage if no melee weapons were allowed (ara/turn limitation).

I'm trying to be constructive, but this sharp pivot from the premise of the game (of actually being an archmage that can get stronger) really irks me.

[Yustarius]

new to the game, jumped on with the combat update.

in my opinion the magic system seem to reward "combo" of sort, for ex i jumped in easy mode after i aquired the earth spell that give the debuff of destabilized?, 2 stack on a orizzontal line and 15 damage per stack if moved around, great damage with aoe spell that push things.

but with only 20 ara it's not real easy to pull off any other combo, require multiple turn while indeed you are just at enemy mercy.

by themeself spell are just mhe, a good weapon it's way more effictive.

for action points i resolved the problem with mount, the bear give it, so imho are just mandatory.

since i don't know, how do you get arcane sight?

[W]

You should be able to get it the same way as other spells, research etc, but from what I understand depending on your worldgen the spell might not be there (the list of what spells are available to use/learn changes between worlds)

[BuriedCandy]

Originally posted by W:

Although it was slow, the previous option of defensive spells actually increased/renewed your armor and could buy you time indefinitely, while you set up or chip away to kill the enemy. Now you are just in a damage race as it's either kill a few enemies quick or be overwhelmed.

So in practice? the "tactical" side of combat doesn't work, because there's no payoff, the multitude of spells are just the illusion of options, they all simply do too little too late.

You're better off just trying to kill them ASAP with raw damage, and hope you can tank the damage they are dishing out. Of course later you have the option of using the slider to boost damage, which is more AP efficient, but with the limited ara you have, the actual difference between a novice mage and an "archmage" is that novice mage can cast the spell twice or the spell once + a melee attack, and the archmage can cast the spell twice at equal power as the novice or once with more damage + a melee attack, and that's the upper ceiling of power. If there was at least damage scaling so your spells passively do more damage as your levels in the elements improved it would allow for a slow grind towards being stronger, but right now there is no getting stronger besides better gear/armor.

Thanks for this feedback! It's super valuable!

We're trying to balance the need for some way of boosting health in combat without having shields be required every fight in order to survive.

I will share this with the team so we can do some more fine tuning. I know that I shared a similar concern with the designers before combat was released because I liked the previous mechanic of the shield and saw the need for some way of keeping my health up, but I was reassured that there will be ways to increase protection during combat, it just might not be in there quite yet. It might not function the same way as shield does, but at least it won't leave you at the mercy of a damage race to see if you can kill everyone before your protection runs out (especially with Embers also chipping away at your health, although if managed well I've found it to be a very effective way to take out hordes of enemies).

Another thing we're working on is having actual monster progression, so that should help mitigate some of the combat issues (although I agree that we still need school power increases as you gain levels in the various schools, apart from the spell power slider). And better balancing in general. The more feedback we can get like yours, the better we can balance these spells, shift around the progression order, etc.

Also, I don't know if it helps, but I just published more details on the currently available spells on https://archmageriseswiki.com. I personally love using Blizzard to immobilize everyone on the field, then start whittling away at their HP. Tactically, I tend to immobilize whoever I can (if I have the spells for it), then take out the weaklings, then the summoners, and then everyone else. Some of the much later spells that you can cast that reduces elemental resistances also helps a lot. I find the combo of Singe + Ice Lance (for the times I don't have enough Ara to cast Singe) helps a lot especially in the early game. And if you happen to freeze a monster, smash them with a weapon for 500% damage.

Thanks again for the feedback! It's feedback like yours that helps us make the game even better :)

[LordYabo]

I don't have much to add to what Phil already said...
I'm sorry you feel disappointed with the new system.
As we go through Early Access we are very much in a "Release, observe, respond" process. Your very constructive note is what we need and desire.
I appreciate the language of the note... i don't know how hard it was for you to keep it positive, but it is appreciated.

Because the Netflix F1 show Drive to Survive is about to drop a new season, I'll use a F1 analogy:
We're kind of like the mechanics/engineers making and working on the car
But we need the driver to say "this feels bad, this aspect is good now" so we know what to do, where to put the effort.

Your note has been shared with all designers working on the game.
Results will be a week or two as we troubleshoot the 'car'.

[Dhuran]

If the team is concerned with casting a shield spell each turn you could make shields operate in a reserve/cyclical way.

When you cast the shield it costs Ara and AP, then when you end your turn it rolls the effect.

Subsequent turns it holds the Ara cost (or a smaller maintenance amount) in reserve. You can release the spell at any time on your turn to access that Ara. If not released it uses the reserved Ara to refresh/reroll the shield effect when you end your turn but doesn't use AP.

The down side to that is you have to write a new type of spell. The upside is the you would have a new type of spell that you could use for other effects!

[LordYabo]

Originally posted by W:

So in terms of combat balance, not good to say it lightly.

Well, you made it into the weekly dev blog.
https://www.archmagerises.com/news/2024/2/20/development-priorities-week-of-feb-19-24

After an internal design meeting, the conclusion is:
1. W is right in some of the comparison between the old and new system. Like damage scaling, there isn't any right now.

2. We are caught in this weird limbo between combat can’t be too easy (becoming meaningless) and not too hard (early players can’t get anywhere). The real solution here is to properly scale the monster encounters between easy, medium, and hard based on where you are and progress in the world. This is what we are working on right now for exploration, to have the combat encounters feel better for your current stage.

3. Improve the spell unlocking process

I realize it is a long time to wait for Update #3, but some things just can't be done quickly because you are raising core issues in the game, not just combat.

[W]

Really great to hear feedback from the devs! I totally get that balancing the game between early and late can be a crapshoot.

For this I have two opinions, which BTW i'm sure not everyone will agree with:
1. If the players can never reach the stage where their character can have an easy battle against previously challenging foes, then character progression will feel unrewarding (e.g oblivion/elderscrolls where crabs could beat over-leveled characters due to crap scaling). So if the scaling you have in mind is early game = goblins can kill you, late game = dragons can kill you and goblins can't, then totally agree, that would be fun. The archmage should seek out greater foes as his need for materials/excitment/wealth/power demands, not that his foes should all become greater as he does.

2: Conceptually I think in the end the level of how strong the character can become should also match with both in-universe and dev/player expectations of how strong an archmage can become. E.g, would in-universe most powerful archmages be able to kill a dragon with little effort? would they be able to blow up a whole city?
or would the "most powerful" have abilities more along the lines of, "with preparation they would most likely, but not guaranteed, beat a dragon". Or "If they had a ton of resources and time, they could theoretically enact a multi-stage plan to blow up a city" Should a powerful archmage struggle against wolves and goblins? should a powerful archmage still need 8 hours to harvest 1 wood? While the risk of the game becoming too easy too quickly is very real, I think the risk of character progression being unrewarding, or the extent of the progression conflicting with the in-universe expectations of power (and thus becoming nonsensical) is greater.

From a practical aspect, one thing that could potentially help is if players had the ability to edit some of the numerical parameters of the game for themselves (either editing files, or some difficulty slider that shows how numbers are multiplied). Eg, I think that if most protection spell durations were longer, or potentially the turns or power scaled with element level, that could also offset some difficulty/frustration, however if I were to hypothetically edit in and test it, maybe I would realise actually it would make the game too easy. Conversely, I could edit it in and also find that the game is more fun and combat less frustrating.

Not much else to say in regards to this, but now i'd definitely looking forward to how combat will be refined in the future!

[LordYabo]

Cool, glad you are happier.

The New Game screen has a series of knobs and variables you will one day be able to change. Including difficulty. It's not a priority right now, but will be there when we get to 1.0.

Just today, I greenlit adding a dragon fight to the game. It's a long process to add such a thing: narrative, art, design, animation, audio, it has to pass through a lot of hands. But in 4+ short months, you'll be able to do it!!

The goal is for an Archmage (primary spell school around 100, secondary spell school around 50) "with preparation they would most likely, but not guaranteed, beat a dragon"

[Interrupted]

Originally posted by LordYabo:

Originally posted by W:

So in terms of combat balance, not good to say it lightly.

2. We are caught in this weird limbo between combat can’t be too easy (becoming meaningless) and not too hard (early players can’t get anywhere). The real solution here is to properly scale the monster encounters between easy, medium, and hard based on where you are and progress in the world.

I'm sure is all over it, but scrying and spells like this to confirm encounters would also be a good alternative to consistent scaling.

Also just varied enemy behaviour. Goblins fleeing or sending wave assaults makes sense to me if they think you're a very powerful entity.