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Try extending your arm out fully while you build up the muscle memory so its guarenteed to land on one single plane.
I only say this because I felt the same way till I practiced enough where now most of my spells are cast on the first try and I have a really high rate of perfect casts.
I Will say ♥♥♥♥ fireworks tho. I dont know what the hell is up with that spell, I have a higher success rate with fire 3 than fireworks and fire 3's rune is absurd.
I can do fireworks at will. Fireball 2 at will. Everything else is not at all or 20% success rate :P
What literal black magic are you using to cast fireworks?
I know the runes in the book are sometimes off but like I said I can cast Fire 3 more consistantly than fireworks. For instance with arcane ray I need to make the horizantal line between the two vertical lines almost twice as long as it shows in the book and I can cast it with like an 80% success rate. Anyone I have taught using this method has also seen their success rate skyrocket.
So what exactly is off in the book rune for firework? Even tracing it doesn't work for me.
Yeah, some runes are way off in regards to what you can cast to get them working. Like the first rune of teleport can be done with a horizontal scribble. Mana shield can be a circle in the middle of line. Frost bolt (the F rune) can be drawn as a droopy r. I'd imagine there are others. In contrast, some runes, no matter how perfectly you seem to draw or trace them, just don't seem to want to work. Some runes are just way too intolerant to error. I really am hoping this gets fixed because it feels broken, or at least not-reasonably-functional for consistent combat use.
Main thoughts:
I get the system is supposed to be cool and kinetic, but if feels like someone doubled down on it, and it doesn't work very well. Seems like it is baked in, so maybe all we can hope for is improvements to existing system. I fear it will turn off potential players used to a more traditional mage experience.
MMOs shouldn't be a second job. Again and again, we realize this with mmos over time, especially at the end game when grinding potions or mats becomes more necessary for raiding. People play for fun, not to do something tedius. When the 2nd job starts at level 1.. I think it will cause quick attrition and player loss.
Some people will want to be a mage. It's a popular class in mmos. Reserving that experience only for those who take the time to practice for hours ok is neat in a design way, philosophicaly. I get maybe that one view is mages should be practiced or rare, or that learning magic could be seen as a skill. BUT IT IS A DAMN GAME! People want to jump in and have fun. Sitting in your house casting a rune again and again only to have it fail isn't fun; it's frustrating. It is doubly not fun to have that happen in combat. Tedium is not fun, and shouldn't be necessary for a game mechanic. Otherwise, you risk alienating and losing customers coming for the promise of being an mmo mage and getting turned off by the casting system. Sure, those who will be left might be practiced, studied and "cool" to themselves, but I think it'd be better to have more players stick around and fill that class spot, than less (but more 1337) players due to the barrier to entry. Maybe fixing some of the early spells to be more forgiving would help this, but as of now, it's frustrating, tedious and pretty unrewarding.
Consistency- Some times it is baffling what works and what doesn't when I try to cast. In combat, many spells end up being completely useless due to the cast time, or ease of failure. This starts at level 1 spells. I have a handful of spells I can cast with some regularity, while others, I've basically stopped trying, they just won't work for me even though the runes are more straightforward than some which I can cast consistently. Useless spells are bloat and bad design, especially when they each take a whole page out of your journal (side note: add journal tabs, sections, or otherwise a way to navigate or organzie)
Hardware issues - Maybe it's more an issue with my Vive setup but I see the lines in my vive controller hitch and jump as I move them, as they are updating their tracking. A straight line can suddenly become a jagged lightning shape as controllers update. Add in muscle tremors, and it becomes really hard to actually get a straight line. This whole mechanic is based on the idea that vive trackers will be accurate and players can actually draw numerous straight lines in 3 dimensions. The hardware jumps and loses tracking, it isn't inherently accurate. If I want to make a straight line in tilt-brush or something, I use the line tool.....I wonder, were the rune textures drawn by hand with vive controllers for the game texture asset, or were they drawn with something like a Photoshop line tool.....? If a line tool was used, is that really an accurate and fair way to model the player experience? The whole system is built upon the accuracy of the controllers tracking, and they don't always track accurately. This will continue to be a fatal issue in the design choice I fear.
3 planes - this is more of a question but also an issue, but I'm unsure how the flat planes are determined. Are they in relation to the headset? the shoulder set? The initial line of the rune? I assume that the first plane is established by whatever initial line is drawn by the wand, but I have asked myself could it be somehow related to my facing. Like would there be a difference if I draw a rune facing forward with shoulders squared, versus drawing a rune standing sideways. My point is, that it's opaque, which just adds to the frustration.
As a suggestion, mages also have an extra arm, and voice, and if you wanted interactive casting, things like raising your arms, or a "Fus Ro Dah" could be incorporated to add some other casting tools, other than the runes. Wide large gestures might be a much easier spell mechanic than straight, angular runes.
Lastly, although I have had some fun with runecasting, I just feel that I get waaaay more frustration and tedium than fun. I consider, ok, I can spend hours and hours building muscle memory and practicing just so I can regularly cast a level 1 spell....... just so I can cast a level ONE spell.... and I realize that the system doesn't work for me. Like, I'd rather be doing a million other things than standing in my house practicing runes again and again and again. Clearly, I'd want to play a magic user if I were having fun, but it's not fun. Right now, instead of actually playing a mage, I keep a wand handy in case I need to rez. Otherwise it's just a needlessly frustrating mechanic. The motivation is low, the frustration is high, the outlook is more thankless grinding, the fun isn't there, and it seems waaay inconsistent. I guess I'll stick mostly, with muskateer.
Overall, the experience with runecasting has really deflated a lot of my enthusiasm for the game in general.
One thing I liked about Corp Por, it worked pretty consistently.
Great game, like the system, do agree though something seems inconsistant in the game.
https://wiki.orbusvr.com/Runemage_FAQ
"Our general rule of thumb is that it should take you around 10-20 hours of practice to be able to consistently cast the "basic" spells (e.g. Fireball, Frostbolt, Ice Lance). "
In response, I'd say some feel much more consistent / easier to cast than others. Some were quite easy to pick up, while other, similar or easier shapes near impossible. Maybe this is the human aspect (see below). It doesn't feel consistent across runes, which is frustrating. For example decurse versus push both are very similar shapes, with decurse being almost always sucessful while push rarely works, for me. Frost lance is a simple shape, can't cast it, hardly ever.. Rez, quite complicated, three stages. I can cast it with one eye in the headset and one eye looking it up on google.. I mean, it feels like it shouldn't work like that.
But, more importantly, I still say the high time commitment just to play is asking a lot of an already small player base. The mage has no other playstyle options other than these runes which they ask 10-20 hours of pracitce to use lol ahahahahahaha wow.. I love gaming and game hours every day. I dont have 10-20 hours on most VR titles I own, excepting a few I really like... so like 10-20 hours just to learn a class so then I can play a game? ahahahahahaah ok good luck with that. I get it's an mmo, time will be sunk, but that time investment should come naturally during play, not as a skill wall at level 0.0 that I have to grind through. Some people will come, see that and leave, and I still contend better to have a larger player base than a small group of people who have mastered an elite system after 100 hours.
"The Runemage spell recognition is math. By that we mean, it is simply a function of inputs and outputs. If you can hypothetically draw the exact same rune every time, you will get the exact same result every time. Like any computer function, it cannot make a mistake. If you are getting different results then you are drawing the rune differently. "
I like how the statement plays the math cannot be wrong card lol. Nice. The human is the one making a mistake... Well, most importantly - players are human, not machines. It's great that the math of their rune system is perfect, but how is that in relation to the players' reality and abilities, and more imporantly sense of fun... imperfect... With tracking lag, processor lag, evidently, muscle tiredness or tremors, distractions from players fighting and yelling, and who knows what other possible wild cards, a system requiring mathematical precision of players in the middle of a fight seems... a tall order. Yes you can practice for 10-20 hours to train yourself in the basics, but with all of these other factors, still, there will be issues which cause casts to fail. Personally, I'd suggest more leniancy in spell casting in recognition of some of these issues, especially in lower level spells.
Anyhow, it seems that they really have a vision of players spending hours grinding just to learn the basics of a class, "because it is a skill, like guitar", except it's a skill only useful in their mmo, lol. It's a shame because runecasting is actually a really neat premise, IF it worked well and was easier to pick up. I love exploring and looking for runes, drawing them with a wand, putting them in my spellbook, seeing them work. Like all of that is cool and works if and when it works, but it doesnt work, usually. Right away at level 1, you are hit with bam, these spells wont work no matter how many times you try and the answer is just 'git gud', spend hours practicing before you can match our math, which isn't wrong, lol. Yeah, thats loads of fun...
My guess is spell casting is dependent on server status. I cant think of any other reason why spells just flat out stopped working. I even tried the lazy P you can do but never get perfect casts on, not a single one worked.
Thought it was odd I didnt see any mages in town practicing magic when I logged in but spells flat out not working tonight would explain it.
If you manage to cast a spell with something that seems incorrect based on your book, you could be finding a new way of casting it.
Runemages need to practice a number of things to get spells to reliably work.
- Straight lines - except for the handful of spells that use curves.
- Proper proportions. Line lengths need to be correct relative to your initial line.
- Proper angles. The angles of the lines need to be correct. Frost 2's slanted F seems to have lines slanted at ~45 degree angle, though oddly I get better results from a backwards 4 shape.
- Intersections. Often I don't quite make the lines intersect, for example Fire 2's B shape might have the middle of the B not quite touch the vertical line. That'll fail.
- Intersections in the 3rd dimension. This is the big one for me, and what I think most people miss. A rune might look perfect until you step to the side and look at it side on. Then you'll often see that you actually drew the lines up to several inches apart from one another and they never actually intersected.
Personally, I think that the 3rd dimension leniency needs to be expanded. Maybe double it for normal casts, but leave it the same for perfect casting. That way, even if you move your arm slightly in/out as you draw you'll still get a normal cast. Those of us with godlike motion control still have an advantage in terms of critical chance, but it'd open the class up a lot.
Another thing that would help a LOT is some feedback on why it failed. Perhaps if you have your spellbook out and on the page for a rune you're attempting to cast the game could light up the parts of the rune you did correctly on your book's rune (maybe in green?) and highlight portions you failed in red. Anything that'd tell the user why it failed would be helpful, as they could then practice in an informed manner.
It might also be helpful to allow players to show each other writing, so that it's easier to teach other players spells. Also.. allow us to recall the last spell we cast. If I cast a spell and it fails, I always want to bring it back up and examine it from different angles to see where I messed up. Maybe make it a different color from purple so we know it's an "old" spell, not a usable one.
Edit: Honestly, you know the system is unreliable when all the Youtube tutorials demonstrating spells fail a half dozen to dozen times before they pull off the spell once or twice.
Nah mate, server lag doesn't equate into it. Graphical lag will though. The way it calculates accuracy is specifically engineered to avoid that pitfal. Every day I log in and I have to "warm up".
THOUGH WHO KNOWS there may have been an issue on that night but I don't see how there could have been based on what they've said about how accuracy is measured. I have trouble with Frost 3 still but I know the guy who taught me can reliably have 2 or even 3 frost3's in the air at once he's so skilled at it. I'm getting BETTER though.
Here's me last night, https://gfycat.com/TimelyAppropriateBlacklemur perfect cast frost3, regular cast knockback and perfect cast ice lance. That is not my norm but towards the end of a night of practice I'm getting that good til the next day.