Design Goal: Getting players to specialize, not just use everything.

[CodexArcanum]

A thought similar to the "restricted tiers/resources" idea, perhaps this can be implemented just using existing elements in better ways.  My example of Light spells was pretty specific to just those spells because ocean shallows are hard to reach in general, especially with the change to how buoys work.  But that can be an advantage to the game's design.  Perhaps if the continent itself was less pangea and more an archipelago of sorts.  Even just a two tile wide "river" between halves of the continent could serve as a buffer zone, requiring buoys to get across.  Required terrain features means you have to play out certain missions to get them.  If the only Forest spaces are on the other side, then getting green elements suddenly becomes much more difficult, and that guides spell selection.

I think that same idea applied to new terrain types could play out very well.  Maybe mountains that can't be passed without tunnels.  Or "Storm Basins" where the wind is particularly bad and you need a chain of adjacent wind towers to break through. (Actually, "the Deep" could serve that purpose just as readily.) 

Going back to the other idea I posted, perhaps "condition specific" resources also give an additional reason to venture into dangerous areas.  Getting a rare resource needed for high power spells is a good reason to venture into a Stormy area, or the territory of Pirates.

[nanostrike]

Examples:

A. Leafy Whip and Miasma Whip are both basically the same idea, but with different visuals.  However, the damage output of leafy is much larger, as is its range; but it's cooldown is also larger.  Miasma is much shorter and faster, and has a very low cooldown.  You can get lots of really different practical effects from these compared to one another depending on how you customize via enchants, and what other complementary spells you might want to use along with these in the matching color (if you have a bonus to the element, then using multiple spells of that element is great).

B.Ice Toss and Launch Rock.  Also pretty much the same sort of thing.  However, launch rock is much larger and thus harder to throw indoors.  It also does more damage and tends to arc in a way that is particularly difficult to throw in close quarters.  It's able to ultimately be thrown much further than ice toss depending on your angle of fire, though.  Here again, these are two basic riffs on the same idea, in two different colors, and how you choose to kit yourself out with enchants really lets you take it even to the next level.

And so on.

While I like this concept, in reality, there are really two things that determine what spell I end up using:

1) How easy it is to get or upgrade a spell at any given time.  This means that on Continent 1, you're stuck with a few spells until you tier up multiple times and/or get lucky with mission ingredients.

In relation to your example, I'd be using Leafy Whip and Rock Throw because they only take Earth Essence (T1) to upgrade, whereas Ice Toss takes Coral and Sea Essence (Significantly harder to unlock!) and Miasma Whip takes Cherries (T2).


2) I usually take the one that can hit the hardest and only switch if the enemies are for some reason immune to it.  This would probably mean, once again, Leafy Whip and Rock Throw.  Not only are they stronger, but since each character has percentage-based attack, that gets magnified.


3) In practice, I really only use 3 spells at any given time.  Two long-range ones (Different elements, to get past any immunities), and a Whip spell to smash objects like Quartz, Granite, ect.  That's it.  I see no real point in using much else.

And while those two ranged spells will vary sometimes, more often than not it's a "Straight shot" type fast projectile (Energy Ball, Ball Lightning, Fireball, ect) and an AoE (Rock Throw).  There's not much reason to switch that up because it works.

4) A lot of the spells are just gimmicky or impractical.  For example, the miasma spell that trails along the groundCOULD be useful, but it's damage is so low that it's not worth your time to cast.

5) The randomness of the Enchantment drops pretty much determine what spells you have to use.  I got a ton of entropy-boosting stuff...so I guess I need to use Entropy, ect.

[Bluddy]

Interesting idea CodexArcanum. Reverting even more to existing mechanics, if the settlement and windmills pushed back even a smaller wind radius, and something about the wind made gem collection extremely difficult or even near impossible, you'd have a much smaller selection of gems to use from which you could build spells.

For example, storms could penetrate caves. The cave itself could be stormy, reducing visibility to the point that gems are impossible to find. Only level 3 and below would be clear of the storm, and getting there would be very difficult since you'd have to fight the storm-boosted enemies on the way.

[madcow]

Adding cool element specific touches to spells would encourage flavor and playstyle in picking a specialization. For instance fire lights them on fire for damage over time (or explodes to hit a small radius), lightning might chain between targets, ice slowing enemies, etc - could work towards encouraging specialization.

While I like the idea of making some spell components rarer/require extra hoops, that seems to encourage -forced- specialization not players deciding what to use. While I personally don't mind so long as its in reason, I imagine quite a few wouldn't like that.

Edit: Another way to encourage specialization, limit spells to your active 0-9 slots only, no carrying extra spells to swap around without going back to base. Then there could be synergy bonuses for equipping spells of the same color. Or it could be made even more complex by adding complimentary colors (like magicka I suppose) with different synergy effects. Though that's getting a little complicated.

[TechSY730]

I guess I am the odd one out, but I actually use all eight of my spell key bindings regularly. (9 and 0 are for platforms and crates).

Sure, my first three or so get the most use, but for elemental advantages, times I want a little extra damage, or want an odd firing angle, I will use the others. I have found myself doing that quite regularly recently.
In fact, I frequently do try some of the less "popular" spells when I can finally craft them just to see if they can provide something useful that my other current "loadout" cannot.

When upgraded, firetouch actually has a pretty crazy good DPS if you can get close enough to use it, especially with ROF increase enchants. I guess I'm one of the few crazy enough to try using melee seriously in combat (albeit, long range still is my standard battle strategy)

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I guess I am the odd one out, but I actually use all eight of my spell key bindings regularly. (9 and 0 are for platforms and crates).

Sure, my first three or so get the most use, but for elemental advantages, times I want a little extra damage, or want an odd firing angle, I will use the others. I have found myself doing that quite regularly recently.
In fact, I frequently do try some of the less "popular" spells when I can finally craft them just to see if they can provide something useful that my other current "loadout" cannot.

When upgraded, firetouch actually has a pretty crazy good DPS if you can get close enough to use it, especially with ROF increase enchants. I guess I'm one of the few crazy enough to try using melee seriously in combat (albeit, long range still is my standard battle strategy)

I'm the same, I use the full range of 0-9 for all the spells I use. Though I'm not crazy enough to try melee

King

[freykin]

techsy730, I think I currently hold the title of first ever to kill an overlord with just fire/death touch . My first world for beta phase 3 I focused on doing entirely melee, just those two skills + storm dash. Death touch can output some crazy ridiculous damage if you search for enchants to build around it.

[zebramatt]

I like the idea of adding effects to spell colours to add variety, and I like the idea of procedurally leading the flow of easiest vs hardest spell unlocks across similar-category-and-power spells, such that it is rarely ever the same progression from world to world, continent to continent*.  If there's not a Mantis for each of those two ideas, there should be.

In almost every other way, however, I'm extremely happy with the selection and variety of spells - and would like to see more of it!


(*Edit - To elaborate on why I like this idea for a moment: I remember back in the early-mid beta time when the make-up of your world , specifically the layout of region types (which got higher level as you got further from your settlement), could have a profound impact on which spells you'd use. Everyone might agree that a certain spell was best but if you didn't have any regions to collect that sort of spell gems close enough to your start, you'd need to have a rethink and use whatever you did have easy access to. It really shook things up and gave it that AI War feel of every time being different, but never arbitrarily so.)

[jonasan]

getting players to specialize...

i really like the idea of the glyph transfer and being able to build up a stable of characters in your settlement that specialize in different ways. I think this idea could be taken further in order to promote specialization.

i imagine a scenario where i need to head into the dessert to get 'x' resource and naturally swap to my character who is adept with magic that will give me an edge in this type of region.

but what does the game need in order to make me feel like this is necessary....

... right now i can pretty much go anywhere with my main character and deal out death assuming i have at least two types of long or whip range spells to help me out when something is resistant. there used to be substantially more enemy weaknesses to go along with the enemy resistances which i think really encouraged using different spells - and if this was carried through for a region type then there would be more incentive to have a mage (character) specially equipped for this kind of region (i.e. most of the commonly found enemies have similar weakness and at the same time are buffed substantially to encourage using the right spell type to have any chance of bringing them down).

... one thing that might add to this would be different characters having an innate ability to use 'x' type of magic more effectively than others. Each character could have the three main stats and one type of magic which they are particularly good with. This would also give us a way of further differentiating the characters from different time periods and encouraging the use of transfers and a pool of mages. Combining this with region wide monster weaknesses and tougher bad guys (which mean you really have to take advantage of the available edge from different characters and specialization) would go a long way to encourage payers to experiement with different spells and build characters for different types of regions.... i.e. encourage specialisation.

.... taking it further, what if every character you control had not only a preferred magic type (i.e. one where their power was higher and cool downs shorter) but also had a corresponding deficiency - i.e. great with fire, terrible with water. one again encouraging the player to utilize certain spells from those available depending on their character and then further customising that specialisation through enchant selection. equally this would encourage glyph swapping and building more than one character. this would also increase the impact of wandering/migrating monsters - suddenly i am facing off with something from a completely different region that I would normally prefer to have a different character for - makes this much more impacting and scary i think.

... right now i think the characters are where we need most attention in order to bring about this change and get players to really use the range of spells and specialize their characters.... so along with the innate strength and weakness with different types of magic for each character what about different characters also having one powerful innate enchant (dealt out by the RNG). Then for example at character selection you have two characters with similar magical strengths (i.e. because from same time period) but who also have radically different innate enchants - making character choice more meaningful.

.... one further idea, though on a different line (and maybe not as good) would be increasing the mission and enemy types and building in the need for specialization - we have this already to an extent but imagine (for example) a mission where all the enemies were equipped with some kind of magical shield which meant you could only hit them with spells fired from inside the shield - thereby encouraging close range combat.

I think theses ideas for a return to region specific monster weaknesses, and more diversity in characters in terms of natural strengths and weaknesses with different kinds of magic and innate enchants (or something similar once something like this has been through the arcen think tank  would be a really big step towards the goal of encouraging specialization and at the same time would offer a more diverse range of play experiences for one player over the length of an infinite game!

Thinking about it now this really reminds me of the initial world selection in AI war (i.e. choosing your location, number of gates to home world and carefully selecting your bonus ship type) - these choices and the procedurally generated world you explore radically effect your play style for the coming game, they promote specialization and experimentation with different ships and add great amounts of re-playability and diversity to the AI war experience. I would love to have a similar feeling built into valley - we have the world, the diversity of regions, monsters and missions, endless variation in enchants for further character customization, and the process of progression which leads you always to new areas and into further exploration and challenge - but i think we need more on the character side of things to really make each play experience more unique, and to encourage experimentation and specialization with all of the spells on offer in valley. Think about how you have to relearn and completely change your attack patterns depending on your arsenal of ships in AI war, and how much fun and freshness this brings to the game - we got to get that into valley..... thoughts??

[Quaix]

There's a good reason why new players don't specialize: It's fun to upgrade spells. It's fun to gather resources. When you're a new player you don't quite know which materials you will need later, so you tend to gather everything you can. For a while I was cutting down every tree because, cedar logs! I thought they'd be useful for something.

That applies to spells, too. They're all different and you don't know exactly what you're going to need later, so you tend to upgrade all of them. On second or third continents that might not be the case, but on the first continent the player wants to explore and see what's out there because everything is new to him.

If I'm at tier 3 and a new tier 1 spell becomes available, how do I know if it's any good at tier 3 without upgrading it all the way?

I really want to understand your motivation for this design goal, because the way the game is right now it encourages new players to do the opposite.

But if you really want players to specialize on the first continent, I do have some suggestions on how to make that happen, although I don't know if I like any of them myself:

 - Have the basic spells of each class be the same. Say, if we have energy orb for each element, which would have exact same stats and behavior. The player will see that Entropy Energy Orb is exactly the same as Earth Energy Orb, and will know there's no reason to upgrade both of them. (If there's a way of applying a color filter to sprites, this might work without increasing the number of sprites)
 - Lock more spells by requiring components from continent 2.
 - Increase the costs of spell upgrades so players can't upgrade them just by wandering around, they have to look for them and if they want to upgrade several, it'll take work on their part. If a spell requires 4 charred amber instead of 1, the player will think twice about how much they actually need that spell.

I don't particularly like any of these except maybe the third one.

On a related note, please implement an easy way to look up what certain ingredients are for. If I see a mission in the overworld and it rewards 5xwitch's hair, make it easy for the player to decide whether he needs that or not. Make each crafting ingredient clickable leading the player to the encyclopedia page listing all recipes using that ingredient. I know it would be a substantial amount of work to implement this, but it's fairly straightforward and the new player experience would benefit greatly from this.

[khadgar]

Well the real issue, when you think about it, is availability. And on that note; lets talk about the old ocean mechanic. The one where you "fell in" to the ocean by walking into that square. What did it do, and how did it impact gameplay? Firstly, it meant you weren't able to easily traverse the ocean! This was HUGE. It meant you could, at any time, travel across the sea, but it was very hard to do so. You didn't have to wait until you farmed 8 buoys to do so either. It was just a "do I want to cross this inhospitable terrain?"

So, thinking about it: what does the world map really represent? What do the regions themselves represent? When you "enter" a region from the map, what are you really doing? Are you visiting a specific spot in that region that is filled with hostile monsters, while the rest of the region is monster-free? If that isn't the case, why can you walk across the area on the world map at any time with no consequence? Perhaps if you had to traverse the entire zone at least once before being able to skim over it, this would make more sense, but as of right now, it's an egregious abstraction of what someone would actually be doing.

What does this mean in the context of variety and availability? You want to learn a fire spell. The lava flats are on the other side of a huge icy tundra. So, you walk over the entire tundra on the world map and arrive at the lava flats. There is no journey. The accomplishment is in getting the rubies from the lava flats, instead of arriving at the lava flats to begin with. Would it be annoying to be forced to walk across several overland dungeon regions to get where you want to go? Almost surely! So what can you do about this? I have a few ideas, but I'm really not sure how a major gameplay change would effect how the game plays out. I think it's too late for a change of this magnitude as well, but... it's always possible.

#1 : Wind Shelters - What are those tubes or roads that go between wind shelters anyway? Why not make wind shelters a fast-travel spot, that you can travel to instantly? Maybe you can travel along those tube lines for free without being forced to enter the zone. That might be weird, since the tube/road things are placed automatically, and it could be put in an awkward position. But it's a start. It is at least an attempted explanation of why the glyphbearer doesn't have to fight the ice espers in the ice plains every time they walk over the ice plains region on the world map.

#2 : You only have to do it once - The first time you enter a region, you are forced into it. You can leave the way you came, but if you want to be able to move beyond that region, you must reach the end / 4 chunks in / a warp point midway / else () that allows that region here on out to be marked as "traversable". Think waypoints in Diablo II, for instance. Been there, done that. It might be a bit annoying, but maybe it wouldn't be. Maybe it would encourage bat-form rushing across each and every zone to unlock them all so you don't have to bother later, or maybe it wouldn't. I know that I would go on unlocking sprees, and forge a pathway through the continent to save time later.

#3 :  Interconnected Regions - The last overland dungeon in one region leads fluidly to the next region. There is no random wall at the end, it just takes you to the next region. This would add fluidity between the regions, instead of feeling disjointed and entirely separate. The big issue here is... which region would it take you to? Given that there is only a left and a right (and left has to lead you back to the world map, right?), but there are 4 possible adjacent chunks to lead you to, this seems like it might feel more awkward than the current system. But I'm sure there is a clever and elegant solution that would work around the 4 direction / 2 direction disjoint.

#4 : Terrain Boundaries - You can travel within a terrain type, by moving to a new type causes something to happen. So, you enter the ice plains, you complete something or another, and now you can go to any other ice plains area. If you want to go to the adjacent forest, you have to do something to get there, or something. I don't know. This is an idea that is not quite even half-baked, given the random nature of continent shapes and region shapes, but it's an idea.

But what do you guys think? Does limiting the resources available to the player, or increasing the time spent traveling make for a more rewarding experience, or a more grindy experience? Is it better to give the player 100 options and let them pick which 10 they want, or is it better to give them 10 to start and give them 1 by 1 as they go? Would making travel more difficult, or at the very least, more time consuming add to the exploratory feel, or would it just be a pain, and something to be gotten out of the way ASAP? And overall, would this make it a better game?

What this post was when i finished writing it is considerably different than when I started writing it. It should be a new thread but I don't wanna.

[Quaix]

Khadgar, I like your #2. Any kind of game mechanic that forces you to 'conquer' the land is good in my opinion.

Currently most regions already contain a mini-boss. Change that to all of them, and require the player to defeat the boss before he can access the adjacent squares.

For shallow ocean travel, have the player craft a raft or a canoe for something like 20 cedar logs. For inter-island travel, make the cost much higher, 200 logs and 20 linen, for example.

As it is right now, the boat just pops out of nowhere.

[Bluddy]

Some great ideas there jonasan.

The concept of a character having proficiencies and deficiencies in certain elements sounds great. Just remember that characters can be very short lived, in which case you'd modify your spell selection for a character that dies right away. So perhaps it makes more sense to have all characters from a certain time period have certain proficiencies and deficiencies.

I also thought of the idea of having shields (magical or tech) that you can only get past within a certain range. You could also have invisible monsters that only appear within a certain range, or really tough monsters whose innards can be hit from close range but who  'pull their innards back inside' if you hit them from afar. I think these enemy types are a must if we're going to balance the utility of long range spells with other spells. Also, some enemies that can only hurt you if you're far away from them would be helpful (like having missiles that can't lock on you if you're close).

From the ongoing discussion, it seems to me like these should to be the requirements for the spell system:
1. Every player should be able to choose their own different selection of spells.
2. There should be a reason to at least try different spells, if not in one continent then over time.
3. Being forced to randomly use spells you're not used to once in a while makes for interesting gameplay.

Rule 4 is implicit, in that the utility of spells should be more or less balanced. Currently long-range spells dominate, but I think that can be dealt with using enemy types as stated above.

So far, the possible ways to mix up spells that have been suggested include having the spells themselves be shuffled between tiers, having characters produce preferences for different spells, having the monsters serve as challenges that drive different spell use, and having access to tiles drive different spell usage.

While I'm fairly partial to the idea that spells could be shuffled between tiers, there is a downside to that, and that is that it doesn't meet requirement 1 very well -- if certain spells are locked out per tier, it makes it hard for players to choose their own palette of spells unless there are MANY spells in the game, in which case locking out some doesn't make a huge difference. Also, there are already more organic ways of randomization in the game (namely the tiles) and this scheme doesn't work into that.

The character and monster options don't seem to require much specialization or changing one's selection per continent. Both options seem to leave the spell selection process mostly as it is, but perhaps someone else could expand on how they relate to the requirements I stated above.

To me, the most potential seems to lie in the tile-based option -- this is a source of randomization per continent that I feel should be exploited, and currently it isn't really. It doesn't matter which tile is next to which other tile -- you can easily access them all. I love the idea of certain tiles being inaccessible (or difficult to access), but that eliminates the 1st requirement -- those spells are cut off for everyone on that first continent. While I think this is also good to have, I'd like to suggest another take on this idea.

I think it makes sense to suggest that the settlement is completely surrounded by storm initially. It's the only place that the wind has been driven away. Each glyphbearer then gets a small way to drive the wind out of one or two tiles initially in the general vicinity of the settlement. This is like placing your first settlements in Settlers of Catan, and I'm sure it's analogous to something in AI War too You're essentially declaring which region types you'll start exploring, and which ones will provide you with resources. Perhaps this way of driving back the storm is temporary. As additional bonuses, the feeling of oppressive storm is even greater. Also, this makes every resource you uncover (gem vein, stash) critical, because you don't initially have easy access to many tiles. This will really contribute to the urgency of the game. As you expand your sphere of influence, you'll have to choose which direction to move in to push back the storm, and it'll only be a few tiles at a time until you build a wind shelter. These selections will determine your spell types. Each glyphbearer in a multiplayer game could start in a different area and therefore have different spells, and the spells would be a mix of what's available and what's determined randomly.

As a variation on this idea, each glyphbearer needs a resource harvester of some sort to be placed in the tile they want to start collecting gems in. Glyphbearers could cooperate and place their harvesters in the same tile, or they could place them in different tiles. The harvester can only move slowly between tiles, meaning that the player relies mostly on gems in a certain area to supply his spells. Each player chooses a different starting point though, and therefore each player can have a customized selection of spells (based on a combination of preferences and the randomization of the continent).

There's a lot that's vague in these ideas right now, but I think the upside is that they satisfy all 3 requirements.

[Bluddy]

khadgar, you make an excellent point. It really brings back the first question I had about the game, which was indeed the same as yours: how can I just travel over everything? But I kinda think it's too late to go back to that question. Back then, I suggested the map be more of a secondary thing: like the map in Fallout 1/2, you'd mark where you're interested in going, and the game would arrange it such that each region would follow the next until you end up at your destination.

Just to give an example though, missions could probably not generate as they do if travelling became a real part of the gameplay. They'd have to be given as quests at the settlement or something. Also, storm dash makes most travelling effortless and grindy. Except for those areas where it wouldn't work (too hostile), and in those areas you'd just get upset that you can't use it. I just think that so much in the game is based on the current model, switching to the models you're proposing would expose so many holes it wouldn't work. But I think in principle it could make for a more realistic-feeling world. As to whether travelling itself would actually add something... it's hard to say.

[zebramatt]

Maybe you could travel by dirigible.