Elemental Damage

[Hearteater]

Few quick comments:

Magika has no mana, so you can combo your heart out.  AVWW is very different in this regard, so you have a lever (mana) to rein in insane player combos.

I actually created a caster using a 3 element casting system before Magika even came out for a game I was working on based off of Enfo's Team Survival (Warcraft 3 mod).  That game required less reaction time than AVWW and even still 3 element combos were a real stretch and pretty awkward.  I'd recommend against that and instead let players build interesting spells with crests.  It lends itself a lot more to preparing well for an adventure theme.

A simple system might be to power down each element when it is used, with the power recovering over time.  Give each spell a +2, +1, and +0 power level.  They charge up one level every X seconds, and drop one level each time they are used.  Arrange the elements in a circle (say, Air->Fire->Light->Earth->Water->Entropy->Air) and have hitting with a spell add a charge to the next element in line.  So you could go Light, Fire, Light to land two Light spells at +2 power and one Fire spell at +2 power.  But two Light back-to-back is only a +2 and +1 power level.  Maybe set the effect bonuses at +10% and +25% for +1 and +2 power levels.

[syndicatedragon]

Is there a difference between weakness and -% resistance? For example, the skelebot boss in the intro has "40% extra weakness" to air and "-50% resistance" to earth. The icons are a little misleading in that case too, because there's an uparrow next to the lightning bolt...

[Toll]

That's been noted in the mantis, and it's probably just an errant -. It probably has a 50% resistance to Earth.

[vordrax]

I'm not a game designer, nor have I played AVWW enough to really comment intelligently on the design choices therein.

However, for theorycraft, there are some interesting possibilities.

You could take a WoW-style approach (say what you will about the game, it may be derivative and stale but damn do they have great spell mechanics): each spell (eventually, maybe just one or two initially, or maybe just the basic spell in each element) has a chance of proccing a special effect that cannot be taken advantage of with the spell itself. For example:

Basic fire spell: Every 4th cast causes your next non-fire spell to hit for 25% additional fire-based damage, and sets the enemy on fire.
Basic light spell: Every 10th cast causes your next non-light spell to bathe the target in light, causing it to deal 75% less damage for 5 seconds and lighting up the map for 10 seconds.
Basic earth spell: Every 5th cast causes your next non-earth spell to shake the ground, stunning all enemies within X distance from the target to be stunned for 2 seconds. This can only happen once every 30 seconds.

And so on.

Additionally, casting a spell repeatedly temporarily lowers your resistance to type of damage (representing your reliance on a particular form of power, reaching power-hungry status). It resets once you cast the opposite element, which also causes that spell to deal damage equal to double the amount of resistance lowered.

For example:

Casting a fire spell lowers your resistance to fire by 2% per cast, up to 20%. Your next (basic) cold spell will deal up to 40% more damage, resetting your resistance.

All of these could be represented visually with auras, which should definitely cut down on having to add additional artwork. I may have more ideas in the future. Conversely, if these ideas are dumb, feel free to disregard!

[vordrax]

After some consideration, I think that casting the same element over and over should lower your resistance to the opposite element, but increase your damage by the same amount.

So for example, casting that hands of fire spell (I am so bad with names, sorry!) 10 times, you'd have -50% resistance to ice, and +50% fire damage. Casting a different element will dump the resistance and the extra damage.

It allows the player to adjust their risk vs reward: Keep pummeling the water-based enemy with lightning, you'll do big damage, but be taking big damage yourself- or play cautiously, throwing a few spells, then a more neutral element.

In general, I think that spell combos should affect the player rather than the enemy, for multiplayer's sake. Whatever happens needs to originate from the player rather than affecting an enemy's statistics.

[Toll]

Will there ever be a general-purpose non-element (or perhaps void-element) spell that deals equal (mid-power) damage, which nothing has neither resistances nor weaknesses against? The only purpose of that spell would be to have guaranteed damage, even if it's lower than average. Walking into an area that is resistant to your most commonly-used spells? Switch to this spell to at least be guaranteed damage, but by combining weaknesses and the correct spell-element you'd be able to deal at least twice, and in some cases four times the damage.

[x4000]

Mostly traps and a few other non-spell things crafted at the outfitter will be sources of non-elemental damage.


And yeah, that - sign is errant, sorry for the confusion.