I've never played a game this bad

[Terraziel]

But really the first part of my point here was that the game currently makes it hard to get spells leveled up to force players to be selective about what they pick to use. Do you disagree with that?

No, I full agree with the assessment, I just feel that that is a fair thing to do.

The second part of my point is that adding more spells - especially "tree" type ones that require getting one or more previous spells - won't be that effective in offering player variety because the existing amount of effort to level up spells already discourages variety and experimentation.

This discussion is going on in another thread as well so I shall quote myself from there...

I had a suggestion a while back for removing the "tech tree" --- as in, I don't see any good reason why you should need tier II lightning ball to make tier III.  I feel like if crafting was only a tier-long commitment rather than a continent-long one, you'd be willing to experiment with new spells a lot more.

See I change my main combat spells every continent and consider that to be encouraged variation. If the game gives you a risk free opportunity to change your spells and you don't take it then that is your fault.

EDIT:

Lets be clear here, I'm not saying that it shouldn't be done, I'm just saying it is going to be complicated to get right.

Rather we are sort of discussing this like combat and exploration are somehow mutually exclusive, as someone who enjoys combat but sees no reason why it should be encouraged what this risks doing is cutting down the amount of both exploration and combat I do by 50% for no benefit to me, except time.

Is that not better last time spent grind out enchants/upgrades/mats more time running missions?

See this is the thing, outside of the very start, I mean first tier of the first continent, I don't grind enchants or upgrades. For materials, it is rare that I need to go out of my way to acquire them I generally acquire more than enough whilst exploring for secret mission rooms and gems.

[BobTheJanitor]

I've never had to grind for basic crafting things. Sometimes I find myself doing it anyway, even when there's no point to it. I just have some uncontrollable urge to chop down every tree or break every granite deposit, even if I'm at tier 5 and have 500+ of the materials in question. I collect cloth drops from hanging flags without ever finding a use for them. I think I'm just bad at the game. I suppose if someone ignored every resource dropping background item until they actually needed some of the resource in question, they could have issues.

[Bluddy]

I've never had to grind for basic crafting things. Sometimes I find myself doing it anyway, even when there's no point to it. I just have some uncontrollable urge to chop down every tree or break every granite deposit, even if I'm at tier 5 and have 500+ of the materials in question. I collect cloth drops from hanging flags without ever finding a use for them. I think I'm just bad at the game. I suppose if someone ignored every resource dropping background item until they actually needed some of the resource in question, they could have issues.

While I haven't gotten to the same point, I can understand the little thrill of clearing background items. It's fun and it releases dopamine, and it quickly becomes addictive.

[BobTheJanitor]

While I haven't gotten to the same point, I can understand the little thrill of clearing background items. It's fun and it releases dopamine, and it quickly becomes addictive.

There's a 12 step process. I went to a meeting, but they kicked me out when I started destroying the chairs to collect wood shavings.

[Martyn van Buren]

Yeah, I am very much in the anti-slaughter camp, but I think it might be good to have a system that made farming mobs a possible but sub-optimal way of collecting goodies.

Or alternatively, what would people think of creating more kinds of stash locations which are less out of the way but involve more combat?  Supposing you had little stashes seeded into the map in surface caves guarded by a microboss and a few mobs, would that feel like a decent way of linking combat to rewards?

Why does combat need to be sub-optimal?  Why would I look for stashes guarded by mobs when I could look for stashes not guarded by mobs if it they are going to give me less stuff?  Why would I be any more inclined to fight these guard mobs than any other mob?  Why can't fighting be in and of its self rewarding, as long as exploring also remains in and of its self rewarding?   

Sorry, those were meant to be two separate suggestions.  I don't like the idea that just killing mobs in the course of ordinary play gives materials as efficiently as stash-hunting --- that would devalue exploration to me.  But if there were stashes that you got to via combat rather than exploration, I reckon those would want to be entirely equal --- there would just be a few different equally valid ways to get to stashes.  I reckon stashes would want to be a bit richer too so you'd be happy to find just one rather than generally wanting two or three at a time.

What I was wondering is whether guarded stashes would appeal to people who want more combat and less exploration --- to me they would be cool, but I'm not big on combat and I'm afraid it would seem to combat people like just another kind of exploration.