Does the game need more patterns (elements)?

[Martyn van Buren]

I'm not sure if I'm putting this clearly, but I've been thinking about the elemental resistance system --- I've put up a couple mantis posts about making it a bit clearer to apprehend during combat --- and I think I'm starting to see what bugs me about it.  Basically, I have the sense that they're nearly entirely random, so I don't really have any expectations --- which means that I never get surprised.  I'd like to see more patterns in the game that I can predict --- so that exceptions can be noteworthy things that throw me for a loop.   I think this could be achieved pretty easily with the elements system in the framework the game has now.

I'm posting this as a thread instead of a mantis post because it's a relatively large issue and I'm curious to see if anyone else shares my feeling about it.  I'm going to suggest an example for a change, but I'm a lot more interested in provoking some discussion than selling one particular plan.  Sorry to Chris and Keith and all for throwing another one of these long essays about fine-tuning some part of the game while they're hard at work on new features.  Sorry also this is very long; I'm finding it hard to explain what I mean. I'm also curious if people have a sense this is a broader issue or just one for elements.


So as I see it now most enemy types have some regular resistance or weakness, but it's very common for regular mobs to have some random quality as well.  What consistent rules there are seem to me to get lost in the noise.  The result is that I basically take fireball and lightning ball with me everywhere and use whichever I don't see a resistance to.  Since the mix of enemies and their resistances is close to random, it's impossible to plan ahead.

Adding more patterns would likely make the game seem to have more variety.  With things close to totally random, every place I go winds up having a similar mix and coming out more samey than I think it should, given the amount of variation the game already has.  Having noticeable patterns would create more memorable situations ---- that weird jungle where everything was throwing ice at me ---- and also create expectations that would make it surprising when the patterns were broken.

I think I'd argue for basic mobs of each type being entirely identical --- personally, I'm never able to read the little icons fast enough to react on the fly, and even if I could it seems to me that having a nearly evenly distributed mix nullifies the strategic side of things --- all it means is that I need to carry six different fireball-like spells and remember to put the entropy peg in the entropy hole and the electric peg in the electric hole, to mix a metaphor.

I think it would add to the strategic layer if I could think before going into a region about what I was likely to encounter --- ideally, knowing the type of the hardest boss/predominant monster type for battlefields before going into a mission.  It would make sense to me that I could think "all right, going to an ice region, I should bring me some fire spells" (or electric spells, because they're often dominated by skelebots).

Of course, there would be exceptions --- the migrating monsters Chris mentioned recently would turn up with different strengths and weaknesses, and bosses would still have unpredictable qualities, breaking your plan.  But having 70% of the enemies you meet be predictable would allow you to have a plan to get broken. 

I'm hoping for situations like these: 1. Going into a region I expect to be skelebot heavy and leaning on electric spells, but then running into a room where they're backed up by lightning espers from the next region over, and having to figure out what to do, or 2. Looking at a region and thinking "Well, most of the mobs are going to be weak against fire, but the boss is a crippled dragon, so I'm going to have to balance my needs for the middle part of the mission against the end."


So I think I'm proposing something like this:

---- Basic mobs of each type would all have exactly the same strengths and weaknesses.

---- Basic mobs native to each region type would be largely consistent in favoring one or two elements over others.

---- Alternatively, basic mobs might get procedurally generated resistances, but these would be applied to each type of monster across an entire region.  I think I actually favor this.

---- Following from the last suggestion, basic mobs could also have an element of randomness to their attack.  Not espers, of course, but I would buy a skelebot using ice.  And I would love a fire rhino (mantising).

---- Bosses would not follow regional element-theming but would be at least partly predictable pre-mission, creating strategic choices.  (The type would be known, so you could guess that a giant skelebot would have an electricity weakness, but their random strengths and weaknesses unknown; if this is adopted, I would suggest making the last boss in a tower mission somehow stronger than the others).

---- As mentioned by X, creatures would migrate between region types with EP, adding unpredictable challenges to regions and forcing adaptation on the fly.  In mission areas, these should be kept out of the "foyer" chunk to prevent players anticipating them before entering missions.

---- (Possible) Normal chunks and rooms would sometimes (perhaps around 1/3) contain a single named monster-level creature with randomized strengths and weaknesses.

If all this happens, it might be worth reopening discussion about limiting spell changes in the field post 1.0.

[zebramatt]

Making the elemental resistances more predictable by enemy type, region and/or mission is something I've been generally in favour of for a while.

[Bluddy]

I agree that the resistance icons are very hard to read.

I think a point that's just as important in order to make elements a more central part of the game is giving an incentive to take as few elements as possible. There could be a penalty for taking more and more spells of different elements with you. Take spells of only one element, and you get the optimal spell power. Join 2 elements together, and spells get slower, weaker, and expend more mana. A full loadout of every element type will produce the weakest, least effective spells. This gives you a strong incentive to specialize. Some of the time, a player will decide that it's worthwhile loading up on specific spells to handle the mission at hand. Other times, he'd be too lazy to swap out his spells because they'd be 'good enough'. The key is that creating element specialization means that a player will have to avoid certain enemy types, or approach some enemies in non-optimal ways. For multiplayer, ideally I envision each player specializing in one or two elements, and taking on boss enemies accordingly.

Additionally, as a further incentive to specialize, a mission could give a player a bonus to certain elements that is only in effect so long as spells of a clashing element are not equipped. This would not be the reward the player chose the mission for -- it'd be an extra bonus the player didn't expect. But once the player had this bonus, he'd want to make use of it, and that would mean avoiding the element he's not supposed to have.

[Hyfrydle]

My thoughts on this are that the basic mobs should each have a main weakness and resistance so an obvious example are Fire Bats which should resist fire based spells and take extra damage from water based spells. This could be applied for all the basic mobs with the odd curveball every so often to keep players on their toes.

Bosses on the other hand should be pretty unpredictable and taking on a mission should only be carried out with a good range of spell elements.

[BobTheJanitor]

I admit currently I don't play very strategically. I just throw spells at something haphazardly until it stops chasing me, really. If I notice it's not doing much damage, I just pick others until it does. But I'm not really basing it off the tiny icons. Sometimes if it's taking a long time to kill something I'll pause and mouse over it to see what I should be using.

[Terraziel]

I admit currently I don't play very strategically. I just throw spells at something haphazardly until it stops chasing me, really. If I notice it's not doing much damage, I just pick others until it does. But I'm not really basing it off the tiny icons. Sometimes if it's taking a long time to kill something I'll pause and mouse over it to see what I should be using.

See I work the exact opposite way, I always pay attention to the resistance\weakness of the enemies, the first thing I do in a boss room is stand still long enough so that I can find out what the boss is resistant to. the issue for trash mobs is that a great deal of the time the weakness don't really matter, because of the health\damage ratio you only save 1-2 shots at best, which is about 2 seconds and not worth worrying about.

That said is there a visual indicator of whether your attack was resisted or not? the traditional one is making the enemy flash a different colour depending on whether the attack was taken normally, resisted or did extra damage but it occurs to me that I haven't been paying attention to combat in that way.

EDIT:

I think my personal issue with the resistances is simply that by allowing the player access to all of the elements at the same time, you essentially make them meaningless, at best they are minor inconveniences at worst I just have to switch toolbars and continue fighting with a set of almost identical spells (which is a separate issue obviously).
If players (or I suppose individual characters) had to specialise in a certain element then it would make encountering something that resisted it considerably more interesting.

[Bluddy]

That said is there a visual indicator of whether your attack was resisted or not? the traditional one is making the enemy flash a different colour depending on whether the attack was taken normally, resisted or did extra damage but it occurs to me that I haven't been paying attention to combat in that way.

I suggested this on mantis but it's not a priority before the 1.0 release. Specifically, I suggested red flashing for damage, heavy red/orange flashing for vulnerable damage, and green flashing for resistance.

[Saolite]

That said is there a visual indicator of whether your attack was resisted or not? the traditional one is making the enemy flash a different colour depending on whether the attack was taken normally, resisted or did extra damage but it occurs to me that I haven't been paying attention to combat in that way.

I suggested this on mantis but it's not a priority before the 1.0 release. Specifically, I suggested red flashing for damage, heavy red/orange flashing for vulnerable damage, and green flashing for resistance.

This is a really good idea! I have gone into the habit of pausing constantly to check enemies. The first time through ( in a few months, admittedly ) I misread the icons ( example: the lightning bolt icon I thought meant the skelebot was -resistant- to eletricity ).

Also, I like the concept of having enemies have regional-based weaknesses and resistances. I think a good example of this is that anything living in the ice age would have a resistance to water/ice, though a weakness to fire/electricity, while bosses could have varying weaknesses.