Why spell tiers at all ?

[JKDC]

I thought a good idea would be to auto level them slightly but each gem/item you collected would increase the power of the spell as well. To prevent people from going down levels for easy gems simply don't have them respawn after they have been collected the first time. If that is not enough then remove all gems from so many levels below you or even better the lower the level of the gems/items the less they raise the power of the spell. Maybe 3 levels below yours they would provide nothing. That would prevent farming,repetitiveness and make the progression more fun and more linear on the difficulty scale instead of larger jumps at arbitrary levels. There would be more reason to go into caves more often as well since there would be tangible benefits instead of waiting for a bunch of levels and being forced to go there.

[Skaal]

I like the tiers personally, and like it better now its to 10 levels, think its a good balance.  A few thoughts I had reading this.

The first issue I see with having gems/potions/ whatnot on every level (other than having level 1000 gems someday) is inventory clutter.  You'd end up with tons of slots of different level gems or potions, making both crafting a pain and force you to spend a bunch of time sorting and dropping junk, rolling over to see whats still useful.

s, that was long, so thanks if you actually read through it all.

You're absolutely right, inventory clutter would quickly become unbearable with my proposal.

I have a new idea: you could keep the current tier system as is, but introduce a new system to combine gems to get stronger ones.  You would have to be able to handle non integer levels (lvl 1.3 for instance), but that's not very difficult (except maybe from an UI pov, real numbers are not really user friendly. But it can be done).

I propose the following formula: when upgrading a gem of lvl A with a gem of lvl B, you get a gem of lvl Log(10^A + 10^B), where Log is the decimal logarithm. This can be extend in a natural way if you want to upgrade more than 2 gems: Log(10^A + 10^B + 10^C + ...).

This formula has very nice mathematical properties:

• The upgrade gain depends only on the difference between the levels, not on the levels themselves. For instance, combining two lvl N gems gives a gem of lvl N + ~ 0.3
• The gain is most effective when combining gems of approximately the same level. You quickly get diminishing returns for combining gems too far away. You always get a new gem stronger than the highest level one, but not by much if the other is just a few levels behind.
• You need to combine exactly 10 gems of level N to get one gem of level N+1, so this is far from overpowered.
• Actually, the exact level you get by combining K level N gems is N + Log(K).
• So, if you are foolish enough to want to get a gem of level N+2, you would have to find 100 gems of level N... not very practical...

I think this would provide a smooth progression, and give an incentive to go into caves between tiers. But you can also choose to not use this system, and then you'll get the current one without a single change. User choice FTW !

You would only be able to combine gems, not spells. So you would always have to decide if you use your upgraded gem to make a more powerfull spell, or if you keep it to upgrade it further. Again, a tough choice for the player.

You would always have something to do between tiers, which is a good thing.

This could also be easily combined with zebramax proposition (chance to get a upgraded gem the higher the level approaching next tier).

[KDR_11k]

Healing and mana gear could cause clutter with too many levels (keep the tiers for those) but I don't see how more fine-grained spell levels cause clutter, you'll want to turn all gems you find into spells anyway (otherwise why did you get them?) and drop obsolete spells.

[stblr]

I like the tiers personally, and like it better now its to 10 levels, think its a good balance.  A few thoughts I had reading this.

The first issue I see with having gems/potions/ whatnot on every level (other than having level 1000 gems someday) is inventory clutter.  You'd end up with tons of slots of different level gems or potions, making both crafting a pain and force you to spend a bunch of time sorting and dropping junk, rolling over to see whats still useful.

s, that was long, so thanks if you actually read through it all.

You're absolutely right, inventory clutter would quickly become unbearable with my proposal.

I have a new idea: you could keep the current tier system as is, but introduce a new system to combine gems to get stronger ones.  You would have to be able to handle non integer levels (lvl 1.3 for instance), but that's not very difficult (except maybe from an UI pov, real numbers are not really user friendly. But it can be done).

I propose the following formula: when upgrading a gem of lvl A with a gem of lvl B, you get a gem of lvl Log(10^A + 10^B), where Log is the decimal logarithm. This can be extend in a natural way if you want to upgrade more than 2 gems: Log(10^A + 10^B + 10^C + ...).

This formula has very nice mathematical properties:

• The upgrade gain depends only on the difference between the levels, not on the levels themselves. For instance, combining two lvl N gems gives a gem of lvl N + ~ 0.3
• The gain is most effective when combining gems of approximately the same level. You quickly get diminishing returns for combining gems too far away. You always get a new gem stronger than the highest level one, but not by much if the other is just a few levels behind.
• You need to combine exactly 10 gems of level N to get one gem of level N+1, so this is far from overpowered.
• Actually, the exact level you get by combining K level N gems is N + Log(K).
• So, if you are foolish enough to want to get a gem of level N+2, you would have to find 100 gems of level N... not very practical...

I think this would provide a smooth progression, and give an incentive to go into caves between tiers. But you can also choose to not use this system, and then you'll get the current one without a single change. User choice FTW !

You would only be able to combine gems, not spells. So you would always have to decide if you use your upgraded gem to make a more powerfull spell, or if you keep it to upgrade it further. Again, a tough choice for the player.

You would always have something to do between tiers, which is a good thing.

This could also be easily combined with zebramax proposition (chance to get a upgraded gem the higher the level approaching next tier).

I actually put something like this in Mantis the other day. My idea was much simpler: allow the player to combine 5 of the same item in tier N to yield 1 of that same item in tier N+1. Of course this would only be allowable once the player reaches tier N+1 themself. But I do like your idea of a smooth progression system.

[FallingStar]

I threw in a mantis early on with a similar idea on gem combination.  The reply (which made sense) is that there is a worry that combining gems would lead to people feeling like they needed to/wanted to farm low level gems rather than just moving along.  Then griping about the grind. Also crafting super world killing spells early in the game wold be an issue.

That was pretty early after public beta, so might have changed a bit.  Perhaps with the new way the tiers work with more mana use for higher tiers, and no longer having such a high increase in baseline stats, world killers might not be as much of a risk.  But as I said in mantis, I always underestimate how much people will grind if given half a reason.

I would someday like to get something that let me kill faster, and thus make me feel more relatively powerful, at least for 5-10 levels.  Always fun in ARPG's or the like when you find that great purple drop and suddenly it seems like you're better.  Whether that someday comes in the form of a mechanic to let me grab spells of +2 or +3 tiers  (+1 tier really isn't that big of a difference)- or if its just rare cool spells that are tough to get and make, either would be great.

[JKDC]

I threw in a mantis early on with a similar idea on gem combination.  The reply (which made sense) is that there is a worry that combining gems would lead to people feeling like they needed to/wanted to farm low level gems rather than just moving along.  Then griping about the grind. Also crafting super world killing spells early in the game wold be an issue.

That was pretty early after public beta, so might have changed a bit.  Perhaps with the new way the tiers work with more mana use for higher tiers, and no longer having such a high increase in baseline stats, world killers might not be as much of a risk.  But as I said in mantis, I always underestimate how much people will grind if given half a reason.

I would someday like to get something that let me kill faster, and thus make me feel more relatively powerful, at least for 5-10 levels.  Always fun in ARPG's or the like when you find that great purple drop and suddenly it seems like you're better.  Whether that someday comes in the form of a mechanic to let me grab spells of +2 or +3 tiers  (+1 tier really isn't that big of a difference)- or if its just rare cool spells that are tough to get and make, either would be great.

That's why I said above that lower level would provide less and none at 2-3 levels below the current one and have no respawning of gems. Each new gem could also raise the power less and less to the point where  it would be inconsequential to pick up  new gems. People won't farm if they get nothing for it. And  in this game if they don't want to get new gems just lower the difficulty level. That's why it is there to make it easier. On the hardest difficulty more farming would be needed to survive and win.

[zebramatt]

Given the resistance to blurring tier level breaks with % drop chances and Chris's reluctance to implement a system of up-crafting lesser gems into higher tiers, a further idea strikes me.

One way to form synergy between the various ideas might be to leave level breaks for gem tiers as-is (10, 20, 30, etc.) but introduce a 'rarity' attribute? A simple, clear scale from common to rare to unique would probably cover it. Common gems of a given tier would produce exactly the same stat spells as now. Rare would produce a spell 15% of the way between the current tier and the next one up; unique 30% - something like that.

Then you could muddy the gem levels with rarity instead of tier, and players would always get the tier they were after (and thus not feel cheated) but with the bonus of getting something slightly nicer if they play at a higher level within that tier; you wouldn't accrue next level tier gems without meaning to - thus meaning you need to always go out in search of them at a higher level region. And you could have some system of crafting x number of lower-rarity gems into the next level of rarity without allowing players to jump tiers without going back out into the field; and discouraging farming because the improvement in quality would be minimal for the amount of time spent - by which point you've probably levelled up anyway and need to go out in search of the next tier up.

Of course this idea isn't by any means perfect! It means essentially adding two more levels of spells for every tier for every type, for starters. And it introduces another element of complexity. And it doesn't completely remove the urge for farming, or the disappointment at receiving a common gem.

Still, something else to spur thought on the subject, at least.

[goodgimp]

Yes!  I like that idea a lot.

[zebramatt]

Mantis 4776

[eRe4s3r]

You know i can only repeat it again and again, but i find Mantis as a place to discuss game suggestions incredibly bothersome, because theres no easy way to find good suggestions. I mean yeah i can sort by vote and all, but forums are so much easier to quickly assess and "scroll" though

And you know what else, Mantis is inrecidble terrible if you want to suggest an actual indepth complex gameplay system complete with GUI mockups, Mantis just has no proper flow for attached images, to HTML formating.. its like posting on a 1990 BBS

I can't even quote parts of the text easily   

[Nalgas]

You know i can only repeat it again and again, but i find Mantis as a place to discuss game suggestions incredibly bothersome, because theres no easy way to find good suggestions. I mean yeah i can sort by vote and all, but forums are so much easier to quickly assess and "scroll" though

And you know what else, Mantis is inrecidble terrible if you want to suggest an actual indepth complex gameplay system complete with GUI mockups, Mantis just has no proper flow for attached images, to HTML formating.. its like posting on a 1990 BBS

I can't even quote parts of the text easily   

Yes.  I've always felt the same way.  It's great for tracking what has and hasn't been done yet and bug reports and things like that, but as far as having lengthy discussions and ability to find things on it and things like that, it's pretty awful in terms of usability compared to the forums.

[zebramatt]

Agreed! But if it were better, the forums would be less useful...

[BobTheJanitor]

its like posting on a 1990 BBS

Hardly! There's no trade wars, and there are no awkward meet-ups where you cook spam over a camp stove on the porch, and stand around staring at each other and thinking how much fun it will be to go back home and talk to these people on the BBS instead.

[JedTheHumanoid]

I don't know, I still think once more spells in general comes into place, and once more complicated crafted spells come into place it'll feel better.  Like meteor but even more complex - at that point having really powerful spells out of the baseline will seem like a big difference, rather than trying to fit the difference into the baseline of the gem that is applied to everything.

This.

Don't overcomplicate the collecting/crafting system, just make it more interesting.

[keith.lamothe]

I feel that I should direct your attention to one of the 0.523 release notes, as this thread largely inspired this one:

* Put in a pretty major balance change in favor of the players:
** Previously, your equipment was always getting progressively worse each time your civ level went up, which meant that with same-tier equipment you were actually losing ground, which wasn't our intent.
** This has been rebalanced to have a 9-level "grace period" wherein equipment doesn't start degrading.
*** This means that as soon as you hit civ level 10, for instance, your tier 1 stuff STARTS to degrade.  But the degradation is equivalent now at level 10 to what it used to be at level 2 for tier I stuff.  And level 11 is like level 3 was, and so on.
*** The net effect means that there are no longer increasing "periods of weakness" between levels 2-9 and 12-19, and so on; those remain stable areas, and your equipment only starts to get weaker when you're actually able to get replacement equipment of a higher tier.
*** This also applies to potions and the like, not just stuff you craft yourself, so that's really quite helpful all around.  Now you actually have time to FIND more potions, more equipment, and so on before you're hurting from the lack of it.
** Thanks to many players for weighing in on this.