>>DR-Socharis: This suggestion is that when running an ability where you learn passive experience, you suffer a penalty to your experience drain rate. There would also have to be a flag where you say "Don't teach me any cyclic experience and in turn don't reduce my drain rate". Additionally, if you're using a cyclic at a rate where you'd gain no experience (keeping an easy one up, for instance), you would suffer no drain rate penalty.

Of the "mindstate" and "scaling" proposals, I prefer this one. I didn't like the old mind murk system, but I think there is still room for some kind of drain-based incentive not to train more than X skills at a time. (Currently, if you're hunting and not training 20+ skills, you're doing it wrong from an experience/TDP perspective.)

>>DR-Socharis: Reduces unrelated experience, which doesn't make a TON of sense.

You could limit the absorption penalty to related (magic) skills.

---

I don't like the escalating mana consumption, because many cyclics are designed to provide an effect that players want to maintain indefinitely. (People also use non-cyclic buffs indefinitely, re-casting as soon as they wear off.) Moongates are not a good analogy, because they are transient by design, since they are only needed for as long as it takes to walk through them.

Making it so that the buff would have to be unused for X amount of time would greatly reduce its usefulness, possibly relegating an otherwise great spell to novelty status.

>>Mockerjb: I like the bell curve best because I don't like losing effective cyclic spell use when I want one up for playing, not training, purposes.

This.

>>DR-Socharis: Causing cyclics to actually require maintenance to use (instead of Raw Channeling being a free pass for experience) is an interesting approach as well, and lets you charge up some high-capacity cambrinth if you want to use it for a longer amount of time.

Isn't this a lot like the old held mana spells? They were too much of a hassle to use in 2.0, so I didn't. If I have to manually pump mana into a cyclic spell via harness or cambrinth, I'd rather have it become a standard spell.

---

>>DR-Socharis: Now, what kind of important way of representing 'focus' or 'concentration' or 'mindshare' do we have in DR? We have the Concentration stat, which is woefully underused, but it's underused to a degree that nobody really cares about it (like the debt system!).

I like this idea best. It's a pool that we already have, so a new "cyclic" pool would not need to be developed. There is some precedent for using concentration in this manner in the sense that it is already used for Thief khri, which provides a passive form of experience.

Being underused is actually a good thing, because it means that players won't often have to choose between cyclic spells and some other concentration activity. Plus, it would be nice to give players a reason to care about this stat.

Concentration's underlying stats (discipline, intelligence, and stamina) are so useful that I doubt that many character have low concentration as a result of neglecting them, but if this is a problem, a RESPEC could be offered.

>>DR-Armifer: RESEARCH is used in conjunction with the Gauge Flow spell to allow magicians to perform basic research into manipulating the mana streams. In effect, this allows experienced magicians to learn more about a skill or related group of skills without directly casting.

I would welcome any system that offered alternatives to repeatedly casting the same spell for no reason other than experience gain.

I also like that it can help supplement gaps in spell trees.

---

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

Vote for DragonRealms on Top MUD Sites: http://www.topmudsites.com/vote-DragonRealms.html

>>this new xp curve will work well once the critter gaps are filled as of right now looks like the huge holes are hurting more then helping.

Agreed. Those gaps are a huge problem - We're working on it.

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

The research stuff sounds interesting.

Is the RT you're thinking about totaling up discrete chunks of a project? 300 seconds is probably a long time to lock somebody down.

Mazrian

>>Is the RT you're thinking about totaling up discrete chunks of a project? 300 seconds is probably a long time to lock somebody down.

We're moving away from RT to a slightly more forgiving situation soft-lock where you need to avoid extraneous actions to keep the research going, but totally can abort out of it if you need to.

But yeah, the idea is you choose how long you want to focus on the research and those chunks get added up across actions until you arrive at a full project.

-Armifer
"In our days truth is taken to result from the effacing of the living man behind the mathematical structures that think themselves out in him, rather than he be thinking them." - Emmanuel Levinas

>>That's cool. If you interrupt, can you pick up where you left off? Like, something you could do in your spare moments totaling up to a full research paper (or whatever the end result of a project of magical research is)?

Currently if you interrupt you lose that chunk of time, but it doesn't wipe out previously "banked" time.

-Armifer
"In our days truth is taken to result from the effacing of the living man behind the mathematical structures that think themselves out in him, rather than he be thinking them." - Emmanuel Levinas

>>We're moving away from RT to a slightly more forgiving situation soft-lock where you need to avoid extraneous actions to keep the research going, but totally can abort out of it if you need to.

You could always build in something akin to the Commune thing for Clerics. Takes you about 5 to 15 RT to do X commune gain your exp bits. Than you dont get to repeat that same Commune for X amount of time, eventually after X internall Cool Down timer you see the message "You can commune with your gods again..." etc. This prevents folks from Spamming the crap out of it and it allows you to go about your business doing other things while you got your Exp bits.

> Also I wonder if I could convince Armifer to give a 1% bonus to people wearing spectacles. Just 'cause.

My moonmage wears a monocle because he's classy like that.

> I'll add it to my list of things to look at when I can breathe though.

Thank you.

> Once you've completed this research, you retain memory of that symbiosis

Permanently, or will it require re-researching? Because if it's permanent, unless the research cost is significant, it seems like a pointless step. First thing I'll do when 3.1 drops is research all the symbioses.

Sounds like a cool system, though. Are there plans to gate the symbioses in any fashion? By skill or mana type or spell pre-reqs, maybe? I like that this system adds value to higher ranks of Augmentation, Utility and Warding, and I'm trying to come up with a way to get it to do the same for Sorcery and Debilitation.

> So ideally, the benefits of sorcery and debil are self-evident (the way they are for TM)

I should clarify that I'm thinking of 1000+ ranks. TM never stops giving, because it always lets you hit better. At those ranks of Debilitation/Sorcery, you can cap every spell there is. There's no benefit to increasing your rank.

Until you posted this idea, I would have said the same thing about Augmentation/Utility/Warding. Now I'm considering grabbing Soul Ablaze for its Augmentation buff.

> additional Symbioses that could be used to enhance them in the future

I know you said you're not considering it now, but since the idea's in my head, I'll say it anyway. You could make certain symbioses mana-flavored. If you're using a life-flavored symbioses and you're not a life caster, it makes the resulting spell a sorcery.

> That's an interesting one, though the impact of it seems explicitly to allow sorcery training to be even easier and doesn't have as much of an RP angle.

Well, it's also to say, "If you want this effect, you'll need to train some sorcery."

> Also, just as an overall note, I'm a huge grammar snit, so I wanted to note that 'Symbiosis' is the singular form of the noun, and 'Symbioses' is the plural form.

I know. The quoted instance was a victim of my going back and rephrasing, but don't worry, I'm sufficiently ashamed. :)

So, lots of things going on in this thread. I want to try to sum up my perspective by showing you how I, as a player, approach the spell selection process as a whole. I.e., what makes me choose spells, given my limited resource of slots?

1. I avoid spells that don't fit with my character concept or what I want to accomplish (this is pretty much as it should be).

2. I avoid spells with additional management costs (e.g., TKT, TKS, and Mind Shout -- ritual spells are fine), unless the spells are very cheap otherwise.

3. I watch prereqs and avoid spells that cost too many prereqs I don't want/need.

4. I watch spell level (Basic/Advanced/Esoteric) and choose spells that will train my skills.

5. I choose cyclic spells if I can employ them in an effective way and (previously) because they taught well.

So, I'm a little worried that we are putting a bit too much pressure on 2-5. I'm starting to see a lot of reasons to cherry pick spells, when I really don't want to do that. I want to choose the spells that look interesting and neat!

I think that we should very seriously consider ways to relieve that pressure, at least from some of them. That means seriously considering if things like lots of prereqs and different spell levels really add to the fun of the game. Here's what I would do to address each issue:

Management costs: Spells with extra management should cost 1 slot less.

Prereqs: I've said this before to Raesh, but I don't see why prereqs even have to exist. They add flavor, but they also significantly add to the cost of some spells. It's not fun. I'm already going to be spending all my slots, even without them. Yes, conquering that spell that is hard to get is meaningful, but that can be achieved a different way (with spell levels, circle requirements, quests, or the rare prereq).

Spell levels: I think it's important to a sense of achievement that spells have different levels, so you unlock them at different times. That said, I think there is really no reason that the lower spells have to stop teaching. I know you compared these to the goblin brook Socharis, but I agree with Tigarclaw that they are more like weapons -- we should be able to wield them for exp throughout our careers. Weapons are wielded in more difficult situations and we learn from that, so why not spells? These are our core abilities.

Further, lack of teaching restrictions would just open up our options so much. I can train with my Evasion booster in combat! I don't have to be relegated to something less useful, or standing out of combat researching (though it's neat to add this option for those who would like it). We don't have to require a lot of extra work from GMs on different options and new spells. I see no good design reason for the spell level learning restriction, other than a slight nod to realism.

Cyclics: Thinking about the recent suggestions, I mainly just want to make sure my cyclics stay relatively easy to use. Making them cost all kinds of management (extra mana, haze, losing them due to increasing mana cost) will make them less effective and make me less likely to choose them. Lower the exp if you have to, but don't increase the difficulty.

One thought popped to mind about cyclic exp: what if we were allowed to increase exp by choosing to perform them in a way that created more risk for ourselves? I.e., you can have your safe, low-exp cyclic up, or you can choose to cast it in a way that gives you more exp but might blow you up a little. This is our justification for allowing passive exp gain in combat -- because there is risk involved.

So in sum: give me reasons to be excited about choosing spells based on what they DO, not be sadface about choosing them based on their prereqs and how they train.

P.S. Love the Symbiosis idea. :)


-- Player of Eyuve

>>I'd argue the fact TM is in a good spot.

Yeah, but it's trainable, which is more than can be said about aug, ward, and util right now. I'm not saying we're done with TM, just that adding new stuff to RESEARCH and the Symbiotic Magic system to support TM isn't something we plan to do right now.

>>we should be able to wield them for exp throughout our careers.

But against what difficulty? With weapons, you're constantly facing more challenging opponents. There are no such opponents in the Magic system aside from mana (and now Symbioses), which is why spells are neither creatures nor weapons, but something in between.

>>I see no good design reason for the spell level learning restriction, other than a slight nod to realism.

It's about maintaining the skill training paradigm we have throughout the game. The reason a spell stops teaching is because you can stop adding more mana to it, not because of any other systemic reasons. When you've sufficiently surpassed the greatest challenge that spell offers you, you no longer learn anything from it.

The magic system is built on a foundation where you get the maximum effect from a spell once you've capped the mana in it. Additionally, any capped spell is as good as any other capped spell - An intro spell that you're capping will give you the same strength of buff as an esoteric spell giving that same buff. The Esoteric spell will give OTHER buffs too, but in general once you've got 100% of the spell's mana, you get 100% of the spell's effect.

So, if we extend the training range of a spell to, say, 1-1600 ranks, that means that that spell is only ever getting capped by the most skilled players. Characters can learn from 1-1600 with that spell, sure, but it's also going to be worse for them as a spell when talking about the amount of buff to give.

Changing these various pillars isn't something we can do easily at all, and would require a Magic 4.0 level of release. That's just plain not something we want to do right now, for obvious reasons.

So, given the magic framework we have today, a single spell has to stop training at some point. Symbioses are, in some ways, a loophole that we can use to make your basic spell (ES, for instance) more complex (and thus training to higher ranges) without altering the core principle that ES only trains within a certain range on its own.

>>Lower the exp if you have to, but don't increase the difficulty.

That's where the cyclic stuff seems to be landing, both from a mechanics perspective and also a player preference perspective.

>>give me reasons to be excited about choosing spells based on what they DO, not be sadface about choosing them based on their prereqs and how they train.

Agreed. I hope that between RESEARCH and Symbiotic Magic, we're getting to a place where spell choice CAN be a lot more about what you want rather than what you need to train.

>>Spells with extra management should cost 1 slot less.

This is already somewhat included in our calculations, under the 'harder to use' bucket. It's a matter of degree, of course.

>>Prerequisites

Prereqs serve a variety of purposes. The argument that the prereqs of a spell can force you to take spells that you don't want is a valid one, but the lore is pretty important too. This is one of the cases where the story trumps the ease of use. Prereqs, in concept, say that 'A spellcaster must know how to cast this more-basic version of a similar spell before even attempting this more complex version'. There's a lot of flavor there, and a lot of distinction. One thing we've seen over the last decade or so is a lot of 'vanillification' - blurring of the uniqueness of each guild and the fiction surrounding them. Removing spell prereqs in favor of 'Must have N spells of type X' would be a disservice to a the fiction around the game world.
[This is a discussion in and of itself, if we want to drill deep into it let's take it to a different thread]

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

> Prereqs, in concept, say that 'A spellcaster must know how to cast this more-basic version of a similar spell before even attempting this more complex version'.

I confess I don't see how Glythtide's Joy and Hodierna's Lilt are more basic versions of Naming of Tears, or what Demrris's Resolve or Hodierna's Lilt have to do with Resonance. I could go on.

The story reason you mention makes sense, and I think some guilds' spellbooks* pull it off very well. Other guilds' spellbooks seem to have ignored that memo and assigned prereqs simply for the sake of having some.


*Like Moon Mages', except for Shadowling.

Double post sorry. Just wanted to say I always loved crystal spike due to the balance hit. It always worked so magically by MB'n a target, firing off a quick CRS and then a full powered PD or burn finisher. So CRS is a good example and I'm hoping it comes back soon.

>>It's about maintaining the skill training paradigm we have throughout the game.

I see where you're coming from, and I respect what you're trying to do. Sitting around casting ES over and over until max level is pretty lame.

The Symbiosis idea is a neat one and, if it allows Basic spells to teach for longer, would go a long way toward making me happy. My main concern is that I do not want to have to limit my spell choices based on training, and I do not want to be forced out of combat to train magic either. I'm a combat mage (as are many).

>>With weapons, you're constantly facing more challenging opponents. There are no such opponents in the Magic system aside from mana (and now Symbioses), which is why spells are neither creatures nor weapons, but something in between.

Makes me wonder if there's room for area-based spell difficulty. Like, if you're fighting certain creatures or in certain locations. Or maybe spellcasting when engaged could become progressively more difficult, but at a very slow rate (so even terts could manage it).

>>This is already somewhat included in our calculations, under the 'harder to use' bucket.

Good to know. I'll take up my issues with individual spells as I come across them, then. It was just that the three I am familiar with (TKT, TKS, Mind Shout) all still seem to cost a lot, so I didn't see the pattern appearing.

>>That's where the cyclic stuff seems to be landing, both from a mechanics perspective and also a player preference perspective.

Did you see my +risk suggestion? (Not saying it's the best just wanted to be sure it wasn't lost.)


-- Player of Eyuve

<<Research and especially the symbiotic concept seem really cool, and if those things materialize and aren't super burdensome to use I will probably not worry about spells not teaching.>>

Same.

There are a number of things being discussed here that I don't particularly like, and think will be bad for the game as a whole. I'll address them one-by-one.

Scripting
I believe the attempt to make systems more difficult for scripters is misguided, and inevitably more destructive to non-scripters. - this coming from someone who uses Genie and has extensive scripts. Genie and Avalon are powerful enough that there's virtually nothing you can add to the system that can't effectively be dealt with through triggers and scripts, and any of those things you DO add will only make things more difficult for non-scripters. Maintaining 4 buffs, dealing with combat, tracking experience, etc... that's hard. And it's inferior training-wise to something that exploits the timers for exp gain. We don't need to be adding more to non-scripters' plates. In addition, there's also the unintended consequence of creating scripting haves and have-nots. Those who are better coders will cope with the changes. Those who aren't will only do so when the knowledge trickles down.

Cyclics
Of the three options presented, I find only the Bell Curve option even marginally acceptable, though I disagree with that as well, and I think many of the cons for each approach have been missed. The big thing I liked about cyclics is that I could train something during RP situations and not scroll the room, so I didn't feel like that time was completely wasted from a training perspective. I think that's something valuable, and worth keeping.


--Bell
Con - Contrary to what Socharis said, I believe this is hard to figure out, and that anyone who doesn't read the boards will have to be paying VERY close attention to figure this out.
Con - I can figure out the timers and script to ensure that I'm never riding the descending side of the bell curve, only the rising side. Affects non-scripters disproportionately.
Con - Failing to gain experience from using magic doesn't seem to make sense within the game's training paradigm.
Pro - I can still probably train during RP situations with Aether Cloak without scrolling the room too much.
Idea - If the Bell option is gone with, please include an option to RENEW CYCLIC or something to restart the bell curve. Something I can do to input and thus be "worthy" of gaining experience for the action, but doesn't message the room so I can continue doing this for RP situations. Also, please make sure messaging is accurate enough so the non-clued-in people can know what's happening.

--Scaling
Con - Tanks the usefulness of cyclics due to the need to constantly stop and restart. Most cyclics are not good enough to be worth this unless there are no options. I can manage this with scripts during training, but during the times when I really want Bard cyclics or Aether Cloak - sparring and invasions - I can't count on them, the mindshare to interact with them is at a premium. Worst of all, they might take all of my mana if I slip up. This is horrible. Vastly horrible, and basically makes cyclics unusable. PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS.
Con - Fire Rain already takes 30 mana per pulse minimum. This would make it unusable except for the very top tier.

--Mindstate
The worst suggestion yet.
Con - Using cyclics during an invasion will result in tanked experience absorbtion.
Con - The clear answer as to when to use the cyclic is "Almost never, unless absolutely forced," if I'm going to play for any length of time. Often, when I play, I either have time to lock everything and let them drain during logout, or better yet, I have the time to let them drain once and lock again. Mindstate use would kill this. I'd be sacrificing the ability to learn more for short term gain, which is mostly a bad idea.

It's either too easy for short-term play, or just a bad idea to use if you're on for any length of time. If this is the option that was chosen I would probably refuse to choose any cyclics unless their utility was just too great to ignore (Moongate). It's just a waste of a slot.

--Fourth Option - Make Them Suck for Exp Gain
This, I think, is the best option. You obviously don't like the nature of cyclic skill gain. That's fine. Instead of playing games with overly elaborate systems like the bell curve, or overly punitive systems like the other two, just make experience gain really bad from cyclics. This way I can still get some passive gain while RP'ing (1/34 or 2/34, enough to keep something absorbing), but it's not a really valid training tactic to supplement normal spellcasting.
Pro - It's easier to implement.
Pro - It's easier to deal with as a player and easier to understand.
Con - People will have to change some habits. But that has to happen anyway.

Research / Symbiosis
I think this is a kludgy band-aid to avoid having to fix gaps in the spell system, which I don't like. I would prefer the core problem be fixed. In my case, that would be, "Why don't WM's have any higher end Utility spells?" In order for me to even consider using the system it needs to do two things:
1) Be usable in combat. I'm a Warrior Mage. I train everything in combat.
2) Instead of having large roundtimes, work like spellcasting - no RT, (or a small one for cambrinth / harnessing), but instead a delay before you get your experience pop or can use it again. Because while that spell is full prepping, I've trained arcana with cambrinth, retreated and collected something, swung my weapon, and maybe done a hunt for perception. Research has to compete with that kind of gain, not just the guildies who cast and cast over and over outside the city walls.

If it doesn't have those two things, it's simply of no use to those who train everything in combat, and actually makes the game MORE of a grind, because it's just one more skill I have to take time out of fighting to train, and the perceived closing of the gap makes it more unlikely that I'll get more spells to train in my spellcasting in what's supposed to be the primary paradigm of the game - learning by doing.

Here's the thing: If I'm a new player, I shouldn't be doomed to having horrible exp gain because I don't know about the Research verb or the Symbiosis system. DR is about learning by doing. I swing a sword, I learn. I dodge, I learn. I craft a weapon, I learn. I shouldn't have to either tie one hand behind my back while casting with a special verb in order to eke out some experience, or do something entirely OTHER than casting to learn magic experience. That goes totally against the existing Exp gain paradigm of getting better at a thing by DOING the thing. Would we be tolerant of a solution for weapon training gaps that forced players to spend long roundtimes whacking on a training dummy in relative safety but unable to train other things? No, I don't think so. Then we shouldn't be tolerant of Research or Symbiosis. I think they're counter-intuitive, bad for the game, and serve only to make it even more inaccessible to new or non-expert players.

Instead, if you're going to allow the ability to make a spell harder to cast and thus give more experience gain anyway... why care about the difficulty of the spell at all? Why not just have a system where the ingredients for Exp gain are: Full prep, and casting near max mana. Or at least, spell difficulty is a very small part of that equation compared to being near max mana. Eventually, people would be forced to move to harder spells because the amount of mana able to be shoved into a spell would get capped, and that would be that.

This would allow training without kludgy systems that have no purpose other than enabling training (which ought to be simpler than that), or requiring spell slots just for the sake of training, and it would provide a big drain on casters anyway. Casting at huge mana amounts isn't necessarily simple to keep up.

The other solution is to fix the spell training gaps and widen the experience range that a given tier of spell can teach.

>Umm... this is what we have now? The problem is that there aren't appropriate spells at all tiers and difficulty for the toughest spells doesn't scale to 1750, which is why research and symbioses are being proposed.

>You're proposing we fix the flaws in the current system by creating the same system we currently use?

I'm saying the proposed cure is far worse than the disease. As it is, magic training isn't flying by. What I'm actually proposing, though, is a middle-ground. Make sure learning scales to 1750, but basically require casting at max ability, more so than it does now.

As someone with little scripting prowess or intent, and a habit of training only combats in combat, and util/warding/aug and a variety of other not directly combat related skills out of combat(I know you can train them there, I just don't. Gasp at my inefficiency) I just wanted to take a moment, make a post, and thank you for developing systems that make an expandable and important improvement to experience gain.

Cheers!

>>I've noticed this not to be the case on Test, was this an oversight or did staff change their mind?

It's an oversight. TM and Debil should be roughly parallel in terms of how experience plays out for them. I'll add it to the list.

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.