| Author | Magic system broken |
|---|
I think the magic system in this game needs some reviews.
First, let's look at the primary skills. Points in Attack and Defense become more effective as you advance in Combat level, since they affect bigger and bigger armies. But points in Knowledge and Spellpower have the same effect. A wizard with 2 points in Spellpower does the same damage at level 1 as at level 10.
As a demon, for me the cutoff point is between level 7 and 8. At level 5-7, my opponents feared my magic-wielding hero. At level 8, they laugh at my magic, even though I now have access to a couple of new Chaos spells. It's no wonder that at high level, more and more people switch to playing might, instead of magic.
Second, the spell damage. What's with the tiny increase in damage when you take a talent in the school of magic? For all those talent points you spend to get Basic Chaos, you can do a whopping 8 more points of damage with Magic Arrow!!!
Adding these together, I find that because magic, unlike might, doesn't scale with Combat level, it becomes less and less effective at high level. Watching combats by high-level players, I see that the spells that are most valuable are the ones that are not dependent on Spellpower, such as Ray of Disruption or Phantom Image. For other spells, you have to sacrifice way too many skill points into Spellpower to make spellcasting worthwhile.
(Oh, and don't even get me started on Phantom Image. That's worth a whole other topic.) |
Well, for wizards the magic talents as a result of higher combat levels does help them a lot. Damage spells aren't meant to be used by low spell power players. Low spell power magic users mainly use their magic to influence the might of his own army or his opponent's.
Right now there's only 3 viable play styles:
1. Might
2. Magic
3. Mostly Might, some Magic. |
Currently, all level-12 characters, with the exception of the wizard who seems to switch between might and magic, are playing might. I didn't check level-11 characters, but I would guess that most of them are too.
They have to make Magic more attractive at high levels. This is so broken. |
| Or maybe we high levels use might because our hunts are impossible to win with magic. Unless you want to compensate me losing 600-700 by changing to magic build by giving me magic which can deal 1200-2400 damage (My normal might troops deal) then i would consider a magic build. |
for MasterTI:
That's exactly his point, magic build is too weak compared to what a might build can do. |
for MasterTI:
Not really weak I think, sorry but I have to point KUSIKA, that stays in faith on his magic :) |
Kusika is primarily a might wizard.
The only high level true magic build I know of is Brilliant. |
Honestly, might and magic have their individual benefits but Magic is a lot weaker than might at higher levels with large armies involved.
Wizards only benefit from hunts and merc quests, but are otherwise handicapped in other matters. I agree that we should tweak the magic system, maybe a 20-30% increase in direct damage spells might help even out the odds.
We can even consider the possibility of giving additional damage if you have greater than 10 points of spell power. This will encourage players to vary their style of play further |
Brilliant is primarily a hunting wizard. He basically foregoes all pvp combats, as you can tell from his combat log.
It takes a ridiculous, unjustifiable bonus like the one wizards have to even have a Magic wizard at level 11. And this bonus is not even incentive enough for Kusika to be a Magic wizard. That has to tell you how broken the system is. |
You absolutely right, but it's a lot of work to change something in the game. I can't see the reason 4 admins to do that change with the magic.
1) there is not many hi lvl players here
2) most ppl quit the game before they get to lvl 10
3) most ppl happy with the existing system
also, without serious advertisement the project will die because of low income as a result of low number of newcomers. (the .ru much more interesting 4 admins 12000 online and keep growing, so they have a lot of other things to do ) |
| I think for the calculations of the primary skill of troops, damages of magic and might have been WELL set by the admins .. it is balanced .. for the might maybe try to use ONLY magic talents, like Expert sorcery that will make u kill much faster, darkness + holy, etc .. everything related on the magic :) |
maigc is very nice for group battles, see my combat log:
https://www.lordswm.com/warlog.php?warid=477679502<=-1
btw, even if I stand at the right-top position , I don't think I have any chance. The fireball are so strong. |
I think the magic system is balanced, it is not so broken as you said.
For example, you are dark elf, your spell is useful until level 7, after you get shrews, your attack power is more useful.
And if faction like wizard get better damage with magic, how about other fations which weak in spells?:) |
When I first started this game and looked at the spells section at 'About the game', I was surprised to see the formula for magic damage. I expected an exponential increase instead of something linear. That made me doubt the magic build, and so from the start as a DE I chose might instead. (potion of oblivion seemed too costly back then) :P
How do we attract more might players to switch to magic?
Either by making might weaker (and cause MASSIVE amounts of complaints) or magic stronger.
As several posts above mentioned, magic damage should be tweaked upwards. But balance isn't found so easily. If magic damage is increased, then barbarians will suddenly find their magic proof ability more useful. And as more people equip magic resisting arts/talents because they start to take the enemy's magic damage more seriously, it would boost the usefulness of DE's magic piercing. There are more implications that will affect game balance, but as you can already see, such a change will affect the effectiveness of the unique racial ability of each faction by varying degrees.
And again, with stronger magic, hunt records can be beaten with ease.
Perhaps we could adjust the effectiveness of might/magic. Maybe we could introduce new monsters that have physical resistance or magic weakness, more arts that reduces physical damage or increase magic damage. How come there isn't a staff that provides '10% bonus to spells'? I think we could have one of this things for higher levels, since it is in those levels that Might becomes clearly stronger than Magic. |
Magic was boosted a lot sometime ago with the double effect of jewel enchants. However the only really magic-oriented faction so far in this game, wizards, need first to save a fortune for mini artifacts and then go for enchants. You can see that by the fact that the best jewel enchanter has 400 points while 3 weapon enchanters are on maximum skill and more coming behind.
The problem with magic is not the spell power though on higher levels. It's the initiative. Hero plays at initiative of 10 while creatures get item initiative bonuses and some high init creatures can even play twice before the caster can do his 1st spell. That's why in PvP magic builds for wizards tend to be useless. And dark elves that could also be magic oriented got ridiculously more damage output as melee anyway so there is no choice for them here.
There are a lot of ways to increase the viability of magic builds in general. Some of them in random order are :
- Introduction of magic guilds 4 and 5 with bigger area damage spells or something like Chain Lightning that cannot be countered by simply spreading.
- Adjustment of talents to give hero faster turns ( Sorcery is very good but it costs too many points and you cannot combine it at my level or so with the school talents, at the moment there is a choice of casting power vs casting speed )
- Adjustment of talents to give more spellpower per talent points invested. Erudition is really really shit compared to Basic Offense tree that melee factions get or Luck, Morale.
- Modification of caster artifacts to give also hero initiative the same way the melee ones give creatures initiative.
Of course all these things as already pointed earlier in this thread, need to be taken into careful consideration regarding the balance of the game. And the balance is very delicate because it involves different game aspects that conflict with each other. |
well but on level 8 you especially get a lot more spellpower by the new artifacts you can wear from now on!
of course demon will never be as good as necro/wiz/DE at spellcasting due to it has no erudition (which helps a lot on higher levels - lvl 12 with expert erudition means +6 Spellpower!)
but so far i'm only a bit disappointed which spells are available at summon magic
imho summon magic would be much better with summon crystal (on any square on the battlefield, you can't walk over it, both sides can attack it and when it blows up it damages alle nearby creatures by the amount of damage it recieved itself)
and chaos magic - well, it isn't worth getting basic chaos magic if you don't have lightning/fireball as those are the only spells that really get better. That's really disappointing! |
for Geryon:
It takes a ridiculous, unjustifiable bonus like the one wizards have to even have a Magic wizard at level 11. And this bonus is not even incentive enough for Kusika to be a Magic wizard. That has to tell you how broken the system is.
It could also mean that Kusika (or any "magic" user) haven't really figured out how to make magic work.
for Skuwak:
How come there isn't a staff that provides '10% bonus to spells'?
Try enchanted jewels. I think each level of enchantment gives 2% bonus damage to spells of one element. Maximum should be 20%. 2 rings, 1 amulet, and a cloak should give a total of about 80% bonus damage. Purely theoretical but this is what I would want if I want to walk the magic path... |
M&M magic spells
http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/heroes5/destructive_magic.shtml
compare that to our spells
https://www.lordswm.com/help.php?section=31
can you say "uber-nerf'd?" |
First, let's look at the primary skills. Points in Attack and Defense become more effective as you advance in Combat level, since they affect bigger and bigger armies.
Spells become more effective too with bigger armies, because you can cast more of them before your army dies. |
| 19: Quite the opposite actually, as both armies grow in size the same way and melee guy gets , say, +50% damage from talents, your army dies 50% faster than before. |
