f13.net

Read this in a different thread, and was interested in who might be interested in this type of mechanic:


Or, in the way I phrase it, who would think a mechanic where you dynamically form a spell by designating verbal, somatic, material, and concentration choices and have the final spell be based upon those selections would be interesting/enjoyable?

Not sure if thats a question. (Who would think?)

But, i will point to Ultimas underworld Rune system, or Ultima:Pagan's magic system. I enjoyed them. I even think, to a degree, tabula rasas "Logo" system is a system like this, however selection is not necessary, you just have to have them..and you all ready know what the "Spell" will be, unlike (during first cast) Ultima underworlds rune system. (Odd that all my examples come from the same place)

Most other MMO's require just mana... Jrpg's as well..(save a few) and i don't think i have seen a "Regent" based spell system in a while.. Scratch that, Sword of the new world does.

On one hand, a system like this sucks to keep up with (OOP "Out of Popcorns"). But then again, it can potentially shake up combat.

Real questions is, Is it worth the hassle, in terms of programing, and players want to keep up with it.

Hand gestures could be done with a mouse movement (Or wii-mote), and some sort of tracking/translating thingy... (Like Raving rabids, the food shape drawing mini-game)

I think it would work better in a single player game, than a MMO.

Like in lieu of stopping and hitting one button until a cast bar ends, I get to hit macro 4 buttons and do it on the move?  Or are you talking about some kind of crazy voice recognition combined with fighter moves?  "Sonic Boom!"

Fixed my original post, correct it wasn't actually a question ;)

I'm thinking of something similar to "combo moves" style of play, adapted to fantasy spell casting, where a series of inputs form a (pre-calculated, or possibly even free-form) causes a spell to be formed and cast.

Think of something like normal fighting games, but viewed from a longer interval--instead of pressing AABForward to do a single move, you'd press AABForward to cast a spell.

AC1 had a dynamic spell creation system, and Daggerfall even allowed for pre-designing spells and then being able to cast those pre-determined spells later, but I'm thinking more of a "real time spell adjustment" concept where you can adapt a spell as it forms to modify it based on changing game state, or create a spell in response to one an opponent is forming--you get to watch it form via various visual/audio clues, and attempt to counter-act, block, or avoid as it becomes more clear what is being cast against you.

Age of conan, i think, has something like this...even botches.

EDIT: Found where i read that. It reads "Kinda" like you describe, or it may be a simple: Cast A, then B, then C get X.


Linky (http://www.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1346&sort=PRIORITY,RELTIME%20desc&table=CONTENT)

I don't think it would be fun.

Who would get this?  Does the warrior in full plate get to type AABForward and cast a spell?  Or is the capability to cast spells restricted to mages?  In which case, ok, so I make a mage character that can... uh has the potential to be able to cast spells, but doesn't have any, cause I haven't discovered any, and in the absence of web-based spoiler sites, must catass my way through random key combinations so I can discover the proper ones and unlock my class?

I think that being able to cast spells is a cool thing to fantasize about being able to do.  The tedium you have to go through to actually get each spell out...  not.

Assume no physical combat for the discussion--PvP mage fights.

Go to WoW. Make a priest. Level to 70. Join an arena team. Play a few matches. Come back and tell us how much you enjoy long casting times while being pounded on by rogues and warriors.

I'm sure the melee would dearly love to watch you form a spell by designating verbal, somatic, material, and concentration choices.

Oh, you throw in no melee while I'm replying. Tricky.

As stated above, this is a mechanic--the assumption being that it's the main mechanic of the discussion (if not the only one), which would imply no melee ;) Hehe..sorry about that. (saw your re-post).

A lot of potential meat here. For dynamic spell generation, it could be fun if you do it right. Offhand, here's a way that I can think of that might be fun. If are focused on something like this, spellcasting on the fly, streamlining using contextual menus is key. You've got to be able to get this spell off VERY fast, especially if you're planning for PvP. It's also got to be a major focus of the game; if you put a system like this in, you'd better let everyone be a caster of some kind or put in a similar system.

The first would be something like an on-the-fly spell cast, composed of 3 elements -- elemental type, area of effect, special power. To cast, you'd use the keyboard or keypad, a direction for each. For example, you hit a key to begin casting, and then to select you'd hit a direction 3 times, once for each type you want. If your contextual menus were
'up - ice, down - fire, left - earth, right - water'
'up - single target, down - small circular aoe, left - line, right, PBAoE'
'up - stun, down - life drain, left - accuracy debuff, right - damage over time'

then hitting the 'action' key/button and then hitting left up right would give you an ice-based, single target spell that also had a DoT component. You may want to add the option to store popular spell selections as a hotkeys. You could have a menu in front of those, offensive, defensive, control, healing, etc. -- you get the idea. You could also be tricky and plan specific directions, if you're talking console games, so that commonly cast spells would work out to a smooth arc, and spells that have more power, versatility, or aren't used as much use opposing directions (left right left) -- this increases the 'cast time'. You'd obviously have 8 directions if you wanted to start putting in capcom moves.

If you just wanted to add a little extra feature instead of an entire spell-cast system, there are a few ways that I think of offhand that you could go about adding 'mini-game' type gameplay:

a 'chargup' bar where you have to hit a stop button at the top of the arc
a simon-says or memory keypress-in-order
a 'reaction' type gameplay where you have to hit a button or direction corresponding to a symbol quickly.

These are tried, true, and have been used with success in games over and over again. It seems logical you could draw on something like this, in terms of combat, for some sort of 'finishing move' to add damage, or a special move that can be used once every few minutes or when specific circumstances are involved.

I think a system in which you have to co-operate with your teammates to achieve a (combat) goal adds loads to the gameplay, and the only game I can think of where something like this was added is FFXI's renkei system. Adding group timing / participation to combat, in moderation, could add quite a bit of camaraderie and gameplay value - as long as you plan for the tards.

Not to sound like a broken record, but Planetsides Voice macro system (V-V-W) would work well with "Combining" things to form a spell.

Contextual menus aren't a new thing, putting it into core gameplay mechanics is. Klingon Academy is the only game that I can think of that used it as a fundamental gameplay mechanic. Planetside ripped off that particular functionality (quick voice commands) from other games. Hell, counterstrike and other multiplayer FPSes have the EXACT same system. There are any number of ways to implement it in a user-interface point of view; you do have more flexibility (and complexity) options with a keyboard than you do with a controller.

The end question is how to streamline it into a system that can easily be used on the fly -- branching options are pretty much the only speedy way to go, unless you want a 'plan ahead and hotkey' system. They both have their merits.

I only brought it up as an example, not to claim they invented it. I enjoy the quickness that comes with it, more so than say, BF or The new quake wars system of it in the middle of your screen. I know you can hit the numbers, but then it becomes a hand position thing.

Firstly, I'd like to point out that the portion of my reply was in a thread asking for less button pressing and that although this type of mechanic would be favored by some people, others would say it was inefficient, time-consuming, and confusing.

Me, I'm actually in favor of more complexity, and I would actually prefer a mechanic that would allow for more diversity in spells and classs delineation, but I also would add that this type of mechanic does not lend itself to "twitch based" or MMO type gaming.

I could easily see how "spell-weaving" or even the EQ2 system of "Heroic Opportunities" (chaining certain abilities results in an ultra powered ending) would be compared to this, but I think that our red-named friend was thinking more of "custom spell-casting/creation" rather than of chain attack type abilities.

The implementation of this suggestion would require a (rather huge) set of variables and combinations that would need to remain static due to coding (plus be in a walkthrough/guide someplace), and this type of complexity is probably beyond most gamers learning curves, so it becomes simply adding complexity for complexity's sake.

Maybe if the game was a single player one, with players becoming an apprentice wizard? Other than that I'm not sure it would be something embraced by players, especially if it wasn't done right, (ie making it fun, easy enough to complete, or enough of a challenge to want to continue playing it).

Yes to first, not necessarily to second.


Correct :)


Not true at all regarding implementation or design. Rules based final spell determination for the win here.


While I see a single player game around the mechanic, I more directly see this is as a player vs player (vs player vs xx) focused mechanic, myself. Being able to guess what a player is casting and react to it before they finish weaving the cast would be really interesting--think something like Guild Wars "interrupt" mechanic for mesmers, but more interactive than just "hit my button before their cast bar is done".

Well, you could design (or wholesale steal) mechanics for fairly balanced spellcasting -- the wild mage 3e splatbook was a good example of a fairly balanced system you could transfer over, which balances damage, range, targets, additional effects, if you just want to have an 'invent your own' system in which you can vary different aspects of spells. You really only have two options still -- plan-ahead-hotkeyed and on-the-fly casting. You can always structure combat to make things slower paced to give people more time to think, of course.

This can obviously be combined with what you're saying to create a very robust 'dueling' type system -- rock-paper-scissors counters with some sort of interrupt mechanic to mitigate damage... you could play attack-defend-attack-defend, with the defender having an interrupt minigame using visual cues. This seems to only work with a 1v1, I can't see it being overly useful in group combat unless the game was structured to force the 1v1s in some way.

Would be interesting to see that mage move.  Say he takes one step forward, and two back.  I'd be able to predict what he was going to do if I knew the mage moves well enough.  Just like when you see Ken or Ryu stutter stepping toward you.

Seems like it would be some kind of finger fuckery on a keyboard though.  Maybe if an mmo for the consoles.

Also if you had to use your movement keys for combos or whatever, wouldn't that be the same as not being able to move to cast a spell?

It would depend on how you make it "dynamic".  The additional examples you've given later in the thread do not sound "dynamic" to me; pushing multiple buttons to do something does not add dynamism if it's the same exact buttons each time.

A "dynamic" system would be one that requires the player to analyze the environment in some way and make decisions based on it, like a puzzle/board game in which the position of the board dictates which moves you can make, or a shooter in which you have to quickly assess what direction an enemy might be approaching from or how best to take cover while returning fire.

Fighting games are highly dynamic, but it's not because you have to push multiple buttons to do certain moves.  It's because each move will only work under certain conditions (i.e. how far away the opponent is and what move they're currently doing), and those conditions are changing constantly.

Give me a few ticks and I can try to think of a system that satisfies the "dynamic" condition better...

Well, if we wanted to go with visual queues and an interrupt system, hypothetically, casting could be a multi-step process -- hold the mouse button down to initiate spell selection, (character does some sort of windup/power summoning motion) and then once choices have been made, release mouse and it starts a 3 second cast time where your character goes through the specific motions, one second for each -- if you can recognize which direction he pushed, you can counter with your your own while your opponent is still casting to cancel/mitigate that part of the spell.

Another idea would be to tie chargeup length of time into spell damage -- Say you have 5 seconds to choose up to 3 components of a spell.... the longer you hold down a direction for those 5 seconds, the more powerful that component is. It could be represented with a bar that slowly fills up across the screen, and the direction pushes (and holds) color the bar -- at the end, your character acts out what you have selected with the same selection as above. That gives opponents a longer chance to interrupt each component, but a larger payoff if he isn't paying attention or you use an unconventional attack. What if he can only counter one component? He'd have to guess which one to pick!

Hopefully, the selections would have enough variance that it wouldn't always be "straight damage / single target". I could see a whole tree of roots stuns confuses counters, dots, slows, stuns, etc -- the sky's the limit, but complexity would have to be considered.

I'm one of those people who could (and possibly still can) do 12 hit combo strings in fighting games, so I could envision a duel based game around this, but honestly I can't really see a fighting game that was all waiting around to chain the correct combos together to beat an opponent. It wouldn't be extremely deep, fun to watch or exciting either, because all casters would do would be interrupt one another over and over (because getting hit by a spell is akin to moving, interrupting casting) taking minor chunks of damage off one another (with no one ever completing the uber string of insta-death).

I don't see a context menu actually working that well either, because it would eliminate the experimenting, diversity and challenge I think Mr Zepp was trying to instill, but I have to say that I like the idea of discovering and experimenting with spells.

The issue of how it's played though is where it would need to really overcome the "complexity for complexity's sake" and if it was say a "dueling" console game it would require almost too much experimentation and not enough action to hold many gamer's attentions. Dueling casters is definitely not the same as a straight out beat em up, martial arts type, string combos, and all I see is gamers spending alot of time looking up guides or entering button presses randomly to get that oooh wow effect (damn was that <><>ABAAB or <><ABAAB?).

Making this into a single player, Oblivion type game is likely just about the only way I could see this working.

Discovery is a lost cause in a multiplayer game, the first thing people would do his hit gamefaqs. You might as well clearly enumerate all your possibilities, there's no such thing as a 'hidden' spell on the internet. Remember 'hidden' diablo2 recipes?

Since I've been player guitar hero, why not use a similar mechanic? Spells are a stream coming towards you, and to counter, you have to repeat the exact thing that was cast using only color visual queues, transferring from one aspect to another just as it hits you. Spell duels could start out slow, and then get faster and faster. You could have a cursor that moves a certain fixed speed and in whatever direction you choose. You draw a sigil using it (think etch-a-sketch) and then they have to repeat what you drew or take damage. Gradually, the cursor starts moving faster and faster, making it easier for them to spam the controller in random directions. Spam could be handled at low levels by having a large moving circle for 'attack' and a smaller pointer for defend which you have to keep 'inside' the attack area -- spam does you little since the attack area wouldn't move fast enough. If done in a 3d enviorn with the spell coming to you, and ending at a 2d plane/grid, you should be able to, with some practice, look 'ahead' and see the general idea of the movements they make.

I'm not sure you'd want something like that, I guess it's consideration of what skill you want to focus on -- quick fingers, memory retention, attack and appropriate riposte combos, etc. There are a lot of mechanics you can 'borrow' and adapt from other games, guitaroman is a good example.

I know I'm focusing on one aspect of gameplay which may not be the one initially intended. I guess I'm more interested in presentation and novel combat systems than I am with 'build your own spell out of lego bricks!' type gameplay. I still like the idea of a general 'damage' spell being able to be manipulated on the fly by widening it into an AoE or Cone at the cost of reducing it's damage.

I'd be happy just to see individual spells with more character and utility.

Rather than:  Energy Blast-- Instant cast direct damage, 5 second cooldown.

How about:   Energy Blast-- "Concentrate" for less than half a second to release a small point blank AoE damage burst.
Longer than half a second, you'll start emitting particle effects and then stepping forward will fire a blast at your target. Walk backwards while glowing and the blast charges for up to five seconds... a more powerful blast the longer the charge. Tap backwards again while charging and the spell turns into a shield buff, able to deflect more damage the longer it has charged. Charge the entire five seconds and the spell disperses as a large stationary field at the caster's location which puts a nasty DOT on anybody enemy who passes through it during the next minute.

If interrupted during the charge period (or with a back tap, if the spellcaster already has a shield buff), the charge level is released as a (potentially powerful) point blank AoE... doing damage to all nearby foes AND the caster.

A little mana is used for activation, then more mana burns at a specific (or accelerating) rate during the charge period.

---

It'd take some practice to learn how to use a spell, but each would still be a single button on the quickbar. If the game has a level progression, perhaps Energy Blast gains these those abilities as the character levels up, getting used to each new aspect of the spell as they appear. Other spells might have branching charge possibilities, or might involve esoteric charging methods (charges while the character is falling, charges while the character is taking damage, charges while the character remains a particular distance from the target).

Color or icon code the spells so that enemies can identify what's being cast and try to react appropriately.

In a PVP game?  Everyone will have the complexity macroed away and the entire system may as well not exist.  Nobody will be hitting down, diagonal, toward + punch.  Everyone will just be clicking "hadoken" on their custom UI and/or cheat program.

Do we see this as a matter of how the command is input, or are we really just talking about having more choices in the cost/benefit of a spell?

The UI stuff, meh, in the long term (ie. in a MMOG) it becomes second nature and no longer part of the fun.

The choices thing, well ok, but choices within, for example, a nuke spell, aren't where the problems are in MMOG spellcasting. The problems are the cost model, and the fact that almost all the spells are nuke spells.


MMOG spellcasting almost always gives you all your resources at the start, and makes the game about pushing out everything as fast as possible.

If you are going for a caster based MMOG, you need to look at something like mtg and find a way to do that in real time.

1) Resources for spells should have to be developed during a battle, not beforehand. This way resource management is meaningful. A significant portion of a mage's spell base should be resource development spells.
2) Spells should get more powerful as a duel runs on, not get less powerful because of dwindling resources. This is an obvious rule of how you develop drama.
3) Mages should not all be competing to fire out all their spells as quickly as possible. Again, look to mtg for the concept of aggro mages (cast everything at the opp's head as fast as you can - hope to overwhlem the opp before they get going) vs combo mages (develop resources as quickly as you can, hope you aren't dead before you reach HADOKEN) vs control mages (attempt to disrupt the opp's plan until resources develop to the higher end, then have better finisher spells than the other guy).


In a long term game the UI vanishes. Players stop seeing it.

And simple choices (do I cast for twice as long to get 3x the effect) won't substantially change gameplay.


MMOG mages need to be casting more spells that don't simply say 'deal X damage'. And they need to be developing the ability to cast spells during a battle, not by waiting for mana to regen between a battle, or visting a store to buy a gazillion stacks of bone chips.

Someone should just make a Puzzle Quest MMO and be done with it.  (Not sure if you've played it, eldaec, but it has all the qualities you describe.)

I like the thinking. I do feel though that unless there's a lot of coordination in a group, the amount of time it takes to create a dynamic and interesting spell could be cumbersome and annoying. At the same time, I loved Ryzom's "bricks" system where you could technically create your own abilities by breaking down into subcomponent parts how game-provided abilities are built. Wish that would be picked up by someone else, but unfortunately the game's not successful enough to brook emulation.

All the qualities who describes? I've played PQ (in fact, just picked up the demo again to waste some time while brainstorming recently), and it has none of the qualities I'm describing ;)

The martini-wielding guy I was addressing.  I have bolded his name for your convenience.   :wink:

I agree it does not satisfy the qualities you describe, Stephen.  The game I can think of that best matches your hypothetical spellcasting system is Potion Panic (http://www.ninjakiwi.com/potionpanic.html), where you mix different quantities of different components to produce different potions with different effects.  It is not what I would call "dynamic", though, because eventually you figure out a handful of optimal (or at least usable) recipes and you just use those over and over.   After five minutes of experimentation you might as well just have a hotbar of predefined spells.  Which is pretty much what everyone in the thread has already said, so I didn't think it was worth discussing further.   :-P

Puzzle Quest's gameplay is a lot more dynamic, even if you aren't "inventing" spells on the fly, because you can't just cast the same spell, or sequence of spells, repeatedly.  You have to build up the mana types needed to cast various spells during the course of the fight, and frequently you're choosing between doing damage right now, storing up mana that you can use later to do even more damage, or maybe hoarding mana that isn't as useful to you directly but that you don't want your opponent to get his hands on.  Making meaningful choices in response to changing conditions... that's where it's at.

I agree, this is a big risk--but one that can be hopefully managed as long as you continue to focus on the act of the casting itself (as much as you can anyway) as the primary mechanic, not the effects of the spell cast.

I know that sounds weird--it's a hard thing to describe. The closest I can come to really is playing an old school red/blue interrupt deck in MTG, or playing an interrupt mesmer in GW. In both cases, what you did and when was specifically in relation to what your opponent was doing, and that's the type of game mechanic I'm trying to describe.


Agreed on your analysis in some ways--I think that's why PQ is still so interesting to me even with just the demo. I've played every class to "max" (30+ all skills, everything available "done") many multiple times, and it's interesting to me that there is a "fight to fight" difference in how you play based on what's going on in that fight. The "mana as a resource" thing isn't necessarily the way I'm thinking about this idea, but it does work.

Well, it could be interesting done right, and of course done fun. First off, it can't have anything to do with keystrokes or combinations thereof. As soon as keys are involved, it gets macroed. Make it about mouse movement patterns. Here's an idea off of the top of my head:

Standard WASD/Mouse control Scheme
Before you cast, you designate in the UI what components you are using. Have a certain number of slots you can drop comps in to.
Holding down Mouse 2 puts you in "casting mode"  - you may or may not allow the player to keep moving via WASD
Once in casting mode, the pattern drawn by the mouse combined with the chosen comps determine the spell.

Example: Component -Sulfer - mouse in a circle and then pulled back towards the caster - might be a ring shaped fire burst centered on the caster
Same motion but add coal to the sulfer - same effect plus a cloud of smoke centered on you

More complex or higher damage spells would take more complex motions. Screwing up the motion could of course result in undersired effects. "Oops, I pushed forward during that heal spell and healed the orc instead."

You would allow the player to cast anything they want if they have the components and can figure out the motions. They would find better comps and be shown specific motions as they progress.

Unfortunately, it would likely work better in a single player pve game than an MMO - since an MMO would have all the recipies online in a week (like they did with AC1).

The problem with mouse gesture recognition systems, much like speech recognition systems, is that they tend to be obnoxious as fuck.  They're also no less macro-able than keystroke combinations.

(I do like the theory of gesture-based spellcasting, though, even if it would probably be annoying in practice.  I remember doodling out a design very much like what you describe several years ago, probably after I played Black and White for the first time and thought "oo, this would be cool in an FPS/RPG.")

I could be wrong here, but I think the "worry" about things being macro-d is unwarranted if the system is designed correctly.

Using a macro would be locking yourself into a cast pattern over a period of time, and removing the advantage of being able to adapt your spell as it's formed based on what the opponent is doing.

Let's say your opponent is casting a fireball (you see the fire around him, you hear him uttering the words for "damage health", and his animation is doing it's "ball missile" thing. Let's say that before you had seen him start to cast, you had focused on the water realm, but hadn't yet done anything else with the spell (thereby your water power was building over time, but nothing else yet). Your intent was to cast a "flood" spell, which takes xx seconds to cast.

Now, if player A and player B were using macros, both would be locked in to their final spell results--a fireball on the one hand, and a flood spell on the other.

However, if player A was using a macro, but player B wasn't, player B could see the fireball spell indicators, and change his spell dynamically to all sorts of "counter the opponent" options:

--cast a raincloud over player A, reducing the fire realm power he had gathered
--cast a "splash" cantrip (low power, fast cast), with the sole goal to distract player A, interrupting his cast (and causing him to have to start from scratch, instead of having his built up fire power still handy)
--cast a "wall of water" spell around himself, eating up much of the force of the fireball as the missile itself hit the wall
--cast a "protection from fire" buff on himself to increase his fire resistance.

Sure, players are going to macro, but relying completely on macros could be a very bad thing against a smart and aware player.

They also are much less counter-intuitive (depending on the implementation) to the user, and have issues going cross-controls/cross platform (would work awesomely on the Wii, be much easier with a mouse than a 360 controller, etc).

The thing of modifying your spell at different stages based on what the opponent is doing, THAT sounds cool.

Right, and that is the core mechanic I'm talking about :)

The idea of changing the spell on the fly is interesting, plus getting visual clues to what your opponent is building up to as it goes. You still need to work it in with the rest of the combat dynamics though to figure out if you have something fun.

Most "fun" spellcasting system I've encountered yet (for pvp) was still AC1. You had multiple elements, elemental specifc protections, elemental specific debuffs. More powerful attacks, buffs, and debuffs took longer to cast. Attacks were targeted, and different spells travelled in straight lines or arcs, fast or slow, and you had to learn to anticipate what was coming based on the words you heard, since the attack spells were targeted and collision based - none of those silly heat seeking CoX attacks.

Yea it had problems - it was twitch based and exploitable - but it was damn fun.

Stephen, are you talking about Spellbinder (http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/spellbnd.htm)?

Interesting, but first you need to design a mechanic where there are a decent number of options to change the spell into, and where best performance comes from something other than casting on a repeating attack chain cycle.

In your typical MMOG right now, the lack of variety and interactivity means I would almost never want to react in any way to what the other guy is doing, because the I'm still only interested in running through my attack chain over and over.

Hmm...hadn't actually heard of that before, so no, that's not what I'm talking about ;) As far as I can tell, it's "similar but not the same" in ideas, although does bring up an interesting question regarding copyright--if two systems, developed independently model a third system (the concept of casting itself), does that mean one is dependent on the other, or totally separate?

Ignorance iswas bliss.

Has nothing to do with ignorance--AC 1 has already been described as having implemented a similar system. Daggerfall has a very basic version. His game implementation is interesting, but it's pretty difficult to take the concept of 5 hand gestures and copyright an entire series of spell casting mechanics from it ;)

Hell, i'd be happy with a 3d mmorpg version of a Mtg Duel.  Even if not an exact replica, I think that style gives us some important factors to keep in mind that could help make such a system work.

Limited Resources - you may know 100+ spells, or pieces of spells (runes, words of power, reagents, etc), but in any given "adventure" you can only take a small subset, and an intelligent design to that set is far more meaningful than taking the gear that gives the best DPS vs resit gear.

Paced gameplay - if you want people to be able to read and react to the opponent, we have to eliminate the dumb twitch parts we can make what should be an even fight a slaugher (i.e. no circle strafing or bunny hopping please).  You should not be able to win or lose before you've have a change to make several meaningful decisions in the battle.  Even though I like GW, the pace is too frentic for my ideal system (plus it has alot of the FPS idiot movement that drive me nuts).  Also, any battle should have a natural conclusion of how long it can run.

Randomness - they has to be some element to it.  In MtG, thats the order you draw your cards; in a pnp game, it's the dice, but whatever the mechanic there should not be any auto win or auto lose scenarios where Water mage defeats fire mage, every time.  I'd be fine if you had say

Flexibility - I like the concept of the sideboard in MtG, you duel, then you can swap out part of your resources from a small pool of backup resources you also prepared ahead of time.  Again rewarding good design of your set of resources to cover you weaknesses, respond to popular archtypes, or even trickier strategy changes (i.e. morphing a mono black control deck into a black weenie rush deck).

Responsivness - as you mentioned, a counter deck adds a level of fun typical mmorpg combat just lacks.  Being able to turn the tables on your opponent in lots of ways should be viable.  Whether thats a classic channel+fireball meets Counterspell (or Reverse Damage, exchange life totals with your opponent, or hell even a well timed Healing Salve).

Multiple Roads to victory - In two ways.  Firstly, you should be able to win by doing more than just "lower opponents health to zero".  If that's the only victory condition then everyone's strategy becomes the same; "how do i do max dps".    Mtg has kill your oppoent, run him out of cards, poison counters, etc, plus you can win on time called (a stall+lifegain deck can actually work), always get your opponent to conceed, and (heres #2) you can also Draw. i.e. A Tie. a Stalemate where neither side won or lost.  Lots of people don't like ties, but sometimes squeaking out a Tie when you are in a horrible position feel even better than a curb stomping win.

Much fun as all the systems sound, most of them just don't seem to flow well in a huge multiple player game where you can be facing more than one opponent at any time.  it;s hard to read and react when you have to watch 5 oppoents at once who can all move simultaneously...

I agree with everything you said, but I'd expand responsiveness to interactivity.

It's not just about immeadiate response and counters - it's about making spells or tactics that affect the way a skilled opponent should play from then on.

It's my opponent playing an enchantment that changes the rules, so I have to think how I use my spells differently as a result, how does my strategy change now everyone has double mana, pets are all debuffed, or any time anyone uses mana they get hit for X damage? It's how much momentum does my opp have? Do I push on with my victory strategy or do I need to disrupt the opp first? Do I have to kill the pet or can I keep developing resources? Do I have to hold mana open in case the other guy surprises me, or do I go for the kill? If I'm casting a rule changer is there any chance it will help the opp more than it helps me? Do I hang on to resources in order to bluff the other guy into thinking I have a counterspell? Does he have a counterspell I should bait him to play it before I hit my finisher?


And to do all this, you certainly need to start by slowing MMOG combat way the fuck down.

Getting rid of front-loaded damage dealers like most MMO rogue classes would be a smart first step, but it's tough to slow combat down in any multiplayer game, even before things get massive.

Two players can theoretically have a clean fight. Even three player bouts will start as 2v1. Four players could make a pair of 1v1 duels, but they tend to gang up as well. It's just more efficient. Play MtG with four or five players and things start out as a game of "whose deck do we hate?" Slow, elaborate development gets interrupted by hardcore ganking once anybody starts looking dangerous. Sometimes the player has hidden his intentions for long enough that hardcore ganking can no longer kill him... in which case the game is already over, and watching him destroy everyone else one by one is just a tedious extension of a game already lost.

The old Apple II game "Mobius" had spellcasting like that.  You had to keep a randomly moving ball in a box for a certain amount of time to cast a spell.

All I have to say about the original post is that precasting in UO and slidecasting in AC1 made both games way more fun, interesting and tactical for mages.

Sorry for re-joining the discussion so late; I was away from the internet for a week.

I probably don't understand what you're trying to explain with this casting system, but I do have a couple comments:


1.
There's an assumption here that there would be spells that I'd want the enemy to cast on me, and others that I'd want to interrupt.  Why would I let him cast anything?  From what I've seen PVP is all about stun-locking or otherwise completely disabling the enemy caster; you either have stuns/snare/silence/fear coming at you, or you have big damage spells coming at you.  Where's the spell that I'd want to let finish uninterrupted?

Also, from what's been explained, I'd have this react and modify ability available without cooldown, so again why wouldn't I try to interrupt EVERY spell the enemy casts, stun-locking him if possible?


2.  Both casters in a PVP match would be able to watch and predict each other's spells, and then modify their casting accordingly.  Your examples deal with one caster being really dumb and just casting without any modifiers, and one being very smart and always countering.  I agree that counterspelling is fun.  Being counterspelled isn't.  In any case, I think that an actual PVP match with such a system would probably be more like playing chess, with moves planned in advance, and possible contingencies accounted for as much as possible.  So maybe, instead of doing a "modify your spell on the fly" mechanic, focus on making a "queue your spells in advance" system work in such a way that the player can see how his opponent could possibly react 3-4-5 "moves" in advance and  play tactics with his spells.

The spells could also come out of the caster as a continuous stream, much like autoattack but not really, and the player would be able to modify the stream with different effects.  Like playing bagpipes that are being squeezed by someone else.

Some interesting perspectives.

Regarding "always counterspell everything", of course there is a hidden expectation that this wouldn't be possible forever--most systems don't let one caster completely stunlock another--either with cooldowns longer than stun durations, or something similar. While I haven't thought it through completely, I'd suggest that a built in balancing mechanic might be that one of:

a) Not all spells can be countered (speed differential, or counter-spell complexity),
b) counter-spelling may be complex enough as a process (while still staying fun hopefully) that human error/skill would play a part--in this balance, it might be theoretically possible but not probable to totally shut down another caster.
c) Counter spelling is more "character effort" (however that might be measured--mana, stamina, mental fatigue, concentration) in the long run than allowing some spells to be cast.
d) Counter spelling does nothing other than counter-spelling. Even if you allowed for 100% stun lock, nothing else could be accomplished by the stunner, requiring an eventual break of the stalemate.

Just some ideas, hadn't thought this one through completely :)

Any system that consists of
"I cast a spell!"
"I cast counter-spell!"

Is doomed.  Fun games include counters that are strategic, not tactical.  Of course, that requires attacks that are strategic and not tactical as well.

Agreed--I wasn't going into any specific details, but the term "counter spell" is a generic form of "react to the opponent's actions by performing competing actions that may or may not diffuse/avoid/interrupt his action".

Certainly not talking M:TG "CounterSpell for 2 blue" here by any means.

How about a system where spells are (almost) always chained together.  The (simple) example I'm thinking of has three types of spells - bolts , shells and whirls. 

Bolts are exactly what they sound like.
Shells look like a spherical bubble is around the caster, these act as shields, capacitors and a status effect.
Whirl is some soft of modifier.

Simple example:
mage_1 casts a frost shell.  This 1) increases his capacity for frost magic, 2) creates a good shield against frost (or fire, I haven't decided), a modest shield against anything not fire, 3) he is effected with the frost status effect which makes him less resistant to fire, more resistant to frost, slows his movement rate and reduces his damage from bleed effects.

He then casts a frost bolt, adding the power of the shell into the bolt.  This dissipates the shell.

Less simple example:
Instead of casting a frost bolt, he casts a frost rejuvenating whirl on the shell.  There is now a blue ball whirling around outside the of the shell.  In addition to the positives/negatives from the whirls frost status effects, he can now cast multiple bolts at an increased power before depleting the shell.  This is not all good, now an enemy caster can see that his shell isn't going anywhere in a hurry, and can try to switch tactics to take advantage of the vulnerabilities caused by frost.

More complex example:

mage_1 casts a frost shell.  mage_1 begins to cast another spell. mage_2 thinks that it will be a bolt, so he casts a counter (which is of type "whirl: - whirls are modified of a spells).  If mage_1 is casting a bolt, it will be countered, part of it's damage rebounding onto mage_1.  If mage_1 is casting a shield, the shield will be enhanced by the counter (in this case the counter was the bad choice - making the "always counter" strategy a bad strategy).  If mage_1 was casting a whirl there is no effect.

The idea is that each mage will want to be building their own shells and whirls (building up power), while attempting to harm and tear down the enemies forces/defenses.

Typhon, I like the idea of adding spell chains and classifications of differing effects, but that seems to move away from the idea that a caster crafts their own spells that Steve was proposing. The stringing together of effects would allow a way around the "chain-interrupts" through proper layering of spells, but I don't actually see how there wouldn't be a single "money play" that everyone would use.

Adding mechanics that allow spells to be blocked, stunned or interrupted every time (or faster than any others) is maybe something that would need to be % based (EQ1 Channeling?) so characters can't always count on these effects. Otherwise every combat would be: Player A interrupts player B. Player A is stunned by Player B. Player B blocks player A's spell. Not very complex, and not very fun seeming either.

...and yet that is, in a nutshell, the core dynamic of every fighting game from Street Fighter to Guilty Gear. It's hidden under layers of cool graphics and each character has multiple rock-paper-scissors moves on which they can focus... but ultimately it's a matter of blocking and countering and bluffing until somebody makes a mistake.

Perhaps it would lose something in a game with half second latency, but it's a pretty popular dynamic.

It's a very instant-gratification dynamic, which is why it's so popular, in my opinion.  Spells and abilities in current games are all instant-reward: you do damage, you stun, you do something immediately with each move, and the point of it is to grind away at the visual indicators of success or failure that are the health bars.

I hate to keep giving chess as an example, but in that game, the only thing you do with each move is you build up, and you build up, and you build up, until you finally either deliver or receive the colossal death blow that is checkmate.

Something like that could be simulated with a swords-and-sorcery combat system (build-ups that don't damage the opponent that you can play with until you find an opening to deliver a death blow through), but the ability to interrupt the match and run away must be tied into the whole thing, else everyone will just run.  It's called tackling in EVE, and everyone just runs away if it's absent.

And, there's still the problem of many-vs-one, or the gank situation, which is the most common scenario out there.  The whole counter-spelling premise is a lot less pretty in a gank situation (cause you can't enjoy a battle-of-wits game like you can 1 vs. 1, too many opponents make every move an "oh shit how do I survive and get away" desperation fight, no elegance to it whatsoever).

I like the idea of spell chains because they allow you to do a few things.  They make combat more involved (something I personally find lacking in many MMO's today), they give a bonus for teamwork, and (if designed well) don't punish players who are not immediatly interested in not wanting to deal with that layer of complexity (they won't do as much damage sure, but make it so they just have to change who/what they fight for it).

I once had an idea to do a chain system based on having abilities put n/pcs into various states, and other abilities would require the n/pc to be in a certain state to take advantage of it.  Then it's up to the player to decide the best way to chain these states together to accomplish what they want.  The main issue I've had with this (though since I don't have a game to impleement it with I never sat down to really design it) was to make an easy/intuitive way to convey which state the mob/player was in.  I'm sure that can be worked around though if enough thought was put into it.

The other idea I've had was for dynamic spell creation.  You would have three sets of runes.  One set of runes sets the area of effect (pbae, gtae, single target, etc).  The second set of runes would contribute the power of the final effect (small, medium, large), then the last set of runes would be the actual effect of the spell (stun, damage, root, etc).  So if you want to do a medum lasting AOE root you would select the AOE rune, the medium rune, and the root rune at which point a targetting decal would appear. 

Balance can then be achieved by setting the cooldowns on all 3 runes based on the 2nd set of runes (power).  So sure, you can do a large damage over time but then you wlil be restricting you won't be able to do damage or aoe abilities for X amount of time.  It means you have to actually have a strategy to everything you do and plan ahead (while keep track of what is going on now).

Would either system be fun.  Don't know as I haven't actually played with them yet and until then it's just theorycrafting, but I think these systems can be made to make combat more exciting in fantasy games. 

The idea I was going for was to avoid the all-or-nothing effect of chaining mutliple parts into one spell, by allowing each spell part to exist independently as it's own brick and mortar that not only provided value in and of itself, but could be used to augement further spells.  An attempt to reward more complex spell-chaining.  I've seen the all-or-nothing approach degenerate into no one attempting the more complicated, but more risky, spells because everyone is watching for someone to swing for the fence (so they can counter).

It seemed similar enough to what Zepp was proposing.

Using the Mortal Kombat (et. a.) model, the idea is to create counters that are similar to the high/low blocks.  Jade Empire also does something interesting with attack sequences that is a bit more simple than normal fighting games but is in the rock/paper/scizzors domain - blocks block normal attacks, big moves break blocks but take more time, normal attacks break big moves while they are being executed.

I really like Typhon's idea.  It sounds like the cool descriptions that came out of discussions of magic in early Vanguard, the only thing about the game that interested me.  No idea if it actually made it to release that way, I somehow doubt it.

To make things a little more generic, you could set effect on each of the 'mini' spells, and then rules for interactions.  Allow 'shell' of multiple elements to stack, with perhaps different effects on a bolt or whirl depending on the elemental shells in place.

You could have multiple types of casters, too, if you had an 'elementalist' who had the classic fire/water/air/earth set; a priest set that was, say, air/fire/holy; and a necro set that was earth/unholy.  Make up for the lack of flexibility/power in spells with additional powers; for necro's, obviously pets.

I'd see combat like this sortof like CoH blasters with sniper powers.  When you need to fire uninterrupted, you use your weaker, 'normal' attacks.  However, if you have the time, you pull out the Big Gun.  So if you're solo, or fighting weaker things, you just through unmodified bolts; but if you need big power, or need to exploit a weakness; and you've got the time or help keeping the enemy away from you, you put up your shields and other buffs before flinging magical death.

--
Alkiera

I was thinking something very similar.  Add multiple... damn, word not coming, I'll go with "categories".  Multiple categories that give the system depth.

Type of spell (bolt, shell, whirl) is one category.  Element is another (I was thinking of stealing MtG's 5 elements, and the way each element has two enemies and two friends) category.  Type of spell caster, with proficiencies in sub-types of spells and elements is another category.  Each category should be fairly shallow (like three types of spells, each with maybe two or three sub-types).  But have them all interact to a degree.  Pretty easy to get into, but many different combination to give depth.

I'd also like to see the environment play a role in the game.  Being close to certain in-game objects has an effect on spell casting - I'm thinking of lay-lines here, but it could be as simple as being close to a fire, or water, etc.  I realize that's a bit obtuse.  Mechanically I'm saying that if someone is smart enough to position themselves effectively it will be like they have the help of other spell casters (no reason that one spell caster can't cast a shell or whirl on another).

It sounds good, but the whole game would have to be designed around such a system, and by that I mean, if I get a quest to kill 15 rats I don't want to have an epic battle with moves, counter moves, spells and counterspells, customized and built-up effects and an hour-long spellflinging match to kill each damn rat.  It's ok to have a coreographed epic dance around a few bosses every weekend, I don't wanna do it levelling up day in day out.

Wouldn't this combo system be pretty much the same as combos in FF or EQ2? Or do you mean something different?

I don't know, I haven't played FF or EQ2.

ajax34i - I don't konw about Stephen, but I was thinking of a sort of a gladitorial area-pvp game (i.e. Mortal Kombat with wizards).

It'd be kinda like the Renkai system in FF, but designed to be done alone, and with some internal logic to why x+y+z=giant fireball;  The EQ2 'combo' system is random and also crap.  Never mention it again.  8)

--
Alkiera

Sorry to dredge, spent a couple months working and missed this thread. 

I think the systems envisioned in this thread are running into the input limit of mouse and keyboard controls (or will quickly).  The worst part about a long 'cast time' in a typical MMOG isn't that you aren't dealing damage during the cast, presumably the player has already decided that the outcome of the action is worth the wait.  The worst part is that the player is no longer pressing any tactical limits on their opposition - they are static.  Static targets attract casual focused fire and allow N opponents to unload their less agile abilities on the static target.  If I catch someone casting a long cast spell I can do a few things then interrupt it (assuming it is still relevant).  These alternative dynamic casting mechanics are no better, in that now we're navigating menus and options instead of pressing or negating tactical advantage.  The implication is that the hard core users will just macro and hotkey "things that usually work" and forgo any of the dynamic options because they need their mouse and/or keyboard to manage the dynamic player environment they find themselves in.

While the mechanics suggested are interesting, I don't think there are enough input channels available to make it work without disrupting current control requirements.

If you start binding movement to a WiiFit device maybe we're starting to get somewhere on freeing up a hand to manage spellcasting while the other is managing awareness/target selection.  Short of that, it is just a complicated way a replacing the arbitrary cast time assigned to various spells.  DestructoSpell has a 6 second cast? You can commonly counter it today by: closing and stunning, closing and silencing, getting out of range, making yourself temporarily immune to the damage, and or mitigating the incoming damage.  While it would be great to turn his DestructoSpell into a spray of petunias on the fly, if it impairs the already limited character control we have today it is for naught.

That said, I think it would be great to play such a system but we're definitely already making (non trivial) assumptions about how many people can mass their blaster fire on the new guy.  Once the players start dieing in less time than their current connection latency the game is up.

Very cool idea.  I love the idea of chaining.  I could see some kind of energy drain on each element, so you can't just do item 1 and hold onto it forever, unless you're higher level.  Also, the idea of branching.  Maybe at first you don't know what's the right spell in the circumstances, so you start with a basic chain element that's versatile - so you might not know exactly what you'll cast in the end.

Other ideas would be the notion of a "cast it now" button - so you could perhaps stack up 1 or 2 links, then hit "fire" or maybe go for 3-4 links more for some addition effect. 

You know what would be a cool interface for this?  A multi-touch screen.  I think it would be a pretty energetic and fun game if you literally were touching (jabbing/hitting) things on your screen to activate them.  You could make it a bit of a mini-game where you have to keep a finger on each active spell chain item to keep it alive.  If you let go of it (lift contact), it fades out.   One hand is holding them all in place while the other is grabbing new spell chain icons and dragging them over to the holding hand.  To cast, you bring all the holding hand fingers together to push the elements into one "blob", drag it to the target, then let go.

Only if it was done where you weren't obstructing your view. If you did it as some circular bright display in the middle of the screen where your enemy was, you'd have a fist full of screen and not see the game you were playing. Just a thought.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/ - check out the latest from that guy @ CMU.  Finger tracking with a Wii.  Again, imagine this combined with some kind of spell casting system.  Sure, make a mouse+keyboard only version as not everyone could have a setup like this.  Seriously, it would kick ass to play some kind of spell casting game with gestures like this.  It would sort of bring the Wii-style to fantasy.  Can you imagine someone playing WoW on their big screen, standing up and using their hands etc?     :eat:

I heard a lot of noises about that when the P5 glove came out...but then never really saw many games using the mechanic. I think the OP's post is about  battles where you counter each other - almost like parrying in fencing. To me that could be cool or could fall on its face. I mean there's only so many times that you can go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth unless the back and forth is from a decently varied list of counters.

Yea I guess Nintendo came out with some kind of system a while back that emphasized motion tracking and such too.  Word is it's pretty popular with some people :^)

Oh... the PowerGlove?  That thing is actually really cool. I have a great book from the 80's called Garage Virtual Reality which is all about creating 3d worlds (before people really knew how) and making head-tracking / finger input systems.

Some guy has a YouTube of hacking the powerglove into a 3d mouse. End result? He plays Unreal Tournament with it...but lulz...he cant strafe :(

I got the powerglove as a kid; it was so expensive it was my only present at christmas. I begged for it, got it, and, 3 hours later, wish I hadn't.

To this day, it's the worst piece of buyer's regret that I have ever had. Thinking back on it, I think my hatred of all things marketing-related may stem from that steaming pile; the realization that I was betrayed by nintendo and whoever made that wizard movie makes me bitter to this day.