Category Abilities, Skills and Magic (24)
Topic Magic - Suggestions, Discussions and Thoughts (21)
Message Cross Post from Maelona (11724)
By BEATTIE from PLAY.NET (Phelim s Progeny)
On Oct 13, 2001 at 14:08

<< >>


By DR-MAELONA from PLAY.NET On Oct 13, 2001 at 12:33

<< >>

<< It is possible that, as Raph said, he was spending so much time working on the HW quest, that he just didn't have enough time to test SH >>

Just to be completely clear - none of this was Raphael's fault by any stretch of the imagination, and he has been exceptionally patient and cooperative during the reassessment period. I can't compliment him enough on his handling of the situation; it's truly a tricky place for a Guild GM to find himself and he's done a superb job of balancing all the issues.

Secondly, a point of information about the QC and testing process. Actually, this isn't something that's confined to DR - it's a comment that would apply to any quality control process. Ever typed something up, read and re-read it to check for errors, then sent it away to the intended recipient only for them to point out gleefully that, despite your customary fastidiousness and attention to detail, you typed "there" when you meant "their"?

This is why a typist can't properly proofread his own output and why a coder can't properly QC his own code. Your brain thinks, "I typed this. Of course there are no typos in it," or "I wrote those lines of code - there's no way I'd make an error in the formulae."

Thus, backstage here in DR we have a QC process that is intended to be exceptionally thorough. First of all, a new concept has to pass by the SGM concerned before anyone is even approved to spend time developing it. Then, once the feature is written, it gets a creative QC which looks for simple things like bad grammar and typos in the text a player will see; at the same time, the creative QCer will look to see that the messaging is in line with the philosophy surrounding the Guild/race/system concerned. Next, a technical QCer will inspect the code for accuracy. Then, once corrections have been reported to and made by the original designer, the feature is re-submitted to the above process. Finally, the creator and - most importantly - numerous others on the GM team are involved in testing; to give you an example, the entire staff was required to put in a certain amount of hours testing Horses prior to release.

I have a sense that spells aren't getting the necessary level of testing attention from people other than the creator. Certainly, as I mentioned in my last post, spells shouldn't be going out that either hugely disappoint their "owners" on initial release, or that hugely antagonize other Guilds. However, as I also said, we don't design with "who's going to cry loudest?" in mind. We design so that each Guild has a variety of useful and enjoyable abilities that are suitably powerful for the intended user. Most of the time we get it right on initial release, but sometimes we don't, and I'm concerned that there have been a few too many "don'ts" recently.

<< But, bottom line, the spell was out for a long time, worked just fine for a long time, player complaints were made and almost immediately it was down-tweaked. >>

In regard to spells that have been out for a long time before coming up for evaluation, I respectfully refer you to several significant Moon Mage spells. We do not tweak because players want us to; as I mentioned last time, you are indeed paying customers who expect a good product, but you are not game designers as a result and we simply cannot ever go the route of changing things just because X portion of the customer base is baying for change.

By all means, there are many occasions upon which player feedback has brought our attention to a feature that is acting strangely. I do not dispute that it is often player response that draws us in the direction of a particular spell - but I reiterate that change to that spell is made only if we perceive it to be necessary, and not because some faction of the customer base is shouting loudly about it. Certainly, I hear you when you're complaining, and I apportion significant import to what you have to say, but I'm not intimidated by a hue and cry, and customer hollering has never caused me to authorize or require changes to any feature. Again, you may draw attention to it when our attention was elsewhere, but we just don't downtweak Paladin spells because WMs want us to. It's that simple.

Someone (Daython, possibly?) requested that someone upstairs put together a definitive essay on game balance from the Simutronics perspective. Respectfully, I'll say that this would be of no use to anyone here, since Simu has a number of different games and I've no doubt the concept mutates somewhat from game to game and depending upon the design practices and philosophy of the people who run the game on a daily basis. When I have time, I'd certainly be glad to write up my own thesis on what is Dragonrealms game balance, but this would necessarily be the opinion of one Senior GameMaster when we have five on the Development staff. Similarly, there are many aspects of balance (for example, in the arena of game-wide systems) where "balance" takes on a different meaning than it has for me, on Guilds.

I can, however, summarize my own understanding of "game balance for Guilds" very simply in one sentence:

"Every player should have access to abilities that are appropriately challenging and appropriately powerful for his level and skills."

Easier said than done, though, eh? <chuckle>

I'll discuss this a little bit, but please know in advance that this is by no means the essay I'd submit to you once I'd had a nice chunk of hours to work on it and to polish my expressions and examples. It's just a bit of colouring-in, off the top of my head, for you to chat about with me if you like.

What does "appropriately challenging" mean, anyway? It means just because you have 500 ranks of PM, casting your most difficult spell should still be damnably difficult. I absolutely believe that spells that are attained at high levels of skill, or that have a high number of pre-requisites, or that demonstrate complex effects, or that typically operate at high power levels, should be very difficult to perform even by a person who is expert in his field of magic. Sure, I can see a high level WM tossing out Fireballs in his sleep, but as spells go up the ladder of effectiveness and power, so must grow the difficulty of using them - and most importantly, difficulty should not be completely counterbalanced by the caster's skill. Otherwise, there is no appropriate challenge in doing something that should be difficult.

Put it this way: a neurosurgeon could probably suture my gashed arm with his eyes shut while listening to Howard Stern. However, when he's stitching my arm back on after my bizarre gardening accident, I want him using the full extent of his mental faculties and I don't want him near me if he's not applying the full force of his experience and training. I'm paying him a flipping fortune to do this, so I anticipate he'll be pushing himself to the very limit of his skills in order to obtain the best outcome: an appropriate challenge for his level of skill and for the result he expects to obtain.

Translating that into the DR spells environment, what this means to me is that spells that, by their various facets, fall into the "difficult" category should remain difficult to cast and should require optimum conditions in the caster in order to obtain the optimum result. Manipulation of mana to engender magical effects is a Big Deal, in my view, and there are a range of "prices to pay" for success as well as failure that I think we could exact from players on a wider scale - especially as spell difficulty increases. We need to keep everyone on their toes and not taking for granted this awesome ability to manipulate mana, most especially as the spell's effects grow in power.

OK, so what about appropriately powerful? Well, put it this way. We can't chuck out a spell intended for 100th level Paladins and have it function like something a 20th level WM would be pleased with, just because "Paladins are Magic Tertiary". Putting Guild affiliation aside for just a moment, I think most of us would agree that a 100th level character ought to have a set of abilities that a 20th level character is in awe of. That someone has pursued gameplay to 100th level is indicative of a very dedicated player customer who (IMO) rightly expects the range of features available to him to dominate in comparison with those available to a 20th level character.

It also indicates, from an IC point of view, a character who has been around and in training under professional instruction for many years; he is experienced in many skills AND he has the additional experience gained from seeing his peers in action. He's lived and worked with people from every walk of life and he has a scholastic, as well as a practical, understanding of how his Elanthian world works. Putting him back in his Guild, now, he's a Paladin of the highest order whose prowess on the field of combat and whose sense of righteousness has earned him the respect of his peers, and perhaps even the fear of his lessers. Game balance dictates that this character be possessed of abilities that back up his reputation as someone at the top of his profession.

Now - the age old argument about primary, secondary and tertiary magic. It means a lot more to you guys than it does to us - let me state that right off the bat. What it means to us is primarily that some Guilds have wall ranks in Magic learning more often than others. And what that means is that, typically, someone who has a wall rank every two walls is going to have fewer Magic ranks than someone of the same level who has a wall rank every eight ranks. It also generally means that someone with frequent walls has to focus more of his attention on another skillset - his primary skillset, which typically contains the worst of his advancement requirements. So, the skill division of Magic typically means that someone who is Magic Tertiary typically has fewer Magic ranks than a Magic Primary of the same level. And that's about it, for what the skill division means for all practical purposes.

The difficulty in designing Paladin spells arises not out of the fact that you are Magic Tertiary but that it's hard to give you a spell that is appropriately powerful for your level when your magic ranks should not allow great expressions of magical power. I do not subscribe to the point of view that spells intended for Rangers and Paladins should have the power turned up to compensate you for your lack of magic ranks; in my view, that is cheating the magic system as a whole. That is to drive a coach and horses through the concept of Dragonrealms being a skill-based game.

It's my view that 200 ranks of Magic is 200 ranks of Magic is 200 ranks of Magic. By all means, you can give any Guild a bonus to any skill at any time; let's use Dragon Dance as an example. What bonuses like that do is take the user's own skill level and add a percentage on top for a certain period of time. It is not the same thing as telling the combat system to consider a Barbarian's 100 ranks of evasion to be "bigger" than an Empaths' 100 ranks of evasion; it's telling the combat system to pretend the Barbarian has 115 ranks of evasion instead. Thus, the Barbarian would be as good at evading as an Empath with 115 ranks of evasion.

What spells sometimes try to do is pretend that 75 ranks of Magic is as good as 115 ranks of Magic. This is possible because spell power can be manipulated on a spell-by-spell basis - and this is necessary if we are not to have cookie-cutter spells, so we can't just take away the ability of the spell designer to massage power numbers in order that we have an exciting array of spells in our world. However, this continues to allow for the possibility that people who design spells for their own Guilds go into it with the ability to massage sometimes a little heavily in order to be able to give their Guilds what they perceive to be an appropriately powerful spell for the LEVEL of the players it is intended for.

Therein lies the problem. LEVEL is playing too grand a role in spell design where SKILL should be 95% of it. And this is a human situation; nobody in their right mind wants to release a spell to 60th level Paladins that a 15th level WM would probably tire of in ten minutes. That wouldn't be appropriately powerful an ability for the 60th level Paladin. However, the downside of allowing a bit of leeway on the power issue is this: look what happens when a high level WM gets hold of Swarm. It's not difficult to see how the power level has been given a deep-tissue massage in order to make it useful to Rangers of lower Magic skill.

So what's the solution? We can't just tell Ranger and Paladin GMs that they can only release crummy little spells, otherwise they'll pull out of the Magic System altogether and only ever do Glyphs and Beseeches instead - things that aren't part of the Magic System per se, and therefore don't have to conform to any rules of Magic as we (GMs) know them, or as you (players) perceive they should be. Believe me, as a former Barbarian Guru I know full well that you don't need the Magic System in order to give your players cool effects and nice bonuses. And also believe that, knowing this as I do, I don't want Rangers and Paladins pulling out of Magic just because the restrictions on them are too severe - they ARE magic using Guilds, after all, and we should make sure they have enjoyable and useful spells in their books.

It's the combat-type spells that are causing the problems here, as - in order to be appropriately powerful for the players for which they're intended, and to be useful in the areas those players are hunting - the numbers can tend to stray away from what is reasonable when viewed with an Overall Magic System hat on. (No wait, you guys are really peeved about the power of External Scar Healing, aren't you... <joking> ) Most especially, the problem rears up and starts hollering when players of different Guilds compare their spells on each other. Let's not forget, though, that Paladins are a combat primary Guild. Skillsets aside, for they are a boring technical thing when it all comes down to it, the home of the Paladin is on the field of battle, and therefore he should have abilities that enable him to do his job to the best of his abilities.

At this point, I'd have to think some more before I typed any more; I am not the only person who has a say in this, and to continue or be more explicit in terms of solutions would be to purport that I'm presenting an authoritative statement of How Things Will Be In Future. I do know that we have issues to address across the entire Magic System, and that spell design for individual Guilds will clearly be a part of that. I also know that no matter what we do, at least some proportion of the BBS community will think we are dead wrong. <grin> It's always good to hear all sides of the conversation, though, and I can assure you that all GMs interested in the Magic situation are reading carefully wherever the topic comes up.

Maelona


<< >>