Teleport is also problematic in more ways than just being able to skip the trash mobs before a boss. You could add specific mechanics to deal with that, but if you don’t deal with it on the ability itself then you’re left with needing to spam that mechanic everywhere.
Otherwise teleport is only kept in check like 10% of the time or however often you throw that mechanic at the player. We don’t need to use a cooldown for everything, but if there is a problem with the ability usually it’s best to just fix the ability.
Also I don’t think cast times are a good thing to have in a Diablo game beyond the short animation that plays with them. Instant cast simply flows a lot better in combat.
Same goes for hit-stun. Makes combat less enjoyable in my opinion, especially as a melee class.
Yeah, cast time would be bad imo.
If people dont want a cooldown or similar, you could add the “cast time” after the teleport, like you teleport, and then you are rooted for 2 seconds. Would make it a risky endeavor to teleport into the unknown.
I would still prefer a simple cooldown though.
And of course, many of the other options can just be skill upgrades.
Rooted after teleport, in exchange for a shorter cooldown, more charges or whatever => add it as a skill upgrade
Increased cost with each teleport => skill upgrade
etc.
No, is not. Having in lore “wizards are schoolars” and in gameplay a wizard with low INT not only viable but also optimal for certain builds is a huge flaw IMO. If you wanna INT to have no relation with magic, create a fictional world where magic is linked with muscle mass or something like that.
Attributes are meant to represent character capabilities.
Seems that you would love D&D 4e… Everyone is equally boring to play. But for eg, Wizard tier 9 spell takes out an enemy from the fight for few seconds. Cipher has tier 2/3 spells capable of turning an enemy into a ally which is far more powerful and due how the “focus” mechanic allows you to cast more often than spells, arguably a cipher is far more useful.
I still think that is ridiculous someone surviving being hit multiple times by a “disintegrate” power. Or the target resists or is dust. But 240 damage is with circle 6 more than what what wizards can do with circle 9.
NWN2 I already found the spells very lackluster. Every boss battle as a caster was talking to a boss, having all protections dispelled by no reason and then in the ground “dying” while I play my other party members. The game wasen’t hard, I had no trouble finishing the OC, was only boring…Gladly there is a mod called spell fixes which makes spells more in line with P&P. And spell fixes is from years on top 10 most popular mods for the game. I who an a very cooldown hater, preferred to play DDO as a arcane caster(which puts arcane casters as “challenging” to play) over PoE 1/2… The “nerfs” on DDO casters are by :
Making casters more specialized than on P&P
Giving a lot of spell resistance to certain enemies and bosses making you landing some spells extremely unlikely
Making resting far more limited. There are a lot of quests which takes dozens of minutes and you can’t rest.
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And on D3 due the logic “a class about using weapons needs weapons, so lets make unarmed martial artists aka monks, necromancers and etc equally gear dependent” produced the game which we have now… Just imagine the same logic applied to ammo, a monk having to waste ammo to punch or to corpses and a druid needing corpses to become a werewolf…
It is completely non sensical, but was made for the sake of balance. And not the good balance aka making things more situational, but the bad one. Leveling everyone by the lowest common denominator.
Well said. Modern game players and modern devs sadly are so used to cooldowns that they probably can’t even think on alternatives. Any alternative given, will be viewed as a “alien thing”. And in the case of teleport it can be
Stopping mana regen for X seconds
Requiring reagent
Dobling the cast cost for X seconds,
Enemies able to “counterspell”
Enemies able to cast a “dimensional lock” and prevent teleporting
A increasing “spell missfire” chance each time that the teleport is casted starting at 0 till 90%.
Requiring reagents(nobody spam it from charged items)
Being available only on charged items
Having a very long casting time
After casting, increasing the casting time for X seconds (stacking)
Doubling the cost after casting(stacking)
(…)
Not all suggestions are great, but here is some alternatives to a hard cooldown for teleport.
IMO the animation length should’t be the same for all spells and skills. For eg, Amazon summon valkirie should take far more time than throwing an firebolt.
That alone would solve a lot of problems. For eg, IMO meteor should take time to cast but be insane deadly. Spammable meteors that deals no damage is silly IMO.
Just because they have a lower int doesn’t mean they have a low int in absolute terms. While 20 might be super high int, 3 could also be pretty high int.
Besides, for those who care about “immersion”, the attributes could simply be called something else than int, str etc.
Names is not a design flaw.
Yeah, and Might could be a wizards magical capabilities.
Yeah, that should definitely happen.
The same logic is applied to ammo, hence why none of the classes uses limited ammo systems. Thankfully.
Not that there is anything wrong with limited ammo systems in general. There is no reason to have it in an A-RPG however.
Not necessarily against cast/animation times for all skills. For something like teleport it would be bad though. Putting cast/animation time on an escape skill would be counterproductive.
In a few cases it might make sense to have a longer cast time for abilities.
You know that Diablo’s lore also implies that there were sorcerers who fought with melee weapon and in close combat right?
For example the lore of the Diablo 2 sorceress’s Enchant skill:
Upon learning this skill, an experienced Sorceress has the ability to imbue a weapon with the power of fire. The renowned Sorceress, Habacalva, once assaulted the elemental planes themselves wielding such an enchanted mace. Her enemies soon came to fear the mention of the weapon as much as her name.
As such having sorcerer who specializes in might or strength wouldn’t be lore breaking at all.
Not only that, but it could also represent how much strain a sorcerer could take when using magic.
This might be a bad time to point out that in Baldur’s Gate a 9 INT Mage can actually cast any spell in the game. The game physically wont let you go lower than that as a Mage at character creation but if you lowered it further via an effect, you could still cast spells.
Which before you try to point out the obvious mechanic here: The INT requirement on magic is to copy the spell to your book, not to actually cast it.
Basically if you hand the village idiot a potion of genius they’ll be able to cast fireball just as well as the guy with 25 INT who spent his entire life studying, even after the potion has worn off.
I also know some people who would argue that Mages don’t actually need INT over 15 at most and that 18+ INT is basically just convenience rather than actually being a better mage.
This is closer to attack speed than an actual hard cast bar.
Variable attack speed for both weapons and spells is fine, and should be there. Though nothing should be that slow.
Nope. All usages of might on dialog decisions are related to physical strength.
There is. I would love to have default attacks with unlimited ammo but special things like a explosive arrow, consuming an item.
You are right.
Actually, it is a EE alteration. On base BG2:SoA, with 9 INT, a mage can only learn up to circle 4 spell level and had only 35% of chance of learning the spell from scrolls.
The unique way to have 100% grantee to learn a spell is by having at least 18+ INT(genious) and trying to learn a spell from your favorite school.
I din’t specified how slow it should be. Just enough to not be spammable.
In any case, maybe being in good physical shape just helps with the spell casting. Some weakling who trembles while casting his huge intellectual spell really messes up the effect.
No it’s not a EE alteration. If you had actually read the next line I explained it:
The INT requirement is learning the spell, not casting the spell. Not only is this not a EE alteration, this is how actual 2e works. This is how it’s written in the player’s handbook.
All that a character needs is a way to temporarily boost intelligence to write the spell down, then their spells are every bit as effective as the guy with 25 INT.
This is also why I said 15 INT is all you really need for a mage. 19 is the breakpoint where you can learn every spell at once, and a potion of genius grants +4 INT.
2e stats are full of oddities like this. A character with 8 strength swings a longsword just as well as a character with 15 strength, for example. In both cases, the character gets 0 attack and 0 damage.
A character with 7 dexterity dodges attacks just as well as a character with 14 dexterity too. In fact, there is zero difference between 7 and 14 dex in 2e.
There’s a reason why they would later standardize score->mod conversion for stats in D&D.
A slow attack speed isn’t what makes something not spammable anyway.
That’s primarily the domain of resource cost or cooldown.
I didn’t say that level design alone would reliably fix everything but I maintain that that alone could potentially do wonders to rein in Teleport as it is in D2 without additional restrictions to the mechanics.
While it is simpler to modify the Teleport directly to conform to the game, there is a tremendous upside to taking the “high-maintenance” approach to keeping Teleport on a long leash, in that it’s bound to greatly enhance the possibilities of PLAY OF THE WEEK. Additionally you would be paving the way for similarly radical abilities to exist safely.
Forget standing still for 2.5 seconds (but I personally wouldn’t mind that style of skill, why the hell not). In this instance I am directly referring to D2-style cast-times of 0.5s~, 0.6s~. If the pace is quick enough, if the “APM” is dense enough, even these cast-times can be hugely impactful.
In any case, certainly, Seismic Slam wouldn’t be half as fun without that initial “wind-up” animation.
My point was that you now have to design the majority of the game’s levels to reign in teleport otherwise it’s not going to do wonders because it wont apply half the time.
Alternatively you could just fix teleport, which works wonders everywhere in the game.
Well like I said we don’t need to just slap a cooldown on it and call it a day. There are ways to reign it in a little while still letting it stay on a long leash.
Having them be ~0.5 seconds long is fine, though we’ll also just get increased casting speed to counter-act that.
It’s something that should be there, but I don’t think it’s going to counter-balance teleport all that well except maybe on lesser geared characters that can’t stack enough cast speed.
Such a solution may do wonders to ensure that Teleport never becomes a problem. But neither wonders nor blunders will ever come from a mild, reserved HOTS-style Teleport doesn’t let you do anything spectacular or ostentatious whatsoever, that you pop for power-plays and no other time. Boo!
Cumulative cast-time could have promise here, if things like cumulative mana-cost are insufficient.
Not bad, and I will point-out: Nothing says that a cast-time should require you to be stationary.
Then I guess it’s a good thing I’ve been constantly reiterating to you that you do not need to do this to reign in abilities like teleport and that there are other ways of changing the ability to prevent it from being overpowered.
but I do know that changing significant portions of the rest of the game just to address ONE ability is not a good idea either. Especially considering that teleport isn’t the only ability that needs to be reigned in.
if there’s a problem with the ability you fix the ability.
OK. I’m just wondering what kind of staves & rings & things I might be looking forward to. And when I find that perfect staff, I’ll be moving so fast you’ll swear you’re seeing double! (…is what would happen if it were up to me)
On another topic I think Wrath of the Berserker is fun. I guess I would have that big 120 sec supercharge just for variety, and basically no others, except maybe another lone 30 second one. Maybe more. It kind of depends if D4 is meant to be a game that takes your full attention & energy at all times, or something more forgiving. I would like a frenetic high APM thing, but either way Diablo has never disappointed in difficulty so good on that.
It still gets away from the idea of “attributes represent your characters capabilities” when a 7 and 14 DEX have literally no difference and a mage with 15 INT is just as effective at casting spells as a mage with 25 INT.
You may not be saying that 2e is perfect, but you do spend a lot of time talking about how modern things aren’t like 2e or games based on 2e like Baldur’s Gate.
There’s not much I can respond with except to point out that 2e stats are also very, very flawed.
Are people physically unable to read the word resource cost in my posts or something?
Or is the word cooldown such a scary concept that people just forget about everything else they moment the see that word?
Because I’m trying to figure out why people keep ignoring half my posts just to cry about cooldowns.
Now if that is the concern, it would be the simplest thing in the world to make the cooldown into a visual effect on your character.
Meteor on cooldown? => Your characters leggings are on fire Or whatever.
As mentioned before they can make the UI be more notification and less “clock bar” down below, it’s really simple
I have to disagree with the other notion though that the “your character casts but spell doesn’t come out” being the “not enough mana” indicator being the better option. Personally can’t think of any single more annoying thing tbh…
And yes some games make it like 3rd time you try it your character goes with a line “not enough mana” or “my mana is low” or whatever, but in the heat of a battle “farting” a spell that doesn’t come out is a 90% imminent death (especially on higher diff or it’s a “checkpoint” i.e. something that gives you back for survival OR was supposed to “last hit” a nasty foe :P)
Now you can make that be in the core of a game design which would be acceptable (such as having a clear visual of your character “tapping” the wand or staff or “double check” the blade of the sword in intention to see if something’s wrong with it, would be certainly a “nice touch” but don’t think won’t annoy the hell out of ppl tbh :P)
I mean it’s certainly one step better than having your spell “farted” in thin air and nothing happens, you’d certainly be more annoyed not realizing what the problem is, if it’s your mouse/kb/controller not working, or if you’ve been interrupted or CC-ed somehow or something else happened
tldr: don’t think people find it as annoying to have CDs, but rather the “clock bar UI” being the indicator down (potentially far to the eye from combat) down at the bottom. They could certainly make it that a quick “popup clock” showing refill % when you attempt cast a spell and have it more side-wise/minimized tbh
Cooldowns are also a tool. Like any other tool they can be used properly or incorrectly.
Diablo 2 had cooldowns and when I suggest that they can be useful I’m not suggesting anything more prevalent or longer than what Diablo 2 had.
and the idea that even a Druid, the class with the most cooldowns, was “watching timers all the time” is completely ridiculous.
Nobody is really suggesting they slap cooldowns on everything and make the player constantly watch them. People need to stop acting like that’s going to happen just because some people say that the issues with abilities like teleport could be solved with a 4-6 second cooldown(which again, no longer than what Diablo 2 had).
Or whatever.