Any MMORPG that gives the same freedom and depth as a SP rpg?

[Cryomancer]

About hit points / damage numbers, an game (non mmo non RPG) that did it right IMO is war thunder.

There are numbers indicating ammo, speed, climb rate, etc, but no hit points are showed to the player. How i know that my plane is damaged? Well, just look to your plane. Smoke, fire, oil/water leaking, fuel leaking extremely fast, holes in wings, etc indicate how much damaged your plane is and even on arcade mode, it affect your plane performance. At the same way that when i an watching an serie, if the character broke two arms and is bleeding fast and losing blood, i don't need to see his hit points number to know that the character is dying. An similar system can work on cRPG's. Even on tabletop, i played an session where the DM hided the damage number of our characters, when was an critical, he said "you hit his arrow in the enemy head" and described how damaged the enemy was.

And how WT that tries to make planes at some degree(not perfect) historically accurate do to balance PvP? Just use battle rattings. You will end up seeing Me 262 fighting cold war planes, something not historically accurate, but between sacrifice "realism" in plane performance, they choose to sacrifice other thing.

-------------------------------------

Even on MP, the best games that i have played are on Arma 3, an realistic game where if GM 6 Lynx with armor piercing ammo IRL can kill you behind armored cover or armoved vehicles at 1000m, it can do in game, so the game was not balanced and of course PvP on NWN1. And game that is awfully balanced around PvP exactly because was not an "spreadsheet simulator", i don't care about disarming monks and clerics with implosion as longs the game is fun

 

[gurugeorge]

About hit points / damage numbers, an game (non mmo non RPG) that did it right IMO is war thunder.

There are numbers indicating ammo, speed, climb rate, etc, but no hit points are showed to the player. How i know that my plane is damaged? Well, just look to your plane. Smoke, fire, oil/water leaking, fuel leaking extremely fast, holes in wings, etc indicate how much damaged your plane is and even on arcade mode, it affect your plane performance. At the same way that when i an watching an serie, if the character broke two arms and is bleeding fast and losing blood, i don't need to see his hit points number to know that the character is dying. An similar system can work on cRPG's. Even on tabletop, i played an session where the DM hided the damage number of our characters, when was an critical, he said "you hit his arrow in the enemy head" and described how damaged the enemy was.

You know, when you put it that way, it's easy to see why developers don't do it more. It's a lot of work requiring the paid efforts of a lot of talented people, that could easily be simply be abstracted as a "health bar."

But I do agree that it would be so much better to have it all graphically represented and intuitive to real life.

 

[Cryomancer]

About hit points / damage numbers, an game (non mmo non RPG) that did it right IMO is war thunder.

There are numbers indicating ammo, speed, climb rate, etc, but no hit points are showed to the player. How i know that my plane is damaged? Well, just look to your plane. Smoke, fire, oil/water leaking, fuel leaking extremely fast, holes in wings, etc indicate how much damaged your plane is and even on arcade mode, it affect your plane performance. At the same way that when i an watching an serie, if the character broke two arms and is bleeding fast and losing blood, i don't need to see his hit points number to know that the character is dying. An similar system can work on cRPG's. Even on tabletop, i played an session where the DM hided the damage number of our characters, when was an critical, he said "you hit his arrow in the enemy head" and described how damaged the enemy was.

You know, when you put it that way, it's easy to see why developers don't do it more. It's a lot of work requiring the paid efforts of a lot of talented people, that could easily be simply be abstracted as a "health bar."

But I do agree that it would be so much better to have it all graphically represented and intuitive to real life.

Yes, my point is that on tabletop, numbers always represent something.For example, how strong your charname is where 1 is someone with amost no muscle, 10 is average and 20 is one of the strongest guys in the planet(and 20 isn't just double of 10), damage numbers too. Same with damage If they become too inflated, the lose the meaning. That is my main problem with mmos, they focus soo much in being an "barbie dressing/spreedsheet playing game" and ignore completely the world building. They include STR by """tradition""" and make STR completely irrelevant for almost everyone, when they should delimitate what is an weak guy, what is an average guy, what is an strong guy, how the PC can become weaker/stronger, how much strong he can start the game, what his STR can and cannot do, etc. Should't be just "wow, i found this gauntlet that increases my muscle mass by 5765484784876 points and my STR is only usable on combat" and the charname without the glove, is a clone with the same muscle mass of everyone else. Any mmo is a proper living breathing world? Doesn't need to be immersive like 90s CRPG's mechanically speaking. Immersive like Dark Souls is good enough for me.

 

[Norfleet]

How i know that my plane is damaged? Well, just look to your plane. Smoke, fire, oil/water leaking, fuel leaking extremely fast, holes in wings, etc indicate how much damaged your plane is and even on arcade mode, it affect your plane performance. At the same way that when i an watching an serie, if the character broke two arms and is bleeding fast and losing blood, i don't need to see his hit points number to know that the character is dying. An similar system can work on cRPG's.

It doesn't work too well in games because games suffer from the "total existence failure" problem. In real life, and things die in a decidedly non-binary manner. People bleed out, become woozy, pass out, and then finally die. Things break, functionality is lost, and finally it becomes an inert object on the field (at which point people tend to stop shooting it because it ceases to pose any real threat to them, not because it has actually been destroyed). In games, people tend to limp along more or less functionally, sometimes with damage-related debuffs, until one more finger poke causes them to instantly fall over dead, with no real indication as to what this point actually is. Machines may catch fire, have holes in prepainted places, and emit smoke, but ultimately, a vehicle continues to move around and fight until it takes a single extra bullet or someone punches it with their fist for the final time, whereupon it EXPLODES. Another point of non-living objects that is commonly missed in games: In a game, an object sustains damage at a linear rate, each marginal bullet contributing the same amount of hitpoint damage towards death. In real life, the first few hits tend to contribute the most amount of damage to something, at which point the destroyed portions of the object effectively begin to contribute damage mitigation as the inoperable portions of the object continue to soak up hits without further impairing functionality. A car being shot at with gunfire, for instance, sustains most of its visible damage very early on the process, at which point it looks riddled with bullets, but further bulletholes aren't really contributing much towards breaking anything that hadn't already been broken, and NO realistic number of bullets you pour into it will ever cause it to actually explode. Things in real life either are struck by something with enough destructive potential to wreck it outright, or they just get more and more beat up with no definite point at which the entire thing ceases to exist.

And how WT that tries to make planes at some degree(not perfect) historically accurate do to balance PvP? Just use battle rattings. You will end up seeing Me 262 fighting cold war planes, something not historically accurate, but between sacrifice "realism" in plane performance, they choose to sacrifice other thing.

It's only "not historically accurate" because by the time Cold War planes were in, Germany was already out. If the fighting had hypothetically continued, this would totally have been a thing.

 

[Cryomancer]

" problem. In real life, and things die in a decidedly non-binary manner

If an cannon with an specific fire ammo has X percentage of chance of putting enemy plane into fire if hits in fuel, you can do gradually, so an burst of an 30mm can have different "damage values", just like the angle affects how much the projectile penetrates in enemy armor.

See an interesting information about an ammo used on heavy machine guns/anti materiel rifles against aircraft.

DGE02: APHEI cartridge weighs between 175 and 188 g. At 1000 m it is quoted as having a 90 percent chance of being able to penetrate 15 mm of armour plate set at 30°. At 300 m after penetrating a 2 mm soft steel plate (representing an aircraft skin) it can further penetrate a 1.2 mm thick steel plate producing 20 fragments. Upon explosion between 75 and 95 incendiary pieces are formed which have an 80% chance of igniting aviation fuel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14.5×114mm

It's only "not historically accurate" because by the time Cold War planes were in, Germany was already out. If the fighting had hypothetically continued, this would totally have been a thing.

You din't understood. Or they sacrifice historically accuracy or consistency with plane performance IRL.

 

[Kane]

The religious devotion to "balance" development philosophy has produced the sameness across all MMOs. Can't really blame them because the same internet that allows for MMO also allows for communities to consolidate information and solve the metagame quickly.
I believe you can preserve imbalance (fun) in MMOs if you hide information from the players; damage rolls, stats, HP, economic value, etc. You can at least slow down the metagame before the basic noob can read a guide and pick the optimal choices.

Or...

Implement a fully player driven economy with loads of sinks and faucets, including full loot.

- Metagame circulates around skill first, which is inherently a human trait and therefore unsolvable ('emergent gameplay')
- Frees your development team from introducing the 60,000. dungeon that took 6 month to make and 6 hours to solve so they can focus on important stuff like e.g. the technical foundation of your game
- The players play an actual game not a rollercoster

 

[Gerrard]

The religious devotion to "balance" development philosophy has produced the sameness across all MMOs. Can't really blame them because the same internet that allows for MMO also allows for communities to consolidate information and solve the metagame quickly.
I believe you can preserve imbalance (fun) in MMOs if you hide information from the players; damage rolls, stats, HP, economic value, etc. You can at least slow down the metagame before the basic noob can read a guide and pick the optimal choices.

Yeah, but that also makes for awful game design because you have no idea how much worth investing in anything has.

 

[Cryomancer]

One game that looks interesting is Legends of Aria



Looks heavily inspired by Ultima Online. Anyone here tested?

 

[Aildrik]

One game that looks interesting is Legends of Aria

Looks heavily inspired by Ultima Online. Anyone here tested?

I have been playing Legends of Aria for the past year or so. It is definitely heavily inspired by UO and the head dev (Derek Brinkmann) I think actually worked on one of the later UO expansions.

You have the same sort of crafting professions as you did in UO. The main issue with the game right now is the dev team seems to be struggling with key design decisions. For example, when early release went live there was a safe guarded area around cities, but the high end tradeskill materials and encounters were all wilderness, aka, you could be attacked by other players. This actually worked fairly well IMHO. However, when they released the game on Steam, they decided to make most of the world guarded, I guess thinking it would be friendlier to casual players. Sadly, there was no huge influx of new players with the Steam launch. At the moment, the design team is planning on reverting to making most of the world wilderness again. This is creating a bit of a vicious cycle where more and more players are taking a break from the game and doing a 'wait and see' while the devs figure things out.

Bottom line however is if you enjoyed UO and you are looking for a sandbox style game with highly customizable player housing and lots of tradeskill content, Aria is worth checking out. I know they lowered the price of the game recently as well.

 

[Cryomancer]

You have the same sort of crafting professions as you did in UO. The main issue with the game right now is the dev team seems to be struggling with key design decisions. For example, when early release went live there was a safe guarded area around cities, but the high end tradeskill materials and encounters were all wilderness, aka, you could be attacked by other players. This actually worked fairly well IMHO. However, when they released the game on Steam, they decided to make most of the world guarded, I guess thinking it would be friendlier to casual players. Sadly, there was no huge influx of new players with the Steam launch. At the moment, the design team is planning on reverting to making most of the world wilderness again. This is creating a bit of a vicious cycle where more and more players are taking a break from the game and doing a 'wait and see' while the devs figure things out.

A game marketed as a Ultima Online successor trying to appeal to casual gamers. WTF? Casuals are playing retail wow and will never leave...

I din't played Ultima Online, but an veteran programmer of my last job constant talked about UO. I was a child on 90s, so i din't played. Looks like you can tame dragons, can become Lich/Vampire, and the gmae had no cooldown or other modern BS. I will look into UO before. Looks like some pacs are on Origin.

 

[Cryomancer]

A update. I downloaded ultima online. Where i can find a manual? I can't figure out how to play the game. Looks amazing, the sub fee is a really bad thing but i wanna see if worth the sub fee. Not having post-wow bs is enough to worth any cost.

 

[Absinthe]

The religious devotion to "balance" development philosophy has produced the sameness across all MMOs. Can't really blame them because the same internet that allows for MMO also allows for communities to consolidate information and solve the metagame quickly.

It isn't exactly the need for balance. It's more a lack of creativity and follow-the-leader tendency as an attempt to achieve the "formula" of a successful MMO. Part of the problem comes from the fact that MMORPGs are more expensive than other games because you have to rent multiple servers to run the game, run regular maintenance on your servers, and maintain a more extensive customer service and GM staff than other types of games need. These costs tend to make publishers very risk-averse, so they will demand safe and predictable formulas that should have safe and predictable returns. So on the whole there's not a lot of room for developers to break the mold and create a standout MMORPG. If you have a small indie crew you are also more likely to have an amateur staff and so the pattern of mediocrity continues.

I believe you can preserve imbalance (fun) in MMOs if you hide information from the players; damage rolls, stats, HP, economic value, etc. You can at least slow down the metagame before the basic noob can read a guide and pick the optimal choices.

This is a terrible idea that's been tried countless times, including in World of Warcraft (where spell damage coefficients, threat mechanics, defense, weapon skill, crushing blows, glancing blows, miss chance, and other shit were obscured from players). People will just methodically test fucking everything to figure out the mechanics and share that knowledge with each other regardless. The only thing this achieves is creating a greater gap between novices and experts and making the game generally more annoying to play for noobs, especially since there will be a greater stigma for the sheer degree of cluelessness noobs will possess. Your other major achievement will be making people feel like they have to alt-tab whenever they want to know how something in the game works, which in turn makes the game more annoying to play.

 

[PapaPetro]

The religious devotion to "balance" development philosophy has produced the sameness across all MMOs. Can't really blame them because the same internet that allows for MMO also allows for communities to consolidate information and solve the metagame quickly.

It isn't exactly the need for balance. It's more a lack of creativity and follow-the-leader tendency as an attempt to achieve the "formula" of a successful MMO. Part of the problem comes from the fact that MMORPGs are more expensive than other games because you have to rent multiple servers to run the game, run regular maintenance on your servers, and maintain a more extensive customer service and GM staff than other types of games need. These costs tend to make publishers very risk-averse, so they will demand safe and predictable formulas that should have safe and predictable returns. So on the whole there's not a lot of room for developers to break the mold and create a standout MMORPG. If you have a small indie crew you are also more likely to have an amateur staff and so the pattern of mediocrity continues.

I believe you can preserve imbalance (fun) in MMOs if you hide information from the players; damage rolls, stats, HP, economic value, etc. You can at least slow down the metagame before the basic noob can read a guide and pick the optimal choices.

This is a terrible idea that's been tried countless times, including in World of Warcraft (where spell damage coefficients, threat mechanics, defense, weapon skill, crushing blows, glancing blows, miss chance, and other shit were obscured from players). People will just methodically test fucking everything to figure out the mechanics and share that knowledge with each other regardless. The only thing this achieves is creating a greater gap between novices and experts and making the game generally more annoying to play for noobs, especially since there will be a greater stigma for the sheer degree of cluelessness noobs will possess. Your other major achievement will be making people feel like they have to alt-tab whenever they want to know how something in the game works, which in turn makes the game more annoying to play.

Yeah I disagree with your opinions and the general sentiment of the thread. You all want this reductional materialist design in games: where everything can be reduced down to objective numbers to make quantifiable utilitarian choices. Just like in reality, this epistemological approach is both lame and soulless as you reveal all knowledge without any process or real agency. There is no discovery or mystery in this method, just linear longsword +1 -> +2 progression of rational optimal "choice". That's why I'm never excited for any of these MMOs as they're just currently just spreadsheets wtih a different paint scheme. The minute a game becomes "solved", it's becomes dull. Skinner boxes for the weak minded.
As for the alt-tab stuff, I'm fine with it if it's looking up debate over something like which weapon is more effective at fighting stone golems: a longsword or a warhammer; where people do their testing and come up with theories that could never actually be objectively confirmed but reach a type of verisimilitude.

If you want to play God and make virtual worlds, then add epistemology to a game. If you want to continue to make soulless schlock, make sure that the 0s and 1s are maximally apparent.
As for "what about the poor noobs?", fuck em they're noobs. They can go play Candy Crush.

 

[Cryomancer]

Yeah I disagree with your opinions and the general sentiment of the thread. You all want this reductional materialist design in games: where everything can be reduced down to objective numbers to make quantifiable utilitarian choices. Just like in reality, this epistemological approach is both lame and soulless as you reveal all knowledge without any process or real agency. There is no discovery or mystery in this method, just linear longsword +1 -> +2 progression of rational optimal "choice". That's why I'm never excited for any of these MMOs as they're just currently just spreadsheets wtih a different paint scheme. The minute a game becomes "solved", it's becomes dull. Skinner boxes for the weak minded.
As for the alt-tab stuff, I'm fine with it if it's looking up debate over something like which weapon is more effective at fighting stone golems: a longsword or a warhammer; where people do their testing and come up with theories that could never actually be objectively confirmed but reach a type of verisimilitude.

If you want to play God and make virtual worlds, then add epistemology to a game. If you want to continue to make soulless schlock, make sure that the 0s and 1s are maximally apparent.
As for "what about the poor noobs?", fuck em they're noobs. They can go play Candy Crush.

About best weapon VS a stone golme, the warhammer is clearly a best choice. Against zombies in other hands, zombies, not.

 

[Absinthe]

Yeah I disagree with your opinions and the general sentiment of the thread. You all want this reductional materialist design in games: where everything can be reduced down to objective numbers to make quantifiable utilitarian choices. Just like in reality, this epistemological approach is both lame and soulless as you reveal all knowledge without any process or real agency. There is no discovery or mystery in this method, just linear longsword +1 -> +2 progression of rational optimal "choice". That's why I'm never excited for any of these MMOs as they're just currently just spreadsheets wtih a different paint scheme. The minute a game becomes "solved", it's becomes dull. Skinner boxes for the weak minded.

This high-speed retreat into literary nonsense is lowering my opinion of you, to be honest. Notice how you never addressed the fact that your proposed solution is both ineffectual, annoying, and generally detrimental to gameplay. You'd rather spout high-minded notions divorced from practical realities while bemoaning how anyone who disagrees with you must be a hyper-reductive powergaming scum who despises exploration, as if a half-assed state of imposed ignorance is the solution to the woes you described. The reality of the game you create will simply be this "Fuck, none of the game's mechanics make sense to me, I have to look up guides again" or "Fuck these guys are noobs." Obscuring mechanical knowledge doesn't suddenly turn the game into an amazing odyssey of discovery and soul like you pretend. Never fucking do that lame shit where you try to ignore the fact that your solution is worthless from a practical standpoint because you think the bullshit vision in your head somehow makes it worth it. At the end of the day, games are meant to be played and will create pressures to play better, and you have to make your peace with that fact and find a way to work with that or change the nature of the game itself instead of being mildly obstructive and pretending you are achieving something special and wonderful by doing so. World is full of idiots who have spouted the same trash you just did in defense of the same stupid ideas and none of them have made better games for it.

As for the alt-tab stuff, I'm fine with it if it's looking up debate over something like which weapon is more effective at fighting stone golems: a longsword or a warhammer; where people do their testing and come up with theories that could never actually be objectively confirmed but reach a type of verisimilitude.

If you want verisimilitude you should focus more on trying to create a world where inhabitants have lives of their own, where a lot of quests are dynamically generated based on the worldstate, and where players and and NPCs can both fuck with each other, maybe cooperate on shit, and ask each other to do shit for 'em instead of NPCs just being shopkeepers, innkeepers, transporters, and quest delivery systems. Where players can put out quests of their own for whatever reasons. Where the activities NPCs engage in can change depend on what is going on in the world. That is sooner how you create a living, breathing world in a MMORPG and get your verisimilitude. Not some bullshit about how hiding game mechanics suddenly makes the world more "real" somehow. It fucking doesn't.

If you want to play God and make virtual worlds, then add epistemology to a game. If you want to continue to make soulless schlock, make sure that the 0s and 1s are maximally apparent. As for "what about the poor noobs?", fuck em they're noobs. They can go play Candy Crush.

Schlock is what you're selling, honestly. Concepts that have zero practical value and fail at developing the desired vision you're espousing while being generally annoying and useless, promoted under a veneer of intellectuality and an aggressive disdain for examining practicalities.

 

[PapaPetro]

This high-speed retreat into literary nonsense is lowering my opinion of you, to be honest.

I have very little care of your opinion of me. I'll say what I feel is right.

I find your overall assessment be merely a continuance upon the same foundations of MMO and game design. This foundation is flawed and a relic of past habits; primarily the past limitations of computations and graphics representation of sensory information e.g. you don't need a health bar if you can graphically show someone getting their arm lopped off and be able calculate the blood loss. I don't find it fun or intuitive, I find it antiquated and absurd. It's continuity exists because of its familiarity, not because it's objective "practical" superiority. It's safe.

What you are verbosely proposing is the status quo of an already anemic system. The uninspired games produced by this philosophy flat out suck and are hackneyed because it is marred in minor iterations/gimmicks of trite old conventions. If you want to be blind to this then fine, but don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

I'm not looking to start a flame thread, I rarely have been stopping by the codex because the new games don't interest much anymore. In my experience, I could just play solid oldie like Angband and get the same fundamental experience as Diablo 4. You might have a different outlook, but I'm fading fast.

 

[Absinthe]

In brief, you are a fucking moron incapable of engaging intelligently with the substance of another person's argument. Instead you dance around, spout pretty words, and make more unsubstantiated accusations that show a complete lack of comprehension of the subject at hand. You're the kind of idiot who went to school and emerged an educated idiot who thought acting saddened or spouting grandiloquent phrasing made you a more intelligent person or made your argument stronger somehow. It doesn't. You're still an idiot.

I have very little care of your opinion of me. I'll say what I feel is right.

Way to be a fucking moron. When I say "This shit lowers my opinion of you" I'm not saying that you should be a sensitive approval-seeking whore. I'm saying that you are fucking up by demonstrating a fundamental failing in your behavior. But you forewent the opportunity for self-reflection in favor of "lol I don't care" and doubling down on your stupidity, I see. Well, if you're going to be an idiot, you will be treated like one. I can respect disagreement, but I don't respect specious reasoning paired with aspersions and evasive generalized nonsensical rebukes that miss the point and betray ignorance of the text you are responding to. That's just rank idiocy.

I find your overall assessment be merely a continuance upon the same foundations of MMO and game design. This foundation is flawed and a relic of past habits; primarily the past limitations of computations and graphics representation of sensory information e.g. you don't need a health bar if you can graphically show someone getting their arm lopped off and be able calculate the blood loss. I don't find it fun or intuitive, I find it antiquated and absurd. It's continuity exists because of its familiarity, not because it's objective "practical" superiority. It's safe.

What you are verbosely proposing is the status quo of an already anemic system.

In no way does "make NPCs have lives of their own, have NPCs move around and generally do shit, make the worldstate mutable, make NPCs respond accordingly to the state of the world, make NPCs and players capable of interacting each other in a wide array of methods" and so on so that it feels like players and NPCs coinhabit a living and breathing world amount to "playing it safe" or "proposing the status quo" you fucking moron. And you would know this if you'd paid the slightest fucking attention to the text you are responding to before opening your fool mouth. What you are showing off right now is that you are too busy getting high on your own bullshit and spouting generalized nonsense to fucking pay attention to the particulars of what the other person is actually talking about.

But sure, you can make a RPG without health bars where players can lop off each others' arms. You're still going to have to put in work to make a MMORPG like that actually fun though because believe it or not that's actually important to making a successful MMORPG. And if there is a health mechanic or whatever the fuck behind the screen, players will test the shit out of it and post results all the same. Assuming your game manages to sustain a decent-sized playerbase, that is. It sounds to me that your vision of a MMORPG will involve garbage gameplay paired with a dearth of meaningful decision-making information in order to create the Immersive World that you seem to crave, and everyone who points out what a failure your ideas are shaping up to be must simply be lacking the right kind of vision, apparently.

The uninspired games produced by this philosophy flat out suck and are hackneyed because it is marred in minor iterations/gimmicks of trite old conventions. If you want to be blind to this then fine, but don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

Okay dumbass, try to explain what my philosophy supposedly is here, because I'm pretty sure you don't even fucking know based on the garbage you are saying. (Guys, watch for this, he'll probably make another dodge.) You're just rushing to make accusations divorced of any notion of reality because in your deficient mind any form of saying something back constitutes a valid answer.

I'm not looking to start a flame thread, I rarely have been stopping by the codex because the new games don't interest much anymore. In my experience, I could just play solid oldie like Angband and get the same fundamental experience as Diablo 4. You might have a different outlook, but I'm fading fast.

No, you're not here to start a flame thread. You're just here to get on a high horse and bemoan how you're the only person with True Taste and everyone who criticizes you is an unenlightened dunce who cannot help but be stuck in the status quo and then walk off without getting called out for being a colossal buffoon.

 

[Cryomancer]

Only another update. Tested a little of Project Gorgon.

In nutshell. What i liked and disliked?

Disliked?

• Graphics
• Cooldowns
• Itemization (too much of your char is on your gear)
• Easy to swap skills at will
• I don't like some requirements, like having to have at least 25 fire magic skill to learn cold magic

Liked?

• No skills are given for free, for eg, to be a fire magician, you need to spend fortunes or be lucky on rare components. Sulfur and Saltpeter can make you go bankrupt. Necromancy? You need to defeat a very hard dungeon boss. I only did it thanks to the help of other high level players
• Necromancy. Multiple summons. I love have 2 skeleton mages and a zombie.
• A lot of cool stuff to do, you can even shapeshift into a gigant bat for eg.
• No themepark BS, is player driven, player made fun, etc
• I don't know why but is one of the best games that i've played in the "fun" department
• No handholding.
• Reagents and requirements for certain spells, for eg, to summon skeleton battle make, you " must be in a graveyard to use this ability. It consumes two Femurs." http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Necromancy/Abilities
• Immunities

I will keep playing and enjoy the game. Could be better, but is IMO a solid 8.5/10.

 

[Norfleet]

[*]I don't like some requirements, like having to have at least 25 fire magic skill to learn cold magic

This actually makes sense to me on a physical level. After all, there isn't really any such thing as cold, merely the absence of heat. So, cold magic is just making the heat go somewhere else, which means you clearly need to have some ability to manipulate this heat.

 

[Cryomancer]

This actually makes sense to me on a physical level. After all, there isn't really any such thing as cold, merely the absence of heat. So, cold magic is just making the heat go somewhere else, which means you clearly need to have some ability to manipulate this heat.

You are right. But in fantasy, generally darkness and coldness are elements. IRL darkness is just absence of light. On most fantasy worlds, they are elements opposite to the fire/light. A silver and a red dragon on D&D are opposites in elements and alingment. One use "magical energy" to produce heat and another to negate heat. Is common for fire magicians to be weak ice magicians on pop culture. Eg, Dark Schneider on Bastard, a amazing fire magician, capable of producing fire hotter than the surface of the sun and he can't cast even the most basic cold spells. And Kall Su, capable of putting a Vulcan in absolute zero can't cast fire based magic. With light/darkness, you can say that light is only a visual effect of the holy nature. While the darkness, is just a visual effect of unholy nature but fire magic produces heat and cold magic negates heat in most fantasy settings.

 

[Norfleet]

"Generally". But given that we're talking about fantasy, they can do whatever they want, and if they choose to do things this way, it's supported by real physics, so makes sense.

 

[Cryomancer]

Yes, you are right. They can make that in their universe, in order to be able to negate heat, first you need to be able to produce heat. BUT some fire spells in game has cold effect. Eg? http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Fire_Magic/Abilities

Anyway, i an liking the necro gameplay.

 

[Damned Registrations]

"Generally". But given that we're talking about fantasy, they can do whatever they want, and if they choose to do things this way, it's supported by real physics, so makes sense.

Trying to ground your magic in physics is usually a lost cause, you end up with shit like telekinetically poking someone's brain for an instant kill being easier than making them slow down. Connecting fire and ice magic instead of making them opposites can be interesting as well though regardless.

 

[Cryomancer]

Trying to ground your magic in physics is usually a lost cause, you end up with shit like telekinetically poking someone's brain for an instant kill being easier than making them slow down. Connecting fire and ice magic instead of making them opposites can be interesting as well though regardless.

I disagree. There are no direct visual contact with enemy brain, brains can be resistant vs "mind waves" and you can find all types of explanations, otherwise, electricity manipulation would be the best power vs any living creature. You can just make any hearth stop...

 

[Damned Registrations]

Sure you can come up with random arbitrary exceptions to the magic, but there's so many possible things that are more effective than 'normal' magic that you'd never cover them all. How about telekinetically poking him in the eyes? How about just blowing sand into someone's eyes? Making the air thin/unbreathable? Making weapons or traps invisible instead of entire people? An illusionary blanket thrown over someone's head? Making some chunk of the ceiling fall loose and crush someone by altering it's size/shape/weight slightly?

It's hard to justify being able to do things like flight, haste, invisibility, telekinesis, creating/summoning objects, without also opening a huge can of worms regarding way more efficient uses of those sorts of abilities. So either your rules end up being arbitrary bullshit, your magic can do very very few things, or it's totally OP.