View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0007409 | Valley 1 | Bug - Gameplay | May 1, 2012 12:20 pm | May 1, 2012 7:24 pm | |
| Reporter | Leafy Greens | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | assigned | Resolution | reopened | ||
| Product Version | 1.006 | ||||
| Summary | 0007409: Creeping Death no longer possible | ||||
| Description | With the upgrade system change, it is no longer possible to have the 400 mana required to cast Creeping Death. Even after 7 upgrades to mana, it only raised from 200 to 353. The eighth would raise it to 357. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | New | ||||
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It all depends on the type of character you have. The ones that start with 300 or greater get _more_ mana per upgrade, and can reach the 400 in a just a few upgrades. Some character types just cannot cast some spells. |
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Additionally Mana Cost enchants will lower the cost signficantly. |
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It's not always possible to start with a character that has more mana. I personally have never seen one with a base value over 250. Furthermore, making it literally impossible to cast some spells depending on which character you choose to start with is a pretty bad idea. An example situation: a new player gets the game, and starts playing it. Because of his playing style, he chooses a character that has a higher starting HP value. He plays the game, getting new spells when he can, and upgrading as seems most useful. Then, he gets a spell that he thinks would be really useful to him, and spends several missions gathering the ingredients needed to make the spell. He makes the spell, only to discover that it is literally impossible for his character to use. On top of that, none of his rescued characters have enough mana either, and he's used up all of the available upgrades. Do you think he's going to have a favorable opinion of the game? |
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IMO mana costs for higher end spell should be rebalanced after the upgrade stone change. The cost of spells especially Sunrise and Nightfall is insanely high. |
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Leafy Greens: This is a game with strategic planning as a component of it. If players don't use some foresight, they can shoot themselves in the foot in minor ways. I think that the sort of players that are attracted to this sort of the game like the fact that their decisions actually matter. If everything works out perfectly and you win no matter what you do, what's the fun? In the case of your example player, they aren't even particularly hosed. All they have to do is wait until their current character dies (or even suicide them if they are that impatient) and then get another character. The characters from the Time of Magic (rescue people in the forest) tend to have waaaay higher mana than anyone else. It's trivial to get 400 mana with them. Depending on what time periods you have unlocked characters from, you might indeed never be seeing characters with very high mana amounts, though. Lastly, with something like creeping death in particular, that's free from the start. You clearly can't use it if your character has too low of mana, so why would the theoretical player ever bother upgrading it until they had a character who could use it? For that matter, if they've encountered this with creeping death why would they unlock anything else that costs 400 mana or more? Previously, the problem was that characters trended to be too generic. Just upgrade health or attack, right? What the heck use is mana? Well, now mana lets you get to some spells that are inaccessible to other folks. That was always the goal, but now it's more rare. At any rate, I just started up a new game, and had an ice age character with 250 starting mana. That's not particularly rare, and ice age folks are just kind of average with their mana. It took 7 upgrades, but then he was sitting at 403 mana and could cast creeping death. Not sunrise or nightfall, sure (those are 480); but for a time of magic character those would be much easier to get to with fewer upgrade stones. With my average-joe ice age character I then still had a further three upgrades I could apply to health if I wanted to, for instance. Or, if I wanted to make it so that he could cast all sorts of new spells, as Terraziel points out there are enchants that reduce the cost of spells that would have brought it well into range. The point is that now there is an interesting choice, whereas before the mana stat was just kind of useless. |
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The example was actually based partially on my own experience. The primary difference is that I chose a character with strong MP. However, when the game got updated with the upgrade change, I found that spells that I had previously been able to cast (and that were an important part of my strategy) were no longer usable. Furthermore, I had already used up all of my upgrade slots. I can't help feeling a bit ripped off. |
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Maybe next time, if (when), upgrade stone costs/values/whatever changes, any stones spent are refunded? It's not much, but might assuage those feelings. |
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And I do apologize for that -- however, think of how it is from my end. No matter what I change, probably somebody is using that at this point. Any sort of change is going to break some eggs. It's not something personal, or meant to invalidate a certain style of play. Rather it was in response to persistent general complaints about mana in particular, as well as the goal of making characters more differentiated. In the process that breaks the builds of some characters that were previously "good enough mana" for certain things but no longer are. That's not the direct goal of the change by any stretch, but given the direct goals doesn't that seem like acceptable collateral damage? Ultimately your character is going to die anyhow, and next time you choose a character you can get one with somewhat higher mana and use the upgrade stones differently (which are now vastly cheaper as a part of the changes that were made, I should remind), and all is then well. So we trade a short-term inconvenience for a few -- which is regrettable, make no mistake -- for something that is hopefully better for pretty much everyone across the board long-term. Is this a deeper issue to you than I am understanding? |
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"Maybe next time, if (when), upgrade stone costs/values/whatever changes, any stones spent are refunded? It's not much, but might assuage those feelings." That would probably help. However, I figured the fact that the cost dropped by a factor of 10 pretty much made up for it already, honestly. |
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I'd be fine even without a refund, if I could just reset the upgrade points so that i could upgrade my stats to be more where i'd like them to be with the adjustments. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 1, 2012 12:20 pm | Leafy Greens | New Issue | |
| May 1, 2012 12:23 pm | Penumbra | Note Added: 0023159 | |
| May 1, 2012 12:26 pm | Terraziel | Note Added: 0023160 | |
| May 1, 2012 12:36 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Internal Weight | => New |
| May 1, 2012 12:36 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => closed |
| May 1, 2012 12:36 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| May 1, 2012 12:36 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => no change required |
| May 1, 2012 3:40 pm | Leafy Greens | Note Added: 0023179 | |
| May 1, 2012 3:40 pm | Leafy Greens | Status | closed => feedback |
| May 1, 2012 3:40 pm | Leafy Greens | Resolution | no change required => reopened |
| May 1, 2012 6:30 pm | Quaix | Note Added: 0023191 | |
| May 1, 2012 6:42 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0023192 | |
| May 1, 2012 6:57 pm | Leafy Greens | Note Added: 0023193 | |
| May 1, 2012 6:57 pm | Leafy Greens | Status | feedback => assigned |
| May 1, 2012 6:58 pm | Leafy Greens | Note View State: 0023193: private | |
| May 1, 2012 6:58 pm | Leafy Greens | Note View State: 0023193: public | |
| May 1, 2012 7:02 pm | Penumbra | Note Added: 0023195 | |
| May 1, 2012 7:03 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0023196 | |
| May 1, 2012 7:04 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0023197 | |
| May 1, 2012 7:24 pm | Leafy Greens | Note Added: 0023201 | |
| May 1, 2012 7:25 pm | Leafy Greens | Note Edited: 0023201 |
