Massivemagic Medium-sized Rework

Discussion in 'Feature & Idea Discussion - Archive' started by MokeDuck, Apr 25, 2018.

  1. MokeDuck

    MokeDuck Hail the duckfather!

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    Massivemagic isn't really used much beyond healthboost and maybe sometimes using push spells to propel people high into the air. Not Ideal. I personally think theres kinda two things wrong:

    1) Everybody who has looked around PackIsle for a while has all the spells, or most. This means every player has the same abilities and knowledge of the system. The system is pretty simple and while some experimentation occurs, the ideal would be that semi-good spells become common knowledge, while (hopefully) how to use, find, and obtain more advanced spells require enough dedication to find and are good enough that only the player that finds them knows how to do it, along with maybe a small circle. (at least for a little while.) This plays int my second point:

    2) The casting system leaves just a bit more to be desired. Don't get me wrong, its fairly good and easy to use. It just not very immersive with how it uses numbers and its just very simple. Theres not really that many new thing to try.
    I suggest a change that... isn't simple. Its actually pretty simple, but makes the whole thing a bit more complicated. Basically, I want to see a second step added to the casting stage that would make the whole thing very immersive and very interesting to use.

    TL;DR version: assign numbers to words, math operations with prefixes, and different numbers as spells. If you want to cast a spell you have to hit its number or set of numbers. The playerbase has to figure out the puzzle of what each word means and what the spell numbers are, with some help of the staff.

    So, the first part of this is changing how spells are actually unlocked: they aren't. Each spell is assigned a number. This could just be random, but if spell-numbers are organized based on similar characteristics it makes it a little more fun. In any case, the numbers should not be consecutive, and spells shouldn't be unlocked. Certain spells would have a strength variable that would mean that it's number is actually a small range of numbers. All spells would be unlocked

    Second, the words you know would be replaced with two things: made up words that have integer values associated with them, and prefixes that have operations associated with them. THESE words are ones you would need to find. Basically, you would string these words together with the prefixes. The game then reads them as an equation. The result of the equation is the number of the spell you cast. Heres the catch: Each word (maybe each non-prefix word) you use costs a random amount of manna. These manna amounts can be easily changed to balance the system. Anyways, this means that players need to use their smarty-smart smart math skills, basic intuition and experimentation, or special tomes of knowledge given as loot to figure out the values of spells, the values of words, how the prefixes work, etc.

    Now here comes the great part: adding more content. This is completely based around complicated numbers, which sound like a terrible idea for practical things but is great for puzzles. Not only this, but complicated number stuff is probably the easiest thing for coding... not simulations of projectiles, reycasting, or any of that sort I know nothing about. In any case, if you don't have the manpower to add more spells you can easily add more words so that players can have brand new content to discover. Basically, this is centered around the player not knowing how things work: so just leaking a few secrets is like content. Any thing that sheds light on the values associated with the spells and words would be content... yea I think you get the point.

    Also, ideally the purpur pillar (maybe to be replaced with a cauldron) would be able to be used as a kind of chemistry beaker or lab where you can experiment with words and prefixes and maybe get a few hints into what happens with different combinations.

    Finally, I also suggest that players have a random number between 1 and 3 that offsets the numbers for spells. This encourages personal discovery without it being to hard to figure out and/or be taught how to cast spells without actual smarty-smart knowledge.
     
  2. Conflee

    Conflee Me an the bois at 3 am lookin for BEANS!

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    If I recall half the spell words haven't even been released. They are in the code/work but theres no way to learn them. not sure but eh
     
  3. grizenator

    grizenator Refugee

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    they have time to completely rebuild regalia every two weeks but not enough to hide some signs around the place :I
     
  4. MokeDuck

    MokeDuck Hail the duckfather!

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    =P yea...
     
  5. FireFan96

    FireFan96 Ever present, Ever seeing Staff Member Lore2

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    Over complicating massivemagic will just make it unusable. While I would like to see a few more combat oriented spells, buff spells, and items that change how magic is used (like increasing mana regeneration, more power, etc)
     
  6. Kaezir

    Kaezir Lunatic

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    I just rejoined the Survival department but as far as I know, the coding side of Massive Magic is dead. Ulumulu is away for an unknown amount of time and I personally wouldnt trust anyone else with the plugin, atleast right now as Ulumulu was the only one who worked on it and as far as I know, Cay is the only other coder who could have even seen its code.

    While the concepts are interesting, a lot of them seem unnecessary. The amount of work it would take the tech department to learn the plugin let alone change it would be pretty work intensive. It would be better to work on other things like the faction plugin.

    Now then, no one quote me on any of this and take it all with a grain of salt.

    MassiveMagic is 100% implemented to the server. All it requires is for the words to be released. Now that I am in the survival department, which considering that it isnt even a real department yet and may be disbanded if Marty isnt pleased with the progress, I hope we can cycle Magic over to Survival 100%. It is purely a Survival plugin. It does not require any game moderation as all the values can be controlled in real time with commands.

    Hopefully we can start releasing a steady stream of words back into the public again but... this would:

    A: Require staff rank which in turn requires Survival to become an actual department.

    And

    B. Quest may very well be working on Magic island quests. Until this is confirmed for the Survival department, which we may not learn till we are official, there is no real telling what to do with Massive Magic as it stands.

    So while it is a shame that it is sitting around collecting dust, there is plans to move the hard working survival members to relevant departments if it is deemed to be unnecessary. And I am hoping to fall into that category. But considering some of the current members, they could very well be better at my job than I was.

    Nothing is for sure. TL;DR- I don't think this is worth the work until other more important things are worked out.
     
  7. MokeDuck

    MokeDuck Hail the duckfather!

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    Agreed. This is hypothetically a best-case scenario.
     
  8. CnocBride

    CnocBride Former leader of Enigma.

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    The MassiveMagic plugin was a very ambitious plugin and was well coded by one of our most experienced coders. There are only 3 people on this server that really know about this plugin in full: Ulumulu1510, Cayorion and Kaezir.

    I'm glad to see Kaezir back because he can actually help guide Survival and Game in trying to get MassiveMagic implemented into Survival. It is a real pity that MassiveMagic never really took off. It took Ulu so many hours of hard work to get it on to the server and sadly it has been abandoned by the community in such a way that it is never really actively used. I would love to give MassiveMagic a real purpose in Survival. I do believe it will never be fully used by PvPers, it just can't. They'll use some odd spells here and there, that's the end of it. I'm hoping that the Survival Department can provide us with some valid solutions for this.

    It is very hard though due to Ulumulu going on hiatus and he is the main person who worked on this plugin for years. He knows every inch of its code and we really need someone who has a good, in-depth knowledge in MassiveMagic to help us get it rolling on the server again.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  9. aprader1

    aprader1 Insert amazing title here

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    As far as the idea goes, I like it. However, we will have people that number crunch like crazy and figure out everything quickly (cough me cough). Then it’s back to being basic and obvious. But! One part of this really stood out. The way we have it now is assigning spells to Wands and clicking. I think the number key combination if used correctly could be amazing (think Wynncraft if anyone has ever played that). I’m not sure how it should be used, but if you came up with a great use, it sounds cool. For the sake of idea generation, I will just ignore the tech issue we currently have.
     
  10. grizenator

    grizenator Refugee

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    Wynncraft has a key order for spells and abilities. like R-L-L or R-R-R
     
  11. aprader1

    aprader1 Insert amazing title here

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    I’m aware. I meant something similar to that. Like instead of right clicking for the spell to cast like we have now, you have to enter a bunch of numbers in a specific order. Like a password
     

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