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Post by ellipsis on Aug 16, 2009 18:31:01 GMT -5
Alright, not sure this is actually better than existing ideas, but here's an interesting way to balance para: remove the hand choice. Rather than choosing a hand to paralyze, paralysis freezes the same hand the caster used to gesture FFF.
So paralysis can still be used to interrupt a foe or to cancel a mindspell on yourself, but a parachain can only affect one hand (unless you switch to F'ing on your other hand). This is more in line with how I (and I assume other people) assumed paralysis was meant to be used when I first looked over the spell list, before actually playing a game - you can opt to have both players play one-handed, which can be an advantage if you have a summon out, or another element that gives you an advantage. You can't, however, alternate hands you're paralyzing while keep your other hand free to gesture whatever you like.
You can still prevent a mirror, and it cancels with most of your opponent's interrupts, so para-fod is feasible, but harder to pull off, because you opponent will almost certainly be able to get off an antispell if they start soon enough (and you're not repeatedly paralyzing one hand into a P).
One other minor advantage here is that it gets rid of the funky paralysis-haste implementation in Warlocks, where it can't tell which hand to paralyze without player input, so just fails.
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Post by xade on Aug 16, 2009 23:08:22 GMT -5
That would kill that ParaFoD wouldn't it?
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Post by ellipsis on Aug 17, 2009 3:11:52 GMT -5
Well, to be honest, killing ParaFOD is part of the point, isn't it? If you see ParaFOD coming and you commit yourself to a defense, you should be able to stop it. Right now, the best you can usually do is one or two 50/50 chances to escape. In a game with an instant kill spell, I would expect that strategy to come from forcing your opponent to commit to fod defense, not from it often being unavoidable and actually ending the game (at least not as often as it does).
Maybe others disagree, but most of our suggestions here would limit or kill parafod as exists now, and my understanding is that it's a natural part of rebalancing para.
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Post by Dubber on Aug 17, 2009 10:06:40 GMT -5
Alright, not sure this is actually better than existing ideas, but here's an interesting way to balance para: remove the hand choice. Rather than choosing a hand to paralyze, paralysis freezes the same hand the caster used to gesture FFF... We've finally come full circle on this, eh? I don't remember who suggested this (or which forum: here, RavenBlack's Yahoo Group, or where ever) but it should be a relatively trivial code tweak to do so...
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Post by heraclius on Aug 22, 2009 16:57:37 GMT -5
I registered just to say that I quite like Ellipsis's idea. FFF would still have most of its current uses, but would be unable to hold down both enemy hands, which a one-handed chain really shouldn't be able to do.
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Post by ellipsis on Aug 24, 2009 2:35:53 GMT -5
Hi Heraclius, good to see you on the forums.
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Post by heraclius on Aug 25, 2009 13:01:30 GMT -5
Thanks. Ravenblack seems rather slow at the moment...is it quiet in the summer, or just dying a quiet death?
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Post by ourjake on Aug 25, 2009 15:29:56 GMT -5
it burns with a small but hot flame
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Post by Daneel on Aug 27, 2009 5:20:36 GMT -5
Potential alternative (not sure if this kind of idea came up already or not): SpasmFFx (as in: FFF, FFP, FFW, FFS, FFD, plus FFc as well, though that would be weak spell-flow) As Paralysis, except: if the effect is not cancelled, there is an additional effect on the caster - he or she cannot input the same gesture for the casting hand as used to finish this spell. This effect on the caster is a "soft" mind enchantment (any other mind enchantment overrides it - even the Spasm, if it connects on self). Some of the Pros/Cons I see: - Lightning becomes nigh uninterruptible at the one-before-the-last gesture.
- Forced one-handed play is impossible (as soon as Spasm connects, it basically self-interrupts).
- Exit from Spasm is much easier than from Paralysis (maybe too easy?).
Alternative: limit Spasm to be cast by FFF, FFW, FFS only (making exit a bit harder and preventing the Lightning auto-self-Spasm).
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Post by ellipsis on Aug 29, 2009 17:55:11 GMT -5
Truth is, at that point you can greatly simplify things by taking out the "FFF" gesture set and removing the funky self-enchantment part altogether. That, paralysis is simply cast by some set of FFx gestures that isn't open to immediate repeat casting.
So the main issues are whether it makes it too easy to mix para into other weaves, unbalancing them, and whether it weakens para too much. For the first issue, at face value, it seems like this would happen quite a lot from these gestures, actually - FFS and FFD both seem just too useful to be feasible. On the other hand, if you don't include them, FFW and FFP are otherwise so unuseful that you'd only gesture them specifically in order to be able to cast para, and if you can only cast it on one turn, then it's not particularly worth doing.
Again, I'd maintain that the most reasonable proposals are ones that allow para to maintain its same basic role in the game, which is a repeatable enchantment with a weak-but-still-useful interruption effect. If we propose something that cannot at least be cast twice consecutively, or which doesn't cancel with other mindspells, then we're no longer talking about changing para, we're talking about making up a whole new spell.
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Post by Dubber on Aug 30, 2009 19:52:22 GMT -5
Or just make other mind enchantments override FFF as in Firetop Mtn iteration... Have we beaten this to death yet? Please?
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Post by succat on Aug 31, 2009 16:08:43 GMT -5
I think what will end up happening is that those of us who are working on our own Warlock variants will each decide how we want Para to work (or not work) for our own respective versions.
I already know how my version of Para will probably work now, but I know that it's still not gonna be accepted by everyone. And that's just how it is... there are too many ways that Para can be changed, so each possible Para variant is gonna have it's YAYmen and NAYmen.
What I am wondering about and concerned about more than the issue of Para is the issue of why there are still so few players. Is it just the learning curve of this game that repels most, or is the game just too hidden on the internet? For myself, the learning curve of Waving Hands is what originally turned me off, but now it doesn't seem like a big deal.
My original idea was to dumb down my version of Warlocks so that anyone could play it, and if you go to my link I posted in the other thread (warlocks clones) you will see that it is indeed a dumbed-down game, but it's hardly anything like Warlocks at all. It's more like a guessing game with very little strategy, if any, to speak of, but I decided to leave it up because it's kind of a nice diversion if all you want to do is see how many players you can smash through without having to think too hard. However, that type of game gets pretty boring pretty quickly for those of us who are craving real strategy, which is why I am working on the 2nd phase of my game, which will have all the good stuff that Warlocks has. But, in the back of my mind, I still don't see how just changing a few spells is gonna make a ton of people want to play the game.
So let's say we change Para... OK, now what? Are hordes of gamers gonna suddenly start flocking to the site to play a game that they can basically already play on RB (minus a few variations) ? Sadly, I think not.
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Post by Dubber on Sept 1, 2009 15:03:50 GMT -5
Why do some people play chess and others not play chess? Substitute "Chess" with any game of your choice...
This is a pretty cerebral game without a whole lot of pretty pictures to entice today's gamers... too much imaginary action only happening in each individual player's head... not enough moving images...
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Post by heraclius on Sept 2, 2009 20:41:36 GMT -5
That pretty much sums it up. If you want your version of "Warlocks" to be popular, Succat, you had better include some Flash. Or a lot of it. And stick in some Ajax real-time chat.
Of course, I'm sure a game with all those things would be rather different from the game as it currently stands.
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Post by Daneel on Sept 21, 2009 7:42:18 GMT -5
Again, I'd maintain that the most reasonable proposals are ones that allow para to maintain its same basic role in the game, which is a repeatable enchantment with a weak-but-still-useful interruption effect. If we propose something that cannot at least be cast twice consecutively, or which doesn't cancel with other mindspells, then we're no longer talking about changing para, we're talking about making up a whole new spell. Which my proposal was kind of attempting to do... But it was more food for thought than "teh one solution", I was just trying to come from a different angle.
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