Magic skill increases

Discuss Daggerfall Unity and Daggerfall Tools for Unity.
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Hurricane Otter
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Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2016 12:09 am

Magic skill increases

Post by Hurricane Otter »

I've been thoroughly enjoying Daggerfall Unity! I was just wondering if there's been any attention to revising the way Daggerfall calculates skill-ups for Destruction, Restoration, Alteration, Thaumaturgy, etc.? In vanilla, the game appeared to calculate skill-ups based on how many times a spell of that particular school was cast. This was a poor gameplay quirk, because it incentivized just sitting in the Fighter's Guild and repeatedly casting a low-magicka practice spell over and over again until your magic skill reached 100. A better system would be for the game to award a greater fraction of a skill-up based on how much magicka a spell consumes, e.g. an Illusion Shadow spell that consumes 100 magicka might reward 50% of a skill-up versus a 10 magicka Light spell only awarding 5%. This would smooth out the progression curve for these magic skills and improve gameplay by encouraging to improve these spells during quests/dungeons, rather than resorting to the cast/rest/cast/rest loop. Morrowind had a similar problem with spell-ups, which was answered with mods like MWE Magicka Based Spell Advancement... I would love to see the same for Daggerfall!

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jayhova
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Re: Magic skill increases

Post by jayhova »

This sort of thing lies firmly withing the bounds of a mod. Actually, practice is the way you get better at anything. However, I think it might be a good idea to not reward casting the lowest level of spell possible. The idea being that as you become higher in level/skill casting easy spells has less utility because it becomes such a low challenge. Let's say a certain spell takes 1 point to cast and another takes 10 points to cast. The spell that takes more points to cast should get a difficulty bonus to XP. In this way the player is encouraged to cast 3 spells that exhaust his magika rather than 30 spells.
Remember always 'What would Julian Do?'.

Hurricane Otter
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Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2016 12:09 am

Re: Magic skill increases

Post by Hurricane Otter »

With due respect, I think this is the kind of thing that should be canonized as an option in the main game! The problems with the default magic system I've described seem to me to be an oversight of the original game dev. The current magic system has other problems too. For example, right now I have a level 15 character. It would be REALLY fun if I could make regular trips to the spellmaker to design a sweet new nuke every time I increase my magicka pool, but I *can't*. I can't do that because it isn't efficient for me to use a big nuke, because using a big nuke contributes almost nothing towards my Destruction skill, even though it would be a lot more fun! Until I get my Destruction skill up to 100, the only sensible thing for me to do is to use the *minimum* possible damage spell. So every time I'm in a dungeon and I go up against a Daedroth, guess what I'm using? I'm spamming that Daedroth with an on-touch 1 to 1 + 1 to 1 damage spell. I created it first thing out of Privateer's Hold, and it's the only thing I've used all game long to this point, because it allows me to get off more casts and therefore raise my Destruction skill faster. I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to sit in an inn and practice too if you want to, but Daggerfall's default system disincentivizes the player from using the spellmaker to create fun new things until they've raised their magic skill in each school to 100, which is bad game design.

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jayhova
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Re: Magic skill increases

Post by jayhova »

As it happens what you are suggesting is a large departure from the game play style. Daggerfall is not a modern game. The system in Daggerfall persisted into later games as well. The spell system IS cannon and there is no changing that, nor should we. That being said I don't disagree with you that some tweaks to magic system could be in order. However, anything that fundamentally changes how the game is played is outside the bounds of DFU proper. The way I see it the intent of DFU is to give the player the experience of playing the original game on a modern system at modern resolutions correcting as many of the original bugs as possible and allowing for the inclusion of mods
Remember always 'What would Julian Do?'.

meritamas
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Re: Magic skill increases

Post by meritamas »

This is a good idea.
Agree with jayhova, it should be a mod.
Added it to my collection of magic related ideas here.
Interest in expanding and improving the Magic system, Capitalism and an Unleveled World.

My main quest in the DFU community is my (Mostly) Magic Mod.

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jayhova
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Re: Magic skill increases

Post by jayhova »

I should point out that QOL changes to the game are generally fairly minor are often reversible and do not change the feel of classic a great deal. An example of a QOL change might be the recent, and hotly debated, addition of a warning message added when in town and the sleep button is pressed outside. This does not change game-play because generally speaking if the sleep button is pressed it is generally accidental. QOL changes for the most part address issues like this and wagon access from inside dungeons because they are annoyances in the original game and the annoyances can be corrected without changing the way the game is played. It should also be pointed out that the current version is steadily moving to make the game surpass the DOSBOX experience in creating a game as it was intended to be played on release. That is to say just as it was released without all the nasty bugs many of which were never fixed.
Remember always 'What would Julian Do?'.

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