Dullahan said:Mastery of all spells 3 levels below and lower is a great example of how far in the direction of convenience EQ moved.
If there is mastery of spells, it should come well beyond the spell's level requirement and probably involve other factors. For instance, perhaps you need to specialize in a particular school of magic which decreases fizzles and removes them entirely with low level spells (maybe half your level and lower). Maybe you should need to find a master copy of the spell (with a higher level requirement). Maybe its based on spell usage over a period of time.
Anything but removing these mechanics. Its those little things that come together and create the meta which makes a game enjoyable. Removing such things is exactly what led to "dumbed down" games that, hard as we try, are just not fun to us.
I think you need to keep in mind that from about level 65 onward, all you saw were upgraded versions of the same spells regurgitated in 5-level intervals. That 3-level gap meant that the vast majority of your most used and most important spells were still very much subject to the fizzle mechanic.
Edit: spelling
??
Fizzle = failed saving throw. (It is a throw of the dice)
So, "fizzles" are a mathematical probability, in which a Character's actions in game (& over time), can learn to mitigate against.
Mastery needs to come back to MMORPGs, bring back the fizzles in a hard way. Make playing dynamic again. Being a lvl 50 wizard and still fizzing root?, or a nuke is a humbling experience... even as a master. (You can't rely on your own spell book 100% of the time.)
Plus, there will be reagents and other forms of magic in Pantheon. Certain spells/lines could most likely mitigate against fizzles with supplementing their spells with a reagent, or color/mana filter, etc.
I believe in the 2nd twitch stream they mentioned that when you fizzle you will only loose the mana spent on the cast up to that point, not the entire spell as was the case in EQ.
I, for one, love that fizzles are in and should certainly be tied to casting skills. However, the rate at which we saw fizzles in the twitch streams should be adjusted, which Im sure they will be.
starchildren3317 said:I believe in the 2nd twitch stream they mentioned that when you fizzle you will only loose the mana spent on the cast up to that point, not the entire spell as was the case in EQ.
I, for one, love that fizzles are in and should certainly be tied to casting skills. However, the rate at which we saw fizzles in the twitch streams should be adjusted, which Im sure they will be.
Think you may be confusing fizzling with interrupts. In the stream they explained that being interrupted while casting will cost you mana. I suppose its like mana is almost being consumed gradually throughout the casting process (something I think is awesome).
Also, you did not lose an entire spell worth of mana fizzling in EQ. It was 10% iirc.
Dullahan said:starchildren3317 said:I believe in the 2nd twitch stream they mentioned that when you fizzle you will only loose the mana spent on the cast up to that point, not the entire spell as was the case in EQ.
I, for one, love that fizzles are in and should certainly be tied to casting skills. However, the rate at which we saw fizzles in the twitch streams should be adjusted, which Im sure they will be.
Think you may be confusing fizzling with interrupts. In the stream they explained that being interrupted while casting will cost you mana. I suppose its like mana is almost being consumed gradually throughout the casting process (something I think is awesome).
Also, you did not lose an entire spell worth of mana fizzling in EQ. It was 10% iirc.
Thx Dullahan, yeah i couldn't remember exactly but i know you lost some of it..heh I am all for fizzles, keeps you on your toes :)
Having spells fizzle was great. The most horrific memories I have are on Sullon Zek during PvP with Fizzles. Honestly, that moment when you see "(insert name of opposing faction play that you know is around) begins to cast spell," just to turn around and see you're about to get blasted. On the other hand, sure was nice when it said they fizzled and you get gate off.
Fizzle should be part of being a caster. A melee class never gets to the point where it never misses with a sword. a caster should be the same.
Fizzle means something went wrong. If you look at spell casting, it normally includes words and a gesture, and sometimes an ingredient.
It is very realistic to say that you mispronounce a word or got tongue tied, or the ingredient slips from the finger tips etc.
spells should never get over 99% chance, even if you have been casting them for the last 40 levels.
In the twitch stream, the reason for SO many fizzles was because those chracters didn't have skills maxed out. They were made and instantly leveled to 10 so they could give a demo.
If those characters had been real, and they actually leveled them, fizzles would have been less frequent. Leave Fizzles in.
We came to this game expecting a game that hasn't caved to all the "that's not fair" crowd. I want epic armor laying on the ground. I wanna fetch 10 wolf pelts until I gets my epic weapon.
There are plenty of those games already on the market. Pick one. No need to wait for pantheon if you want the easy mode.
( the You in this post isn't directed at OP or any specific person, just a general 'saying' )
There are ways for general 'quality of life' mmo game updates without being on easy mode. I think Brad knows this and has a plan. Like you can give some LFG tools, or some help with finding groups without going all the way to Dungeon / Raid finder like you see in WoW.
Dullahan said:The decision to engage a mob (or for a party to pull) was based on player health, mana, preparation (buffs, knowledge, etc) as well as other factors... factors like the liklihood of missing attacks, being resisted, patrols, respawn (esp on offset timers), or - the chance to fizzle. It was those things that created the sense of danger in combat situations. It was those things that made the difference between the knowledgeable player who made informed decisions, accounting for all the variables, and the unskilled. When you begin to standardize everything and make it too predictable, it takes away from the challenge and sense of accomplishment.
I agree with Dullahan here on every point. And would like to add to it some decisions by casters concerning fizzles.
The Cleric that needs to decide do I cast Complete Heal now and waste a tiny bit of mana but still have time for a recast, or do I wait until the very last second and risk that small possibility of a fizzle and the tank dies?
The Wizard, ( omg, the Cleric is oom) do I Mana burn him now and hope for a clean kill and risk a fizzle with no mana left for an Evac, or do I use smaller nukes and hope we can burn him down before our Tank dies now at 30% health and still have mana for Evac if needed?
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions..... give them to us and make them complicated.
The only Guarantee I want is that the servers are up!
I pretty much agree with most people on here, fizzles were very important, however, they did make spell school specializations at like level 20 i think it was, making it more difficult for a spell to fizzle if you practiced enough. That being said on my cleric, I rarely fizzled after a certain point because it was maxed in skill and in the specialization. But other spells such as buffs would fizzle every once in a while and sure it costed a lot of mana to fizzle, but it brought a side to the game, and difficulty that no one has seen before, which i enjoyed. Without fizzles i could mindlessly cast whatever i wanted with no repercussions, We need fizzles for the difficulty and the decision making.
revolw said:EQ took it WAY overboard imo. I mean really... fizzling Spirit of Wolf at lvl 60 on a Druid? I guess the other 51 levels of constantly casting it wasn't enough practice?
I do not k ow what your talking about here...
By level 60 you should be an expert and fizzling and doing it all the time. ;)
SoWplz said:revolw said:EQ took it WAY overboard imo. I mean really... fizzling Spirit of Wolf at lvl 60 on a Druid? I guess the other 51 levels of constantly casting it wasn't enough practice?
I do not k ow what your talking about here...
By level 60 you should be an expert and fizzling and doing it all the time. ;)
Even the most practiced expert makes simple mistakes from time to time.
Agreed with the general consensus.
Been soloing at the entrance of Lguk recently, on P99. Fighting those dam frog shamans and trying my best to keep their spells interrupted with a well-placed bash or a cast of "Stun". Every time I see that Fizzle text on a stun, I look on in horror as they blast me with 240 cold damage.
It absolutely does create a tension that - while a pain in the a$$ - it is also important.
I guess the fizzle roll is/should be tied to your skill in the current school versus the level of the spell, which is supposedly how it was done in Eq I guess.
Edit : I thought Fizzleing was tied to Channeling in EQ, right or wrong ? what was the purpose of skills of spellschools except offering a discount at cast once specced in ?
MauvaisOeil said:I guess the fizzle roll is/should be tied to your skill in the current school versus the level of the spell, which is supposedly how it was done in Eq I guess.
Edit : I thought Fizzleing was tied to Channeling in EQ, right or wrong ? what was the purpose of skills of spellschools except offering a discount at cast once specced in ?
Channeling was the ability to continue casting while being attacked.
Fizzling was tied to 3 things, your school skill level, such as alteration for healing spells, your school specialization skill level, 2 we able to go past 50 but only 1 was able to go past 100 i think it was, and both of those checked against the level of spell you were trying to cast. So a level 60 cleric could probably rarely fizzle casting a level 1 spell when alteration was at 100, but he probably couldn't get a level 60 heal spell off except maybe one in 100. However, if both his specialization alteration was maxed as well as his alteration skill, didn't matter what level the spell was you probably never fizzled.
I think spell fizzles should stay in the game. Definitely can add strategy to a lot of situations when a spell fizzles and you need to have a backup plan ready. If fights are always the same, or breaking a spawn is the same series of spells, it gets boring. There are lots of game mechanics to change things up and spell fizzles are one of those mechanics.
Benefits of Spell Fizzles in my opinion:
Two things fizzles do.
1) Add in a "this can fail" mechanic to the game where, even if you are really good, you can sometime screw up. Sometimes that mistake means nothing and you simply recast, other times it drains the last drops of mana.
2) Also gives you a sense of accomplishment. One of the things that made everquest fun for me was that every level felt like you achieved something. Even the base levels like going from level 1 to 5 could take a whole evening (obviously depedent on class, level of twinking, getting boosted etc, but just solo and no buff or help it could take awhile).
I like it when I feel like I worked towards a goal and achieved it.
Fizzling is just one small part of that, but it does create that "I'm not really good at Divination" feeling, and that "Now I feel like I really master my spells properly". It makes you feel the progression from being that newbie caster who kept burning a manabar to get better at a particular school of magic to the experienced caster who can (at least most of the time) cast a spell without worrying about it fizzling out.
Has anyone seen it in the latest stream play throughs? I remember seeing them in the early ones, cant specifically remember them lately?
Hope they keep it in, it was such a love hate relationship with fizzling! We can always laugh at a good fizzle at a terrible moment... I mean, once the dust has settled and we've made it back to our corpses anyways :p
Fizzling doesn't add strategy. It's just another RNG factor to deal with. You already have a way to make spells "not 100%" by resists. Gates, and evacuations can fail. Theres not really a reason for fizzles other than because we want the game to be as close to EQ1 as possible.
It was also linked to skill specialization. You could only break I think it was 200 and hit 250 in a particular spell school. This meant you cast spells from the school more efficiently. As an Enchanter, we usually had to decide, either Alteration or Conjuration. Alterations was a lot of our buffs, debuffs and charms. Conjuration was our mezes. There were phases early on where people said Conjuration all the way, others said Alteration. I was an Alteration Enchanter, mainly because I weaved charm incredibly well and a mez fizzle just meant I clicked it again as the mana cost for a mez isn't normally very high. However, I still saw the use.
With Pantheon, it may be somewhat similar here but depends on how they work the skill schools and I hope it's not just some arbitrary number that we all eventually cap and every class is effectively the same. The only thing I'm concerned with in this game is differentiated flavor. Where no one class is exactly the same, not only gives more closeness with your character, it allows for amazing replayability value.
I wrote a bit about this here. https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/8310/skills-and-spells
Porygon said:Fizzling doesn't add strategy. It's just another RNG factor to deal with. You already have a way to make spells "not 100%" by resists. Gates, and evacuations can fail. Theres not really a reason for fizzles other than because we want the game to be as close to EQ1 as possible.
This is where you are wrong. You always had to have a plan for fizzles. And it's not about making anything as close to anything as possible. We are taking good parts from every game. There has been recommendations from more than just EQ all over these boards, cool systems and designs that made a game more immersive, not copying. These ideas brought more layers to difficulty, which is what made us love these games. And I don't see how strategy isn't involved with this. If you weren't skilled up in the spell school of a spell you wanted to cast because it was extremely useful against a guy, you had to decide if it was worth it to cast that spell. Making a decision on whether or not to cast the spell is called strategy.
The reason for fizzles is so people have to work on making their characters better. These things can't just be given. Otherwise the game will become too easy and fail.
Porygon said:Fizzling doesn't add strategy. It's just another RNG factor to deal with. You already have a way to make spells "not 100%" by resists. Gates, and evacuations can fail. Theres not really a reason for fizzles other than because we want the game to be as close to EQ1 as possible.
A fizzle is the caster equivalent of a melee missing an attack and a resist is the equivalent of a melee attack being blocked/dodged/parried. Would you also say there is no reason for or that it is poor design for melee to have attacks miss or be blocked/dodged/parried?