As the title suggests, I'd like to open up a discussion about some potentially novel spell effects whose behavior depends on time. Now, the king of this realm has to be the Damage over Time (DoT) spell mechanic that we all know and love, but can we have other spells interacting with time as well? Does the interaction with time have to be constant, i.e. 5 damage/second, or can we have more dynamic effects, i.e. an initial rate of 5 damage/second accelerating at 2 damage/second^2 throughout the duration of the spell?
To seed the conversation, I'll propose a couple new spell dynamics, of which have not been implemented in MMOs before (to my knowledge). I'll mainly root the examples in terms of damage for ease of understanding, but I want to open up the possibilities for other spell effects, such as buffs or debuffs.
Effect Acceleration: A spell cast is initiated with some base effect rate, i.e. damage/second. The spell then accelerates making it's ticks occur more frequently than once every second at some acceleration as exampled above. The spell could either accelerate or decelerate depending on the dev's design goals. The interesting result of having accelerating effects would be having a burst phase for the spell where the acceleration has pushed the tick rate to a high frequency, and a waning phase when the effect's rate is the slowest. One case in which I think this would be particularly interesting if the effect were a debuff making the mob more vulnerable to a specific spell type. The debuffer could tell the group, "Ok I cast Flame Susceptibility, Druid's get ready to cast you fire spells near the end of the debuff's duration when the percentage is at it's peak. We have one shot at this!"
Effect Potency Ramping: This is similar to the above, only the rate is constant, but the effect is amplified through time. Let's take damage again for example. A DoT is cast that ticks every second for 5 seconds total. The first tick will hit for 5, the second for 10, the third for 15,... and so on until the final tick hits for 25 damage. Now, I feel like I've seen this effect in an MMO before, but I can't remember specifically. I haven't, however, seen it with anything other than damage. Imagine an Enchanter casts a haste spell which ramps in time. It starts off at +5% attack speed and ramps an additional 5% every 5 seconds for a total of 20 seconds. This would be pretty cool to watch the Monk's fists start accelerating and could give the Monk a 5-second window at the end of the haste buff to really achieve his maximum output. Again, deramping could be also designed.
My above two examples had changing rates at constant velocities, but whose to say we couldn't have even more complex dynamics? The acceleration could follow a bell curve where, initially, the effect triggers slowly, increases its frequency to the max during its mid-life, and decelerates to essentially nothing at the end of the duration. It could also follow a logistics curve where the effect's tick accelerates very slowly, quickly ramps, and then saturates at a constant velocity at the end. You could also couple the above two effects, having a potency ramping effect which also accelerates!
The possibilities are nearly endless when playing with the intricacies of time. I think these interesting effects could add to the strategizing element of group play by enabling teams to play around with the optimal timing of actions based on the dynamics of the spell effects being used. I think this would be prime real estate for the Living Codex spell modification possibilities.
What do you guys think?
Hi Syntro,
Intersting ideas and well put forward.
I have seen somewhat similar mechanics in the WoW Druid (just the first example that comest to mind) and their healing spells, e.g.
1. Wild Bloom: AoE HoT which starts off with high ticks, and ends on low ticks
2. Lifebloom: A single target HoT that with low ticks, but a big heal when it expires
Then you have a Mastery:Harmony that increases healing based on the number of HoT's that you have on the target.
This does make things more interesting, but it also requires a fair amount of concentration (and UI elements which display this information in a meaningful manner). Depending on the cooldown of abilities and the tick counter of HoT's, this can quickly become a case of watching the UI and health bars for the majority of the time. Personally, I would prefer to stay away from focusing on the UI too much.
But I acknowledge that my response is based on my experience with WoW and their implementation of such a dynamic spell effect, and would love to see discussion around a different (or similar) system and how it may be incorporated into Pantheon without losing the social, slower pace of grouping (compared to many modern mmo's).
This ia a pretty simple idea. Zubi brings up a good point though. In an MMO we are always looking at so many timers as it is. The monster has a 30 second spell buff timer, followed by a 10 second timer when it splits into two monsters. During that time, healers are rotating cures and the tanks are switching threat. If you add to the mix progressive spells that require certain classes to adhere to a timer you set, that might conflict with their own.... see the problem?
Having said that, I like the idea of progressive spells. I just can't see anyone keeping up with 12 progressive timers at once.
Great post and fun idea.
Other possible examples:
Here, instead of the regular :
'If you are in range' -> spell effect applies (Buff/Debuff),
1. Range based Linear spell effects
Size of Buff/Debuff is linearly proportional to the distance from point of origin.
E.g. (1) Spell gives Annie -45 (1m away) Erica -25 (5m away) and John -5 (9m away)
I.e. effect lessens as you get further away (here, lessens debuff by 5 for every metre)
E.g. (2) Spell allows +5 Resist chance per 5' away from spell caster.
2. Area-Effect Non-Linear spell effects
Size of Buff/Debuff is proportioanl - but non-linear.
E.g. Web Spell gives AE movement slow ... max of -100% reduction in move with effect lessening by square of distance in metres.
I.e. Annie -99% (1m), Brad -96% (2m), Derek -84% (4m), Emma -75% (5m), Irene -19% (9m)
Just thought i would throw these in ....
Evoras, likes maths ...