I played this game for a while now, and this is the first post that Im publishing! I just want to share with you my feedback on wizard.

By now wizzard are really no balanced at all, I mean, as a wizard I should be very weak at fighting with brute force but in the other hand I should be able to "master" all the kind of magic. However in this game that's not true, because while I haven't many fighting skill ( sword-100, dodging-75, staves-200, throwing-75, light armor-120) I can't master all of the in game magic( necromancy-prayer-summoning are all at 150), but that's not all because a knight ( that is the only class with shield, heavy armor and tons of hp) can master two of them(necromancy-prayer) so he becomes too strong unbalancing the game( and, why should a knight have more knowledge thant a wizzard?), even the ranger can master summoning( ok in rpg ranger are able to use some magic but I'd say the druidry one), it would be more normal to just add a skill named tamer and add it to the ranger. Now that I said why a mage is unbalanced, I would like to discuss with you all some changes to make him playable.

 

1- I see that the mage can master hiding, but why? I suggest to eliminate this skill and adding a new one more suited to him or at least increasing the cap of some other skills.

2- He has poison resist too and he can master it to 200, that's to high only a rogue who master poison should have worked enough with poison to master this skill, so the cap is to be lowered( the point 1-2 are meant for all the classes)

3 He has magic resist and he can master it to 200, that's good, but the other classes should have a lower cap since they don't know magic as much as a wizard( this point really is important)

4 If the mage can't master prayer, necromancy and summoning then neither can other classes, because he is a mage!

5 a mage doesn't have any armor, he just uses that of leather meant for rogue and barb, It would be nice to have some armor for us only

6 Rejevunation really is useless with a mage

7 Druidry is not meant to be used by mage, it's for ranger principally why don't swicth druidry with summoning it would make more sense( mage that summon are called summoner, they exist I saw them!)

8 Why should a summoner be good, I wonder?

9 Reading all the spells I became aware of one fact, they are too similar beetween them. I mean, all magic schools follow the same pattern: a support skill, a healing skill, and two damage skills of low level and then the same magics but with more power, so why don't regroup them. It would be nice to have a magic school for healing with all the healing spells, a school for the damage ones, and a school for the support ones, like: white magic for the healing, pyromancy for all the fire spell, druidry with the spell that can support a fighter, prayer with the bless, necromancy with curse, and black magic with curse that drain the life of the enemy.

10 Concentration lev up only by activating it (it doesn't matter how much time you stay on concentrating), is this wanted?

I'm sorry if I was rude but that just show how much I care for the game, and I even have high respect for Chris who did all this alone, just wanted to discuss some possible changes with the community, see ya guys.

Hi khoen,

First I do not find your post offensive in any manner :-) I encourage players to share their thoughts. Ill preface my response it is important to remember the game and skill system has evolved into what it is today; things that worked well initially may not work as well and need rebalanced. We tried to make the best decision based on flavor of skills, one overarching theme was to give each class a good skill and an evil skill that they could get to 200 in that no other class could.

The Mage for example got white magic/black magic. The Knight got Prayer/Necromancy. The Ranger got Summoning/Demon Posession. The Barbarian got Protection/Adrenaline. The Rogue got Absorption/Lifetap. We then wanted to allow the different classes to splash around in different skils; especially knight/ranger (we fealt flavorfully these two classes were the most approp to allow splashing) though every class has certain splashes of skill. This was our initial temp in diversifying and balancing the classes. Obviously the game has many more skills and rulesets for just about everything than what we started with. So rebalancing needs to occur, I understand.

I still do believe overall the Mage has access to the most powerful spells in the game... Should they be able to get 200 summoning; yes probably and its something that is easy to change but we would like to find a skill to replace summoning with as an exclusive for the ranger. Summoning wasnt the first choice for the ranger as their good skill. It was originally a neutral skill. Druidry was a good skill originally as you stated, we swapped them at the time because druidry we fealt was important to have access to across all allegiances due to the general application of the spells and important for early use (flavorfully it fit).  Taming may work but even still I dont feel we have enough tamable creatures at this point. If mounts work out; then we may.

As far as Prayer goes; I do think prayer should be  thought of as a bit more unique from magic and i thought obviously it mostly belongs with the knight. Should the mage be able to get 200; maybe/maybe not I could be convinced. What may happen is a shuffle of protection to knight as primary good skill; while maintaining 200 prayer but also give 200 prayer to wizard if a replacement skill can be found for the barbarian. (I will take ideas there as well).

Necromancy I see an argument flavorfully with wizard. I feel it does also fit nice with knight maybe not as a primary but again a skill needs to be made to replace it as a primary.

And yes concentration has to be used to gian.... just gaining skill without actually having to do anything seemed like a bad idea. Again the skill system wasnt always gain by use... Originally you got skill points to assign on level gain; there was an overwhelming amount of feedback requesting the skill gain by use which is why some skills had to be form fitted into it. I know its the most exilherating skill to gain but it is important.

As far as wizard armor goes our intention is to eventually bring back wizard robes that were in the first release of the game but to find an appropriate ability for them. Somene also made a suggestion of being able to hold a "charm" like a skull or crystal ball in your left hand to gain bonuses on spell casting... And that is also a possibility.

I do think that grouping the spells like your saying would make certain schools of magic completely useless. We tried to place spells in the certain schools to balance power and flavor which is why knight does not have access to "Heal", early on we tested this and it was way too powerful, so we came up with restoration as the Heal spell for prayer. It is important for most schools of magic to access support/healing/damage spells which is why they are there in each class. White magic has most of the cold, buff enchants, healing and lightning spells; black magic got most of the fire/ dark magic spells. Necro got life drain effects and prayer mainly focuses on holyness, and protection. Mundane magic was really designed to be utility magic just dabbling in a bit of everything.

 

Expect some kind of skill shuffle soon. Based on the KS we have a couple more classes we want to add and that may be a good time to rebalance all the skills.

Thanks for the feedback and I agree with some of the points you have made.

When you add more spells it should be tweaked, especially Druidry that has very few spells. I would like to see it go back to being a Neutral magic because right now Wizards who dont have an alignment are severely limited, should be viable Neutral magic like Druidry or Elementalism. 

What 'fits flavorlly' might be stepping beyond the bounds of balance. People want to play a Necromancer but finding out that the KNIGHT is the necromancer and not the wizard is very counter intuitive.

The Knight is just a tank, no matter his alignment he is very tanky. The barb is really only DPS if he goes Evil, and 'protection' on the barb instead of knight... also very counter intuitive ! Maybe some kind of attack speed boost for Good barbs ? Maybe good barbs could get higher concentration and druidry than Evil ones ? Prayer magic seems a lot better than Necro, Bless spell alone could be its own SKILL and i'd equip/train it, knights having more str/stamina than barbs because Bless, and its very useful for Merchants too, you just cast it on your merchant.

Was 'druid' a planned class ?

Woha that was really a great answer that cleared many doubts I had.  You can count on me, I'll gladly share any solutions that comes in my mind. But still, you misunderstood me about concentration, I'm not english so I can't explain well but I'll try again.

 

I'm in some adventure with my mage and decide to use a spell of mine, the spell does is dirty job and I lose some of my mana, in order to get it back sooner I activate my concentraton skill, that gains experience, but the skill take all the exp at the start so it doesn't matter how much time I use it to regain mana, using this fact I can activate it more times to get the same quantity of mana, doing so I get more exp and level up the skill faster; so the levelling works in a different way, of for expample, the levelling of poison resist where one doesn't get exp when poisoned but with each tick of the poison. I hope you can understand what I mean

What he means is, concentration only gives exp on activation, not through extended use. So to train it you just turn it off and on a lot.

 

EDIT: What if you broke skills up into Combat, Magic, and Adventure catagories ? Every class could only pick X amount of each skill type, and wizards could pick the most Magic skills, because they should master any magic they choose. 

Knight could have 6 combat, 5 adventure, 1 magic, for example. Thats enough for Sword, Shield, Heavy Armor, Dodging, + adrenalin/protection, and throwing. For adventure they could pick Poison Resist, Magic Resist (or maybe that would be magic?) Healing, Detect and Hide (or whatever they prefer) and for Magic could still master Prayer or Necro.

I see what you mean now on concentration... Yeah I think that is an improvement that can be made.

Khor that is an interesting concept to explore with the skills.... I think something liek that could work but needs integrated into a level system.

I disagree with your point on knight only being a tank... I think most games from the past decade have depicted this though my gaming experience is primarily from the 90s :-) and I like the depiction from my generation a bit better; typically a knight is associated with a role that evolves into a paladin which involves having access to some magical abilities hence maintaining more of a slash role.

Paladins are ALSO tanks or at the least, very defensive. Hes the heavy armor/shield guy with lots of support spells, of course hes the tank. Doesnt matter what you call him but the class with the best armor/survivability is the tank ! I cant think of any game that has a Knight who isnt the official tank because of their heavy armor/shield trope.

 

"death knights" are usually offensive but since in this game they still have super armor, they're much tankier than other classes (except rogue with absorb maybe)

 

Which goes along with another post i made that a 'Evil' knight could lose some armor/shield skill in favor of weapon/offensive skills

thanks for the explanation khor.

I think the real problem here resides in the fact that actually there isn't  a skill limiter, what if skill would have a setted amount of points like the static ones( Actually even the static points are too much 6x92=552, one can cap all his static, what if we had less, so one should choose what static has to be maxed).

In the old skill system we had a static skill point cap over a skill count cap... Unfortunately that didnt work well when integrating into the level system.

uhm I see. Well can new skill be introduced? What if the barb had skill that when you turn it on gives damage and speed and when you toogle it off takes back life depending on how much you used it?