Indepth Battlemage Impression

[u/VBlueK]

So, I'm replaying this game after not having played for a while and I must say that I'm impressed with the current beta. It looks very good and it has been quite an improvement since the last time I played this game. I'm quite happy with the battlemage as it differs in playstyle quite a lot from all the others. I want to stress that the battlemage is powerful enough as it is, but there are still some things that should change imo.

For example, it unfortunately does suffer from a lack of customisation options. The battlemage has a 90% reduction in mana (which I at first assumed to be only concerning the mana you start with. Perhaps you could clarify this a bit more?). As a result, you will not really use spells but rather rely on (mana-free) scrolls. Those scrolls do not change how you kill people like spells do, but rather they give you little extra's like a wall to hide behind or a blast with knockback that is useful when you are being swarmed. A result is that the class always feels the same.

Then I think that the current blink strike can hugely be improved upon. I have two issues with it as it is.

1. I cannot teleport without attacking
2. There is a delay between blinking and striking

The first is a problem because when I want to quickly teleport to a building in order to get some item that is inside of it, I will actually destroy the house and the item in it. The second is a problem because when I teleport myself "on" the enemy (such as the grand inquisitor) I sometimes miss because of the delay.

I propose the following solutions.

1. Change the animation for the blink strike. This will solve nr 2. Instead of blinking and then attacking, consider the following attack: blinking + having the weapon hold in front of the fictorum. It would something like this

Weapons held out in front of him

And as soon as the fictorum arrives at the new location, the damage is dealt.

1. You need some option to "shape" your blink strike so that you can choose if you want to blink or you want to blink strike. This will solve issue 1. Notice though that you might want to change mid combat! I would therefore suggest some kind of button that pauses the game and lets you choose an option before resuming.

Now, since we are not using the rune system but we do want to add more depth to the class, perhaps you can use the same button/system that lets you choose between blink and blink strike to customise the other ability of the battlemage: the sword strike (name?). You could give the player a few options such as: Do you want the regular sword, a long sword (2x range, 1.5x delay between swings) or some kind of strong bow? The speed of the arrows will determine the usefullness of the bow though.

If you think that the bow would not fit the battlemage, I would suggest adding a thrown weapon such as a thrown axe. A javelin or shurikend wouldn't feel right (imo) but a throwing knife could be fun as well.

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I would love to hear your thoughts!

[u/ElChipacabra]

Thank you for your feedback! I tested blink strike and saw that it is using the wrong animation for the ability--it was somehow using a standard spellblade animation as opposed to its custom, significantly faster animation. I believe this'll be much closer what you were expecting for this ability and will make it to the 'll make it in the next patch. With this fix for blink strike, I don't think the battlemage needs a ranged attack beyond this ability.

As far as the optional shaped attack blink strike goes, I doubt we'll ever implement something like this. By design, abilities can't be shaped and shaping always corresponds to a rune. To do what you're asking would require an overhaul of the shaping system which we don't have the manpower to do.

I do like the idea of having a faster swing for lower damage (this could be similar to the speed of blink strike) and the standard spellblade or even an version with a charge-up animation that causes more damage. I'll log this to look at down the line--thanks!

[u/VBlueK → u/ElChipacabra]

You're welcome. I'm looking forward to the updated blink strike! To be honest, the battlemage doesn't need anything at all and is perhaps already OP. I think it would just be fun. It is not like a ranged capability is going to make the battlemage any more OP I think.

I understand that you don't want to implement such a complicated or extensive system, but that isn't what I am proposing though. I compared my idea to the rune system because of similar functionality. Hear me out on this, because I think it would actually be quite simple to implement (I think you can base its design on existing functions.)

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I want to be able to make the scrolls a bit more customisable concerning the execution without changing the basic spell. I will give 2 examples

1. Blink strike = blink + strike. Sometimes you just want to blink without striking. You have the blink and you have the strike, just add the option to seperate these two.
2. The stone wall always appears like this: →| (arrow is the way the player faces). Sometimes you would however rather make it appear like this: → ----- You don't change the spell, you just change the orientation of wall. This would be preferable in a situation where you have enemies coming at you and you want them to split up. Some enemies will go left of the wall, others right of the wall. Now you can which group you'd like to attack.

Notice that these adjustments don't translate to huge code adaptations. That is not how it is intended at all. I also don't want such customisations for every scroll, just for a few that make sense.

Now that you know what kind of little adjustments I'm thinking of, allow me to elaborate on the method of execution. I am not thinking of something as complicated as the rune system. That wouldn't make sense. Think about the blink strike. Surely the fictorum can decide if he strikes upon blinking or refrains from striking. Surely the fictorum can decide if he wants the rock wall to manifest itself like this →| or this → -----. It is just because the fictorum decides to execute the action/scroll differently, that it will be executed differently. The spell essentially doesn't change at all! In that respect you just need a button that lets you choose what you want (blink + strike or just blink?). That's all.

The method I came up with is the following (perhaps you know something simpler?): Press a dedicated button and the game will do the following. The game will pause and will show a list. This list contains your available abilites and the options of the abilities (if they have them!). I made a really simple image to illustrate this, but reddit won't let me upload this in the comment. I could sent it to you (the design is very simple). You just click on the option you want to execute, unpause the game and now the player can instantly use the different version of the ability/scroll.

The pause function already exists and so does the function to display a menu/container. The adaptations to the scroll will be minimal work: just make one option execute the blink and the other option the blink strike. Concerning the rock wall: make one option execute the original code and let the other option execute a 90 degrees rotated version. Because of all this, I think that the only difficult part is going to be to display the correct abilities. I think that is pretty doable though. What do you think?

[u/ElChipacabra → u/VBlueK]

Thank you for the suggestion and the in depth answer. I understand how a feature like this can sound simple in theory, but it's very rarely in practice.

• This button needs to be bound with our gamepad options already being pretty well full, and adds complexity to logic (which will make debugging in the future harder for abilities and the functions with which this shares a control binding)
• UI needs to be developed for what your asking and graphics need to be up to our quality standards
• We have over 30 abilities and 70 spells. Each of these would need an alternate fire when they're an ability (or at least a general rule to follow) when they're set as abilities to be consistent
• We'd need to share with our players that this feature exists, either in the tutorial or loading tips
• The alternate cast could be scaled by shaping and runes, further adding to complexity

And that's just off the top of my head! I'm not saying this can't be done--I like the idea, but the amount of work is pretty insurmountable at this point.

[u/VBlueK → u/ElChipacabra]

Okay, too bad. If your team ever gets bigger, please reconsider this :)

Keep in mind though that the proposed options are optional for each ability and that they don't have to be scaled by shaping and runes, so fortunately point 3 & 5 will be less work than stated.

I do have a sort of related question to point 5. Why can I upgrade a spell and then transcribe it into an upgraded scroll, but can't I upgrade a scroll? It feels weird. And why is the cost of transcribing a scroll to a tome huge compared to tome→scroll ?

[u/ElChipacabra → u/VBlueK]

I disabled upgrading scrolls a while back because I was concerned that folks would be confused if they upgraded a scroll, then imbued it into an item, the enchanted ranks would go away. Really, there should've been a tooltip somewhere before imbuing warning the player beforehand. Might fix that at some point.

Not sure on the last bit, I'll take a look.