0008751: 'Shards --> Health' skill - DEV Arcen

ID	Project	Category		Date Submitted	Last Update

0008751	Valley 1	Suggestion - Spell Ideas		Jul 3, 2012 2:17 am	Jul 5, 2012 10:30 pm

Reporter	Pyrrhic	Assigned To
Status	considering	Resolution	open
Product Version	1.108

Summary	0008751: 'Shards --> Health' skill
Description	When activated, enemies no longer drop consciousness shards, but instead drop even more health. The conversion rate could be 5 consciousness shards = 1 extra HP healed, rounded down (and subject to tweaking; maybe a 10:1 conversion rate would be better). I think the ideal implementation of this would be to make it a spell that's totally free, and endures indefinitely: using the skill toggles it on and off. Other possible ways to implement this: a spell that when used, turns all on-screen consciousness shards into health; or perhaps, an enchant which makes all encountered consciousness shards instead be health. This makes short-term survival a bit easier, at the expense of your longer-term goal of collecting enough shards to afford X; or maybe you just have more than enough shards at present, and would rather have the extra health. Since players would have the option of opting out from getting shards, this ability would consequently make shards a bit more scarce - which I think seems a bit more challenging and fun, as currently shards seem a bit too abundant and not too necessary to use (although that could easily change with future updates). The inspiration for this idea: Healing is usually very slow. If you've taken 100 points of damage, when most enemies usually drop around 7 health, it's going to take a while to restore that health from killing enemies - even longer, if you continue to take damage while killing enemies for health. Healing via backtracking to home base may be safe, but can be kind of a hassle (depending on where warp gates are) - and of course, you may be in an area where you'd rather not leave, like in the middle of a boss fight. If possible, I suggest that this spell make /all/ encountered consciousness shards be/become health - so, ones that you happen to come across in rooms or stashes also turn into health. However, an issue that may arise from implementing this: players may forget / not realize that this skill is on, and wonder why they're not receiving any consciousness shards. Here are some ways this might be prevented: * The spell's description and/or its icon could indicate if the spell is active (unless this is an enchant, in which case having it equipped is notice enough that this is active). * The spell's description might need a warning - something like 'please note that when this is active, you won't gain any consciousness shards, which are useful for buying things from the opal guardian stone; use this skill when healing quickly is a priority, and you can't easily return to your home base to heal.' * Perhaps the spell could automatically deactivate when the player reaches full health? * The extra health produced by this spell could be a slightly different color from regular health, tipping the player off to the fact that something's up (and hopefully making them realize that the spell is active). This would also be a pretty, in-game and more immersive way of seeing if this spell was active.
Tags	No tags attached.

Internal Weight	Feature Suggestion

Kio Jul 3, 2012 10:22 pm reporter ~0026283 Last edited: Jul 3, 2012 10:26 pm	Aren't dropped consciousness shards able to be picked up by all multiplayer peoples? If I have the spell active, does this mean I don't see shards dropped, and they don't see the health heal me? If I'm wrong about that, since the changes to shared and individual resources, does that mean if You have the spell on, am I unable to collect any shards at all, letting you screw me out of collecting enough to buy something? EDIT NOTE: I'm all for this spell. Really. I have around 100,000 consciousness shards, bought all the upgrade enchants the store has, so I can fully customize my hp/mp/atk stats whenever, and to whatever balance I decide. I can buy all sorts of buildings, and just get more shards and don't even see a dent. I buy four buildings, and in less than an hour, I forget my shards dropped to 4 digits. Meanwhile, I love the combat difficulty, and what it means for the fights, but takes such a toll on my health that I often do backtrack, or plan points that I'll farm easy to kill enemies for health, or go into rooms I know won't have many enemies, just one or two, meaning easier fights meaning easier health. But that takes a fair load of time. A spell that lets me Transmute my shards to more healing would be great. And I DO like the coloring idea. Normal healing is green. Bonus healing should be blue?

Pyrrhic Jul 4, 2012 6:16 am reporter ~0026293 Last edited: Jul 4, 2012 6:19 am	Good point with multiplayer, I hadn't thought of that. Maybe whether a monster drops shards or extra health could depend on who deals the killing blow? If you kill the monster and this spell is on/off, then the monster does/doesn't give extra health instead of shards. As for consciousness shards you find by exploring: I'm getting the feeling that turning these shards into health might be difficult to program. These kind of shards aren't that common, in any case: maybe it'd be simpler if found-shards are always shards. re the color: I thought blue, too! Blue might make people think that they heal mana, though. Still, blue seems like a great choice for alternate-color. Maybe we could go with blue anyway, and just let players figure out for themselves that they heal health and not mana? In any case, if a player activated this spell, then they'd probably know already what was going on. However - what if the spell worked not by making monsters drop extra health instead of shards - but instead, by spending your own stockpile of shards in exchange for healing you? (Kio, you gave me this idea by mentioning "transmuting my shards". I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but thanks for the idea nonetheless.) * This way, neither of the above issues matter: everything can keep dropping as it already does, even in multiplayer. * You'd only be able to use the spell in an area that was completely cleared of enemies. (That seems pretty obvious - you shouldn't be able to spam it in the middle of a boss fight.) This doesn't mean you'd have to hunt down every last monster on a huge map, as you could just duck into a Warp Gate, or enter a building and just clear a small room instead. * The effect should be identical to the one that happens when you touch an Ilari stone - both in terms of graphics played, and in the sense that it has the effect of fully healing you. * The more health it heals, the more shards it costs. * If you don't have enough shards to fully heal yourself, the spell will instead spend all your shards, and heal you by however much healing you could afford. * However much this ends up costing, maybe the price could decrease when you upgrade your settlement in a certain way - with a certain building, or maybe as a character increases in a certain profession level. I still like my original 'monsters drop extra health instead of shards' skill, it seems more fun...but this idea seems more practical and effective.

Pyrrhic Jul 5, 2012 10:30 pm reporter ~0026359	Hmm, I'm reconsidering my new idea of a stockpiled shards --> full hp spell. That kind of a spell would take the place of going back to town (unless it was balanced by being really quite expensive). But if it were too expensive, wouldn't players just never use it, and always return to town? So...maybe there isn't really a place for this kind of spell. dropped monster shards --> HP, on the other hand, would be the kind of thing you'd use while adventuring, and help you stay alive in the field longer - without instantly refilling your HP, which could be seen as cheap and ruining the flow of the game. As for whether a monster would drop shards or extra HP in multiplayer, I still figure that it could just depend on who kills the monster (and whether the killing player had this effect on or off). If a monster was killed by a player's damage-over-time effect, it would be decided by whoever produced the spell that inflicted that effect. If 2+ players were judged as having killed the monster simultaneously, then the game would randomly choose who did the kill (for purposes of deciding whether the shard->HP effect would kick in or not).

Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
Jul 3, 2012 2:17 am	Pyrrhic	New Issue
Jul 3, 2012 8:14 am	tigersfan	Internal Weight	=> Feature Suggestion
Jul 3, 2012 8:14 am	tigersfan	Status	new => considering
Jul 3, 2012 10:22 pm	Kio	Note Added: 0026283
Jul 3, 2012 10:26 pm	Kio	Note Edited: 0026283
Jul 4, 2012 6:16 am	Pyrrhic	Note Added: 0026293
Jul 4, 2012 6:19 am	Pyrrhic	Note Edited: 0026293
Jul 5, 2012 9:45 pm	Pyrrhic	Relationship added	related to 0008015
Jul 5, 2012 10:30 pm	Pyrrhic	Note Added: 0026359