Recently I’ve been hearing alot of complaints on how most magics feel identical to each other and that there’s little to no variety between them.
This suggestion aims to make each magic have a more immediately tangible difference in playstyle and progression from each other.
The Suggestion:
Basically, every magic will have a different order and requirement set to when they unlock spells and their customization options, this would extend to scroll spells too.
These would be based on what the magic is and what forms it would be able to take more naturally.
For a few examples:
Lightning/Light would have beam as their first spell and would unlock blast later.
Energy/Powder Magics like Snow/Sand/Wind/Fire would be able to unlock surge earlier but would have increased requirements to unlock javelin.
Solid magics like Metal/Ice/Earth/Wood would unlock javelin earlier but have a tougher time learning surge.
Explosion magic would uniquely have explosion as its first spell type.
This would serve to provide a tangible difference to how each magic progresses
The only immediate downside I see would be that the unlock requirements between magics would suddenly become a new and unique headache for the balance team.
Tl;Dr:
Different magics unlock spells in different orders and some will be able to unlock certain spell types earlier and later than others.
The more rare+ spells that are added, the more each magic can stand out from the others.
its alright for base spells, but scrolls spells are actually supposed to be stronger and more complex the higher their requirement is as far as i know. now im not gonna say its an issue for what we got currently but we never know with later spells
I think it’d be cool to provide more variety to progression. Maybe this could be done for fighting styles too, as shot for example would make sense as a first technique for cannon fist, the ranged style.
This would be a fun way to differentiate Magics from each other, and I feel like it could apply to Fighting Styles as well. The main issue is that it might screw over some hybrids depending on what their Magic is.
What Magic would keep the current spell unlock path?
this isnt feasible for long term or even right now, considering there are 20 magics and each one would have different unlock levels for every spell type. In the future youd be looking at like 40 magic types with unique unlock levels for 30-40 spell types
also, this has been explained 100 times, but people saying magics “feel identical to each other”, “magics are reskins” etc, its because magics in this game get variety from the spell types used, and until there are a lot of spell types they will obviously be very similar. logically its more fun and way better of a plan to have magics being able to choose from like 30-40 different spells rather than being locked to 5-8 unique spells which everyone seems to suggest for some dumb reason
that… isn’t what I suggested???
having a small handful of unique spells for each magic would suck.
I’m in complete agreement with you on that.
and this is exactly what the suggestion is for.
I think you’re getting the wrong idea here, I’m not saying that surge for metal should be locked to like 500 magic instead of 160 magic (I think its still that I forgot lol)
That’s why I never specified numbers, I thought the differences would be smaller.
The way I had it in my head was like:
A set of level 100 rare spell scrolls at equal power that have requirements ranging around 200-140.
A set of level 200 rare spell scrolls at equal power with requirements ranging from 400-280.
and so on and so forth.
I don’t understand how magics are supposed to get variety from the spell types used if every spell type functions near identically for every magic with very little exception and is unlocked at the exact same time for every magic.
I don’t know how to fix the first half of that, but the second half seems far more feasible.
This would also solve the issue of hybrid builds being completely locked out of certain spells at different points in the game’s development because what they can/can’t use would be dependent on their magic and they’d be able to make a build that has access to it.
In the future they could even change their magic to something compatible with the spell they want to use.
Actually gonna have to disagree with the V-man here and say I don’t mind this idea. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I much prefer having interesting and varied opinions over some semblance of “balance”. (A balance which is never retained anyways)
The idea is mostly thinking of forms the magics would more naturally take.
So, naturally liquids would get explosion and beams earlier… except for magma maybe.
