Currently, different magic types are so balanced and similar to each other that for the most part, one doesn’t have any significant advantage over the other. This is a good thing and should continue to be the standard. To spice up dark sea enemies and PVE to give different mobs randomly generated advantages and disadvantages. This would be a nightmare to balance in PVP, but in PVE, I believe it would be an interesting and fun addition.
It wouldn’t make sense for normal humans to have these, but in the dark sea where magic pollution is rampant, it would make sense for humans and creatures alike to develop resistances and even weaknesses to certain magics. For reference, advantages and disadvantages will be referred to as (A/D) or (A/Ds)
For example, if you were to fight a certain NPC, they could be resistant to cold-based magic but slightly weak to solid magic. The intensity of the (A/Ds) would vary and also most likely be randomly generated.
This could even play into the randomly generated island system. You could find monsters that are resistant to cold magic because they’re on an extremely cold island, or an acid monster that is resistant to acid.
This idea would also give certain magics that have negligible or near useless elemental bonuses (shadow e.g) an actual benefit in the Dark Sea.
(Weapon and Fighting style users don’t worry, there could also be (A/Ds) for blunt and sharp sources of damage. )
This would also give you an incentive to create certain offensive potions. You could throw a bleeding potion and a sharp resistant enemy to bypass the (A/D) and disable it long enough to do consistent damage. Preparation would be essential since if you were to run a mob that you have all disadvantage with, if you didn’t come with any appropriate potions or crew mates, you’d struggle even more to defeat said enemy.
Overall, I believe this idea would make players reevaluate how they view the different magic and damage types. In the main overworld, you can mostly ignore it except in maybe the highest tiers of PVP or if you’re a poor heat based magic user underwater, but in the Dark Sea it would be the difference between life and death and reinforce the unpredictability of the Sea.
The point would be to be prepared. Depending on the enemy, you’d either be lucky or unlucky, or the (A/D) wouldn’t matter at all. There’s a potion for every damage type in the game, so solo players wouldn’t be screwed and you wouldn’t be completely locked out of significant damage. (although if the Dark Sea is as hard as advertised, you shouldnt be solo in there anyway.) Also it would most likely be in the Far Reaches where the (A/Ds) become a serious obstacle so you’d already have to be prepared anyways to get that far.
Imagine trying to solo this game and just making some bosses annoying as hell because they resist you and essentially have double/triple the HP they have than normal in terms of how many times you need to hit them.
Not to mention this feels like such a bad way to implement potions into the game that it makes them feel more like obligations than a cool side gimmick, there are probably many better ways to make potions more relevant, and if I have to be honest with you, potions are already quite relevant in today.
I love magics in this game because you can dick around with the environment but this is a really shitty way of doing it. Maybe instead have enemies have parts which actually interact with magics, like metal conducting lightning for heavily armored foes or certain enemies simply behave different to certain types of magics.
I feel like this just unnecessarily punishes you for something you cant control. What if you go two heat magics? Two cold magics? Depending on rng, you’d just be doomed. The dark sea is already really hard to do solo, having randomly generated damage nerfs would feel unfair in the moment and would actually be unfair ingame. A better system would be enemies that are already tough, but have some sort of bonus for certain things. Like tough armor that can be destroyed quicker depending on your magic’s destruction, or a quick enemy that could be easier to catch up to with the dodge reflex and actual speed of light.
its cool if you could swap out of a bunch of elements on the fly, but only a minority of players even have access to 2 different elements (which isnt enough to deal with that anyway) and i dont like having to carry literally every potion type to break an armor
Isn’t the whole point of the Dark Sea that you CAN’T solo it at the far reaches unless your absolutely cracked out of your mind? If you’re playing with a crew, chances are you have someone else who can break the (A/D) and if you’re solo you’d be smart enough to bring potions with you. However I do agree the idea could be more intuitive this is just the basic idea. I think RNG can be fun if implemented well and the best place to do it would be in the Dark Sea. Maybe if the advantages were always more impactful than disadvantages, it wouldn’t be as annoying to players when you run into a type disadvantage or if there was a proper incentive like type disadvantages getting better loot chances.
I’m talking about like, hypothetically giving important main-story NPCs these ridiculous resistances.
No No No man not RNG please
do not make arcane odyssey’s NPCs even more bullshit and janky
unless I’m overreacting, I feel like RNG is just going to make pirate captains with shitty broken grabs and insaney cracked gun m1 aim to be even deadlier
This idea would be 100% for Dark Sea lol it’d be obnoxious asf in the main story which is why I said it should only apply to the Dark Sea and most likely on the Far Reaches. And we already technically have RNG lol. A magic captain is 100% less stressful to fight than a boxing captain who can 0 to death you in like 2 seconds. Why wouldn’t this also be the case in the Dark Sea lol. I feel like this idea would definitely be annoying as a solo player which is why I added the potion aspect to it but with a crew it would be so much more engaging. Feeling useful to your party is a fun and addictive draw especially in an already difficult environment. With that being said, I don’t think RNG should disadvantage you significantly.
Your idea, at the first glance, sounds fun. However, well… this isn’t a type of fantasy where every caster can throw around three elements or more. And the potions are… neither logical, nor in any way fun, as far as I can tell. Also, as far as I can see, this Advantage/Disadvantage system would just clutter up the game code until you get far enough out, at which point it would make it impossible to progress without excessive amounts of effort, or arbitrary preparations.
Maybe as a gimmick for an island type generating based on the magics/fighting styles in use by those on one expedition, so that a group gets an island where some enemies are easier for one or two of them, and others are tougher for those same people. But not as a mechanic for the entirety of the Dark Sea.
Why not just apply this to Dark Sea hazards, if a magical tornado is imbued with Water Magic an Ice mage/warlock/conjurer can freeze it and shatter it, if the tornado is not that powerful or if the player is powerful enough.
I mean maybe also apply this to weapons based on the weapon type
same with fighting styles
would be unfair if mages are the only thing getting backlash
nope. this would be way too annoying and would basically force anyone that wants to do good in pve to pick specific magics based on their first one instead of doing whatever they want. wayyyyy too annoying of a feature, and if the effects were extremely minor why even add them if they basically wouldn’t do anything. + you might not be supposed to solo the dark sea, but it’s still possible with enough skill to get far and this just seems like a massive annoyance to anyone trying to, along with being a horrible way to try and get potions used more
Bro, you’re telling me im limited to 2 elements as a fighting style user because of the goofy element system in the dark sea
Naaaaah bro, you aint forcing me to change into playstyles I dont like just to enter the goofy dark sea that’s bound to be content dried in a few days after release
Even if potions were a thing, you’re bound to run out of them, so what I need to have 1K+ potions per dark sea expeditions or else im screwed? No thanks
