wow good job flare do you want a golden sticker
No.
I just felt like saying something mid
I dont have to yell whatsoever or complain!!
I bought so many slots to the point I’m basically experinmenting and wasting my time.
Lovely 900 hours in AO wasted when I could’ve become a pro in art
Prometheus acrimonies also break lore - it’s not like someone can drink a potion and suddenly 40 years of weapons training and experience is now 40 years of magic training and experience.
In fact, Hecate Essence’s lore came out around the same time as HE itself. There’s also nothing in the lore that explicitly requires Hecate Essence to be atrocious to find, or any mention of Hecate Essence in the lore doc AT ALL.
I also found nothing that explicitly stated magics couldn’t be changed, however I’d expect it to fall under learning a new magic rather than massively changing the one you currently have.
Going by lore itself? Hecate Essence nor Acrimonies exist, with a likelihood nothing can be changed. However, lore should not completely dictate gameplay. I’ve included two examples in the dropdown.
Examples
Armored Core 6: An AC would likely not be able to tank nearly as much damage as they’re shown to in gameplay (Secret Level shows a more lore-accurate take), ACS Overload may not exist in-lore, and Kate Markson wouldn’t struggle with 5 helicopters. Bosses wouldn’t move in set attack patterns (cough cough IBIS CEL 240 cough cough).
Project Wingman: No human would be able to pull the amount of G-Forces that an AOA limiter allows for. You are not going to tank 4 missiles before you get shot down, one short burst from a cannon would do that. One missile would likely mean you’re shot down, or at the very least not fit for combat. No, Crimson One wouldn’t logically be able to survive getting shot down over a volcano, somehow get back to the Federation core, steal the PW.MK1, fly back, and nuke Presidia. No, you don’t have to destroy every weapon on a ship for it to be damageable.
Lore should compliment gameplay, if lore accuracy would impact the player’s enjoyment to a substantial amount, it’s probably best to deviate. After all, I wouldn’t expect what you see in-game to be a perfect representation of lore. Hecate Essence might have been intended as such - a feature that doesn’t 100% mesh with lore that’s intended to improve player enjoyment. However, it’s placement deep in the Dark Sea, it’s rarity, and the fact that it isn’t mentioned in the lore doc lead me to believe that it’s artificial scarcity isn’t because of lore, but rather that Vetex still clings to the idea that magic, as a gameplay element, is special in some way. Spoiler: outside of the changing difficult and range of synergies, it’s NOT. It’s just another method of combat, like Weapons or Fighting Styles.
god I need to stop making text walls.
yeah the night can be dark thats fine but making vision obscuring a game mechanic in an area thats not designed around it is objectively bad. its not incredibly a problem in overworld night areas because you have the map, it’s more of just a missed opportunity there because night in games can look really pretty and it just doesnt in ao
the titan caverns at night are the main place where its bad, especially since there are no ways to actually see in there or solve the problem of ‘its dark’ so all you can do is jump around blindly until it turns day or you reach the exit
The RPG using lore as a guideline to gameplay? What a shocker.
You seem to not like that Vetex values any aspect of the lore over your own pre-conceived notions of how game design is; which are flawed since you think developers should disregard lore entirely for gameplay.
Lore and setting can set the tone and gameplay for a game. They aren’t independent, but they work off of each other. If you can’t understand that basic concept, then this serves no purpose since you won’t understand so called ‘basic game design’.
yeah but if your lore forces you to ignore basic principles of game design then it might not work very well as video game lore 
If the lore will actively make the gameplay experience worse, without having a true upside to it that can attempt to balance it out, then why should you restrict yourself to working off what the lore says and nothing else?
Give me an honest answer; the best you can.
Honestly, I wish AO had AA’s training mechanic, but modified.
Imagine this, you can train all of your stats to max with enough time, but for the most part you’d focus one or two stats at a time. This would be the typical mage/hybrid archetypes, where you train one or two stats and they’ll be of a higher level and usefulness over the rest. You’d still be able to use them, just not as effectively, and awakenings could instead be modified to be some kind of boon or blessing you choose to a particular play style. So mage could have: Sorcerer or Zoner as it’s two main archetypes, and then it’ll have hybrid archetypes to benefit Warlock, Conjurer, and Paladins. Stat levels would also be how we’d unlock things like imbues and whatnot.
TLDR:
Stat training mechanic (capped by level)
Stat levels determine unique abilities (eg. imbues, 2nd magic, weapon aura, etc)
Awakening becomes play style enhancements we can choose
Probably more I’m not thinking of
Anyways, ramble over.
Fair, but magic is the most synergistic thing in the game. Gameplay and in lore wise, magic is more similar to spirit weapons than weapons or fighting styles. Spirit weapons themselves being treated as a rarity in the lore and in gameplay, with our sources of them being relatively limited in availability compared to both FS and Weapons. Both have the capacity to be far more versatile and unique than FS and Weapons.
If the Lore and Gameplay don’t mesh well, then it’s either the lore or gameplay that are poorly designed (sometimes both). Part of game design is using the lore as a guideline to establish what you can and can’t do. That’s just how it is.
if you want to chang e your weapons, fstyles, or spirit weaoinsb oyu ahve to find an essence in the far reaches of the dark sea in order for you to change them itll work trust!!!
you also choose between them at the start of the game and have no frame of reference to how they work!!! peak game design!!!
i love how you ignored my entire message and decided to fixate on my last sentence
im saying that lore shouldn’t be prioritized over gameplay because people care more about the game being fun than the lore. It’s not a pre-conceived notion it’s literally a fact that games should focus more on being fun to play instead of sacrificing that joy for the sake of being accurate.
okay??? that doesn’t mean something should be blatantly unfair to get because “muh lore reasons”. Tell me who benefits from magic reseting being as cancerous as it is right now
Narrative design and game design are two different things. Keep talking about how I don’t understand basic game design when you literally don’t know what’s game design and what isn’t
Alright, but I want to hear how it has made gameplay worse for you. Because I suspect in most cases, most people they try a magic, they either don’t like it or get tired of it, and then they want to change it up. I also suspect in most cases that’s because of the spell variety not being quite there yet, so people are getting tired of using the same spell over and over again, making each magic slot feel the same. I’m sure later down the line there’ll be spells that you’ll like using with that magic, I’m sure that some spells simply work better with some magics than with others. We just don’t have those yet, and that’s why people want to complain.
TLDR: Magic is versatile, it just lacks the spell variety to make it feel unique between each player. People get tired, want to change their magic as a result, and complain. I don’t think magic resets would be necessary or viewed as necessary if we had a greater variety of spells available.
I’m not arguing for myself, I’m arguing for other people. The issue isn’t spell variety; it’s the dichotomy between ease of changing Magic between the ease of changing every other attacking style. Let’s say that, instead of being able to switch your Fighting Style with roughly 25 minutes and 300 Galleons, you have to spend hours killing enemies on top of all that just to go up one or two Mastery levels, since lore-wise, switching from one Fighting Style to another would take insane dedication and getting used to your new style. Sounds awful, doesn’t it? Now imagine that it’s now Magic that can switch it up whenever without the crazy time sink. Do you understand the point?
I also find it odd that you seem to bring up Spell Variety as a counterpoint; it sounds logical, but isn’t using the same attack over and over again effectively any type of power in the game? While I’m here, why did you choose to write a tangent about how AA’s power system would’ve been better when Interchange Potions and Acrimonies were brought up, instead of saying something about how they’re different from Hecate Essences? Why change the subject so drastically?
In fact, last time I checked, Interchange Potions and Acrimonies just don’t exist in the lore (I’m going off of memory and what others have said, so if I’m actually wrong, please crucify me). They, by all means, shouldn’t exist, but they do in-game since the game would suffer without them. Why is the Hecate Essence any different?
@Crusade if you wanna address multiple people i suggest you quote their portion you want to critique
There are a few ways to look at this.
- You liked your magic, now you don’t.
- You were trying out your magic, now you realized you don’t like it.
- You want to try something different, maybe it’s boring now.
- Maybe something else I’m not thinking of.
Tell me, how is magic resetting the issue? Because right now, magic is basically all the same or similar because we lack the spell variety and level cap to really work with our magic slots. The issue isn’t how magic is designed, it’s the barely built foundation of it’s concept.
It was originally never going to be an option, period; now you have it now so if you want to go through that slog, then go right ahead. I’m not gonna do it, I don’t really care enough to do it. I’m fine with my magics, if I want to play something else, I’ll play with another build on another file. I’m not stuck to being a mage, and I’ll play something else until I get a little more variety if I’m that bored of mage.
They aren’t, get rid of the narrative and world; now what do you have left for a game?
it’s about how it’s much more complicated and unfair to change compared to weapons and fstyles
Wow Mr.Crusade thank you so much! There’s an issue where magic couldn’t be easily reseted like weapons and fighting styles so it’s absolutely okay to implement it in the most shittiest way possible using lore as an excuse. There’s no way the original problem is still in place right??
So you know how people have a main or cherished file right? they usually like to play alot on that file and have all their stuff on it. If they decide they wanted to reset their magic for the file they either need to deal with the hell that is hecate essence hunting or reset their well loved and adored file.
Buildings need both steel bars and concrete to be stable. Doesn’t mean steel bars are now all of a sudden concrete right?
you are yet to address how prioritising lore over gameplay makes the game less fun btw
I guess it’s kind of baby act (the buying part)
Also yes i know he didn’t want to add that, although personally i love the feature because that means i don’t have to delete the file while having to stay with explosion magic (I am NOT deleting a WoM file, i would not forgive myself)