Spellweaving in Age of Conan detailed
Filed under: Age of Conan, Game mechanics, New titles, News items
Magic users in AoC will be able to use Spellweaving, a trance state that will allow the combination of different spells in order to create more powerful magical effects, spells, etc. The trade-off is that the longer a magic user ( in the case of Spellweaving: Demonologist, Necromancer, Tempest of Set and Priest of Mitra) stays in this trance, the more stamina they lose. Once the stamina bar is emptied, health begins to drain instead -- lose that and a digital dirt nap is your final destination. While it's possible to gain positive buffs during a spell weave, there is just as likely a chance that a negative buff will manifest itself. Positive buffs will last for the duration of the weave, while negative ones can last beyond your trance state.
This is all an attempt by Funcom at making spell casting more exciting by adding a level of danger in exchange for a bigger magical bang. Plus, it sounds as though the mechanical act of weaving spells isn't entirely dissimilar to martial combat.
We have only one question: Will this system be hated by magic-users or non-magic users? Because it seems like the sort of thing that will only go one way. While it's very cool that mages and priests have the chance to do some serious damage to their enemies, it could be seen as overpowered and thus unfair to those getting hit with these spells. On the other hand if the features' risks outweighs the reward, we're likely to see lots of players complaining about a "worthless" system.
There's always the chance Spellweaving could turn out balanced and largely successful, but since when does that happen in MMOs? Someone is always crying, "Nerf!' it's just a matter of whether they're crying for or against it.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-29-2008 @ 6:41PM
danarchy said...
One of my greatest hopes is funcom wont follow the herd and start "nerfing" classes. In anarchy online there were a couple classes that were just unfair to fight, the trade off was they were a absolute pain in the tookus to level! Simply put, if i can send a lightning bolt through 5 guys and leave chared remains awesome! Thats what i want and expect! Of course those 5 guys will be on a message board 10 minutes later "nerf XXXXX totally unfair to XXXXXX!"
Ya know what happens when every class is totally equal??
DAOC, thats what happens!
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4-30-2008 @ 12:11PM
easybakeevan said...
Rewarding a player for difficulty of leveling sounds a lot more to me like rewarding a player for more time spent. That is considering you are of the opinion that the higher the difficulty the more time you will be spending to play.
With that said, nerfing a char. because it is powerful should be done if the only reason you think it should be powerful is because it was difficult to get to level.
MMO game design MUST start focusing on a combat model that is dynamic and reliant on skill and less on time played, because as this genre grows, so do harsh stereotypes that keep players from playing the games they love. I think we all know what I am talking about. I started playing WoW around a year or 2 after launch, and at that time noone really knew what an MMO was outside of the PC gaming culture. Now, in my college I hear plenty of stories about roomates "addicted to wow", and the antisocialites that start plaguing the campus. This makes it harder to enjoy the games I love to play. Sure you should do what you think is best for you, but the general idea of this rant here is simple:
If MMOs don't start to see a scaled system of play that can reward both casual and hardcore players the same, there will be no MMO genre to speak of. The games will bend back over and collapse on themselves, and more than likely submerge back under into an underground gaming culture. A market flailing for a new success story just might not survive something like this.
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