Magic In Video Games

I think more games should allow us to use magic to turn people into goats. I think it's important thing for evolution of videogames as an art form.

I will start:
DnD based magic. I remember trying to play NwNs 2 or something like that as a mage. You need to sleep in-between spell use, and as a mage that was my only weapon. So enter room, use spells, hope they kill everything, if not run away until they stop chasing you so you can sleep. Basically it worked until I encountered a boss. And technically any decently defended healing enemy would be basically unkillable. It was such a boring system. It is possible I was playing wrong, as I said bosses basically were unkillable, but even if I was missing something huge that whole system of having to sleep every time you use a spell was soo bad.

I could see having a reagent based system working, just have to have the weaker/more common spells requiring a few of something extremely abundent, and the most powerful spells require more reagents and rarer reagents. I suppose the hard part would be balancing the availability of the reagents against the strength and use of the spells.

I loved the spell system in Neverwinter Nights. With the wizard you had to prepare spells before the fight (no mana or cooldown). You put spells in a limited number of spell slots and when you used the spell you can't use it again before you rest (out of combat). I don't like the fast paced spell shooting (with super low cooldowns) this way you had to think about not wasting your spells.

I don't know if that was what you expected, but I really like Magicka's magic system. While it had not so many Magicks and regular spells, the general idea was good and it was real fun to play.

Other than that? Maybe Skyrim? Having typical mage clothes not only gave you more damage but also allowed for almost continous use of spells without worrying about mana, which I think was great. Wanna be a mage and use spells as much as possible? No problem. Wanna be a warrior and occassionaly set enemies on fire? Sure, why not. A bowman who can summon undead once for a while? Okay!

What I disliked however was magic system in Guild Wars 2 though. There was no resource bar and all skills were cooldown based - while this may not require you to stop farming to recharge (like WoW) low amount of skills (5 per weapon [I know, elementalist has 4 elements making it actually 20 spells, but shuffling was cooldown reliable too...] and 5 utility, one of which is healing) doesn't actually fit my gaming style.

And Magicka:
Fun, really fun. With a huge array of combinations. But it is really hard to have a game reward diversity. The only way to really play well was to learn 3-4 spells down pat. I remember getting to the Yeti? level, being absolutely creamed, and them just using wet beam -> ice, lightning beam for the rest of the game.

But in general I really like the idea of finger dexterity based magic. Avencast was fun as it added a similar mortal combat style button combination to launch spells. SO you progressed and got better at spells as you used them.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thoughtstem/codespells-express-yourself-with-magic is neat, but looks like they are going to fall flat on the objectives/duel/combat. It feels like they are aiming for a more kid friendly creative experience. I sort of like how it is somewhat resource based, an earth spell is not just spawn a rock shooting towards your enemy, you need to find an actual rock. And I imagine it will be similar with water. I could see that promoting a very interesting creative mmo industry system. With maybe magic aqueducts bringing water to holding tanks to be used in spells.

But I could see it really being unbalanced and one sided. You can create these very very complex spell constructs, or just blast a repel earth spell to destroy one. It will be a challenge to design a system then give as much power to order as chaos.

Note: No matter what you do, you have to watch the end of the KS video. They creates an Fing stone golem, that is soo amazing.

I didnt read anything, i just wanted somewhere to put this (っ ͡ ͡° ͜ ʖ ͡ ͡° )⊃━☆ﾟ. ･ ｡ﾟ•
(っ ͡ ͡° ͜ ʖ ͡ ͡° )⊃━☆ﾟ. ･ ｡ﾟ•