Cloth Map Interface & Spell Balancing

and my random ramblings

from Elemental Forums

I noticed that when casting spells like Currigan's Inferno it seemed random whether it would cast where I clicked or not.  I play in cloth map only mode so I can run it on my laptop.  That still is pushing it late game on even tiny maps.  But I wanted to see some of the pretty landscape I've been missing out on and saw that there was a hue area of effect circle for my terraforming spells!  That doesn't show up on the cloth map at all.

I don't know if this is just something that has not been addressed yet, but things like this need to be fixed I think.  Make sure the game is fun and fully playable with almost all the pretty graphics off...  if that's not too much to ask.  Massive scale down was a really played up pre-release, talk of playing the game on a low end netbook was going around.  Haven't really seen any of that since then.  

 

On another note, spell casters are way overpowered.  My sovereign, no equipment, can take out huge enemies with ease.  Could be that I never get involved in a conflict or use mana till I have a few shards and over 1000 mana stored up.  I do like being the badass wizard teraforming the land just for the heck of it.  But the one thing I have not seen is a rival.  I know if I store up a certain amount of mana, get spell blast, and a decent amount of Int points the game is over.   I would kind of like to see a battle between two master wizards that makes the land tremble.  Oh, and fire seems slightly overpowered... or, rather, earth, wind, and water are under powered.  In my opinion.  And why can you research to level 10 spells if the highest spells go is 5?  How cool would it be to have long almost cinematic tactical spells that cost a thousand mana?  

 

Oh, another side note.  Custom armor for heroes.  Hard to get, hard to find, not worth the effort.  All my "unique" recruited units end up looking like clones once they are in a full set of armor.  I like the idea of training up individual warriors.  Maybe more could be done with this?  Research specific armor types: assassin, wizard, knight, warrior, etc.  They each raise certain stats and have that look to them.  Assassin could have a pack that gives the assassin skill (initial attacks avoid defense, something like that, I forget), armor could raise dodge and accuracy while lacking in defense.  Whereas a warrior could have higher strength and hit with little dodge or defense, kill or die sort of thing.

 

Sorry for not sticking to one idea, just sort of rambling.  I'm sure others have probably posted with similar stuff and I just did not see it.

4,359 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

The problem with putting the cool visual effects on the cloth map is that they use up system resources, and part of the point of the cloth map is that it's not supposed to be resource-intensive.

That said, I am mostly zoomed out to cloth-map distances, and wouldn't mind some spell effects.

 

I would like to see some high-tier spells as well.

 

The mode-specific armor is cool. Something of that nature that I'd like would be some sort of weapon or item that rewards you for not using armor at all.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

yesss high tier spells that wrack the world - cause major problems - solutions - yum yum

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I do think that the cloth map definitely deserves some more love.  There's no way to see where you can put a harbor for transport boats (without going back to the regular view, and back to cloth map), and there's no delineation between a hill that you can move on and a mountain that you cannot.  I enjoy the cloth map, just think it could use some tweaks to make it even better.  I know it's not one of the main problems with the game, and there are other issues to address, but if they could put it on a list somewhere...  O:)

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Cruxador, reply 1
The problem with putting the cool visual effects on the cloth map is that they use up system resources, and part of the point of the cloth map is that it's not supposed to be resource-intensive.

That said, I am mostly zoomed out to cloth-map distances, and wouldn't mind some spell effects.

Well, what I was talking about was more what Stewapet mentioned in his reply.  Keeping the cloth map simple is the point of having a cloth map mode, but it ought to be functional still.  I've sat for a while trying to walk in what was clearly flat land till I took cloth map mode off and found out the mountain just was not showing up.  Now, that is probably just my computer being buggy, but there are legitimate problems with the cloth map that should be addressed at some point.  These fixes include, but are not limited to, distinctions for where one can pass or not, clearly delineate cliffs from shoreline, show where I have caused volcanoes to pop up, and have some sort of area of effect indicator for spells.

But yeah, like stewapet said, there are bigger issues to resolve before these polish tweaks really need to be addressed.  The sooner the better though, in my opinion.  I'm really happy with the way this game is turning out.  I was starting to regret pre-ordering the special edition way back, but things are starting to look really good.  I actually really enjoy the game in Beta as is, so the fact it is only going to get better has me rather excited.