General Category > A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2
Design Notes: New Mana System
Hearteater:
As long as the boss regenerates enough health when not under attack waiting on long cooldowns is a losing strategy.
Gallant Dragon:
This is absolutely fascinating, and breaks the mold nicely. It'll need a lot of playtesting, though.
Hearteater:
As an additional note on making mana regen lower the lower your current mana percentage, that also makes increasing a characters base mana pool much more useful even by only small amounts because it means your regeneration rate doesn't drop off as fast. Similar to health tanks multiplying base health's effectiveness.
Bluddy:
I'm not sure how well time based penalties (cooldowns) work in a game that doesn't press you for time. Perhaps all enemies should regenerate health to give some urgency to your attacks? This creates a counter incentive to waiting around for cooldowns to end, and a reason to use powerful spells despite their cost.
The combo system sounds fun but I'll reserve my judgement until I see it in action. I think I'd rather see the system I outlined in the previous thread, where enemies have layers of resistance shields that are best tackled by varying the attack to match the layers or finding original ways of attacking (such as lifting up the enemy with a telekinesis spell and attacking from below). In other words, I'd rather the bonus for varying spells be in tackling challenges than in using a set combo system (which I suspect may become monotonous -- everyone will just adjust to firing the sequence required for a combo).
FallingStar:
Its such a big change in the way we use our tools (spells) I almost think I'll have to try it to see how it feels. So long as I'm not leaving rooms to wait for regeneration or standing around a lot I think it will be good. Even so, I guess with the old system I sometimes left boss rooms to wait for my potion timer to cooldown, so anything is an improvement there.
I do like the idea of big spells having additional side effects possibly outside battle, just seems interesting and not something I've seen much in other similar types of games.
One thought on the combo system, perhaps I'm misreading it -- am I right about the only way its being cleared is if all 3 elements in the bar are the same, otherwise just the most recent 2 are retained and a 3rd blank spot opens up? If so, in boss battles or the like just alternating between red+ green (for example) would soon mean that every shot got the finisher bonus (red+green + red(bonus) -> green+ red (bonused earlier)+ green (bonus) => red(bonused earlier)+ green(bonused earlier) + red (bonused) etc. ). Since I already often just hold down two buttons for a boss battle to avoid the regen timer, getting a special combo bonus on every shot for doing that seems a bit off. Of course I could be totally wrong how its working.
On the flipside I do worry that any casting pattern based system needs to have only a few items to combo, since its a bit tough to alternate between more than that for standard mouse users, and for a keyboard user I'd think it would be a nightmare to move/dodge while patterning out spells. I'd almost rather set them up another way, in a pattern on the quickbar or whatever or in a special combo slot somewhere.
Anyways, its all good, will just have to see how it goes in practice, just my small worries and perhaps confusions as I read up the new design ideas.
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