Why spellcrafting is a bad idea.

Vimora

So I'll try to explain in as few words as possible why I hope we never get spellcrafting and why it would mean the beginning of the end for ESO.

There is something called game balance. There is a certain level of power our characters can attain and there is the PvE enemy's strength. The two are supposed to be in balance.

Spellcrafting only makes sense if those crafted spells are more powerful than our base skills and spells, otherwise no one would want them. So you see, right now we have "BiS" skills and spells given to us in our class trees, weapon trees, etc. We only need to use them to level them up as we play our toons. But once spellcrafting is out, these base spells suddenly become subpar. So the "BiS" spells that you now take for granted are suddenly taken from you and if you want make a decent toon, you're faced with an new tier of grind that is spellcrafting. Grind for mats, research, whatever they come up with as a requirement for spellcrafting. Obviously, I do not mean that they will literally take away our current skills, they will just be nowhere near as powerful as crafted ones.

In order to keep game balance, ZOS will give you something with one hand and take away something with the other. What you end up with is more grind. This is why I'm saying it signals the beginning of the end. When an MMO can no longer provide sufficient content to keep people busy for financial or whatever reasons they replace it with grind. They then sell this grind to the player in a very very attractive package. Like spellcrafting freedom.

Case study. (Optional reading):

The exact same thing happened in my previous MMO. What they did was they introduced essence gear, which basically meant that gear no longer had stats, it had empty slots. These slots now needed to be filled with essences, which were basically the stats. They told the player they did this to give us 100% customization over our gear. We can now be all-powerful! And guess what, it was true. The only thing they forgot to mention was that now we had to grind empty gear and stats separately, which meant exactly 6 times more grind than before. When you were finally done, they released new gear with more slots and new, higher tier essences with higher stats and this reset everything.

The funny thing is a small minority cried out against this, but the min-maxers got so used to their full customization power that they would rather grind 24/7 than return to the old system where they can't have everything. In the meantime, there was less and less playable content released. At long last, the new expansion came out, which re-scaled the entire stat system so now they have the essence grind, but no longer the immense power it was initially sold with.

Always watch out if a newly-introduced system brings more grind or less grind. More grind always signals the deterioration of a game.

Sixty5

I see it more as a way to fill gaps in a characters kit in an interesting way.

For instance the Sorcerer has to rely on Force Pulse as a spammable, but this skill does all 3 elemental damage types, and therefore doesn't work very well with Netch's Touch, so if I could craft an equivalent lightning only spammable spell, I have filled that niche, and made a B-tier build into an A-tier one.

Likewise a Templar lacks Major Sorcery as an innate buff in their kit. They can get it from Entropy, but it isn't a great skill in terms of what it adds to their setup. So having the ability to craft a spell that grants that buff would help out the class. In terms of meta performance it wouldn't make much difference, because spell power pots exist, but it would give them more options.

mb10

Could take the game to the next level or destroy its balance completely imo

I cant lie, as a magicka player, I'd love to see it

FloppyTouch

Did they ever release any info that spell crafting if it was ever done would be? A lot of assumptions base on something that never been given any info on. What is spell crafting just made ur skills different colors like dks fire can be blue.

Milvan

For the nine and our lord and savior yet to be born Talos

What in the oblivion did I just read...

Are you really already complaing about something THAT WE NEVER EVEN HAD A CHANCE TO GLANCE AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT UPON IT?

WaltherCarraway

I’d like to craft Crystalsteelhurricanelash for my magicka dragonknight, LOL

FloppyTouch

WaltherCarraway wrote: »

I’d like to craft Crystalsteelhurricanelash for my magicka dragonknight, LOL

XD

LordGavus

Spell crafting could be a bad idea, it could also be awesome.
It depends on how it's done.

Seeing as we have no info on it, or even confirmation it's coming, I'm going to add it to my list of things not to worry about.

That said, I want spell crafting.

gepe87

If Spellcrafting is going to be a feature it would be interesting to see it as a 4th class tree skills, common to every class available to avoid unbalance among them. Changing existing skills could bring unbalance. Frag stam?NO. Sorcerer invisible? NO. DK Permafrost? Non sense...

Vimora

Sixty5 wrote: »

I see it more as a way to fill gaps in a characters kit in an interesting way.

For instance the Sorcerer has to rely on Force Pulse as a spammable, but this skill does all 3 elemental damage types, and therefore doesn't work very well with Netch's Touch, so if I could craft an equivalent lightning only spammable spell, I have filled that niche, and made a B-tier build into an A-tier one.

Likewise a Templar lacks Major Sorcery as an innate buff in their kit. They can get it from Entropy, but it isn't a great skill in terms of what it adds to their setup. So having the ability to craft a spell that grants that buff would help out the class. In terms of meta performance it wouldn't make much difference, because spell power pots exist, but it would give them more options.

I can see what you mean and this would be certainly a better way to implement it, but at the end of the day it's still more grind. It's a way to perfect your toon which is everything that's wrong about MMOs, imo. They are already clearly cultivating an MMO culture in ESO. This game had to take into account all the single player folks who would play it. So it provides a better single player experience than most others of its kind. But... With the transmutation system they now introduced a token grind for guaranteed rewards. This is to help you make your build perfect. In other words, they are training their minmaxers, "perfectionists", and elitists, the bulk of an MMOs most obsessed and loyal supporters, who also happen to be the ones thinking they are better than others.

idk

While I agree that spellcrafting would make game balance more challenging in an already challenging system, I think OP has made huge assumptions.

Take a step back. The Warden was expected to be an OP class. A great many threads were created based on that premise. When it finally went live, and continuing to this day, it is far from the best class though it is the second best raid healer.

So to assume that spellcrafting would essentially create skills that would replace what is currently BiS is an enormous leap since we have no clue how Zos would design and implement such a system.

None at all so this thread is something based on an idea that has come out of thin air.

Further, this idea of comparing it to some essence gear in another game is again, just grabbing for straws since none of us, except Zos, has any idea what they have in mind and certainly no one has a clue how it would actually turn out.

Certainly no essence here. Pun intended.

Vimora

idk wrote: »

While I agree that spellcrafting would make game balance more challenging in an already challenging system, I think OP has made huge assumptions.

Take a step back. The Warden was expected to be an OP class. A great many threads were created based on that premise. When it finally went live, and continuing to this day, it is far from the best class though it is the second best raid healer.

So to assume that spellcrafting would essentially create skills that would replace what is currently BiS is an enormous leap since we have no clue how Zos would design and implement such a system.

None at all so this thread is something based on an idea that has come out of thin air.

Further, this idea of comparing it to some essence gear in another game is again, just grabbing for straws since none of us, except Zos, has any idea what they have in mind and certainly no one has a clue how it would actually turn out.

Certainly no essence here. Pun intended.

I can only repeat myself. ZOS will not create a system that no one or just some people use. Crafted skills will be better than current ones and they will be competing for the same 12 skill slots on your bars. Better can mean higher numbers or more specialized for your build (which again means higher numbers). Creating spell crafting is expensive, they will make sure everyone wants to use it.

It's exactly the same as the essence system I talked about for reasons I mentioned. You are just too lazy to think about it.

Strider__Roshin

There are two directions spell crafting can go: underwhelming or over-performed. Neither of these will be good.

Vimora

Milvan wrote: »

For the nine and our lord and savior yet to be born Talos

What in the oblivion did I just read...

Are you really already complaing about something THAT WE NEVER EVEN HAD A CHANCE TO GLANCE AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT UPON IT?

It is clear to me that you have no idea of the development cycles of an MMO. If you have any input on spell crafting at all, now is the time to give it. Not when it hits PTS in its final form as the company envisioned it and all you can really do is bug test and probably beg for some minor tweaks.

idk

Vimora wrote: »

idk wrote: »

While I agree that spellcrafting would make game balance more challenging in an already challenging system, I think OP has made huge assumptions.

Take a step back. The Warden was expected to be an OP class. A great many threads were created based on that premise. When it finally went live, and continuing to this day, it is far from the best class though it is the second best raid healer.

So to assume that spellcrafting would essentially create skills that would replace what is currently BiS is an enormous leap since we have no clue how Zos would design and implement such a system.

None at all so this thread is something based on an idea that has come out of thin air.

Further, this idea of comparing it to some essence gear in another game is again, just grabbing for straws since none of us, except Zos, has any idea what they have in mind and certainly no one has a clue how it would actually turn out.

Certainly no essence here. Pun intended.

I can only repeat myself. ZOS will not create a system that no one or just some people use. Crafted skills will be better than current ones and they will be competing for the same 12 skill slots on your bars. Better can mean higher numbers or more specialized for your build (which again means higher numbers). Creating spell crafting is expensive, they will make sure everyone wants to use it.

It's exactly the same as the essence system I talked about for reasons I mentioned. You are just too lazy to think about it.

You created this thread for a discussion. Since your comments are based on your opinion that is leveraged by some mysterious game then it is not appropriate to belittle people as you have attempted.

It is in poor form to be calling people Lazy because we do not accept your assumptions and somehow thinking you need to repeat yourself like somehow they missed your point about what some other mysterious game did. We get it. I even commented on the essence gear comment you made about that mysterious game, I seriously doubt it is top rated game.

VaranisArano

Spellcrafting is by necessity limited in this game compared to what we had in, say, Morrowind or Oblivion.

For one, we have a much more limited set of spell effects. I mean, would only nightblades have access to invisibility? Unless you break the various class abilities back into the Schools of Magic, we don't have full access to Illusion, Alteration, Mysticism, Restoration, etc. If you do break it down into the Schools of Magic, then you break a lot of class uniqueness. For example, the nightblade fear effects are Illusion, the Sorc and Warden pets are Conjuration, Templar and Warden heals are restoration, Dragonknights have a lot of tanky Alteration but so are all damage shields.

Second, Morrowind and Oblivion both had a lot of brokenness associated with their crafted spells. However, balance really didn't matter because they were single player games with a difficulty slider. If you made an uber-powerful spell, you could either one-shot everything on very easy difficulty or you could use it seriously on very hard difficulty. In contrast, ESO already struggles to balance sets and skills in both PVP and in PVE, in addition to what the developers change for changes sake. ESO can't afford for players to design spells that cause sets to suddenly become overpowering. Add in the effects of CP, class passive, armor passive, guild passives, and weapon passives, and suddenly trying to balance spells starts to look very, very complex.

How I can actually see Spellcrafting working:
It works like Alchemy. In Alchemy, you have specific abilities you can combine together and there is a set effect. Also like alchemy, this system would need its own set of passives, because trying to combine and balance class, weapon, and armor passives would be seriously complex.
Essentially, ZOS would have to design a spellcrafting system made of preset effects. For example you could choose:
1. a single-target damage or an aoe of a preset area and range (cone, rectangle, circle, each a preset)
2. A single proc or damage over time for a preset max amount and/or time(remember that burst damage is preferable in PVP, so balancing this one gets interesting)
3. 1-3 effects of preset spells similar to how alchemy allows the combination of effects. For example, a shock+stun+invisible, each of those having a different preset already established according to the types of spells chosen beforehand. Or a shock single-target with a lingering smaller shock dot, same thing.
4. The cost of each effect and type is preset by ZOS. Unlike in Oblivion or Morrowind where your ability to create spells was limited by your magicka pool, your skill, and your gold, ZOS has to control both the cost and the effectiveness of crafted spells in order to keep them balanced with non-crafted class and weapon skills. So this suggested spellcrafting system is less "play as you want" and more "pick your combo from options approved by ZOS" which would mean that ZOS has to playtest nearly every possible combo with most of the gear sets and passives in the game. If ZOS were willing to do so, the preset options offer the best chance at getting balanced spells equivalent to the skills already in game.

This is me making up a system off the top of my head, so I'd welcome suggestions, criticisms, and pointing out of the flaws. The general idea here is that ZOS would have to create the preset options for us to choose our options from only those effects and options that ZOS wants us to have and can guarantee are balanced with passives and gear sets. Do note that balancing spellcrafting gets much easier if you remove the ability to use spellcrafted spells from PVP entirely.


As a final note, any spellcrafting system is going to have to address and benefit stamina focused players. Whether that's including poison, disease, and other physical damage effects in the "spellcrafting" system or developing a similar system for stamina skills, we've come a long way from the days when ZOS expected that everyone in the game was going to be a magicka player. Stamina builds are half of the game now, which is a pretty compelling reason for why ZOS probably won't put a lot of development into spellcrafting.

Elsonso

Vimora wrote: »

I can only repeat myself. ZOS will not create a system that no one or just some people use. Crafted skills will be better than current ones and they will be competing for the same 12 skill slots on your bars. Better can mean higher numbers or more specialized for your build (which again means higher numbers). Creating spell crafting is expensive, they will make sure everyone wants to use it.

A Spellcrafting system has to be done in concert with a revamp of the class and skill system. They have to be designed to work together. If they just toss Spellcrafting into the game, with the classes and skills as they are today, then yes, what you say will come to pass.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

Vimora wrote: »

Milvan wrote: »

For the nine and our lord and savior yet to be born Talos

What in the oblivion did I just read...

Are you really already complaing about something THAT WE NEVER EVEN HAD A CHANCE TO GLANCE AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT UPON IT?

It is clear to me that you have no idea of the development cycles of an MMO. If you have any input on spell crafting at all, now is the time to give it. Not when it hits PTS in its final form as the company envisioned it and all you can really do is bug test and probably beg for some minor tweaks.

Well, as it is obvious, you must not be aware that Spellcrafting has ALREADY BEEN DESIGNED and Coded, and they have shown it to us already with gameplay shots.
It is a great system,imo, that works off a grind, yes, and works like the glyph/ rune system in place now.
You collect tablets, combine them for spells, with old TES styles..i.e. conjuration, etc.
The only question is not IF they implement it, but when...
My 2 Drakes, I look forward to it..'
Huzzah!!

Dolgubon

Vimora wrote: »

idk wrote: »

While I agree that spellcrafting would make game balance more challenging in an already challenging system, I think OP has made huge assumptions.

Take a step back. The Warden was expected to be an OP class. A great many threads were created based on that premise. When it finally went live, and continuing to this day, it is far from the best class though it is the second best raid healer.

So to assume that spellcrafting would essentially create skills that would replace what is currently BiS is an enormous leap since we have no clue how Zos would design and implement such a system.

None at all so this thread is something based on an idea that has come out of thin air.

Further, this idea of comparing it to some essence gear in another game is again, just grabbing for straws since none of us, except Zos, has any idea what they have in mind and certainly no one has a clue how it would actually turn out.

Certainly no essence here. Pun intended.

I can only repeat myself. ZOS will not create a system that no one or just some people use. Crafted skills will be better than current ones and they will be competing for the same 12 skill slots on your bars. Better can mean higher numbers or more specialized for your build (which again means higher numbers). Creating spell crafting is expensive, they will make sure everyone wants to use it.

It's exactly the same as the essence system I talked about for reasons I mentioned. You are just too lazy to think about it.

ZOS may well create a system that just some people use. Just some people use Housing. Just some people use Wardens. Just some people use many different spells. Just some people use crafted sets. Just some people run even normal trials, let along vet trials.

Similar to Crafted gear, there will be ways for ZOS for spell crafting to not be a must have, and yet still be attractive for many players.

You are making a huge assumption when you assert that spell crafting would be a huge grind. In fact, looking at Clockwork City, the introduction of Transmutation has greatly reduced the grind, though not quite eliminated it. If they wanted to increase the grind, this is not a system they would have created. Sure Transmutation crystals can take some time to farm, but compared the the hundreds of vMA runs that some people ran for that perfect weapon, or the many normal trial farms, it is peanuts. It maybe makes people want perfect gear, but that has already existed for a long time.

D0PAMINE

Spellcrafting should run on Ultimate or an equivilant, or treated like a potion with an acceptible cooldown. A potion based system would make sense and could be integrated nicely.

AlienatedGoat

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

Spellcrafting has ALREADY BEEN DESIGNED and Coded,[/b] and they have shown it to us already with gameplay shots.

Adding this here for context. Skip to 56 minutes in.
It's the portion of the QuakeCon 2014 panel that unveiled the Spellcrafting system.

Important to note that the developer that is showing the system no longer works at ZOS. I forget where, but there was a post by ZOS stating that the system was still being worked on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gNVxn80j4g&feature=youtu.be&t=56m

altemriel

if you would have more skills ("spells") to choose from, the game would be more fun!!

spellcrafting yes!!!

Iselin

So the OP is basically saying that 100 skills can get balanced but not 150? Good to know.

All that spellcrafting will do is add new skills that you can research one component at a time but the end-results, be they ultimates, single target, AOE, DOTS or DD will be known quantities to the developers that can be balanced just like anything else if you stick it in a class or add it as a new weapon line skill or have it as spellcrafting.

IDK how people can imagine we would be able to craft skills that would be a surprise to the developers lol.

Ragnarock41

I want spellcrafting so everyone and their mums will realize how broken stealth and some other *** are.
When everyone have access to anything, I think we will finally have some sort of balance.
Cus If everyone can be OP, nobody is OP.

And I would like to remind you that in the current state of the game Dk and templar both feel very outdated to play and are only good as block-heal bots. This needs to change, If spellcrafting is the answer, then so be it.

Qbiken

mb10 wrote: »

Could take the game to the next level or destroy its balance completely imo

I cant lie, as a magicka player, I'd love to see it

Same thing can be said about jewellery crafting to be honest. In general I´m against both these things. I would prefer ZOS balancing those skills that already exists before adding new ones.

Fixing skills like magicka Templar´s two main damage abilities (Sweeps and Radiant Oppression), just as an example, are things that needs to be sorted out before sketching on new spells/system. ZOS has the last few patches done a lot of changes to a variety of skills which shows that they´re capable of doing so. It just bothers me that some essential things (like Templar skills mentioned above) takes so long to fix. Nightblade´s impale had the same issue as Sweeps and Radiant oppression has now, but ZOS fixed that. It baffles me why ZOS decides to fix one skill, but not the other, when they have the same issue.

Conclusion: Fix/balance the skills we already have at our disposal before adding new ones

Storymaster

How could you possibly be complaining about a system that you haven't the foggiest idea about prior to implementation?

I am just baffled right now.




What's worse is that you are doing grossly irresponsible fear mongering.

SisterGoat

I don't mind the grind so much when it comes to skills or gear. The worst grind in the game right now is obtaining motifs and epic furnishing recipes, especially for Vvardenfell and Clockwork City... Even getting to thes CP cap is not as bad.

I still would love to see spellcrafting added. Obtaining the components to make them sound fun, just as long as you don't have to grind veteran trials to get them.

Vimora

I thought about it and spellcrafting will be just like furniture crafting. Recipes will drop from containers with a 0.0000001% chance but the good news is they will also be in crown crates.

Jade1986

Spell crafting only makes sense if it is approached in the same way as motifs. We would need SET writs or motifs so to speak in order for it to be feasible, otherwise it would be a balancing NIGHTMARE.

VaranisArano

Iselin wrote: »

So the OP is basically saying that 100 skills can get balanced but not 150? Good to know.

All that spellcrafting will do is add new skills that you can research one component at a time but the end-results, be they ultimates, single target, AOE, DOTS or DD will be known quantities to the developers that can be balanced just like anything else if you stick it in a class or add it as a new weapon line skill or have it as spellcrafting.

IDK how people can imagine we would be able to craft skills that would be a surprise to the developers lol.

My concern is less that we'll be able to craft skills that would be a surprise to the developers, and more that the developers would inadequately test every possible combination of spells against every class, every passive, every gear set combination, and every possible build.

Crafty players still find ways to use the current skills and gear sets in ways that impact game balance and create a clear BIS meta. Judging by experience, I have serious doubts that ZOS can adequately playtest the addition of spellcrafting to the game.

Vizikul

I would like to be able to convert all the magicka class abilities into stamina abilities and the stamina morphs into magicka. It's so disappointing to rely on weapon skills as a stamina character because the class skills only scale with max magicka and spell dmg.