Magicka Weekly Community Update 22nd of April 2011

  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

unmerged(256234)

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Jan 27, 2011
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  • Crusader Kings II
Leader boards
Most of you know what state the leader boards are in today and we all know that it takes away from the fun having people who abuse the system, and a system that allows itself to be abused. We are are working on the security of the leader boards for a future update, but we wanted to ask the community what they think about a possible leader board wipe.

So please, speak up and say what you think about a possible wipe of the leader boards, together with greater security.

DLC
We still have some DLC between here and the PvP patch and some of it is coming very soon. The two new challenge maps, Caverns and Marshlands, are some of the goodies we have in store. We asked the community witch one of them should be free, and the community voted for Caverns, so we are giving it to all of you for free! Marshlands will be a paid DLC for $1.99 and will be released on April 26th.

If you missed the voting, make sure to like Magickagame on Facebook so you don't miss future updates!

Next patch
We are preparing to deploy a new patch soon(tm), it will contain a few small fixes and no major changes. As per usual we are still working on bug fixes and as long as you keep reporting them on our forums, we will continue to work on them. We would like to take this opportunity to once more thank our awesome community for helping us out with tracking down the bugs.

PvP
We have done some balance changes for PvP in house and we quickly learned a lot about what needs to be balanced. Some things are still too good, like the ice projectiles together with arcane, and the ease to spam them. We are not sure what to do with them yet, if you have any suggestions regarding the ice shards or other PvP balance changes you would like to see, make sure to post it on our forums.

There is noting to RSE other than RSE itself.

/Arrowhead Team
 
Ladder board wipe seems like good move, If you can do it once then you can do it twice if skill was involved.
Also I think the achievement of completing a level with only magicks is failing. I completed chapter 3 and 4 with only magicks and didn't get the achievement. Noticed how hard the boss fight in chapter 4 was because that guy is immune to vortex death and only indoors damage magick is Conflagration.
 
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Leaderboards: Wipe them, then there should be a maximum score the player can get, say if they combo'd every enemy with the 5x multiplier for 20 waves, that has to equal a score, make that the capped score for that challenge

DLC: Excellent!

Next Patch: good!

PvP: When a player spawns, make them invisible and INVINCIBLE, with quick movement speed, and allow them to spawn only a certain amount of blocks from the player (this will prevent spawn killing) also FORCE a respawn after 10 seconds, incase the player decides to grief and not respawn

/

Add a delay/ or mana, The delay will in reality only effect experienced Magicka players, as inexperienced players don't really use spam, I didn't use or even think about using spam when I started until I gained much skill in the game, so add a delay or mana so when players try to QSR/RSD/QSD/ spam they will no longer be able too, I think it would be great for balancing

As for spells being "overpowered" I think in pvp giving players the same attributes that the staff of war, combined with aristo staff gives, which is RESISTANCE to all elements and DOUBLE health, that will make spells much less overpowered and make it tougher to earn a frag!
 
Wiping sounds good. As said above, if skill was involved, there should be no problem repeating the feat.
 
PvP balance:
Add charge to more spell combinations and make charge always rewarding. D spam is useless but charged DDDDD can actually kill things.
 
Any DLC is welcome in my book!

Regarding the spam of powerful spells in PvP, I think a good way to fix that would be some kind of system that penalizes same-spell use in a broad spectrum. In fact, I've already written up a wall of text for a future mod I've been dreaming of putting together should mod tools/source code be released :). Fixing the spamfest of powerful spells was one of the things I wanted done...

Short version:
The limits can be decided by a system of points which are tied to some categories such as: Cast Type; Spell Type; Element Type. Cast Points could start at 100 and the number subtracted from it depends on the Cast Type which includes from most to least taxing: Area; Force; Imbue; Self. Spell Points could also start at 100 and they are tied to each category of possible spells results(Aura, Barrier, Beam, Earthquake, Imbue, Mine, Nova, Projectile Bomb, Projectile Barrage, Shield, Spray, Storm). This type could recieve small reductions as long as Spell Type variety is maintained, but receives a penalty with same-spell combos. As for Element Type, each element would have its own points which get reduced on a per-channel basis.

Now, it seems the problem with doing it like that is elements may have to be rebalanced quite dramatically and of course the feel of the game would be so much different. I still say this would work and while the name of the game for the player was intended to be a god with "Phenomenal Cosmic Power", having a few "Provisos" couldn't hurt. That's my 2 cents!
 
I would almost agree with the adding delay/mana to PVP, to prevent spam. However I have no interest in having mana in PVE. I like to play with an XBOX 360 controller because I just have more fun that way. I'm not saying the entire PVP should revolve around people who use controllers. But a controller user cannot spam like a keyboard user.

If there is nothing to prevent spamming then the only way I'll likely use the PVP is if a friend and I are both playing with controllers on the same computer, on the same screen (which is fun). One of the major selling points of Magicka is that everyone has the same arsenal at their disposal.

But yeah, I really just prefer that the PVE content remain untouched as much as possible. I know some changes will have to happen. But too many games balance for PVP and wreck the PVE to the point of where it's no longer the same game (for the worse).
 
Yep, wipe the leaderboards, and better still judge some kind of upper limit (as someone suggested) and dissallow / log all values that are stupidly higher than it.

And good idea on the rest, some of the pvp suggestions here would be wise to take heed of as well.

Also a good point in a future patch, can the server hosts please have the ability to kick players? (As stated in the manual). Obv some people will be arses with this, but it would be nice to remove anyone joining a server and just sitting there in the lobby, or being total dicks while in game. There should always be a way to deal with people and overall it may help manners rather than make em worse, since people would know they couldn't just be arses with no retributtal whatsoever. May help more games to be less passworded.

Also nice in the future would be for people to be able to join a game while its running, not necessarily jump in and play, but to join the actual server at least and "observe" until the end of the chapter, where it could be chosen to jump back to the lobby and include the new person in the next chapter. Obv it would haveto be stated in the lobby that the game is in progress, but it would help lots to fill up spots while playing if so chosen. This would be how Alien Swarm works sorta, with people able to join a non-full server at any point, but only able to actually be included in the mission after the current is finished.

Another couple of good points would be voice chat, (and mute / kick capabilities) and also to extend the length of permissable text chat characters. I'm having to split up a LOT of my sentences due to the massively short text chat limit in both lobby and game. (again, kick capability would help against anyone abusing this).
 
I don't know what to say about the kick capability since I am able to play only with my friend using the "Invite to game" option (whenever I try to join a random online server without password, I receive the "Authentification failed" message). If anybody knows the cause of this, help would be apreciated.

Can't wait for the DLC to be available, hope it will bring new achievements with it.
 
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I would almost agree with the adding delay/mana to PVP, to prevent spam. However I have no interest in having mana in PVE. I like to play with an XBOX 360 controller because I just have more fun that way. I'm not saying the entire PVP should revolve around people who use controllers. But a controller user cannot spam like a keyboard user.
controllers fail at this game anyway. game efficiency is all about spell casting speed and precission of choise when casting spells. I can't say much since I don't play console games much but the control scheme is innovative but not efficient.
 
The number of shards could related to the time you charge.
@Vesuvius: the RQS is spammed because you can press all the buttons down at same time (this makes spamming it lot more easier than more useful/powerful combinations.) ideally you would add more elements but electricity requires you not to have water in it so it often turns into cold arcane beam instead. nothing hard about spamming it.
 
Leaderboard: Wipe.

DLC: Perfect. I shall buy.

Balance: I suggest making immunities permanent or at least last much longer. There's no point in spamming Arcane Ice Shards if the opponent has Ice/Arcane immunity. And since to can't have opposite immunity on one character at once you can't make yourself invincible.
 
You can't cast ice immunity. RQE puts you in a crystal.

@Vesuvius: the RQS is spammed because you can press all the buttons down at same time (this makes spamming it lot more easier than more useful/powerful combinations.) ideally you would add more elements but electricity requires you not to have water in it so it often turns into cold arcane beam instead. nothing hard about spamming it.
I'm well aware of how to spam it, but if you increase the casting times it won't be very spammable. You can't spam beams or mines that way because the casting animation isn't instant. Additionally, it hurts your hands to spam RQS because it's a very awkward position for the middle finger(in relation to the index and ring fingers).
 
Leaderboards:
Wipe, also I think this
there should be a maximum score the player can get, say if they combo'd every enemy with the 5x multiplier for 20 waves, that has to equal a score, make that the capped score for that challenge
...may be a quite good Idea

PvP:
I think maybe something like a Timespan which has to expire before a Spell could be casted again (Cooldown - Time) may fix this.
This Timespan could increase, depending on how often the Spell was casted before, based on a fixed Time-Table
for example
1 -3 casts +0 sec.
4 - 5 casts + 1 sec. each
6 -10 casts + 2 sec. each

This would require to Write down the Spells the Player casts in one way like this
  • Fixed Spell count:
    You could "store" the last 5 - 10 Spells the Player has casted and increase the Timespan needed for a spammed Spell to be "castable" again, depending on how often the Spell was casted before. The fixed amount of Spells stored may keep the Cooldown Time in a moderate Radius.
  • Over Time:
    Could be quite similar to Cooldown Counter except for the fact that it "stores" the spells casted over time, (lets say for example over a Time of 30 Seconds) and increases the time a spell cannot be casted, like the counter, basing on how often the Spell was casted during this time period.

If a spammed Spell would be casted while cooling down you could simply let it "fail" (Empty Element-Bar, nothing happens, maybe casting animation) or change it into the standard "Wind-Spell"

Another option may be to introduce a fagitue or Mana bar which decreases with every spell casted and increases again while you are doing nothing.
While the Bar is empty the Player simply wouldn't be able to cast anything.

Hope this is quite understandable...
if it should not be I'll write it down into a PDF more clear, structured and with diagrams :3c
 
Diminishing returns for spamcasts would be a lot more reasonable than an irritating hard limit.

I agree with this, definitely. I feel like a hard limit, or something like a mana pool would not be in keeping with the spirit of the game. Super Smash Brothers: Brawl has a system to discourage spamming attacks similar to one detailed above. Basically the last 10 attacks you make are stored, and if you keep using the same one it gets weaker and weaker. You can reset your moves by doing ten other attacks and then re-use the one you want to use at full strength. This might add an element of strategy to the game, and should solve the spamming issue. I think this should be in PvP as well as PvE, since it is a lot more fun when you use a variety of spells (though this is a personal choice).

It would also be good to do something with Fire. I know this is an issue that has come up a lot, but it really has issues. In addition to not doing as much damage compared to other elements, it also doesn't combo with anything else at all (except to make Steam). Water, Frost, Earth, Lightning, and Arcane all seem to synergize well, but Fire doesn't really mix with anything, and indeed undoes the effect of water and frost. The damage issue might be mitigated if there was some element that comboed with Fire.