this one is written from a SotW act1-2 perspective.Resource management
I find it a very antiquated design concept that mana is a problem at lower levels and abundant at higher ones. I don't find it one bit awesome to be 80% restricted to basic attacks for hours upon hours of playtime. Using my abilities is fun. Battles should be balanced around me using them. I want to be pondering how to best use them to win each battle, not how much I can afford to use to have enough mana for the next five to follow. That typically results in a lot of basic attacks, abilities only from characters who can replenish their mana (Krimm, Chalassa, Vaelis) and only the most efficient spells out of anyone else (usually heals). The mana at least isn't so bad that I couldn't blow the full mana bar for a speedy victory in most fights. Anyway...
I want to talk about Rage, Krimm's ability that grants her mana when she is hit or hits someone. This works out really well, it has me trying to make her trade blows as much as possible. Yet it's not a guarantee she'll always have mana. If nobody wants to hit her and she can't multi-hit, she's only gonna melee and get 5% mana back per turn. So it's mana management but not infinite mana. That's great.
Abilities have set costs, but our mana pools grow constantly. With each level and each point in will. This means it gets easier and easier for Krimm to handle her mana, because that 5% mana is going to give her more and more absolute mana as her pool grows. This is bad. Growing mana pools are bad. The larger your mana pool, the more effective any % regen will be. It's not just Rage, there's taverns, there's half-day rest, there's Meditation (Chalassa) and the most infamous one, Jariel's Vigorous Sonata. But it cuts both ways. If I had a level 2 Krimm, I would not teach her Rage. It would be awful with that mana pool. I might be tempted to take some points in will and take Rage at level 4, and maybe that will work out. Yet as I level up, her mana pool will grow, to the point she'll always have mana because the 5% from Rage become so much absolute mana. And at that point I'll be wishing I hadn't taken those points of will, and I might make a mental note to really suffer through the small mana pool until level ups have made it decent, so that I can have the perfect stats for that damnable endboss.
If we look at Vaelis' Recovery, that is a more acceptable ability. The size of your mana pool doesn't determine its effectiveness. I think however it should restore way more than 10/turn, as I'm sitting in it constantly and even then holding back on using abilities. A better design would be like 30/turn, an even shorter delay and no cost for stances, so that I would sit in that stance for mana and swap into the offensive stance when I want to spend it.
But this is under the turn system, and we need to look at it from the global timer system perspective. Regen will no longer be measured in points per turn but points per time unit on that clock. So if you take a short action, you get less regen, and a long action lets you get more. With that being said, here come my ideas for Loren 2 resource management:
- Each character has a means of replenishing mana. It can be getting hit, it can be delivering hits in general, it can be only specific attacks, it can just be a flat passive regen, you could have an ability to give up offense/defense for more regen.
- Characters have abilities that cost both more and less than their average regen.
- Mana pools are static. Will increases the power of your regen abilities (or just your passive regen if it's too hard to program). This is needed since...
- Speed will make your actions faster, so you'll get less regen between them.
- No character can end up in a situation where they are both out of mana and means of replenishing it.
