There are a number of things I like about the change to "Arcane", and few things I don't like. I do miss having a damage type named holy, but by and large I think we've otherwise had huge improvements through the new setup.
I thought it was a great benefit to finally get a "generic magic" attack, because in many instances, elemental connotations being slapped onto different types of magic were unfounded. The biggest problem was an association of "cold" with "evil magic" in the game; cold might seem like the temperature of death to those from european backgrounds, but to someone from an equatorial background; to a man from the desert, I could easily see the parching, desiccating heat as the most prominent symbol of death. What we needed was something to represent "magic meant to hurt" in its pure form; like the "Evil Eye", it is something which has no physical corollary - that's what makes it "magic". It's not something dying from burns, or from frostbite - it's something dying from a curse _alone_. That's what makes it magic, and not a cheap substitute for technology - IMHO, the most truly "magical" fantasy works are those which do what could never (by our current conjecture) be possible for technology. To use LotR as an example; the one ring had one cheap property, invisibility, which we'll eventually be able to mimic. But its other, and much more subtle properties - the great command it could forcibly exact over fate itself, the real reason it was called the ring of Power, are what made the story so profound, what made it into something other than an odd form of gadget porn. I thought it was good to finally get a "pure magic" attack type of some kind. There were a lot of ways this could have fallen out - in one, it could have been a faerie-like magic that the more magical units (elves, drakes, trolls) were more resistant to, and the more mundane units (humans, etc) were weak to. There were others, but frankly, I was pretty happy to have seen any change, because the old balance was quite broken, quite volatile, and also quite boring. I do think the same attack damage being used for holy attacks works well to dispel magical things - as boucman pointed out, religion, in medieval times, was practically the only defense people thought they had against a demon-haunted world. I think there's a downside, in that any discerning heavenly force wouldn't be willing to smite good things at all, but we've always had that problem. What I think is broken in the current setup is: - Ghosts, especially the high levels, are too powerful against undead and drakes. Wraiths are unstoppable, especially because they regain sizable amounts of health when their damage is boosted, because they're quite mobile and hard to hit, and because they even have a ranged attack that the drakes are quite weak to, which makes it difficult to use the only weapon the drakes have against them, fire, to significant effect. They also have the opposite alignment of drakes, are mobile enough to make it matter, and also are very resistant to all saurians' attacks. - White Mages are playably balanced, but are too fragile; this is a holdover from the days when they needed to be unusually fragile so that the undead had any hope of stopping them. I suggest a sizable increase in HP, with other nerfs (probably to damage) to keep things even. - Dark Adepts, and even liches, are still largely powerless against undead - this has never made sense, because they're supposed to be the masters of them. You'd think someone with an intimate knowledge of how to create said unlife would be equally apt at turning or destroying it. (on that note - a "turn" ability for undead magi to seize control of opponent's undead units would be very interesting). - The "drakes vs. undead" vulnerability circle is still there, and this hinges largely on the presence of cold as the dark adept's attack. Combat between these two is still too volatile, mostly from the undead side. Volatile = high damage and/or fragile units, higher-than-normal importance of luck. Frustration, lack of fun, lower importance of skill due to a lower ratio of player-input versus game events. Volatility is bad, which is of course why we made the holy -> arcane switch in the first place, because the holy vs. undead matchup was so unpleasantly volatile. On Aug 24, 2007, at 12:59 AM, Hogne Håskjold wrote: > Soliton wrote: >> >> Arcane is confusing, full of contradictions, and unnecessary. Roll >> it back. >> > > I agree, this was a bad move. I looked back at the Holy damage > proposal > mails and I see that the justification for this change was to improve > coherence and needed for balance. I don't buy that. Wesnoth is > based on > a "traditional European fantasy" setting where /Holy/unholy and > undeads > are well known concepts. "Disenchanting type attack", what the heck is > that? it is in no way firmly rooted in our chosen setting at all. > > -- > mvh (o_ > Hogne Håskjold //\ > V_/_ > > _______________________________________________ > Wesnoth-dev mailing list > Wesnoth-dev@gna.org > https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev _______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list Wesnoth-dev@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
