Magicka 2

[Alweth]

Hi. There are not a lot of things about Magicka that disappointed me. One of the main things that did disappoint me is that, after the tutorial, interaction with the environment drops off incredibly. Magicka 2 should have a ton more of environmental interaction:

- Objects in the environment (fences, trees, barrels, walls, etc.) should get smashed to pieces, and you should be able to fling those pieces at enemies (and allies) for damage.
- Grass, wheat, and wooden objects should catch on fire and spread.
- Large earth blasts should cause craters. Even better, you should be able to crumble ledges.
- If you keep Life as a basic element, it should make plants grow.
- Water should turn dust to mud, slowing creatures.
- Generators should be much more common and should do interesting things.
- Electricity should arc along metal.
- You should have Magicks like Tidal Wave, which temporarily sweeps water across the play area, getting everything wet and washing everything along, damaging it if it hits terrain. IE, Magicka that change the environment. (More than just Rain or something.)
- In general, the environment should be more active. For example, a beach level where waves hit the low areas every few seconds.

 

[sanityslayer42]

There's plenty of doors in Magicka that you can interact with... sadly most of them are locked.

 

[unmerged(464796)]

Well, I couldn't agree more with your suggestions, and I think this is pretty much doable for a next installment.

I gotta start by saying I love magicka as it's now, I think it's one of the games I enjoyed the most in my life (And I played a lot)

Currently it seems Magicka has a mix of programmed events that work in a fixed way (fires you can put out, mechanisms that activate with electricity, water you can freeze, rain that wets everyone, etc) and also some props that do not react to events (for example some other fire sources that you can't put out, the snow you can't melt in snowy levels, trees that don't burn, etc).

It'd be great if they can make the next game so you can interact with every element on the screen as expected.
For example:
In snowy maps the snow would be "actual" snow you could melt to reveal the ground below. If it's snowing the snow would eventually cover the floor again.
On some floor types you could form pools of water and freeze them to make some enemies slip or catch their feet in the ice if they are already stepping in the water. On other floor types you could create mud to bog down foes.
You could burn down or destroy trees, and "revive" them.

This full, logical interactivity with the environment would make this world even more alive. It would also create unexpected situations and events that would make for a good laugh specially in challenge mode where players constantly teamkill their friends accidentally (And you get the most fun out of challenges from those accidents)

It would be cool also if some magicks would have other undesirable effects, for example if you use revive around some enemy corpses that didn't already vanished, they'd be revived along with your buddies. It could work the other way with zombies, killing them...

 

[unmerged(669905)]

I agree with everything in the first post.

I think that the spell system needs to be revised. at the moment with spells canceling each other or taking precedence
by element the list of actual useful spells is quite limited.
One of my ideas is that spell effects take precedence by order instead of by element. For example casting lightning then fire could create a lightning bolt that ignites enemies, whereas fire then lightning would be a spray of fire that does lightning damage, another good example would be casting shield then earth to create a wall of rocks but casting earth
then shield would fire a rock that on impact creates a shield(Long range ice lightning shield would be awesome).
Another of my ideas is that opposing elements null each others damage but are not removed from a spell, a situation where this would be useful is if there is an enemy that is healed by both heal and arcane.but you still want to use a beam. So you cast arcane, heal, fire. arcane and heal would both add the beam effect to the spell but cancel each others damage/healing resulting in a beam that only does fire damage. Another thing you could do is earth, lightning, fire. where earth then lightning would add the projectile effect(because earth was put in first) this would cause a ball of fire without the rock(useful against shogoths). lightning, earth, water. would create chain water as a way to make multiple enemies wet quickly and it wouldn't heal enemies that absorb lightning.

I also think sword enchantment needs to be tweaked. Currently you get one swing then you have to re-enchant, which when your surrounded and unable to move, is really annoying. So I was thinking that you enchant a sword with fire and that sword has fire for a set number of uses. and the more elements you enchant it with the lower the number of uses, so you could get like 50 fire swings, but one qrqrase wall. Also you should be able to enchant your sword with magick's by holding control and left click. so you would be able to enchant your sword with revive give you a certain amount of revives for free. meaning if all your friends are dead you wouldn't have to worry about being wet to revive them. also i don't understand why the tome is needed to cast magick's, surly you should be able to cast them if you know the combination. In magicka 2 new game plus you should remove the tomes and the list of magick's so you HAVE to do it from memory hence makeing it harder. another thing, i think self casting earth shield should add a physical damage resistance aura rather than rock armor. that way the aura can disappear at the same time other immunities do and you not left basically invulnerable. That earth shield lasts almost indefinably can be recast ridiculously quickly and makes you immune to lightning(near enough) is just OP.

 

[purple wizard]

Good but not enough

I really like the idea of a more interactable environment as it rather adds some awesome options rather than fudging up the spell/element system like LadyRamkin suggested.

No offense, LadyRamkin, your ideas are intereseting but total garbage compared to Magicka's current system...

I'd rather like to see:
- more interactable environment
- an actually working Multiplayer
- a Capture the Flag game mode
- a map like the Debug map, which was removed again some version ago (http://store.steampowered.com/news/8585/) for testing stuff and derping around
- a way to cast poison as element
- an ingame chat or at least some buttons to join the public chatroom for Magicka in Steam
- Global ingame leaderboards for Challenge points, PvP matches, wins/loses, kills/deaths, etc.
- and of course Steam Cloud Support

 

[unmerged(669905)]

Why is it garbage? It gives more confident players more control over their spells and less confident players can still just spam the most op spell they can find. i dont like that i cant cast ice beam myself and instead get a stupid arcane shotgun that never hits anything. And it wouldn't be just the ice beam, you could have a earth beam that acts like a machine gun and fires lots of little rocks. shield, fire self-cast could make you immune to fire but fire, shield self-cast could make a wall of fire that follows you around. just sayin the way it is is woefully limited. Lost magic had a better spell system and the only thing that let that down was that it was on DS so you had to draw the elements you were combining.

on a side note you should be able to alter rain. like add a fire to it to rain fire. or a heal like those guys in OSOTC.

while i don't beilve poison should be an element there should be a way to create it like steam or ice.
maybe earth, heal, earth, or some such. while i think this idea is silly, poison being an element is also silly.

also Im not sure where to post this but on my magicka i have an avatar for what looks like a dragon-born wizard on my character select. But he gives the description for the survival kit wizard (the one with the Hat), and when clicked he
rearranges the order of the wizards and nothing happens. how do i get rid of him... or is he supposed to be there?

 

[purple wizard]

I apologize for any grammar and spelling mistake in advance.

Stuff like a machine gun or fire/life rain should rather be magicks.

The main reason, why that's garbage is this: (I'll give some examples)

You simply can't spam stuff, because the order will change very often.
For example: I really like spamming QSDF- and SDR-missiles alternately (I never saw a "less confident player" spam anything), which is quite "OP".
With your system, I couldn't do that, because it's really hard to keep the order of the elements exactly the same.
Sometimes I also mess up and get QSDR or SDQ instead of QSDF and SDR (note the order of the elemets)
I really don't need a lame machne gun in a situation that requires simple missiles...

Another example:
You are in a hectic fight and quickly need an aura.
But wait, you accidently cast ERAS instead of ASRE and bam you'll just have some ... (I have no idea what kind of garbage you would get then) instead of the spell you actually needed.


And really, what do you want with a fire wall that follows you? You can just area-cast a normal fire wall when going around.
Or cast EFDFF as enchant. Would be much more effective...



You also have to understand the system of the enchantment:

First, you put some elements on your weapon. Let's say you enchant it with a stone wall, EFDS (woe onto you, if you don't enchant these elements in this exact order...)

After the first entchantment we can
-enchant more elements to make your spell stronger
-or directly cast the stone wall
-OR cancel the elements on our sword, by enchanting the opposite elements (would I need to cast ERAW to cancel EFDS or would AWER do the job too? *coughs*)

We do former in this example and enchant it with another Fire-element for stronger fire damage and burning effect.
Now we can cast it and expect to get a lined stone wall. Oh wait, we messed up with the order of the elements...
(enter something weird and garbagy here)

Moreover, how would you control what layer of enchantment you cast or re-enchant, maybe some layer manager like in Gimp/Photoshop?
Or something like ALT+SHIFT+SCROLL WHEEL?
If you want to to cast it, you'd have to press something like SHIFT+ALT+LMB
And for re-enchanting you would need to press SHIFT+ALT+STRG+LMB?
Additional, you talked about storing magicks on sword, what key combination would you need for this? I don't really want to imagine...

Sounds a-w-e-s-o-m-e!!


To the magick/tome system:

It's really not hard to remember the exact order of elements to cast magicks....oh...wait........

You really want to have ALL magicks unlocked at the beginning of a challenge, versus or adventure?
Well, f*ck it, let's just screw up everything! ٩(̾●̮̮̃̾•̃̾)۶

Magicks are, especially in PvP, like cookies you get for fighting better than your opponent and shouldn't be unlocked from the beginning.
That would give "more confident players" even more "confidence", because they could cast any magicks they want, since they know the combination already...


Also, poison as usable "element" isn't silly, it would add loads of new spell combination, without making any "output"-troubles.
It could also add some new magicks like a Poison Wave, same as conflagration, but poison instead of fire.
Or maybe Poison Rain? Now THAT would be awesome!
(Calling poison an element is still wrong somehow)

 

[unmerged(669905)]

So what your basically saying is its garbage because you are too stupid to press the correct buttons in the right order... cool i can appreciate that. no reason to go "sarcasm psycho" though, all you have to do is simply say you are unable to use a keyboard/controller with any precision and that would be the end of it.

Also I never suggested that "You really want to have ALL magicks unlocked at the beginning of a challenge, versus or adventure" I just said in adventure mode and in magicka 2 none of the magick's may even be the same combination, and considering the number of possible combinations you would have to paly adventure at least once(or cheat) to learn what the magick combinations are. so yes, if you can figure them out why not have them at the start?

Also thank you for this:
"After the first enchantment we can
-enchant more elements to make your spell stronger"
I did not know that, I always assumed that the new enchantment overrode the previous enchantment. So your over the top hate speech was actually useful, well done.

 

[purple wizard]

Well, it's not easy to cast four buttons at the same time, five times per second with exactly the same delay between each finger activating the button every time.
Please don't call me, that I'm stupid, because I don't have control over each microsecond...

You never said, that all the magicks should be enabled at the beginning, yeah, but you didn't say the opposite either!

Hm, hold on, didn't you say, there shouldn't be any tomes to learn magicks?
How will you learn the magicks then?
A NPC tells you the element combination maybe? (Ba Dum Tss...)
Or how about a little pop-up: "You have learned the magick haste. But we won't give you the element combination, you will unfortunately have to test out all the gazillion possible element combinations, because we also took out the magick list!"
Maybe if we make a little macro programm, that tests out all these combinations? :rofl:



Yeah, I like sarcasm...a lot.

 

[unmerged(669905)]

"In magicka 2 new game plus you should remove the tomes and the list of magick's so you HAVE to do it from memory hence makeing it harder."
"In magicka 2 new game plus you should remove the tomes"
"In magicka 2 new game plus"
"new game plus"
...
"Well, it's not easy to cast four buttons at the same time, five times per second with exactly the same delay between each finger activating the button every time.
Please don't call me, that I'm stupid, because I don't have control over each microsecond..." I think this makes any sense. why are you taking about microseconds? the spell input + spell effect is way longer than a microsecond. why would you have to do ANYTHING that fast. I would not say Im a good player, in fact I would say I was awful. and I am unable to touch type. but i am still able to cast a spell in the same order every time quick enough to be effective. i only mention this because anything i can do, you(you or anybody else) CAN do better.

In-fact any spell I cast regularly i cast in the same order (for magick's you have to) such as qrqrase, dqrqrqrqr, edddd, qfqfass... actually that's about all i use. except for immunities and magicks and the occasional challenge round where i spam fire everywhere.

 

[purple wizard]

microseconds, milliseconds, whatever.
I guess, that milliseconds fit more in this case though...

My simple point is, that you can't really controll the input, if you press more than one key at the same time, you understand?
Open something, where you can enter text and try pressing QDSF or QWER over and over again. You will see, that the order of the elements vary.

"In magicka 2 new game plus you should remove the tomes and the list of magick's so you HAVE to do it from memory hence makeing it harder."
"In magicka 2 new game plus you should remove the tomes"
"In magicka 2 new game plus"
"new game plus"

Whut?

 

[unmerged(669905)]

"new game plus" is what i said instead of "didn't you say, there shouldn't be any tomes to learn magicks?" IF all magick's could be cast WITHOUT tomes "In magicka 2 new game plus you should remove the tomes and the list of magick's so you HAVE to do it from memory hence makeing it harder." Basically i called you an idiot again only more subtly.
also:
qdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdfsqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsfqdsf... i cant be arsed anymore.

Good night.

 

[purple wizard]

Good copy/paste work there


edit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvEkeiz4uwY This fast?

 

[unmerged(17083)]

I'd rather like to see:
- an actually working Multiplayer
- a Capture the Flag game mode
- a map like the Debug map, which was removed again some version ago (http://store.steampowered.com/news/8585/) for testing stuff and derping around
- a way to cast poison as element

What did the debug map do? Are you sure it was removed or just disabled?
Poison sounds cool but its really only useful against the AI monsters. Wizards can just cast heal and remove all poison.

 

[purple wizard]

The debug map was a simple map for testing stuff.
There where little areas where you could step onto and monsters would spawn.
The files for the map accidently slipped into a patch, but were taken out with the following patch
I had a backup though and still have these files, but the map didn't work anymore after this patch...


But yeah, the map was quite awesome for testing monsters and doing random stuff.

A little screenshot:

 

[unmerged(669905)]

I also think properties should be able to interact, like if you had fire, cold, arcane, heal, then random element/s (who says magicka 2 has to have a limit of 5) this mix of spray then beam could create a spell that fires a wide beam, covering an area similar to that of conflagration, an example of using this property would be to have fire, cold, arcane, heal - (this sets up the main property of the spell) - earth, fire, shield - this could create a spell that is sort of like a mixture of the conflagration and wave magick's, it would be a wave of fire walls that expands outward from your starting position.

you could mix projectile then beam to charge and fire a stream of projectiles rather than just one. Spray then projectile could create a fan of projectiles(similar to ice except as you charge it doesn't narrow the projectile range).

Also the wall of fire that follows you around doesn't have to be fire, it could be hovering rocks for mobile protection so you don't have to remain stationary, or a a ring of hovering mines that you can run into the enemy with.

The ice effect mixed with beam would be cool because it would be like a laser shotgun.

If you had arcane, heal, shield, water then AOE cast you could have a circular beam that follows you around and pushes enemies away.

Another point, if you do mess up the spell input then just fire it anyway. Its magicka if you mess up, you(or preferably someone else) deserves to be blown up, and if the spell is determined by order you might discover something awesome. being able to pick apart a woven spell just seems too precise a thing to do in the magicka verse.

"Also, poison as usable "element" isn't silly, it would add loads of new spell combination" yeah!!! like a poison rock or a poison beam or a poison wall or a ... well considering poison itself doesn't do any damage its not gonna be amazing, unless maybe you give it knock-back like water.

There also needs to be more magick's like haste, maybe one that increase melee attack damage, or one that makes aura's only affect friendly players for a certain amount of time. Just something more party boosting. also a magick that is the opposite of fear, using it would make all nearby enemies attack you and only you. This might make the tank in the party robes DLC actually useful.

Another thing i think rain should be downgraded from a magick to a "element" so that you can put in water, water, fire in that order and it becomes a rain "element" then you could add things like earth, fire to create meteors or lightning for lightning storm, or heal for heal'y rain or arcane, heal, fire for big pillars of fire to appear on the map. also poison could be the same as rain. so you put in heal, earth, heal and it condenses into poison. you could also do the same for summons, so you put it sedqfs (summon elemental) which condenses into a summon "element" then various combination's can summon every creature in the game. like heal, water, earth, heal could be a tree spirit. or you could add a single element to get an elemental.

While i have suggested lots of changes i do love the original magicka, its just i bought it for the spell system but played it for the humor. mainly because i felt the spell system was too limited. For example, using Steam, fire, earth, arcane, shield will create a specific spell. Using the current system there is 120 ways (5!) to cast that EXACT same spell.120. its just wasteful. With the change I suggested EVERY combination would do something different(if only slightly)

The reason I'm so adamant about this is mainly because i have no friends and a terrible internet connection meaning i can ONLY play this single player. and i would like a greater variety of things to do. at the moment if you just spam random elements and cast its either a beam, a shield or a rock. I'm just trying to expand upon what is in theory a brilliant system.

 

[unmerged(669905)]

I know that nothing i suggest will be taken seriously, by anyone. but since i have nothing better to do and since nobody wants to talk about anything else im just gonna keep listing awesome things you could do with the changes to the spell system i suggested, you never know, one might be made a magick or a staff ability(it wont...)

so to start with resistance auras should prevent that element existing inside of the aura and lock that element tp any wizards inside. This would allow you to do things like ignite your opponent in then cast a anti-water aura so they burn to death. or you could cast - earth, lighting,(for the projectile effect)cold,(to make cold the main property)shield, fire - this spell would fire a projectile that on impact makes the target cold AND creates a anti-fire aura.
you could also do - earth, lighting, water, shield, arcane - a ball of water that on impact pushes AND creates a circle of mines therefore pushing enemies in to the mines.

earth, lightning, lightning, fire - fires a ball of lightning that on impact explodes in to fire.

water, water, fire, arcane, fire - makes pillars or fire come out of the sky. self casting this could make a really big pillar of fire fall around you causing burn and knock-back to nearby enemies/friends.

lightning, earth, lightning, arcane, shield - normal lightning spell that creates a ring of mines around each enemy it jumps to.

arcane, heal, fire, cold, earth, fire, shield - creates a wave of flaming rock walls. that rise, explode, rise further away, explode, ect to a certain range - (similar to what the Asha'man do at Dumai's well).

arcane, heal, fire, cold, shield, water - creates an expanding row of anti-water aura as a way prevent wet over a large area, in case of rain or something, other elements can be used at the end to change aura(obvs).

fire, fire, fire, fire, fire - could be blue - just sayin.

earth, lightning, shield, arcane, shield, earth, fire, water, arcane - would create a projectile that makes an anti-summoning aura - mainly because zombies are annoying.(enemy zombies)

shield, shield, heal - instead of double shield canceling it could do the opposite, this for example would create an area of healing rather than canceling healing. this could be self cast for a "regen" like effect.

water, water, fire, shield, shield, fire - this could make it rain fire covering any where the "rain" touches with a aura that does fire damage.

arcane, heal, earth - a rapid stream of tiny pebbles that act like a machine-gun (sort of what like Ang dose in "last air bender")

earth, shield - self-cast could make a ring of floating rocks for mobile protection. then maybe is if you AOE push they could fly away like projectiles.

An example of what you can do with just 3 elements(well technically 4)
arcane, water, cold, lightning - would fire a arcane beam with lightning charged icicles in it.

arcane, lightning, water, cold - would fire a arcane beam lightning that does physical ice damage.

water, cold, arcane, lightning - when un-charged would create a shotgun like beam that does lightning damage. when charged concentrates the beams like with normal ice.

water, cold, lightning, arcane - when un-charged would create a shotgun of lightning bolts (each able to jump to diffident targets) that do arcane damage. when charged concentrates the bolts in one direction (cant really see that as useful though...)

lightning, cold, water, arcane - (had to put cold first as the lightning then water together would have canceled into the chain attribute) would create lighting with little icicle's that jump from enemy to enemy doing lightning physical and arcane damage.

lightning, arcane ,water, cold - would fire a chaining arcane lightning beam that has little icicle's doing lightning physical and arcane damage.

 

[unmerged(259759)]

The debug map was a simple map for testing stuff.
There where little areas where you could step onto and monsters would spawn.
The files for the map accidently slipped into a patch, but were taken out with the following patch
I had a backup though and still have these files, but the map didn't work anymore after this patch...

View attachment 74816
But yeah, the map was quite awesome for testing monsters and doing random stuff.

A little screenshot:
View attachment 74817

Care to send me those files please?

 

[Dikharz]

Care to send me those files please?

Hey KrietoR,

We could certainly give you those files.
You can find the files of the debug content link:here.
The password of the zip is: f1r3b4lls4r3h0t
This .zip contains the files you need for the debug map as well as the Dragon Robe which was added with the patch along with the debug file.
Although you could play that map and with the robe at that time, it isn't working anymore at this moment.
You can select the map (found at challenges) and the robe still though, but while loading the game just crashes.

Have fun checking the stuff out, we did atleast!

Your fellow fireball catcher,
Dikharz

 

[purple wizard]

I actually sent the files already, but I didn't write a reply here.