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Escher

Escher

Senior Community Manager
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Oct 7, 2013
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Hi all!

You should notice another Magicka 2 "app" in your library, by the name of the Spell Balance Beta. The goal of this beta is for you to giver feedback on the current state of spell balance, i.e is X spell too strong, Y spell too weak? Maybe Earth wards should remove push-back entirely? etc etc.

This branch of the game will be constantly changing as it's effectively a live Dev environment, as such it could be up and down at weird times, and sometimes things could get plain broken. Please don't let that dissuade you!

We would really value your feedback in making M2 the best game it can be, please do remember though, this beta is to highlight spell balance ONLY.

Many thanks!
 
Great idea with balance test, but...
  1. There shouldn't be any achievement connected (seems that you've moved achievements from stable version).
  2. Why as separate app? Wasn't Steam "versioning" system (available for users from "Betas" tab of games properties) good enough?
Anyway, downloading now.
 
Agalin said:
Great idea with balance test, but...
  1. There shouldn't be any achievement connected (seems that you've moved achievements from stable version).
  2. Why as separate app? Wasn't Steam "versioning" system (available for users from "Betas" tab of games properties) good enough?
Anyway, downloading now.
Click to expand...
If they use the steam beta feature, only people who pay attention to the forums regularly are going to notice. By doing it this way, everyone will see it and go "oh? what's this?" and thus more people are likely to participate.
 
I do hope you're going to inform us about any differences and changes in this build on the fly, at the current state I have no clue if the spell I use operates exactly the same as in the normal build. I am not devoted enough to memorize each spell's behaviour or jumb betveen tvo builds, and surely not a lot of other testers are.
 
This makes me happy. Like, a lot. Those are all my words.

But yes, Escher, full earth wards should completely remove pushback. Make it percentage based like the other wards with damage mitigation. In fact, with the absorption wards, there's justification for making !EDDDD reflect knockback similarly to how !EQQ does in WW. Note, knockback reflection is not a big deal either way; it would just be neat.

Also, !EX should grant immunity to application of a status effect and 50% damage resistance. !EXX should grant immunity and cleanse a status effect and 100% damage resistance. !EXXX should do the former with 50% damage heal and !EXXXX should do 100% damage heal.

!ED should prevent flinching when charging projectiles.

Wizards should be able to queue/dequeue AT ALL TIMES. Period. No exceptions.

There's other stuff, but I'll wait till after I get a chance to play the app. :)


--edit--

Oh, and as Van (Wan?) Silke pointed out, ice machinegun is awesome. However, I think it should have more spread and beams should do more damage comparatively.

--edit edit --

Also, please COMPLETELY remove the cooldown for casting magicks via elements. Seriously. Don't make it shorter - REMOVE it.

--edit edit edit--

Sorry, I keep thinking of things. Make the wizard face the direction of the mouse INSTANTLY. With a controller, you can easily backpedal and cast a spell in the opposite direction. However, when I'm running from the enemy and trying to cast a spell behind me (say a wall to block them) when I swing my mouse around, the wizard's turn doesn't keep up and I end up casting the wall 90 degrees off.

--edit edit edit edit--

And something needs to be able to break walls quickly. Like sprays. And by quickly, I mean one or two ticks of damage.
 
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Since beams have a priority over lightning, I can tell right avay that the Lightning element's cast type (not flat damage) should get buffed a tiny little bit to keep it a viable option even after players re-discover QFAS

I'm going to leave it here to let it sink in. Also, keep Argotha around as a gamma-tester, he's probably right in most of his statements.
 
Yeah, the lightning form could possibly be stronger, but you also have to take into account that lightning is straight up AoE, whereas beams are single-target with potential AoE (detonating corpses).

I say this to caution overbuffing lightning.

On the other hand, the lightning spellform is almost kind of a spray in M2, which I don't particularly like, but that can be seen as meaning that sprays in general need a buff as well. I wish there was more distinction between lightning and non-lightning sprays. I like how it's done in WW better.

Lastly, I agree with Wan Silke that I am probably right in most of my statements. ;)
 
Argotha said:
!EXXX should do the former with 50% damage heal and !EXXXX should do 100% damage heal.

Wizards should be able to queue/dequeue AT ALL TIMES. Period. No exceptions.

Also, please COMPLETELY remove the cooldown for casting magicks via elements. Seriously. Don't make it shorter - REMOVE it.

And something needs to be able to break walls quickly. Like sprays. And by quickly, I mean one or two ticks of damage.
Click to expand...
This seems pretty strong, considering that current absorption wards only heal 33%. Maybe 25 and 50% is more in line?

This made me think of the problem when wet... you can't dequeue water or earth.

With the magick cooldown, focus has a use (besides casting magicks that include lightning while wet). But with a shorter/nonexistent cooldown, people could spam dragon strike for days

and I was annoyed that the only way I could get rid of walls was by replacing them. Beam is kinda lame. But, if sprays could destroy walls, the flamethrower/coldspraying enemies could just plow into you
 
That sounds fair, Skul. I didn't actually test to see how much absorption there was currently.

You couldn't dequeue earth when wet before, either, but I agree there is some loss from gaining poison and I'm not entirely certain I'm fond of it. Though, Sol pointed out it's use in applying a DoT effect in conjunction with cold, which was not possible before.

Focus will still have a use: noobs. That's the only justifiable reason for having it anyway. It's not focused on PvP so what's the harm in spamming dragon strike?

Spray mobs could be warded against or put storms/mines in their way. I know there is a loss in power there, but there's a significant gain in that you can actually do something about the mobs that cast walls and I find them more disruptive than the sprayers, personally, since you can absorb them and kill the other things first.

--also--

Fix teleport, Plz. It needs to go in the direction your're looking. The random thing makes it literally useless.
 
The loss from gaining poison is at the game's current state literally nonexistent. The only spells to suffer vould be DSQQQ, vhich didn't vork in the first place, ESQQQ vhich doesn't really vork on half of the enemies because everything bigger than an elf is nigh-imjune to any pushing force...
The only thing left is SQ, the vater ray, vhich didn't really push anything and can be easily replaced vith SQF, vhich is arguably more effective.

So devs basically took a bunch of spells that vere almost useless/can be replaced and gave us vhole nev element to play around vith. I can't see any other nev elements coming out in near future and it's really fun to see hov Poison interacts vith things, so overall it's a neat move.

The fact that sprays can destroy valls kind of defeats the purpose of the special attack of that beast guy vith a can of soup on his back, other than that it feels like something I'd love to see.

Emergency teleport is kind of useful and randomness is fun, but it's range has to be much, much bigger. If it's meant to escape a horde of enemies, it has to have at least a range of said horde's radius.

An ability to spam dragons vould still be insignificant next to the pover of the FQAS ( See vhat I did there?)

Seriously though, this one spell is arguably half of the spirit of the original Magicka. So many people loved it because of it's ridiculously high DPS, and nov, placed in the vorld of "balanced" mechanics, people are not going to complain over it solely because using it in any form guarantees a victory screen. And vhat's vorse is that there's no clear solution. Lover Lightning's double-ticking potential? Nov this element's iconic strength is gone. Lover Steam's damage? Might as vell bring back vater. Move Lightning's priority over beams again? This vouldn't change much, because Steam-Lightning-Death combination is alvays poverful regardless of the spell form and piss off fans as a bonus. This vin button is a no-vin scenario.

Also I'm not sure if a distinction betveen fire and poison is clear enough. Both do apparently stackanle damage, only Fire has flat numbers and Poison does %of max health and slovs stuff.. An obvious choice vould be to allov fire DoT stack up to 1337 dmg/s but then the Poison vould not be as effective against big targets... Perhaps I'm just underestimating the pover of Poison and Fire Statuses combined.
 
As far as the guy's special attack, everything the game throws at you should have an answer. That's Magicka. You're a wizard with awe-inspiring power at your fingertips but someone throws a wall and you can't just blow it up?

The things I listed would increase the reward for being skilled with the spell system.

I take it you're not fond of QFAS coming back. Personally, I'm disappointed in QRASE not being what it once was. It doesn't even explode. Q.Q

Also, QRASE takes forever to "die".
 
Also maybe poison should explode? Like in divinity original sin. And be opposite to fire. So poisoned targets would explode with force and damage based on poison stacks. In magicka 1 all enemies with poison attack/immunity burned very well.

Not sure about doubling wards' power. Wouldn't this make the game too easy? One thing is upping all weak spells and thus creating multiple variants of game completing and other is doubling ALL defence.

Does anyone know If poison already was in Magicka 2 but was cut like in Magicka 1? Did we have poison attacks in Magicka 2? Or Is it an entirely new element? If it is we may see new elements one day. Like boom, cheese or time.

And why do you call noobs all players who use focus? There are some casuals who just like to play not to make 10 element combos 15 times in a second.
 
What's happened to the ice at the moment? Also, I think standard shields should be able to be boosted like in magicka 1., and agree that teleport and manual magicks should be like Magicka 1
 
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