One Affinity Per 10 Levels

A suggestion was made earlier, after someone pointed out "if we get affinities every 5 levels, why do they scale every 10 levels?", to make it so we get an affinity level every 10 levels instead. Since this seems to be extremely debatable with lots of differing opinions, I'm going to just be an observer on this, and then when all the logic is added up at the end, I'll weigh up the suggestions and stick it to a vote.


Post your input and why you'd like to see this change (or not see it), or possibly suggest another change to rectify this.

Yeah sure, most things scale every 10 level. However, given how affinities are set up today, we'd have to rebalance quite a large part of the game should we wish to change affinities to do the same. Bare in mind that it's not only spells that would be affected, many abilities and other stuff are related to what your current affinity level is. And at the end of the day, I generally don't see the value in switching over from one every 5 levels to one every 10 levels. It's a rather trivial change, and it's not like spells don't have level requirements on them too.

Affinity and Spell Tiering

Currently, players get 1 affinity level per 5 base levels. This is fine, it allows room for customization. The problem lies in maybe it's a little -too- much customization possibilities here?

By the time someone is level 50, players would have access to 11 Total Affinity Levels. Back in ZCURPG when I first tossed the suggestion for affinties, I intended it to be a one-affinity per character system. Meaning absolutely -zero- multi-affinity builds as there are now.
With this said, this poses a huge balacing problem upon WindStrike and Orithan.

Remove the ability to go multi-affinity altogether. This doesn't change the rate players attain affinity levels, but does lock a player into an affinity the moment they create their character.

• Easier to balance.
  
• Easier to deal with affinity bonuses/losses
  
• No need to stick said bonuses/losses into spells since a global overall formula will work due to lack of multi-affinity shenanigans.
  

• Doesn't provide the customization the game has now.
  
• Our current spell lists go to a maximum affinity level of 7, so as it stands, one player can have access to -all- spells in some form, of one affinity type by the time they're level 30. We can spread that out a bit more.
  

Change the rate at which players attain affinity levels to 1 affinity level per 10 levels.

• Our spell scaling already scales per 10 levels, so what really is the reason to level affinities every 5?
  

• Limits customizability somewhat, as it makes it much harder to do All Affinity builds.
  
• Limits flexibility, since players need to think twice before spending that affinity level.
  

With this said, since we're overhauling Spells anyways, why not overhaul the affinity system to fix these problems? If we go with Version A, where players get one affinity, and one affinity only, then we don't need to specialize affinities, and there would be more spell options available overall, because overlap must exist in some form with this type of system. Something WindStrike has been refusing to do. But with only one affinity, players would get locked into a single school of spells. We'd need restorative spells for all affinities. We'd need buff spells for all affinities. We could introduce more spells to close the gaps given to us now by keeping EFFECTS unique per spell.

Or if we go the Version B route, it'd be way more complex for players to build out their characters. Multi-affinity builds shouldn't have access to the extremely high-end spells of affinities, because they chose to go for multiple affinities instead. Currently I've seen pushes for developing more for multi-affinity builds, but why should they have the raw power that someone focused in one affinity has? They chose multi-affinity to open up different options for them to make them more versitile. Why should they need the raw power when they have versitility on their side? That's what I don't understand.

Alright. Well, as I said in my previous post, proposed system B has no advantage if you ask me.


Proposed system A has it's own problems. Firstly, it limits dual affinity builds from ever existing. Until the spell re-work, (and maybe after depending on how it's done,) players will be extremely weak to their elemental weakness. This will make spell combat very volatile. Keep in mind that enemies/monsters will only have all affinity levels in one type too. Furthermore, this still breaks some parts of the game that we'd have to re-work. (Split recovery strike for example.)

I don't buy the argument that it's easier to deal with affinity bonuses/loses though. Technically it will, but technically we'll also be switching over that calculation to spells where it's a non-issue in the future. Yes, with this system we'd not have to switch, but I honestly see it as a none-issue with the switch.

We'd probably have to re-work all spells with this change anyway, given that we'd know for sure exactly what all players could have access to at any given level. Generally I don't think this is a great set-up for the system, if so I'd rather we got with the idea Nimono posted in the other thread.



Regardless, I am against both the proposed systems in this thread.

I disagree with this system, largely because it badly cuts down on customization. From my time here, ZURPG has always been about customization; of which you have a fine degree of control over when you create your characters and DMs for their NPCs and enemies and has been built around that concept for a good 3 years now. One affinity per 5 levels is the best this game can offer for flexibility in this department, due to making it easy to mold your character into your unique playstyle reasonably early on.
While there is a rewrite to the spells coming, I don't think we should go to the trouble of completely rewriting such a huge system just to make it slightly easier to balance.

FYI, if Version A of Sephiroth's suggestion comes through, I quit the game. I realize that this is a very extreme thing to do at face value, but one of the main reasons I stayed here is because of the core focus on the customization the game provides. If the game gets to the point where it gets restricted to 1 affinity per character, I feel the game has become beyond salvagable in regards to customization. There would be little variety and room for customizing your abilities in general and being permanently locked out of certain playstles (or having them badly hindered) depending on the affinity you choose really does not help.

Currently I've seen pushes for developing more for multi-affinity builds, but why should they have the raw power that someone focused in one affinity has? They chose multi-affinity to open up different options for them to make them more versatile. Why should they need the raw power when they have versatility on their side? That's what I don't understand.

What do you define as "raw power"? Higher level spells = more Damage? Or stronger effects in what they specialize in? Or something else?

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There would be little variety and room for customizing your abilities in general and being permanently locked out of certain playstles (or having them badly hindered) depending on the affinity you choose really does not help.

Right now, each affinity is seen as "the core concept for enforcing one style of play", or well, that's the intended idea. Theoretically, if we were to drop down to just using one affinity for each person, do you think the lack of multi-affinity issue would be fixed if the core concepts for each affinity expanded their roles and naturally included our multi-affinity options? Which would then potentially result in something like 50-60 spells for each affinity, more getting unlocked as you naturally level-up.

What do you define as "raw power"? Higher level spells = more Damage? Or stronger effects in what they specialize in? Or something else?

A combination of the two, really. More Damage, more potent EFFECTS.

There would be little variety and room for customizing your abilities in general and being permanently locked out of certain playstles (or having them badly hindered) depending on the affinity you choose really does not help.

Not if each affinity wasn't specialized, and -every- affinity had plenty of options for different playstyles. Want to be a Shadow healer? Sure. Want to be a Nature Ninja? Be my guest. The point is we won't be cutting back on flexibility, the point is we'd be cutting out unnecessary complexity in favor of smoothening out certain calculations.

Generally I don't think this is a great set-up for the system, if so I'd rather we got with the idea Nimono posted in the other thread.

For the record so all know what this refers to:

Alright, here's a suggestion of my own that I know that NO ONE will ever accept, but discussion, lol!

No affinity levels, you only get two affinities, max. One during the tutorial, the at some arbitrary level like 15, 20, 25, or 30. probably 15 or 20; the second may or may not be optional. Spells could be cast regardless of affinity (though level requirements always apply), but not having the affinity of the spell makes it weaker, such as reducing its damage and/or removing/weakening its effect. Bonus/loss would be either written into the spells, or a flat "damage multiplied/divided by X", where X is some arbitrary number we decide is balanced like 1.5 or 2 or whatever.

(The idea here is to increase customization by allowing you to cast any spell so long as you meet its non-affinity requirements, but limit your affinities so you have some spell types you're really strong with but others you're weaker with- you decided to focus primarily on one or two spell lines, after all! Also it's entirely possible to take NO affinity should you choose so, so you have no weakness or resistance, but you pay for it in weaker spells all around.)



Personally, I'm all for customization. I'm fine with the idea of one affinity per 10 levels, but I do agree with Orithan's previous complaints about that idea- it makes trying to do an all-affinity build worthless because you wouldn't get that until level 50, long after it would've been of any use to you. Hence my suggestion up there. (I still doubt anyone would really want it.) Yeah, all-affinity builds shouldn't be as crazy powerful as focusing on one affinity, but we really shouldn't be trying to remove that customization aspect, either. People don't play a game like this to be forced into a specific playstyle, they play it so they can play how they want, customize their character how they want.

Someone pulled this point up to me:


Say we expand the options of each affinity out, to the point where each affinity has maybe one or two actual specializations, and then the rest of of what they can do is shared with other affinities. At that point, why do we have affinities in the game? Which brings me to a potential suggestion of cutting out affinities and then being able to choose whatever spells you wanted.


While that'd technically fix this issue entirely, it does cause the loss of something I find rather important. The idea of customization comes down to personalizing, as in literally creating your own build that fits your playstyle. Maybe you wanna use someone else's build as a basis, but in the end, everyone will still have different characters. However, in a system where either affinities don't exist or affinities overlap with each other due to such a wide variety under each affinity... will it still feel like you're creating your own character? I imagine for the players that don't use spells at all won't actually care, but a large part of the playerbase still does care, and that's something I feel that needs to be taken into consideration here.


Anyhow, continue slingin' away. We got some good opinions and ideas posted so far; perhaps there's a hidden path among all this we can all agree on.

Honestly I feel if we widen the scope of each affinity too much seph, then that kinda completely ruins the point with an affinity system in the first place. At that point you might as well remove affinities completely and just have spells as is and given everyone access to the complete library.

I have had my own idea of how things could be done instead, though I'd like to stress that I'm fine with the current system:

Le Radical Affinity System

Everyone has access to the arcane school of spells. At character creation you choose an affinity. (Standard boon applies in that you can re-spec this before your first quest if you don't like it.) You can, when out of a quest, pay a fee to re-spec your affinities, (But not arcane). At level 10 (or 15, it has to be fairly early though.) the player can choose to pick a second affinity.

• All characters have access to the same basic spells (arcane).
  
• Still a very large degree of freedom in customization.
  
• Gets around the evenly speced affinity builds that everyone seems to hate and no one seems to play.
  
• No affinity levels to keep track of. (This ties well into the proposed spell update).
  

• Slightly less customization than what is available now.
  
• Everyone would practically be dual builds and while you can choose to buy only spells of one kind, you're kinda not. It's not like arcane has any weaknesses though.