Sephirius
08-20-2008, 04:56 PM
Howdy, now that the NDA is dropped I wanted to share a bit of my impressions of the supposed boomy and pretty effects that the archmage gets. However, my impressions so far (at least at lower to mid levels) have been kinda disappointing.
Remembering that I loved playing a mentalist/eldrich in DAoC I have been feeling that the elf spell effects in that game are much more dramatic than the ones I have been seeing while playing the Archmage. And being the "Master of all magic blah blah" was expecting something... well read on.
For instance, lets take your basic bread and butter nuke is a bright lance. The idea is neat of having it come out of your staff and the character animations for each type of spell is a nice touch, but the business end of the effect is a little puny, if not silly looking. Basically an animated irredescent line texture stretching to the target over a second with a delayed spark animation on the target'd toon after it "touches." I also believe this animation will stay the same all the way up until 40 as your baseline spells level with you.
Compare that with the bread and butter nuke of the hybernia casters in DAoC with a big blast of light and energy frying the target with shockwaves of light. Hell even the 1st level "gleam ray" looks a bit better than this. Needless to say, Warhammer AMs get little taser looking textures reaching out and touching targets, DAoC Hybernians get Kamehameha's.
But wait thats just one spell you say, well the others are except maybe one or 2 exceptions are nothing to write home about. Although you do get a nice little eye-beam spell which is descent but only descent when you compare say with what a bright wizard or a magus can throw out there.
So those that have close beta tested, what are your thoughts on the matter?
And there are already threads about fixes the AM when it comes to numbers, but this is more on the aesthetics and something more for the art department.
Remembering that I loved playing a mentalist/eldrich in DAoC I have been feeling that the elf spell effects in that game are much more dramatic than the ones I have been seeing while playing the Archmage. And being the "Master of all magic blah blah" was expecting something... well read on.
For instance, lets take your basic bread and butter nuke is a bright lance. The idea is neat of having it come out of your staff and the character animations for each type of spell is a nice touch, but the business end of the effect is a little puny, if not silly looking. Basically an animated irredescent line texture stretching to the target over a second with a delayed spark animation on the target'd toon after it "touches." I also believe this animation will stay the same all the way up until 40 as your baseline spells level with you.
Compare that with the bread and butter nuke of the hybernia casters in DAoC with a big blast of light and energy frying the target with shockwaves of light. Hell even the 1st level "gleam ray" looks a bit better than this. Needless to say, Warhammer AMs get little taser looking textures reaching out and touching targets, DAoC Hybernians get Kamehameha's.
But wait thats just one spell you say, well the others are except maybe one or 2 exceptions are nothing to write home about. Although you do get a nice little eye-beam spell which is descent but only descent when you compare say with what a bright wizard or a magus can throw out there.
So those that have close beta tested, what are your thoughts on the matter?
And there are already threads about fixes the AM when it comes to numbers, but this is more on the aesthetics and something more for the art department.