Hey Dungeoneers, v3.0.0 and the Cleric are finally ready for beta!
In this blog post I’m going to share more details about the Cleric! Just as with the Duelist, I’m releasing the Cleric’s beta a little early. There’s still one subclass and two armor abilities to implement before the Cleric is content-complete and ready for release.
No, see, that’s the problem. Yes, of course targeting logic can be thought of for each of those items, which would be correct most of the time, but then the targeting system has 5+ different behaviors depending on the context and most of them make assumptions about what the player wants to target that may not align with what a particular player wants to do. This means that the player can no longer rely on the targeting system to act in a predictable manner.
But they would just be default suggestions. The player can overrode the target just like they are forced to today. Players can get used to the intelligent defaults.
For instance, having Wand of Warding target an enemy makes no sense. Having it target nothing would be preferable. Having it target the last targeted ward on the current floor would be brilliant! How would that be in any way confusing to the player? It would be wonderful. And if there is no ward on the current floor, it targets nothing.
I don’t see why having 5 or so different targeting rules is going to ruin the game when those rules make more sense than the current one rule. People have been asking for a Wand of Warding fix for ages, for example. When you have players begging for a change, having you tell them the change would confuse them is… I don’t even know what word to use. Maddening, for one.
Having the Bless spell target yourself by default just makes perfect sense. Players would understand that and benefit from it. Having it target an enemy by default is so egregiously bad, I’d think it was a bug.
You’re programming one of the most challenging, hard to learn games there is, and you’re saying your players won’t understand a few exceptions to the default targeting rule? I just don’t follow that logic. Especially when it comes to items like Wand of Warding and spells like Bless.
Just please consider it. Try changing a few of the more obvious items mentioned above and see how it goes. For the borderline ones, like Healing Dart, or Bomb of Regrowth, maybe you never change them, and that’s OK, but I just don’t understand this position of “changing certain targeting rules might be confusing” means “I can’t change any of them”. Please, please just consider changing the obvious ones like wards and Bless, etc.