Runes of Magic Rolls Back Mana Changes

Wow!  Just thought I would post this update to the 3.0.3 patch notes I posted for Runes of Magic this morning.  Apparently players were not happy and the mana changes were rolled back without giving players in the U.S. advanced notice.  Here is a copy of the explanation.

Hello Runes of Magic Community.

In regard to our latest Patch 3.0.3 and the change of spell casting cost I want to give you an explanation about the reason behind all of this.

As many of you are aware, the spell cost has been changed with Patch 3.0.3 from a standard single value cost to a new formula. The new cost is a combination of a base cost plus a percentage of your total mana pool. The percentage can vary between 1% to 6% depending on the spell. This is not a class specific change as it does affect all spells (it does however affect magic users more).

Our reason behind this change was that as the game lost a lot of it’s previous challenge with a mana pool outgrowing eventually the cost of spells, therefore causing no small amount of our players having “infinite” mana pools. Once you no longer have to be afraid of running out of mana by not drinking a potion or waiting for the cooldown from drinking a potion, an important part of strategy in the game is being removed.

That would just result in spamming spells without the need to decide when to take that special potion and basic strategies of deciding which spells to use on which targets first would no longer matter. For example: some healers were able to spam group heal constantly without the need to watch their mana anymore at any level of difficulty.

The next problem caused by this old system is to decide how to design new content and still being able to offer you a worthy challenge. Do we design for the average players who will have to watch their mana or do we design for the super strong player base who does not need to worry?

After carefully evaluating all possible new methods our final solution was to introduce a percentage cost into the spells. This would ensure that players would have to watch their mana supplies and cast with some strategy in their mind. Players that have a larger mana pool can still cast more times than those who have less.

Thanks to the feedback of the Runes of Magic Community and Frogster we have been able to shape the game in the past and hope to continue this way for the future.

We are convinced about the logic and need behind the new way how to manage mana cost, but we have decided to take back the changes for further evaluation. So until we have finished improving the scaling system of how mana will be reduced we will restore it to the old ways.

Sincerely,
Tony Tang
Runewaker Entertainment
VP Business Developement