That's right!

And multiple types of mana are more complicated than one type too. But don't worry, they just decided to dumb it down use only one.

I'm waiting for someone to carry this reflexion to his logical term: if there's only one type of mana, why have 4 types of shards?

And soon, I shall get told that multiple types of weapons are more complicated than one, expecially since there is only one damage type. People could get confused choosing between a spearman and a swordsman.

Bah, that's no use getting even more cynical. I prefer to stop before getting rude after someone tells me "Just mod it yourself!"

Don't forget we need to change the name of the game to "Arcane: War of Magic"  since there will be no elements to Elemental.

I've been trying to ignore that vexing question ever since I saw the idea of having only one type of mana. But I'm not going to wallow in imaginary worries about it because we should see an initial rollout of the magic system somewhere this coming spring.

This game is still *very* early in development and the idea of multiple mana types was in play during runup to the beta. If the devs don't have something neat under their hats to replace mana types in a way that makes having different shard types meaningful, maybe they will decide to try again at working with mana types.

And that's a good thing.

Because maybe the mana they produce is tied to your spell knowledge? Because you need a number of them to be able to research or cast something? We can find lots of explanations to that. Or maybe in the end we will have only one shard.

I never said multiple damage spells were more complicated than one single damage spell (which they are, but there, I think they add to the game). You could have tried the weapons comparison if we had slashing, piercing,... types of physical damage, buuuut we only have one. Same for spells now.

I am being a little facetious.  I trust that Stardock will get it right in the end.  Brad is a gamer and wants to create a classic, so I'm not worried that the game won't be fun or worth the money I paid to preorder.  Part of creating that classic is these open discussions about the game concepts and mechanics.  Some people are very sensitive and passionate about their ideas and vision of the game.  I'm pretty easy going, but will poke, vote and make a few points when I get a chance.  Even though there is a bit of conflict on here, it will all help stimulate Stardock's thoughts and help bring about a great game.

Personnally, I would like to see a system that is more divided by the different elements and brings more diversity to the game.  I've played MtG and I understand where you are coming from.  I usually play a mulit-colored deck because it allows you to do more things and have less weaknesses, but you do run into the bad luck of getting mana-screwed sometimes.  That's just the way it goes.  I can accept that in a game like this, as long a balancing is factored in.  As long as there are plenty of spells and effects that use more 'colorless' mana and maybe a pinch of color, it will work out.

This also spurred another thought:  why not get a glimpse of your starting location prior to faction/channeller creation?  that way you can see if there is a certain shard or something else that may force you to play a certain way.  This can also make sense story wise, since your charcter would have emerged from that fire area and then be better with fire spells.

What the heck is wrong with you?  (This isn't even that serious of an insult on it's own, but considering all the other crap you've thrown aro9und I'm not going to explain it further.)

(You can also check earlier in the forums for examples of what I'm talking about.  I'm not going ot explain further, but I'm pretty sure others mostly get what I'm talking about.)

This does come up in some other games as wekll, so definitely could be useful here.  (Depending on testing, of course.)

This thread is funny.

You zap a yeti, he says ooh, spring breeze, nice snow storm!  You zap him with a fireball instead, and his hair catches on fire.  You zap a bleach blonde with a fireball, she turns over to tan the other side.  Stick her in a snow storm and she'll have to invent practical clothing.

Options for achieving this, you do different damage types and have resistance levels for them.  The walking tree is utterly hosed against a fireball, but doesn't really mind getting rained on at all.  You can even have special effects trigger based on the resistance score.

Or, you be a ninny, put twice the work in, and do impractical idiocy, sticking immunities and resitances all over the place, with specific spell lists or spheres of influence.  You make a mess.

You can't really do much if you don't have different damage types, you just end up with clutter trying.  It's practical unless you want generic spells.  A freeze effect applying to a walking popcicle just doesn't make sense.

That can be a very fun system, it works for M:TG.

I think for Elemental it will be a interesting mechanic because it will force the player to expand to be able to cast the more costly/powerful spells. It's conceivable that you'll need to control a good bit of land to have control of a high number of shards.

What is nice is this whole argument is tied to semantics. Fire elementals have to resist fireballs just because both of them have the word "fire". If the school with damage spells is called, for example, Chaos (that sounds familiar) and the fireball spell is called doomball (familiar too, not as much but close), or chaos storm or whatever, then suddenly, it makes sense that the fire elemental is damaged by the spell...

Mmm, at least for me, separating spell lists where chaos gets damage spells, life gets buffs, nature gets summons or things like that, looks pretty interesting. Much more than fireball, mudball, natureball, boringball and so on.

Your idea, but you can do lots of things with a generic damage type, because lots of things aren't tied to damage at all.

Common sense and the physical laws of magic...

@Tormy,

Hmm I wonder what you read that gave you the idea that one side would require more shards to cast high tier spells than another side, or if that is just an idea that you are throwing out there. I see what you are trying to accomplish and I kind of like the idea, but I am wondering how the 'gamemaster' determines why one side it would take less shards than another side? It's an intriguing idea, mind you, just wondering how it might be implemented...in a non exploitable way.

I'm also hoping there is a way to control shards without having to build a city next to each one.  The gathering of shards would create more city spam just to cast good spells.  Also essence would be spent to gather each shard, with may actually be a good balance, but maybe we can spend say 2 essence to create an outpost that controls the shard vs. 5 and a city.

Also, @Raven X - I think rather than considering it "giving control" of the node, maybe more of a "I will channel two nodes worth of Fire "energy" to you if you channel two water nodes at me - it would be an ongoing agreement, like a trade agreement, and could be broken any time by either side. (If done vs. the AI I would like to see it only minimally affect relations). Of course how big of a deal it was could be dependent on the AI's personality...