I have always thought that spells were a littel too easy to obtain. I have a slightly different though: how about a "build the spell" concept? Let's say when a person level's up he trots on over to the mages guild, or the local Temple to the most high Whaatever. They issue him a spell book. The spell book has 10 rune slots within. Three slots which are automatically inscribed through the use of a weaker version of the spell. Use it enough times and all three of the runes are filled in. The next three runes can be obtained from drops. This means they can be picked up and sold from one player to another. The next three runes should be filled through questing. Say one quest that describes the lore of the spell, one fore use of the spell, and one for the future of the spell (think of this as a gateway to the next level of that spell). Finally there should be one final rune that is only obtained through a crafting push. This means that you have to gather the components required (not buy them) and then either craft them yourself or hire some crafter to complete it for you. Alternatively, we should consider an NPC to craft them for you (this would put a limit to how much another player would charge to craft the final rune for you). I know - it SEEMS time consuming - until you see it in action.
Seconding Zorkon's post on the bottom of the page 1. I think Braradune has confirmed many spells will be only obtainable through the ways youve described, thank The Pantheon.
Old proof but there, first paragraph, "spells and abilities scattered throughout a forbidding landscape": http://www.pcgamer.com/pantheon-rise-of-the-fallen-preview/
Dekaden said:Venjenz said:EQ1 had it right when Research still mattered. You got pages, you had to assemble the pages and that would be an ingredient for making a scroll for a new spell. Spell casters had it tough back then, because the mobs that dropped pages always dropped pages 4-6 levels below their level, so if you just dinged 29, your researched level 29 spells needed drops from level 33-36 mobs, and you might have a level 26-27 spell in your lineup.
That was tough, and you ended up using the same spells for a long time. Spells advancement sucked pretty hard and you had to group if you wanted your spellbook current with your level.
I can relate to this very much. Not only were the research pages hard to find, but if you didn't do research or couldnt find someone else to reasearch it for you, the only alternative was buying spells from other players at rediculous prices... really REALLY rediculous prices.
I wasn't a big fan of research, but I like the idea of finding/earning the top spells rather than simply buying them from a vendor or being granted them for free. I thought EQ handled this really well in PoP and beyond with runes/parchments. These items had a CHANCE to drop from named mobs and raid bosses and could be turned in for the top level spells. For example, when level cap was 65 in PoP the drops looked something like this:
Ethereal Parchment = lvl 61/62 spells
Spectral Parchment = lvl 63/64 spells
Glyphed Rune Word = lvl 65 spellsYou would turn these in to specific NPC's and they would grant you a class-appropriate spell in the given level range of the parchment/rune. Great system, loved it.
I'd say if there is a quest like this to turn in to get spells there isn't many it can give you due to i would love if they're is a tradeskill that makes spells it should have the majority of the high end spells, or be dropped from high end mobs like it did in velious.
I used to farm Skyfire for rareish spellbook drops, specially seeing as there was an expensive black market..for those items at the time. I would farm for what I needed personally, and GIVE AWAY the rest to my friends and guildies. Pretty much thumbing my nose at the blackmarket. :) I'm a bit of a rebel.
Cana
I never played a caster back when research was needed, but I definitely like the concept especially for higher end spells and remember helping friends farm for drops. I also enjoyed there being slightly better versions of spells that dropped from end-game content. Think of the ancient spells in Velius. Those could involve [no-drop] research components dropping instead of the spell itself instead.
As far as researching spells pre-max level goes, I think they should be special spells that are useful at any level and simply scale. These spells would require a quest (nothing too difficult so it's fair) and no-drop componants (maybe not all of the parts). Buff spells would probably be self target - again, depending on the spell. Say it gives a buff that modifies damage on a percentage value. The value could be static since the base damage of your spells increase with level/stats anyway. If there's a canni type spell for any class then it can scale too instead of how EQ had multiple versions. Whether it would scale by level or max hp/stat or whatever, it would still make the research worth doing sooner than later. This would also mean that spells would be skipped along the way and depending on its usefulness people would go back and farm at higher levels. This could cause issues, but from what I've experienced with jboot farming and other similar situations, it isn't usually a mess and people help each other. That adds to the social aspect of the game.