Not too sure if this can be a "Baseless Speculation" thread if it's not part of an actual expansion. If not, can a mod please move it to another forum. Thanks (will remove this part if a few days, regardless of where it is kept/moved to)
There is a lot we speculate on. What I am aware of is that you take the roll of a Planeswalker who can travel from the various planes.
I imagine we will get to meet many of the PW's already known in the game, as well as meet new faces. I also imagine we'll start off on a plane (my guess, Dominaria) and will have at least 3 to 4 planes to go to in the start. I am also betting that new expansions will bring 2 additional planes to explore.
I am betting that creature rarity is taken into account, w/ Mythics having rare loot, w/ Legendary Mythics as the end boss for a "raid" or planned encounter.
I am betting a lot of the equipment will follow suit, w/ a Bonesplitter as a weapon you can buy/find immediately, while a Sword of Light and Shadow will be epic loot.
I am curious to see how many of the cards, i.e. artifacts, spells, enchantments translate into a MMO. And how does spell speed differentiate when it comes to sorceries and instants.
Also, to see non-basic lands translated into physical locations we can explore, a Tundra, or a Reflecting Pool, or a chance to fight baddies at the Phyrexian Tower. Maybe artifacts that are locations will change gameplay... imagine you come to an Ensnaring Bridge and the weight of your gear determines if you can cross, or behind a staircase is a secret passage, where you crawl through a Crawlspace where there is only room for 2 players, but there are monsters coming the opposite direction.
I am betting that the spells cast from spell books requires Mana (really, this is obvious), but I also see Mana required for crafting.
A big, last thought: how on Earth Dominaria will cards like the Power 9 get translated? Will a Black Lotus be a quest item for crafting a legendary item? Will moxen give protection from a certain element or give a bonus to damage of a certain element? Will Timetwisters be a cataclysmic event that sends you back to where you were when you logged into the game, w/ a fresh amount of mana?
Oh, the ideas and directions this game can go in are astronomical and dizzying. What does everyone anticipate? What do you hope for? In what ways do you see cards getting translated? And lastly, what do you hope to NOT see (think of mistakes other MMO's have done in the past)?
I gave you a topic, now talk amongst yourselves... discuss...
I just want them to flash out the world properly and make justice to Magic’s amazing worldbuilding.
I want Ravnica to be a hectic and crowded city, with a million different streets canals and starwais that lead to god knows where.
I want Dominaria to have giant phyrexian hulks reclaimed by nature, colossal statues of Urza and thran relics that obscure the sun.
I want Zendikar to have whole flying islands, waterfalls and volcanoes coming up of nowhere and sterminated hedron fields.
I would hate this game to have pettyful renditions of the planes just because of performance, devs can make compromises elsewhere. Personally I don’t care about having a giant player count, I would rather have better gameplay and worldbuilding than giant raids and grindy “content”.
I don't know how this works cause I don't know how they do classes. Oldwalkers worked better for this cause while you could put them in class (they were all casters to some degree I guess), they were far more versatile lol.
Whereas Chandra for instance just fires fireballs. Which if you say have creatures with Fire Resistance or Immunity your character is now worthless.
I care about Classes and Races....and I wonder how much they take from DnD and presumably WoW.
My guess is that the "classes" are going to be flexible based on each color, with your abilities either earned through questing or being able to chose how your magic manifests, and you'll be able to add a secondary and tertiary color
Not all PW's are shoved into
Chandara and Jaya are "Spell slingers" where as Koth is artifact based and Sharkhan is dragon based.
Nissa is mana/land's based where Viven is Creature based.
I'd love to be able to summon a specific type of creature ala Liliana/Varaska/Kasmiana/Teyo, while others can focus on spells.
I would like to start as a normal creature-card-Type character and become a Planeswalker after ending the starting zone. This involve a epic story, a mess up situation/sacrifice etc.
I could see different starting planes as starting zones depending of the chosen race like human -> Innistrad, Dominaria, Theros or merfolk -> Ixalan, Theros, Dominaria etc. Races are bound to colors for example no red merfolk. Maybe adding some race specific spells, too. You can't play any mana construct race like demons, angels, elements or undead creatures like zombies. I think the races need to be limited because MTG has too much.
The main problem with a Magic MMO is that it will either cause a disconnect with the game or with the story. Both treat summoning creatures very differently. In the game, we summon creatures all the time, from rats and squirrels to soldiers and wizards to elementals and phantasms. In the story however, planeswalkers only really summon magical creatures like elementals and such, with the very infrequent exception, see Kiora and Garruk and... *narrows eyes* that's it I think. We've never seen anyone summon sapient beings in the newer stories. (I can't remember a single instance since Odyssey, then again I skipped a couple books like Alara and Theros) At least no humans and humanoids.
The main problem with a Magic MMO is that it will either cause a disconnect with the game or with the story. Both treat summoning creatures very differently. In the game, we summon creatures all the time, from rats and squirrels to soldiers and wizards to elementals and phantasms. In the story however, planeswalkers only really summon magical creatures like elementals and such, with the very infrequent exception, see Kiora and Garruk and... *narrows eyes* that's it I think. We've never seen anyone summon sapient beings in the newer stories. (I can't remember a single instance since Odyssey, then again I skipped a couple books like Alara and Theros) At least no humans and humanoids.
Not too sure if this can be a "Baseless Speculation" thread if it's not part of an actual expansion. If not, can a mod please move it to another forum. Thanks (will remove this part if a few days, regardless of where it is kept/moved to)
There is a lot we speculate on. What I am aware of is that you take the roll of a Planeswalker who can travel from the various planes.
I imagine we will get to meet many of the PW's already known in the game, as well as meet new faces. I also imagine we'll start off on a plane (my guess, Dominaria) and will have at least 3 to 4 planes to go to in the start. I am also betting that new expansions will bring 2 additional planes to explore.
I am betting that creature rarity is taken into account, w/ Mythics having rare loot, w/ Legendary Mythics as the end boss for a "raid" or planned encounter.
I am betting a lot of the equipment will follow suit, w/ a Bonesplitter as a weapon you can buy/find immediately, while a Sword of Light and Shadow will be epic loot.
I am curious to see how many of the cards, i.e. artifacts, spells, enchantments translate into a MMO. And how does spell speed differentiate when it comes to sorceries and instants.
Also, to see non-basic lands translated into physical locations we can explore, a Tundra, or a Reflecting Pool, or a chance to fight baddies at the Phyrexian Tower. Maybe artifacts that are locations will change gameplay... imagine you come to an Ensnaring Bridge and the weight of your gear determines if you can cross, or behind a staircase is a secret passage, where you crawl through a Crawlspace where there is only room for 2 players, but there are monsters coming the opposite direction.
I am betting that the spells cast from spell books requires Mana (really, this is obvious), but I also see Mana required for crafting.
A big, last thought: how on Earth Dominaria will cards like the Power 9 get translated? Will a Black Lotus be a quest item for crafting a legendary item? Will moxen give protection from a certain element or give a bonus to damage of a certain element? Will Timetwisters be a cataclysmic event that sends you back to where you were when you logged into the game, w/ a fresh amount of mana?
Oh, the ideas and directions this game can go in are astronomical and dizzying. What does everyone anticipate? What do you hope for? In what ways do you see cards getting translated? And lastly, what do you hope to NOT see (think of mistakes other MMO's have done in the past)?
I gave you a topic, now talk amongst yourselves... discuss...
You are thinking too much like an old player imho. They won't care about referencing old cards, it will just be a neowalker ****fest
I bet we will start on ravnica, do the first tutorial levels, then ascend before we can enter in a guild an move on a different plane
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
One possible idea I like for this is that leveling in the game isn't tied to fighting enemies, but to filling out and exploring maps to claim them as a land. Basically, the game would have a sort of 'fog of war'-like effect on the maps, where the map gets filled in as you explore it. Once a certain area of the map is filled in, you 'claim' a 'mana bond' with it. Your in-game power level would be tied to your mana bonds. Exploring lands though would have it's difficulties, there may be inaccessible areas that you can't reach without certain skills and abilities and spells and such, or that you need to go on certain quests to convince NPCs to let you access or find keys to, and many of the maps out in the wilds have dangerous monsters roaming them that aggro relatively easily unless you have powerful stealth or intimidation type abilities or something to bypass them (so that they don't bother players who are more powerful than them too much) so that you can't just freely explore and claim lands willy nilly.
The game would have the ability to let you jump to 'random planes' of a certain 'mana density level'. The mana density level would be a rough gauge of power level of the mobs, and these planes would basically be randomly generated with various features. Early versions of the game would likely have them largely uninhabited by sapient life-forms or civilization, and just include a relatively small explorable area with a number of map regions to claim, including a random assortment and arrangement of basic land types (forest areas, plains areas, mountain areas, swamp areas, 'island' areas with less swampy water heavy space, like rivers and lakes and such). These places wouldn't be truly random in every sense, they'd be procedurally generated with a seed, so you can return to them, or even share them with other players. The mob types and gathering point materials and the like would remain consistent on these 'random planes', so there would be incentive to keep private or share with friends or trade or 'planar frequencies' or something to find or use ones that generate specific resources, or let you find certain creatures for farming certain resources and drops or perhaps gaining summoning patterns or something. The things they generate would be found within certain lists, not all mob types found in the game would be available, and things would be limited by the 'mana density level' of the plane in question.
Maps explored as a mana bond would not all be of the same power level, ones with more difficulty (more dangerous enemies and the like) to explore them would offer higher boosts to power levels, so you can take risks to power up faster by going closer or slightly above your own current effective level. Maps also offer different colored mana sources, so you can't just explore any old map, you have to explore ones matching the color you are leveling, unless you've got some kind of versatile multi-color build, which would likely have a much slower power curve and other issues with it's playstyle without special builds designed to work with it's difficulties. After you bond with a certain number of lower level maps, they stop contributing significantly to your current mana, and you are forced to move on to seeking stronger mana bonds and visiting higher density mana areas.
Besides the 'random' planes you can visit, which are basically impossible for the player base to truly explore all of (similar to No Man's Sky) but have limitations on what kind of content can be found on them due to the procedural generation engine used and balance issues, there are also specific planes inputted by the game developers with properly manually designed maps and potential for more things like cities and NPC populations and quest chains and stuff. These maps include whatever MtG canon planes have been implemented in the game, and might have various methods for discovering them related to the in-game story quest advancement or being shown there by other players by partying up with them or the like, and some of them would likely serve as starting areas for beginner players that they 'accidentally' travel to during their first planeswalk. Early ones would likely include places like Shandalar which aren't as heavily developed in the lore so are easier for the programmers to implement without breaking flavor or as having to do as much research on MtG lore details and such, and are known for their potent mana so likely have 'high level' zones ready for late-game play, but developers could implement more planes as they have the time to design them and their maps and NPCs and quests and loot and everything, including more complex ones like, say, Ravnica.
The sapient-life inhabited, civilization possessing, human-programmer and such designed maps would be some of the ones that include things like more typical spells one can learn, most 'random' procedurally generated planes would likely be limited to doing things like forging mana bonds, gathering loot, and claiming summoning patterns of mobs you turn into your summons, and things like that, if you are a summoning focused build (this may be largely a 'cosmetic' thing, with pre-approved and balanced designs made for player summoning mechanics, which means your own summons wouldn't be exact copies of the mobs you find out in the wild, although you could still find various 'types' more easily by traveling to random planes or specific ones that other players help you find or whatnot that might not be found in the more manually designed 'civilized' planes or the like). On the civilized (and game developer more directly designed) planes thus you could find things like new spells to learn via purchasing scrolls or doing various quests and other things like that appropriate to unlocking new in-game abilities, things equivalent to instant, sorcery, enchantment, and artifact spells, or collecting certain types of gear that players aren't personally crafting, or learning some kinds of crafting recipes for crafting focused players.
Maps that you have fully explored and forged a mana bond to are also ones you can more easily travel directly to when planeswalking.
Planeswalking itself would likely have two modes. The first would be a 'standard mode', which is somewhat 'slow' but lacking in penalties. It's likely different for different players, from a list of options on character creation, related to the 'ignition of your spark' and various innate affinities and such. It allows you to precisely target where you are going from planes you've visited and formed mana bonds on, and then pick the mana bonded map section you want to end up on, and probably needs to be done in a safe area and has a noticeable cast time to it that could have trouble if you are interrupted or the like. Probably some fancy animations too. The differences though would largely be cosmetic, and there would be limits on how much it could be upgraded. The second mode would be a 'random jump' where you randomly find a new procedurally generated plane (sometimes ones other players might have already discovered, in theory, although the odds would likely be relatively low, possibly lower than it is in No Man's Sky, since at least in that you are all headed towards the center of the galaxy and odds of encountering other players likely increase along the way). This would be slightly faster than the standard mode, but not by much, and can easily place you smack dab into a dangerous situation if you are going to a mana density appropriate or higher zone.
Then there is the 'emergency jump', this would be triggered instead of dying when a player would normally be killed, and takes you back to a place designated as your sanctuary, or, if you don't have one yet or deliberately don't set one, takes you to a 'super-low mana density, safe feeling' random plane with mana bonds so weak claiming them effectively doesn't level you, almost nill value materials gathering points, and harmless mobs, and leaves you littered with penalties and such until you heal up (this would be done to keep with the lore that death tends to cause one to lose the planeswalker spark, so we don't want players 'dying' or discovering a way around this too easily, at least at lower levels). This 'emergency jump' would possibly leave some stuff behind at random, losing you some loot and currencies and the like that you might have to go back and retrieve, and might be stolen by another player or certain mobs if you were in a PVP allowed zone. Emergency jumps and their sanctuaries can never be PVP enabled zones, at least not early on in the game before you might unlock alternative methods to avoid death with less penalties or the like.
Different planes would usually have different currencies, but you can easily 'convert' currencies by buying one type of good on one plane and selling it on another. Trading focused players could even find profitable trades based on differences in economies and stuff on different planes in order to trade between currencies, and some currencies wouldn't be 'suspicious' on certain other planes, and thus be able to be traded more directly for alternative currencies, especially if it's made of valuable raw materials or seems like a work of art to the other plane or something. A few planes that are more heavily trafficked historically by powerful planeswalkers might even share some currencies, but generally, players not focused on the economic stuff would usually earn currencies separately on each plane.
Some magic items don't work off their plane of origin, due to relying on local features (likely often for balance and implementation reasons), some might even 'break' if you try to take them off plane, and thus have to be 'stored' somehow on the plane you get them on, such as finding some kind of bank or private housing setup to keep them in when on that plane, perhaps later learning a spell to summon the stored items to you from where you have them kept after you arrive on the plane). This could include things like a magic chest that you can access from anywhere on a plane, but actually is located on a 'local' space, like a local ethereal or astral 'sub-plane' or something, or the local divine realm or afterlife or something. Or a magic whistle that calls a type of local steed to you that doesn't actually summon them out of aether like a typical summoning spell (to allow lower 'level' players or players in certain limited zones limited access to things like, say, mounts or flying mounts). Or access to a 'font of healing' in an area you use as a sanctuary to recover faster from an emergency planeswalk.
Things that you can bring with you across planes would likely have to have certain flavor restrictions that make sense. You couldn't take, say, a D&D style bag of holding across planes if you wound up on, say, Eberron, or the Forgotten Realms, because it is connected to the local connected plane cosmology, and wouldn't work on just any random planar group that might work differently. However, a similar item could exist funtionally speaking for players, that, say, works by say, shrinking and lightening items entering the bag, instead of it being a specific linked extradimensional space, or having the bag and it's contents be magically lightened and the space inside warped and distorted to be larger on the inside than the outside without actually expanding into alternate planar space. Or one designed by powerful planeswalkers or mages familiar with the blind eternities that actually let you take small demi-planes around with you that sit in the blind eternities, rather than local cosmologies, but might be a sort of higher 'level' item in the game (since it isn't just lowering loot weight by a percentage or whatnot, and probably has larger slot spaces availible than one that just 'warps' space or 'shrinks' items by a certain amount). This would limit early game item storage, and might tie into possible costs for account upgrades and subscriptions or purchasable with real world currency items for some of the higher end stuff like the noted 'small demi-plane that follows you and sits in the actual blind eternities' thing.
For balance reasons, I'd probably make it so that you can't planeswalk everything with you when over-encumbered, if over-encumbering is even possible, and you drop random stuff when overencumbered and doing an emergency planeswalk, if such a mechanic is implemented.
To ensure the game actually can run on a reasonable number of people's systems, there would likely have to be limits to how many summons a player can have up at a time, different from the card game. Other tweaks to how summoning works would be for controls and game balance reasons as well, but given how integral it is to the card game, I think summoning should definitely be a possible character build, and basically all mobs and NPCs should have a possible summon template you can get from them in some way or another, even if it wouldn't necessarily match their actual stats.
Additionally, some spells would be considered, 'suspicious' if they are illegal ones on a current plane, or ones the locals don't have equivalents of, at least not commonly, and would normally be restricted unless the game developers implement an 'openly a planeswalker' mode of some sort, and so can't be used in certain zones when in perception areas of NPCs and such. This could be a useful way to limit features for balance and/or implementation aspects in certain designed zones like cities. Players might even need some ways to disguise themselves as local races if they are a race that doesn't exist on that plane in order to visit such areas, unless it's a plane like Ravnica with lots of biomancy, or a weird plane where lots of people use shapeshifting and/or illusions of more extreme sorts as some kind of 'fashion' thing.
Might also be interesting if while starting a first character on your account, you are limited in a selection of more balanced races, it would be possible to later unlock the ability to generate new, characters of 'unlockable' races after encountering them in game once they are implemented and you reach a certain power level on one of your characters, maybe only unlocking them after you already have achieved effectively their innate abilities somehow, like a changeling race would require you learn some shapeshifting magic first. This could let players unlock races that are effectively more powerful, like, say, a changeling, or a dragon (as a 'late game' type unlock that has built-in mana generation of it's own beyond it's mana bonds of a significant amount, and effectively 'starts' at a higher level, and when not shapeshifted to disguise itself, is considered 'suspicious' on most civilized planes and areas), or a physically powerful and slightly larger race like an ogre or loxodon, or a swimming and water breathing race like a merfolk.
I'd hope the game has a very flexible and extensive character creation system, at least on the cosmetic end. I also hope for a relatively flexible system for character building and learning new spells and abilities and types of 'classes' or the equivalent. This might be determined partially at character creation, by picking 'affinities' and 'talents' for game balance reasons, but would have a relatively large number of effective classes within such limitations, including, at the very least, options for either mono or dual-color characters, characters focused on summoning vs. characters focused on instant/sorcery type stuff, 'burn' type characters in red, 'healing' type builds in white and green, and in a weirder way black, and a wide range of things you can learn and unlock as the game grows and expands with each new 'civilized' plane introduced or the like for each build based on what your 'talents and affinities' are and what colors you are in. If they aren't as focused on game balance, I might like for just freedom to learn almost any spell or ability, but limitations of play time and matching the complexity and power of your spells to your mana levels would necessitate following various training trees and make players focus on a viable build for more combat focused designs, rather than be super diverse.
Might be interesting to also have a difference between stuff that is 'learned' and stuff that is 'practiced' with stuff that is merely 'learned' winding up in game menus and having longer cast times and increased mana cost compared to what it would normally have, but once you use it enough in game training methods, many spells (although not all for balance reasons) can become 'practiced' and get to be added to hotbars and have their mana cost and cast times reduced. This would limit the sheer number of spells an individual player might keep on their general combat taskbar. It might also be related to previously noted 'affinities' perhaps making it so that while you can in theory, 'learn' almost anything the game allows (allowing for expansive utility options out of combat if you put in the effort), only things in your 'affinities' can be quick-cast effectively in combat. There might be some special ways in the game to change your affinities later, but perhaps not your 'talents', through some kind of ritual using a special location or powerful entity, in order to swtich play styles without it seeming like a character is 'forgetting' or directly getting 'worse' at things in terms of skills, just changing their ability to control certain types of mana by changing their 'aura type' or something, letting them change what options can be put on hotbars and cast more quickly and efficiently, but if you change back the things that were previously 'practiced' are put back to that status immediately that are within that 'aura type', while the new ones you unlocked that aren't are put back into a more 'dormant' status. It might also be slightly easier and faster to do and train in things that are within the correct 'aura type', and maybe things that you have down to a 'practiced' level that aren't in your aura type could still have somewhat reduced mana costs and cast times, just not down to 'in combat' reasonable levels, at least with most level appropriate encounters, making things easier for some types of play-styles, like certain sorts of diverse crafters and gatherers who learn magics from a variety of colors but aren't so much focused on combat ones.
Still, I'd prefer something more like FF14 to a more restrictive class system locked in at character creation and involving complete re-sets when you want to change, even if it feels like you 'forget' or become 'worse' at stuff occasionally temporarily, since it could at least seem similar to, say, creating a different deck in the card game, and it could let them still balance stuff somewhat easier. Although I'd prefer it to not be linked to items like it is in FF14, since sharing systems like that across different planes wouldn't make much sense.
I'd also like some builds to not necessarily unlock new abilities by 'learning' them normally, but by making deals or something, like black characters might enter contracts with demons, red characters might pay vast sums of money as tribute to ancient dragons, blue characters might convince ancient and powerful fey, white characters might enact certain services for powerful angels while maintaining positive reputations on the plane where that angel resides, and green characters might appease various spirits and elementals to some degree and then meditate and commune with nature in a certain location after following various quest trees to purify taints and deal with poachers or stop some destruction or over-harvesting of nature or whatnot. This could then imbue the character with various abilities in a different manner than, say, learning spells from books or from teachers at a magical school or whatnot, and allow for play-styles for flavor reasons like demon-contractors.
One possible idea I like for this is that leveling in the game isn't tied to fighting enemies, but to filling out and exploring maps to claim them as a land. Basically, the game would have a sort of 'fog of war'-like effect on the maps, where the map gets filled in as you explore it. Once a certain area of the map is filled in, you 'claim' a 'mana bond' with it. Your in-game power level would be tied to your mana bonds. Exploring lands though would have it's difficulties, there may be inaccessible areas that you can't reach without certain skills and abilities and spells and such, or that you need to go on certain quests to convince NPCs to let you access or find keys to, and many of the maps out in the wilds have dangerous monsters roaming them that aggro relatively easily unless you have powerful stealth or intimidation type abilities or something to bypass them (so that they don't bother players who are more powerful than them too much) so that you can't just freely explore and claim lands willy nilly.
The game would have the ability to let you jump to 'random planes' of a certain 'mana density level'. The mana density level would be a rough gauge of power level of the mobs, and these planes would basically be randomly generated with various features. Early versions of the game would likely have them largely uninhabited by sapient life-forms or civilization, and just include a relatively small explorable area with a number of map regions to claim, including a random assortment and arrangement of basic land types (forest areas, plains areas, mountain areas, swamp areas, 'island' areas with less swampy water heavy space, like rivers and lakes and such). These places wouldn't be truly random in every sense, they'd be procedurally generated with a seed, so you can return to them, or even share them with other players. The mob types and gathering point materials and the like would remain consistent on these 'random planes', so there would be incentive to keep private or share with friends or trade or 'planar frequencies' or something to find or use ones that generate specific resources, or let you find certain creatures for farming certain resources and drops or perhaps gaining summoning patterns or something. The things they generate would be found within certain lists, not all mob types found in the game would be available, and things would be limited by the 'mana density level' of the plane in question.
Maps explored as a mana bond would not all be of the same power level, ones with more difficulty (more dangerous enemies and the like) to explore them would offer higher boosts to power levels, so you can take risks to power up faster by going closer or slightly above your own current effective level. Maps also offer different colored mana sources, so you can't just explore any old map, you have to explore ones matching the color you are leveling, unless you've got some kind of versatile multi-color build, which would likely have a much slower power curve and other issues with it's playstyle without special builds designed to work with it's difficulties. After you bond with a certain number of lower level maps, they stop contributing significantly to your current mana, and you are forced to move on to seeking stronger mana bonds and visiting higher density mana areas.
Besides the 'random' planes you can visit, which are basically impossible for the player base to truly explore all of (similar to No Man's Sky) but have limitations on what kind of content can be found on them due to the procedural generation engine used and balance issues, there are also specific planes inputted by the game developers with properly manually designed maps and potential for more things like cities and NPC populations and quest chains and stuff. These maps include whatever MtG canon planes have been implemented in the game, and might have various methods for discovering them related to the in-game story quest advancement or being shown there by other players by partying up with them or the like, and some of them would likely serve as starting areas for beginner players that they 'accidentally' travel to during their first planeswalk. Early ones would likely include places like Shandalar which aren't as heavily developed in the lore so are easier for the programmers to implement without breaking flavor or as having to do as much research on MtG lore details and such, and are known for their potent mana so likely have 'high level' zones ready for late-game play, but developers could implement more planes as they have the time to design them and their maps and NPCs and quests and loot and everything, including more complex ones like, say, Ravnica.
The sapient-life inhabited, civilization possessing, human-programmer and such designed maps would be some of the ones that include things like more typical spells one can learn, most 'random' procedurally generated planes would likely be limited to doing things like forging mana bonds, gathering loot, and claiming summoning patterns of mobs you turn into your summons, and things like that, if you are a summoning focused build (this may be largely a 'cosmetic' thing, with pre-approved and balanced designs made for player summoning mechanics, which means your own summons wouldn't be exact copies of the mobs you find out in the wild, although you could still find various 'types' more easily by traveling to random planes or specific ones that other players help you find or whatnot that might not be found in the more manually designed 'civilized' planes or the like). On the civilized (and game developer more directly designed) planes thus you could find things like new spells to learn via purchasing scrolls or doing various quests and other things like that appropriate to unlocking new in-game abilities, things equivalent to instant, sorcery, enchantment, and artifact spells, or collecting certain types of gear that players aren't personally crafting, or learning some kinds of crafting recipes for crafting focused players.
Maps that you have fully explored and forged a mana bond to are also ones you can more easily travel directly to when planeswalking.
Planeswalking itself would likely have two modes. The first would be a 'standard mode', which is somewhat 'slow' but lacking in penalties. It's likely different for different players, from a list of options on character creation, related to the 'ignition of your spark' and various innate affinities and such. It allows you to precisely target where you are going from planes you've visited and formed mana bonds on, and then pick the mana bonded map section you want to end up on, and probably needs to be done in a safe area and has a noticeable cast time to it that could have trouble if you are interrupted or the like. Probably some fancy animations too. The differences though would largely be cosmetic, and there would be limits on how much it could be upgraded. The second mode would be a 'random jump' where you randomly find a new procedurally generated plane (sometimes ones other players might have already discovered, in theory, although the odds would likely be relatively low, possibly lower than it is in No Man's Sky, since at least in that you are all headed towards the center of the galaxy and odds of encountering other players likely increase along the way). This would be slightly faster than the standard mode, but not by much, and can easily place you smack dab into a dangerous situation if you are going to a mana density appropriate or higher zone.
Then there is the 'emergency jump', this would be triggered instead of dying when a player would normally be killed, and takes you back to a place designated as your sanctuary, or, if you don't have one yet or deliberately don't set one, takes you to a 'super-low mana density, safe feeling' random plane with mana bonds so weak claiming them effectively doesn't level you, almost nill value materials gathering points, and harmless mobs, and leaves you littered with penalties and such until you heal up (this would be done to keep with the lore that death tends to cause one to lose the planeswalker spark, so we don't want players 'dying' or discovering a way around this too easily, at least at lower levels). This 'emergency jump' would possibly leave some stuff behind at random, losing you some loot and currencies and the like that you might have to go back and retrieve, and might be stolen by another player or certain mobs if you were in a PVP allowed zone. Emergency jumps and their sanctuaries can never be PVP enabled zones, at least not early on in the game before you might unlock alternative methods to avoid death with less penalties or the like.
Different planes would usually have different currencies, but you can easily 'convert' currencies by buying one type of good on one plane and selling it on another. Trading focused players could even find profitable trades based on differences in economies and stuff on different planes in order to trade between currencies, and some currencies wouldn't be 'suspicious' on certain other planes, and thus be able to be traded more directly for alternative currencies, especially if it's made of valuable raw materials or seems like a work of art to the other plane or something. A few planes that are more heavily trafficked historically by powerful planeswalkers might even share some currencies, but generally, players not focused on the economic stuff would usually earn currencies separately on each plane.
Some magic items don't work off their plane of origin, due to relying on local features (likely often for balance and implementation reasons), some might even 'break' if you try to take them off plane, and thus have to be 'stored' somehow on the plane you get them on, such as finding some kind of bank or private housing setup to keep them in when on that plane, perhaps later learning a spell to summon the stored items to you from where you have them kept after you arrive on the plane). This could include things like a magic chest that you can access from anywhere on a plane, but actually is located on a 'local' space, like a local ethereal or astral 'sub-plane' or something, or the local divine realm or afterlife or something. Or a magic whistle that calls a type of local steed to you that doesn't actually summon them out of aether like a typical summoning spell (to allow lower 'level' players or players in certain limited zones limited access to things like, say, mounts or flying mounts). Or access to a 'font of healing' in an area you use as a sanctuary to recover faster from an emergency planeswalk.
Things that you can bring with you across planes would likely have to have certain flavor restrictions that make sense. You couldn't take, say, a D&D style bag of holding across planes if you wound up on, say, Eberron, or the Forgotten Realms, because it is connected to the local connected plane cosmology, and wouldn't work on just any random planar group that might work differently. However, a similar item could exist funtionally speaking for players, that, say, works by say, shrinking and lightening items entering the bag, instead of it being a specific linked extradimensional space, or having the bag and it's contents be magically lightened and the space inside warped and distorted to be larger on the inside than the outside without actually expanding into alternate planar space. Or one designed by powerful planeswalkers or mages familiar with the blind eternities that actually let you take small demi-planes around with you that sit in the blind eternities, rather than local cosmologies, but might be a sort of higher 'level' item in the game (since it isn't just lowering loot weight by a percentage or whatnot, and probably has larger slot spaces availible than one that just 'warps' space or 'shrinks' items by a certain amount). This would limit early game item storage, and might tie into possible costs for account upgrades and subscriptions or purchasable with real world currency items for some of the higher end stuff like the noted 'small demi-plane that follows you and sits in the actual blind eternities' thing.
For balance reasons, I'd probably make it so that you can't planeswalk everything with you when over-encumbered, if over-encumbering is even possible, and you drop random stuff when overencumbered and doing an emergency planeswalk, if such a mechanic is implemented.
To ensure the game actually can run on a reasonable number of people's systems, there would likely have to be limits to how many summons a player can have up at a time, different from the card game. Other tweaks to how summoning works would be for controls and game balance reasons as well, but given how integral it is to the card game, I think summoning should definitely be a possible character build, and basically all mobs and NPCs should have a possible summon template you can get from them in some way or another, even if it wouldn't necessarily match their actual stats.
Additionally, some spells would be considered, 'suspicious' if they are illegal ones on a current plane, or ones the locals don't have equivalents of, at least not commonly, and would normally be restricted unless the game developers implement an 'openly a planeswalker' mode of some sort, and so can't be used in certain zones when in perception areas of NPCs and such. This could be a useful way to limit features for balance and/or implementation aspects in certain designed zones like cities. Players might even need some ways to disguise themselves as local races if they are a race that doesn't exist on that plane in order to visit such areas, unless it's a plane like Ravnica with lots of biomancy, or a weird plane where lots of people use shapeshifting and/or illusions of more extreme sorts as some kind of 'fashion' thing.
Might also be interesting if while starting a first character on your account, you are limited in a selection of more balanced races, it would be possible to later unlock the ability to generate new, characters of 'unlockable' races after encountering them in game once they are implemented and you reach a certain power level on one of your characters, maybe only unlocking them after you already have achieved effectively their innate abilities somehow, like a changeling race would require you learn some shapeshifting magic first. This could let players unlock races that are effectively more powerful, like, say, a changeling, or a dragon (as a 'late game' type unlock that has built-in mana generation of it's own beyond it's mana bonds of a significant amount, and effectively 'starts' at a higher level, and when not shapeshifted to disguise itself, is considered 'suspicious' on most civilized planes and areas), or a physically powerful and slightly larger race like an ogre or loxodon, or a swimming and water breathing race like a merfolk.
I'd hope the game has a very flexible and extensive character creation system, at least on the cosmetic end. I also hope for a relatively flexible system for character building and learning new spells and abilities and types of 'classes' or the equivalent. This might be determined partially at character creation, by picking 'affinities' and 'talents' for game balance reasons, but would have a relatively large number of effective classes within such limitations, including, at the very least, options for either mono or dual-color characters, characters focused on summoning vs. characters focused on instant/sorcery type stuff, 'burn' type characters in red, 'healing' type builds in white and green, and in a weirder way black, and a wide range of things you can learn and unlock as the game grows and expands with each new 'civilized' plane introduced or the like for each build based on what your 'talents and affinities' are and what colors you are in. If they aren't as focused on game balance, I might like for just freedom to learn almost any spell or ability, but limitations of play time and matching the complexity and power of your spells to your mana levels would necessitate following various training trees and make players focus on a viable build for more combat focused designs, rather than be super diverse.
Might be interesting to also have a difference between stuff that is 'learned' and stuff that is 'practiced' with stuff that is merely 'learned' winding up in game menus and having longer cast times and increased mana cost compared to what it would normally have, but once you use it enough in game training methods, many spells (although not all for balance reasons) can become 'practiced' and get to be added to hotbars and have their mana cost and cast times reduced. This would limit the sheer number of spells an individual player might keep on their general combat taskbar. It might also be related to previously noted 'affinities' perhaps making it so that while you can in theory, 'learn' almost anything the game allows (allowing for expansive utility options out of combat if you put in the effort), only things in your 'affinities' can be quick-cast effectively in combat. There might be some special ways in the game to change your affinities later, but perhaps not your 'talents', through some kind of ritual using a special location or powerful entity, in order to swtich play styles without it seeming like a character is 'forgetting' or directly getting 'worse' at things in terms of skills, just changing their ability to control certain types of mana by changing their 'aura type' or something, letting them change what options can be put on hotbars and cast more quickly and efficiently, but if you change back the things that were previously 'practiced' are put back to that status immediately that are within that 'aura type', while the new ones you unlocked that aren't are put back into a more 'dormant' status. It might also be slightly easier and faster to do and train in things that are within the correct 'aura type', and maybe things that you have down to a 'practiced' level that aren't in your aura type could still have somewhat reduced mana costs and cast times, just not down to 'in combat' reasonable levels, at least with most level appropriate encounters, making things easier for some types of play-styles, like certain sorts of diverse crafters and gatherers who learn magics from a variety of colors but aren't so much focused on combat ones.
Still, I'd prefer something more like FF14 to a more restrictive class system locked in at character creation and involving complete re-sets when you want to change, even if it feels like you 'forget' or become 'worse' at stuff occasionally temporarily, since it could at least seem similar to, say, creating a different deck in the card game, and it could let them still balance stuff somewhat easier. Although I'd prefer it to not be linked to items like it is in FF14, since sharing systems like that across different planes wouldn't make much sense.
I'd also like some builds to not necessarily unlock new abilities by 'learning' them normally, but by making deals or something, like black characters might enter contracts with demons, red characters might pay vast sums of money as tribute to ancient dragons, blue characters might convince ancient and powerful fey, white characters might enact certain services for powerful angels while maintaining positive reputations on the plane where that angel resides, and green characters might appease various spirits and elementals to some degree and then meditate and commune with nature in a certain location after following various quest trees to purify taints and deal with poachers or stop some destruction or over-harvesting of nature or whatnot. This could then imbue the character with various abilities in a different manner than, say, learning spells from books or from teachers at a magical school or whatnot, and allow for play-styles for flavor reasons like demon-contractors.
Dude, no offense, but if it were ever on the Internet an appropriate moment to use a "TL;DR synthesis" on a wall of text, is this one!
There is a lot we speculate on. What I am aware of is that you take the roll of a Planeswalker who can travel from the various planes.
I imagine we will get to meet many of the PW's already known in the game, as well as meet new faces. I also imagine we'll start off on a plane (my guess, Dominaria) and will have at least 3 to 4 planes to go to in the start. I am also betting that new expansions will bring 2 additional planes to explore.
I am betting that creature rarity is taken into account, w/ Mythics having rare loot, w/ Legendary Mythics as the end boss for a "raid" or planned encounter.
I am betting a lot of the equipment will follow suit, w/ a Bonesplitter as a weapon you can buy/find immediately, while a Sword of Light and Shadow will be epic loot.
I am curious to see how many of the cards, i.e. artifacts, spells, enchantments translate into a MMO. And how does spell speed differentiate when it comes to sorceries and instants.
Also, to see non-basic lands translated into physical locations we can explore, a Tundra, or a Reflecting Pool, or a chance to fight baddies at the Phyrexian Tower. Maybe artifacts that are locations will change gameplay... imagine you come to an Ensnaring Bridge and the weight of your gear determines if you can cross, or behind a staircase is a secret passage, where you crawl through a Crawlspace where there is only room for 2 players, but there are monsters coming the opposite direction.
I am betting that the spells cast from spell books requires Mana (really, this is obvious), but I also see Mana required for crafting.
A big, last thought: how on
EarthDominaria will cards like the Power 9 get translated? Will a Black Lotus be a quest item for crafting a legendary item? Will moxen give protection from a certain element or give a bonus to damage of a certain element? Will Timetwisters be a cataclysmic event that sends you back to where you were when you logged into the game, w/ a fresh amount of mana?Oh, the ideas and directions this game can go in are astronomical and dizzying. What does everyone anticipate? What do you hope for? In what ways do you see cards getting translated? And lastly, what do you hope to NOT see (think of mistakes other MMO's have done in the past)?
I gave you a topic, now talk amongst yourselves... discuss...
I want Ravnica to be a hectic and crowded city, with a million different streets canals and starwais that lead to god knows where.
I want Dominaria to have giant phyrexian hulks reclaimed by nature, colossal statues of Urza and thran relics that obscure the sun.
I want Zendikar to have whole flying islands, waterfalls and volcanoes coming up of nowhere and sterminated hedron fields.
I would hate this game to have pettyful renditions of the planes just because of performance, devs can make compromises elsewhere. Personally I don’t care about having a giant player count, I would rather have better gameplay and worldbuilding than giant raids and grindy “content”.
Whereas Chandra for instance just fires fireballs. Which if you say have creatures with Fire Resistance or Immunity your character is now worthless.
I care about Classes and Races....and I wonder how much they take from DnD and presumably WoW.
Not all PW's are shoved into
Chandara and Jaya are "Spell slingers" where as Koth is artifact based and Sharkhan is dragon based.
Nissa is mana/land's based where Viven is Creature based.
I'd love to be able to summon a specific type of creature ala Liliana/Varaska/Kasmiana/Teyo, while others can focus on spells.
I could see different starting planes as starting zones depending of the chosen race like human -> Innistrad, Dominaria, Theros or merfolk -> Ixalan, Theros, Dominaria etc. Races are bound to colors for example no red merfolk. Maybe adding some race specific spells, too. You can't play any mana construct race like demons, angels, elements or undead creatures like zombies. I think the races need to be limited because MTG has too much.
You forgot Jace and the faeries.
You are thinking too much like an old player imho. They won't care about referencing old cards, it will just be a neowalker ****fest
I bet we will start on ravnica, do the first tutorial levels, then ascend before we can enter in a guild an move on a different plane
The game would have the ability to let you jump to 'random planes' of a certain 'mana density level'. The mana density level would be a rough gauge of power level of the mobs, and these planes would basically be randomly generated with various features. Early versions of the game would likely have them largely uninhabited by sapient life-forms or civilization, and just include a relatively small explorable area with a number of map regions to claim, including a random assortment and arrangement of basic land types (forest areas, plains areas, mountain areas, swamp areas, 'island' areas with less swampy water heavy space, like rivers and lakes and such). These places wouldn't be truly random in every sense, they'd be procedurally generated with a seed, so you can return to them, or even share them with other players. The mob types and gathering point materials and the like would remain consistent on these 'random planes', so there would be incentive to keep private or share with friends or trade or 'planar frequencies' or something to find or use ones that generate specific resources, or let you find certain creatures for farming certain resources and drops or perhaps gaining summoning patterns or something. The things they generate would be found within certain lists, not all mob types found in the game would be available, and things would be limited by the 'mana density level' of the plane in question.
Maps explored as a mana bond would not all be of the same power level, ones with more difficulty (more dangerous enemies and the like) to explore them would offer higher boosts to power levels, so you can take risks to power up faster by going closer or slightly above your own current effective level. Maps also offer different colored mana sources, so you can't just explore any old map, you have to explore ones matching the color you are leveling, unless you've got some kind of versatile multi-color build, which would likely have a much slower power curve and other issues with it's playstyle without special builds designed to work with it's difficulties. After you bond with a certain number of lower level maps, they stop contributing significantly to your current mana, and you are forced to move on to seeking stronger mana bonds and visiting higher density mana areas.
Besides the 'random' planes you can visit, which are basically impossible for the player base to truly explore all of (similar to No Man's Sky) but have limitations on what kind of content can be found on them due to the procedural generation engine used and balance issues, there are also specific planes inputted by the game developers with properly manually designed maps and potential for more things like cities and NPC populations and quest chains and stuff. These maps include whatever MtG canon planes have been implemented in the game, and might have various methods for discovering them related to the in-game story quest advancement or being shown there by other players by partying up with them or the like, and some of them would likely serve as starting areas for beginner players that they 'accidentally' travel to during their first planeswalk. Early ones would likely include places like Shandalar which aren't as heavily developed in the lore so are easier for the programmers to implement without breaking flavor or as having to do as much research on MtG lore details and such, and are known for their potent mana so likely have 'high level' zones ready for late-game play, but developers could implement more planes as they have the time to design them and their maps and NPCs and quests and loot and everything, including more complex ones like, say, Ravnica.
The sapient-life inhabited, civilization possessing, human-programmer and such designed maps would be some of the ones that include things like more typical spells one can learn, most 'random' procedurally generated planes would likely be limited to doing things like forging mana bonds, gathering loot, and claiming summoning patterns of mobs you turn into your summons, and things like that, if you are a summoning focused build (this may be largely a 'cosmetic' thing, with pre-approved and balanced designs made for player summoning mechanics, which means your own summons wouldn't be exact copies of the mobs you find out in the wild, although you could still find various 'types' more easily by traveling to random planes or specific ones that other players help you find or whatnot that might not be found in the more manually designed 'civilized' planes or the like). On the civilized (and game developer more directly designed) planes thus you could find things like new spells to learn via purchasing scrolls or doing various quests and other things like that appropriate to unlocking new in-game abilities, things equivalent to instant, sorcery, enchantment, and artifact spells, or collecting certain types of gear that players aren't personally crafting, or learning some kinds of crafting recipes for crafting focused players.
Maps that you have fully explored and forged a mana bond to are also ones you can more easily travel directly to when planeswalking.
Planeswalking itself would likely have two modes. The first would be a 'standard mode', which is somewhat 'slow' but lacking in penalties. It's likely different for different players, from a list of options on character creation, related to the 'ignition of your spark' and various innate affinities and such. It allows you to precisely target where you are going from planes you've visited and formed mana bonds on, and then pick the mana bonded map section you want to end up on, and probably needs to be done in a safe area and has a noticeable cast time to it that could have trouble if you are interrupted or the like. Probably some fancy animations too. The differences though would largely be cosmetic, and there would be limits on how much it could be upgraded. The second mode would be a 'random jump' where you randomly find a new procedurally generated plane (sometimes ones other players might have already discovered, in theory, although the odds would likely be relatively low, possibly lower than it is in No Man's Sky, since at least in that you are all headed towards the center of the galaxy and odds of encountering other players likely increase along the way). This would be slightly faster than the standard mode, but not by much, and can easily place you smack dab into a dangerous situation if you are going to a mana density appropriate or higher zone.
Then there is the 'emergency jump', this would be triggered instead of dying when a player would normally be killed, and takes you back to a place designated as your sanctuary, or, if you don't have one yet or deliberately don't set one, takes you to a 'super-low mana density, safe feeling' random plane with mana bonds so weak claiming them effectively doesn't level you, almost nill value materials gathering points, and harmless mobs, and leaves you littered with penalties and such until you heal up (this would be done to keep with the lore that death tends to cause one to lose the planeswalker spark, so we don't want players 'dying' or discovering a way around this too easily, at least at lower levels). This 'emergency jump' would possibly leave some stuff behind at random, losing you some loot and currencies and the like that you might have to go back and retrieve, and might be stolen by another player or certain mobs if you were in a PVP allowed zone. Emergency jumps and their sanctuaries can never be PVP enabled zones, at least not early on in the game before you might unlock alternative methods to avoid death with less penalties or the like.
Different planes would usually have different currencies, but you can easily 'convert' currencies by buying one type of good on one plane and selling it on another. Trading focused players could even find profitable trades based on differences in economies and stuff on different planes in order to trade between currencies, and some currencies wouldn't be 'suspicious' on certain other planes, and thus be able to be traded more directly for alternative currencies, especially if it's made of valuable raw materials or seems like a work of art to the other plane or something. A few planes that are more heavily trafficked historically by powerful planeswalkers might even share some currencies, but generally, players not focused on the economic stuff would usually earn currencies separately on each plane.
Some magic items don't work off their plane of origin, due to relying on local features (likely often for balance and implementation reasons), some might even 'break' if you try to take them off plane, and thus have to be 'stored' somehow on the plane you get them on, such as finding some kind of bank or private housing setup to keep them in when on that plane, perhaps later learning a spell to summon the stored items to you from where you have them kept after you arrive on the plane). This could include things like a magic chest that you can access from anywhere on a plane, but actually is located on a 'local' space, like a local ethereal or astral 'sub-plane' or something, or the local divine realm or afterlife or something. Or a magic whistle that calls a type of local steed to you that doesn't actually summon them out of aether like a typical summoning spell (to allow lower 'level' players or players in certain limited zones limited access to things like, say, mounts or flying mounts). Or access to a 'font of healing' in an area you use as a sanctuary to recover faster from an emergency planeswalk.
Things that you can bring with you across planes would likely have to have certain flavor restrictions that make sense. You couldn't take, say, a D&D style bag of holding across planes if you wound up on, say, Eberron, or the Forgotten Realms, because it is connected to the local connected plane cosmology, and wouldn't work on just any random planar group that might work differently. However, a similar item could exist funtionally speaking for players, that, say, works by say, shrinking and lightening items entering the bag, instead of it being a specific linked extradimensional space, or having the bag and it's contents be magically lightened and the space inside warped and distorted to be larger on the inside than the outside without actually expanding into alternate planar space. Or one designed by powerful planeswalkers or mages familiar with the blind eternities that actually let you take small demi-planes around with you that sit in the blind eternities, rather than local cosmologies, but might be a sort of higher 'level' item in the game (since it isn't just lowering loot weight by a percentage or whatnot, and probably has larger slot spaces availible than one that just 'warps' space or 'shrinks' items by a certain amount). This would limit early game item storage, and might tie into possible costs for account upgrades and subscriptions or purchasable with real world currency items for some of the higher end stuff like the noted 'small demi-plane that follows you and sits in the actual blind eternities' thing.
For balance reasons, I'd probably make it so that you can't planeswalk everything with you when over-encumbered, if over-encumbering is even possible, and you drop random stuff when overencumbered and doing an emergency planeswalk, if such a mechanic is implemented.
To ensure the game actually can run on a reasonable number of people's systems, there would likely have to be limits to how many summons a player can have up at a time, different from the card game. Other tweaks to how summoning works would be for controls and game balance reasons as well, but given how integral it is to the card game, I think summoning should definitely be a possible character build, and basically all mobs and NPCs should have a possible summon template you can get from them in some way or another, even if it wouldn't necessarily match their actual stats.
Additionally, some spells would be considered, 'suspicious' if they are illegal ones on a current plane, or ones the locals don't have equivalents of, at least not commonly, and would normally be restricted unless the game developers implement an 'openly a planeswalker' mode of some sort, and so can't be used in certain zones when in perception areas of NPCs and such. This could be a useful way to limit features for balance and/or implementation aspects in certain designed zones like cities. Players might even need some ways to disguise themselves as local races if they are a race that doesn't exist on that plane in order to visit such areas, unless it's a plane like Ravnica with lots of biomancy, or a weird plane where lots of people use shapeshifting and/or illusions of more extreme sorts as some kind of 'fashion' thing.
Might also be interesting if while starting a first character on your account, you are limited in a selection of more balanced races, it would be possible to later unlock the ability to generate new, characters of 'unlockable' races after encountering them in game once they are implemented and you reach a certain power level on one of your characters, maybe only unlocking them after you already have achieved effectively their innate abilities somehow, like a changeling race would require you learn some shapeshifting magic first. This could let players unlock races that are effectively more powerful, like, say, a changeling, or a dragon (as a 'late game' type unlock that has built-in mana generation of it's own beyond it's mana bonds of a significant amount, and effectively 'starts' at a higher level, and when not shapeshifted to disguise itself, is considered 'suspicious' on most civilized planes and areas), or a physically powerful and slightly larger race like an ogre or loxodon, or a swimming and water breathing race like a merfolk.
I'd hope the game has a very flexible and extensive character creation system, at least on the cosmetic end. I also hope for a relatively flexible system for character building and learning new spells and abilities and types of 'classes' or the equivalent. This might be determined partially at character creation, by picking 'affinities' and 'talents' for game balance reasons, but would have a relatively large number of effective classes within such limitations, including, at the very least, options for either mono or dual-color characters, characters focused on summoning vs. characters focused on instant/sorcery type stuff, 'burn' type characters in red, 'healing' type builds in white and green, and in a weirder way black, and a wide range of things you can learn and unlock as the game grows and expands with each new 'civilized' plane introduced or the like for each build based on what your 'talents and affinities' are and what colors you are in. If they aren't as focused on game balance, I might like for just freedom to learn almost any spell or ability, but limitations of play time and matching the complexity and power of your spells to your mana levels would necessitate following various training trees and make players focus on a viable build for more combat focused designs, rather than be super diverse.
Might be interesting to also have a difference between stuff that is 'learned' and stuff that is 'practiced' with stuff that is merely 'learned' winding up in game menus and having longer cast times and increased mana cost compared to what it would normally have, but once you use it enough in game training methods, many spells (although not all for balance reasons) can become 'practiced' and get to be added to hotbars and have their mana cost and cast times reduced. This would limit the sheer number of spells an individual player might keep on their general combat taskbar. It might also be related to previously noted 'affinities' perhaps making it so that while you can in theory, 'learn' almost anything the game allows (allowing for expansive utility options out of combat if you put in the effort), only things in your 'affinities' can be quick-cast effectively in combat. There might be some special ways in the game to change your affinities later, but perhaps not your 'talents', through some kind of ritual using a special location or powerful entity, in order to swtich play styles without it seeming like a character is 'forgetting' or directly getting 'worse' at things in terms of skills, just changing their ability to control certain types of mana by changing their 'aura type' or something, letting them change what options can be put on hotbars and cast more quickly and efficiently, but if you change back the things that were previously 'practiced' are put back to that status immediately that are within that 'aura type', while the new ones you unlocked that aren't are put back into a more 'dormant' status. It might also be slightly easier and faster to do and train in things that are within the correct 'aura type', and maybe things that you have down to a 'practiced' level that aren't in your aura type could still have somewhat reduced mana costs and cast times, just not down to 'in combat' reasonable levels, at least with most level appropriate encounters, making things easier for some types of play-styles, like certain sorts of diverse crafters and gatherers who learn magics from a variety of colors but aren't so much focused on combat ones.
Still, I'd prefer something more like FF14 to a more restrictive class system locked in at character creation and involving complete re-sets when you want to change, even if it feels like you 'forget' or become 'worse' at stuff occasionally temporarily, since it could at least seem similar to, say, creating a different deck in the card game, and it could let them still balance stuff somewhat easier. Although I'd prefer it to not be linked to items like it is in FF14, since sharing systems like that across different planes wouldn't make much sense.
I'd also like some builds to not necessarily unlock new abilities by 'learning' them normally, but by making deals or something, like black characters might enter contracts with demons, red characters might pay vast sums of money as tribute to ancient dragons, blue characters might convince ancient and powerful fey, white characters might enact certain services for powerful angels while maintaining positive reputations on the plane where that angel resides, and green characters might appease various spirits and elementals to some degree and then meditate and commune with nature in a certain location after following various quest trees to purify taints and deal with poachers or stop some destruction or over-harvesting of nature or whatnot. This could then imbue the character with various abilities in a different manner than, say, learning spells from books or from teachers at a magical school or whatnot, and allow for play-styles for flavor reasons like demon-contractors.
Dude, no offense, but if it were ever on the Internet an appropriate moment to use a "TL;DR synthesis" on a wall of text, is this one!