[color:"orange"]The game needs to "remember" the mana regeneration rate for the different walkpoints the player passes through.[/color]
The game would have to change music and environmental sounds (etc) when changing areas anyway, so changing regeneration rate should not be too hard, as long as it is constant within each major area. If there are going to be variations (a cursed building with a lower regeneration than the surrounding forest, or an oasis with higher rate than the desert) perhaps those areas could be designed as a mini-level.
Oh, that's true. But that's a lot of extra programming, isn't it? After all, aren't there a lot of places in a 3d gameworld?
Whether you would want to vary the regeneration rate (effecting specific character builds much more than others) or if this feature would be the best use of resources during development are other matters entirely.
Again, sounds like even more programming especially when you want to take into account the various character builds, classes, skills, etc. Geez...
Yeah, I was actually thinking more along the development resources. Unless this feature is part of a larger system which affects spells and other abilities, it does seem kinda unwarranted. But it could be a very special feature that's given to the player as a reward.
Or a temporary special feature like a mana booster: you click on a device and it'll reward with both vitality and mana regen speed-up. Or this could even be a skill that you can learn.
[color:"orange"]Unless it's limited to only certain key areas, I think it's better laid off to rest.[/color]
It would probably be limited to key areas anyway. You could get really detailed and have the recovery rate differ if (for example) your character was walking on a stone pathway rather than the nearby grass, but practically only larger difference would be noticed by most people. Even then, potions could be the main source of mana (at least during battles, and depending on price / availability), with people not paying a lot of attention to their mana levels while walking around exploring.
Whoa... that sounds really detailed! But is it really necessary? It sounds like overkill, a trademark of some games where they spend so much $$$ on developing some "super-powerful system" but the plot is barely there or the rest of the game is just plain boring. I guess it's up to Larian to balance it out so the system is detailed yet doesn't collapse under all that intricate complexity.
I'd prefer having just potions or some skills that would help speed up mana-regen, that's all. And oh, while we're on the topic of regeneration, I wonder IF Larian could also have some basic vitality regeneration as well. I recall that vitality regen was also a skill under Survivors but perhaps, all characters could have a basic stat for this.
This could be an interesting difference between classes or races, but in that case you would have to make sure there were areas that each character type would find easier or harder, or there would need to be a party, so individual strengths and weaknesses could be balanced. This could more easily be applied to opponents (ie provoke a magical swamp monster into leaving the water and it could be much easier to defeat), though it wouldn't necessarily be the best way to differentiate them or modify their behaviour.
Hmmm... I agree that could sound interesting. Although it sounds kinda complicated to me, if Larian manages to implement that, good luck! ^_^
Though I'd prefer Larian program abilities or skills which would have similar results but which could be applied to different situations and which would have many purposes.
Speaking of stuff to put in DD 2, I just thought of a mana-sucking trap which drains the opponent's mana and stores it so that you can use it: viola! Your insta-mana factory! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ROFL.gif" alt="" />