Undo the alleged MCP "fix" for Absorb spell reflection

[Jemolk]

In the vanilla game, when an absorb spell, say, Absorb Health, is reflected, it has you absorb health from yourself, so no change and nothing lost. The MCP has an exceptionally annoying "fix" for this behavior toggled on by default and located under bug fixes. The "fix" makes it so that when an absorb spell is reflected, the target absorbs from you. The result is that one of the best outs for mages trying to not get annihilated by anything with reflect becomes one of the most painful ways to quickly die while healing your enemy. I cannot see how the vanilla behavior constitutes a bug. After all, if the portion of the spell targeting your opponent gets bounced back to you, how does that necessarily mean that the portion that only affected the caster (being healed by the health lost) gets swapped to the enemy? This seems to me to be a game balance alteration, and the MCP description also mentions that the vanilla behavior "feels too safe for a game mechanic" as the reason for the change.

Unfortunately, OpenMW copies this behavior. Not only that, but here, it isn't optional, we can't toggle the "fix" off. The result is that enemies with reflect render pure mages almost unusable at anything below godly levels on OpenMW, and the only solution is to mod the enemies so they don't have reflect effects. Can someone please alleviate the pain here? Even making it alterable through editing config files would be lovely.

P.S. Also, please make the drain int exploit work again, even if we need a cfg file toggle for it. All it requires is for 0/0 magicka to be treated as 100% rather than 0%, so I really don't see how that's regarded as anything more than an odd and overlooked implication of magicka percentage being retained through changes in Int.

[DestinedToDie]

How about a spell like this?

Drain magicka to 1.
Restore 1 magicka.

This way you get 100% magicka and restore it.

[kuyondo]

the absorb health issue has been addressed in the bugtracker.. and it was rejected. the devs prefer the 'fixed' behavior.

[Chris]

The result is that one of the best outs for mages trying to not get annihilated by anything with reflect magic

Which just adds to how stupidly over-powered absorb health is if you can use it without consequence on enemies with reflect, with at worst nothing happening. A damage-oriented spell-caster still has to put up with reflected damage from their own damage spells, yet a spell that does both damage to the enemy and heals you at the same time is safer? That's hardly balanced.

Spell-casters do have problems with enemies that have reflect magic, but I'd say that's an issue with reflect magic (reflect physical damage in Oblivion is similarly problematic for non-casters). Making absorb health more OP than it already is isn't how to deal with it, though.

At best I can maybe see adding a config option to restore vanilla behavior, but I do think the MCP fix should be the default with better fixes offered in the future.

[Tes96]

the absorb health issue has been addressed in the bugtracker.. unfortunately it was rejected. the devs prefer the 'fixed' behavior.

I like the fixed behavior myself, too. It poses more of a challenge for pure mages when fighting spriggans or golden saints.

[kuyondo]

the fix is fine. and i have no objections to it. just pointing out the difference between the vanilla engine and openmw, which emphasizes emulating vanilla behavior..

[Jemolk]

How about a spell like this?

Drain magicka to 1.
Restore 1 magicka.

This way you get 100% magicka and restore it.

Okay, sure...Doesn't work if you have more than 101 Magicka though. Yeah, okay, you could make a version that restores more...Doesn't work if you have more than 200 then. IOW, worthless for anyone who would use it. I mean, this one I can live with as-is, but it's extremely irritating and really not a bug.

The result is that one of the best outs for mages trying to not get annihilated by anything with reflect magic

Which just adds to how stupidly over-powered absorb health is if you can use it without consequence on enemies with reflect, with at worst nothing happening. A damage-oriented spell-caster still has to put up with reflected damage from their own damage spells, yet a spell that does both damage to the enemy and heals you at the same time is safer? That's hardly balanced.

Spell-casters do have problems with enemies that have reflect magic, but I'd say that's an issue with reflect magic (reflect physical damage in Oblivion is similarly problematic for non-casters). Making absorb health more OP than it already is isn't how to deal with it, though.

At best I can maybe see adding a config option to restore vanilla behavior, but I do think the MCP fix should be the default with better fixes offered in the future.

A config file revert would be acceptable...But seriously, this isn't a bug. Pretty sure the intention was to emulate vanilla behavior until 1.0 except bugs. Yes, the game's behavior is flawed. Very much so. I'd be quite happy post-1.0 with ways to alter Reflect effects to be less absurdly crippling to face as a mage rather than allowing Absorb Health to be overpowered. But right now, that's not exactly an option, is it? So until then, I'd really like to see that reverted. I mean yes, I can always make sure I have constant effects that make me immune to the type of spell I'm throwing, but that's not really any better and takes being nearly a god already. Alternatively, I could make a spell that does, say, 20 pts Fire damage on target and 20 pts Restore Health on self in the same spell, but that also requires being a god. So with current behavior either I never face anyone with Reflect effects until like level 20, or I die at random with very little I can do about it. That sounds worse IMHO. So until mods can fix it, I'd like vanilla behavior back, please.

[AnyOldName3]

Sometimes I think it would be nice if we could summon everyone who worked on a specific part of the original game (not just those who created the engine - anyone who created spells or balanced their effectiveness or conceived of a mechanic in the first place would also be good) and ask them what they think the original engine does in a specific situation and why that's what it does. It could be that:

• Everyone who worked on it thinks it works like MCP, meaning it's an obvious bug.
• Everyone thinks it works like it does, but admits it's a cock-up (so still a bug).
• Everyone thinks it works like it does, but on purpose (so not a bug).
• The engine people think it works like MCP and the balance people think it works another way (so the engine people probably cocked up their implementation but other people worked around that and the game is balanced around the original behaviour, even if it was actually a bug).
• The engine people say it works like the original but the balance people say it works like MCP (so it's not a bug, but the game is balanced as if it was).
• There's disagreement about it being intentional.
• Something else.

Without this discussion with a feature's creators and designers, we can debate which is the correct version until the cows come home. My vote is that unless it makes the code unduly ugly, we should make it configurable.

[wareya]

If the vanilla behavior is not available then there are a lot of people who will never use OpenMW.

[kuyondo]

i somehow agree that openmw should not be balancing things now, but rather fixing bugs only.

recently , theres a pr that fixes duration and strength of eaten ingredient effects to match vanilla, but it was already 'balanced' (effects from eaten ingredients has fixed duration and magnitude), by doing so, the change made it more overpowered and prone to abuse. the reason given is that, the devs wanted to emulate vanilla as much as they can... so it made me confused for a time. do they want to match vanilla? or do they want to balance things out?

why is that accepted and this issue is not?