Lowering the cooldown on Meditation.

[Aquillion]

Why does Meditation even have a cooldown, let alone one of over a hundred turns? You can't use it in combat anyway, so as far as I can tell the only effect of that long cooldown is to make the player wait a bit in real-time -- if you're in a situation where you can use Meditation at all, you can almost certainly wait another hundred-plus turns for it to cool down if you really have to.

I always found that cooldown really annoying, for some reason.

[Zonk]

I fidn the current Meditation pretty annoying, can't see myself putting points into it when I'd just find a safe place and spam it.

What if it was reworked so you meditated until your equilibrium was down to 0/the min based on sustains or were interrupted? Also, reduce the cooldown to something like 10 or even remove it.

ALSO, to make it worth the points - it could provide some passive benefit, like confusion resist(10% per TL), mental saves...All that meditation making you more focused.



Points would make you lower equilibrium faster(like now) BUT the talent would also

[marvalis]

Reduce cooldown to 60 turns. For each generic point spend into it, reduce the cooldown by an additional 10 turns. At 5/5 it would have a 20 turn cooldown. Keep the other effects of the skill.
If someone where to invent ~2 points into meditation that would reduce it to a 40 second cooldown, much better than the current 150 turn cooldown.

The reason why you should put points into mediation is to make it less annoying. This is not the best reason from a game design point, but since summoners do not have a lot of places to spend generic points in you can put at least two points into this skill.

[Zonk]

This is not the best reason from a game design point, but since summoners do not have a lot of places to spend generic points in you can put at least two points into this skill.

I think it's a very bad reason, really. Make you put talents to make spamming a talent away from enemies less annoying? The 'benefit' would be less time spent resting/holding down 5.

[bricks]

I've mentioned this a few other places, though without any comment:

Change Meditation to a sustained ability, with mechanics very similar to stealth: can only use when no enemies are around, cancels on attack. Perhaps daze the player for a turn and cancel the effect if hit with an attack. For every turn that it is active, decrease Equilibrium by a small amount that scales with talent level. This way, the player can use it both as a recovery move between fights, and as a recovery move while running away from a fight.

Another nice change would be for any player character with the Equilibrium resource automatically learn level 1 (or level 0) Meditation, and change the current talent to a "Meditation Mastery" ability. Only decreasing equilibrium on the world map is a weird mechanic.

[marvalis]

How about making meditation a passive talent? (passive talents are always on).
As long as you are not withing LOS of any monster, you gain the meditation effect. If a monster enters your LOS, you loose the meditation effect.
There are no penalties for mediation.
Additional points spend in meditation increase the recovery rate.

While under effect of meditation, your equilibrium decreases. When the player uses 'r'esting, it would continue until you have 0 (+sustain cost) equilibrium.

I have suggested before that we could use a 'in and out of combat' mechanic. This would be a good place to implement it. The character is out of combat as long as there is no enemy in LOS. A character is in combat whenever a monster is in line of sight.

[Talonj]

Meditation has the cooldown to prevent people from meditating in battle. You can, as a wyrmic, actually use lightning speed, run around behind a wall, and then meditate for full equilibrium. You can't do this more than once in battle. (without nature's balance, anyway) Summoners can do the same with any of the normal inscription movement options, as well.

It's saved my wyrmics' asses in boss battles a couple times.

[Zonk]

How about making meditation a passive talent? (passive talents are always on).
As long as you are not withing LOS of any monster, you gain the meditation effect. If a monster enters your LOS, you loose the meditation effect.
There are no penalties for mediation.
Additional points spend in meditation increase the recovery rate.

While under effect of meditation, your equilibrium decreases. When the player uses 'r'esting, it would continue until you have 0 (+sustain cost) equilibrium.

I have suggested before that we could use a 'in and out of combat' mechanic. This would be a good place to implement it. The character is out of combat as long as there is no enemy in LOS. A character is in combat whenever a monster is in line of sight.

I like this way better than the current one..but again, why would you put points in it when you can just rest? Again I think there should be some other (even if minor)benefit associated, like confusion resist or +saves.
Or a lesser chance to fail when your equilibrium is high, perhaps.

Also, might want to think how 'out of combat' condition interacts with ESP, where you can see enemies but know they likely cant' see you.

[Elkan]

Why not replace meditation's slot with an entirely new talent, Give meditation "free" whenever equilibrium is gained as a resource, and make it function more like spacetime tuning. When you activate it you lose one equilibrium per turn until you are at zero or your sustain cap, you are dazed until you see a monster or are attacked (in case something invis/stealthed sneaks upon you) A short cooldown 20 turns or so, wouldn't go amiss. As it stands the ability just forces characters to hit the skip turn key until the ability is ready.

[marvalis]

I like this way better than the current one..but again, why would you put points in it when you can just rest?

It will decrease faster between battles (less time spend pressing 'r').
More importantly, it will reduce your equilibrium faster during a battle when you can break LOS for a few turns!
For summoners this does not matter (not much anyway) since they can just use the jelly to reduce equilibrium in battle. It is still nice to have the option of improving regeneration out of battle. For wyrmics, it looks like it would matter more:

It's saved my wyrmics' asses in boss battles a couple times.

Again I think there should be some other (even if minor)benefit associated, like confusion resist or +saves.Or a lesser chance to fail when your equilibrium is high, perhaps.

Meditation reduces fail chance by lowering your equilibrium. It would not make any sense to give an addition fail rate reduction bonus (that would remove the purpose of having equilibrium as a resource in the first place).
Meditation cannot be activated when there are monsters in LOS, and ends as soon as you take damage. Giving a skill that is clearly meant to be used out of combat bonuses to combat makes no sense. On top of that, there is already way to much confusion resistance in the game and it would not make any sense at all to give this to meditation.

Meditate on your link with Nature. You are considered dazed for %d turns
Each turn you regenerate %d equilibrium and %d at the end.
If you are hit while meditating you will stop.
Meditating require peace and quiet and may not be cast with hostile creatures in sight.
The effects will increase with your Willpower stat.

Maybe the best change will be to change 'r'est so it always continues to use meditation until you have recovered all equilibrium (wait for cooldown, use it again, wait etc). Then again, this is going to be dangerous because the player might be dazed when he doesn't want too.

Meditation has the cooldown to prevent people from meditating in battle.

Maybe the least we can do is reduce the cooldown to something like 80 turns (instead of 150). Most fight probably take only 10-20 turns.