Effects such as Inscribed kick off once you hit cast, but before you choose a target. My guess is the order of operation is something like… cast button clicked, at least one valid target confirmed, spell considered cast (triggering mana removal, and perk activations), target selected, spell resolved. So cancelling during target select requires a roll-back on a variety of tasks performed during the spell considered cast step.
Not that they couldn’t change that, but I doubt it was a conscious decision as much as a, “just how they coded it” moment. Those sometimes end up very difficult to change and they probably just haven’t devoted the time. Maybe a good feature request to submit so they have it on their radar. I would imagine it would be a relatively low priority due to how rare it probably comes up and how core of a system casting is. The QA effort magnifies on those kind of changes and often pushes them out of the “reasonable effort” umbrella.
However, like I have said before, our job as players is to request features we think would benefit the game. It is the job of the devs to decide which features are worth implementing and which are not. I wouldn’t presume to make that decision for them. Sometimes things are easier or harder than they initially appear and a simple change isn’t and a complicated change isn’t either.
Yeah, I understand how it may be difficult and why it might not have been implemented when the game first came out (or after the first couple of patches). But it seems to me that it would have been one of the first things asked for when the game first came out and since it hasn’t been done yet, there must have been some reason (perhaps for the above reasons). It’s just curious that there hasn’t been a response from one of the longtime players either remembering such a reason or saying that it hasn’t been asked (and this forum is pretty active), so either no one has been playing long enough to remember, it hasn’t been asked previously, or someone who does remember isn’t stating it or hasn’t seen this yet
This has happened to me a couple of times as well. And just happened now, ruining my PvP win streak. When I clicked cast, I wasn’t looking at the board… Yes. I was just using it so I could get rid of the barrier on the char in front… So I could hit her with something harder… Really frustrating though that you can “break” the game. If it said no targets and backed out, that seems a simple enough fix, not even a cancel button for all spells.
Damn, getting the handle of Soothsayer when i didn’t paid enough attention costed me some battles that had to be canceled with Alt+F4.
Well, better improve my skills while/if the “Cancel Spell” is not implemented.
PS: It’s a really great thing the system of this forum that allow us to see similar posts when we are about to create a new one.
As of right now, one (minor) complication is that troops that have an ability that fires when a spell is cast (such as Inscribed) fire before you choose a target, not after. That would need to be addressed if canceling out of target selection were ever implemented. (The fix is trivial, however, if your spell target happened to be an enemy troop and you were attempting to calculate exact damage, Inscribed might then mess you up if it added one effective HP after the cast was committed.)
When you push the “Cast” button, the spell is effectively cast the way it is implemented. This doesn’t just affect traits that trigger by casts, the spell also consumes the troops mana at that same moment, before choosing a target troop or gem.
