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| Thread: Modified skill system, Synergy skill and Dual hero classes - Heroes VI relevance | |
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted October 25, 2007 07:51 PM |
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Modified skill system, Synergy skill and Dual hero classes - Heroes VI relevance
Ok, on request of Geny, and as a result of a lot of different thoughts I've been playing around with for a long time, I will post here a couple of different suggestions on how I feel one could improve some of the Heroes V (TOTE) features, possibly with relevance for Heroes VI.
I will reserve the first three posts here for the three parts of the subject, which are more or less intertwined:
1 - A modified Skill system.
2 - A new take on Ultimate Abilities: Syngergy skills.
3 - Dual Hero classes - a reworking of an old concept of Advanced Classes.
1 - Modified Skill System
Heroes V introduced a new and exciting Skill system, with 12 Skills, each of which has associated Abilities: 3 basic abilities common for all classes, and 3 advanced abilities depending on Hero class. I find this system to be rather brilliant; logically it makes sense to have some abilities grouped with certain skills, and more importantly, it takes care of the problem with some abilities being poorly suited for ranking as real skills. Heroes 3 is notorious for this problem with skills like Eagle Eye, Mysticism, Estates, Navigation, etc. These skills now live happy lives as abilities tied to relevant abilties.
Tribes Of The East stepped things up a level, but introducing the concept of more than 3 advanced abilities to each skill - now several or all basic abilities will lead to advanced abilities, sometimes even leading to several advanced branches from the same basic stem. The great thing about this is that it will allow for a lot more variation and customization - and randomnes - the downside being that the skill system is rather chaotic.
Based on that, I suggest a slight modification, which is in fact rather a simplification. The base of my suggestion for skill system is therefore this:
For all classes, each basic ability always leads to one and only one branch of advanced abilities.
This means, that no matter which basic ability you choose, there will always be two (and only two) advanced abilities branching from this basic ability. There will be no dual branches, and no dead branches.
The advanced abilities will still depend on which class you play - thus, there can be variation between the different factions, although like in TOTE, a lot of common skills will be expected. Only the imagination sets the limit, really.
Example
The following shows an example of how such a skill-tree could look:
I've labeled it "General", because this is supposed to be the frame on which each class will build it's tree by substituting class-relevant skills. Thus, Knight will subsitute Ice Resistance and Eternal Darkness with Fallen Knight and Weakening Strike; and Divine Health and Eternal Light with Grace Of Light and Guardian Angel. Other factions will substitute other skills depending on their properties.
Suggestions for skilltrees for individual classes can be seen following these lings:
Knight
Demon Lord
Necromancer
Warlock
Ranger
Wizard
Rune Mage
New Abilities
To fill some of the slots, I've made suggestions for some new abilties. Not all of these are particularly brilliant (though I really like some of them!), others could replace them, but this was just to give an example. Also, some existing abilities have been modified.
General
Fortitude: Adds +2 permanently to Hero Attack.
Dodge: Decreases damage received by friendly units by 5 % for each point of Luck.
Enforced Arrows: Grants a +3 Attack bonus to the Ballista.
Healer: Grants the Hero 2 more uses of First Aid tent, increases healing power by 100 %.
Energy Burst: Treatment with the First Aid tent will also increase unit ATB by 0.10.
Navigation: Increases speed at see by 50 %. Hero only uses 50 % of his full movement to enter or disembark boats. Losses in Whirlpools are reduced by 50 %.
Familiar Grounds: Hero gains familiarity with his native terrain upon acquiring the skill, and can spend a full day to gain familiarity with foreign terrain. All creatures receive +1 Speed when fighting on familiar ground, and Hero ignores all movement penalties. Hero can learn 1 terrain after the first for every 4 Knowledge points.
Ambush: When Hero attacks an enemy stack or Hero, enemy stacks will always enter combat with lower ATB value than normally, ATB will be capped at 0.1 x Initiative / 10. Heroes with Scouting are immune to this effect.
Track Lore: Hero leaves no trace on adventure map. He is able to track enemy Hero’s trails for two days, and can get general information about direction, distance and army size.
Estates: Increases income by 50 x Level Gold + 1 Wood / Ore for every second level through levels 1-9 and 1 Gem / Crystal / Sulphur / Mercury for every second level through levels 10-16. Then starts over as from level 1.
Recruitment: Increases growth of all creatures in related town by 1.5 % per level.
Trading: Offers better trading rates (Hero is equal to two marketplaces) and gives 1 % pr. Hero level discount at Artifact Merchants.
Spoils Of War: After combat returns 2 % of defeated creature value in Gold, 0.02 % in common resources and 0.01 % in precious resources.
Power of Weakness: Hero gains ability to use Mass Weakness at advanced level.
Lucky Blows: Hero melee Attacks may be affected by good Luck.
Mana Flow: Each round, units with the Caster ability will regenerate 25 % of their Mana (rounded down).
Divine Health: All units in Heroes army are immune to diseases and poison (including spells).
Knight
Unstoppable Charge: Hero retaliation strike deals double damage.
Chivalry: Hero may receive positive morale when performing a melee attack (including Retaliation Strikes).
Divine Premonition: During Tactics phase, Hero gets to know the starting position of some of the enemy stacks. The number of stacks revealed will be [Hero Level] / [Hero Level + Enemy Level], where the Enemy Level will be taking as the larger number of Enemy Hero level and level of strongest creature in enemy army. The revealed stacks will be picked randomly.
Grace of Light: Hero effective Spell Power with Light Magic spells is increased similar to his Morale Modifier.
Summon Terrain: Knight gains the ability to summon a particular terrain during combat, changing the combat arena to (one of) his Favoured Ground(s)
Demon Lord
Infect: Once a unit is targeted by the Plague Tent, there is a chance the unit is infected by a disease and will suffer damage on the subsequent two actions it takes.
Necromancer
Despair (skill): Decreases enemy creatures’ morale depending on skill level: Basic Despair = -1 Morale penalty. Advanced Despair = -2 Morale penalty. Expert Despair = -3 Morale penalty.
Malice: Every time an enemy creatures suffers a Negative Morale effect, the Hero moves forward by 0.1 on the ATB scale. In contrary, when enemy creatures suffer a Positive Morale effect, he moves backwards on the ATB scale by the same amount.
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What will happen now?
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted October 25, 2007 07:51 PM |
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2 - Synergy Skills
Whereas the above suggestion is pretty none-controversal, this one is less likely to fall into everybody's taste. I will give a brief description of what motivated me to come up with this idea.
Basic concept
The concept of Synergy Skills is a reworking of the current Ultimate Ability system. In the beginning, it was build on the realization that the Ultimate Abilities are thoroughly unbalanced - for instance, Nature's Luck is was more powerful than almost all of the other abilities.
At first I thought the best solution would be to rebalance the abilities, and that would also be a solution - however, the thought occured to me: Why should only Rangers have access to Nature's Luck? That was what let me onto the concept of Synergy Skills:
Abilities, that become available through certain combinations of skills.
It is very reminiscent of the current Ultimate Abilities, with the exception that each class will have access to all "Ultimate Abilities", or put the other way around, each "Ultimate Ability" is available to all classes. That does not mean, however, that all classes will have equally easy access to all Abilities - for instance, Nature's Luck (still) builds on Luck, Light Magic and Logistics - this means, that Ranger will have easy access to this ability (15 % for Luck, 15 % for Logistics, and 8 % for Light Magic), whereas Necromancers will have a hard time pursuing this ability (2 % for Luck, 8 % for Logistics, and 2 % for Light Magic).
Build of skills
The specific layout for the skills may seem random, but is not quite that. To unlock a Synergy Skill, one needs a combination of 3 Skills with 3 specific Ability branches. Because ability branches vary between classes, only the basic stem is shown (for instance: Attack > Tactics), but this means that you need Attack on Expert level and all three abilities in the Tactics branch.
The build is made, so that all abilities are used once and only once - with the exception of Navigation, which is not used because of the controversal nature of this ability (even though an improvement could make it ok); instead Path Finding occurs twice.
The tables below show the suggested combinations 12 x 3 Skills/Abilities, which makes 12 possible Synergy Skills. For each skill is shown requirements and also which classes favor this build (number in brackets after class name denotes sum of occurance chances for the three skills). A skill is generally not considered favored if one of the requirements has only 2 % of showing up, exceptions are when both of the others have 15 % (shown in square brackets).
This is only work in progress - some abilities might be underpowered, others might be overpowered.
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What will happen now?
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted October 25, 2007 07:51 PM |
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Placeholder
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What will happen now?
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Rogue_Lord
Bad-mannered
Hired Hero
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posted October 25, 2007 07:52 PM |
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WoW its cool!
Alci, I read all your work that you did, I am your fan!
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I will steal all your money!
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Geny
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted October 25, 2007 07:58 PM |
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Taking it to a new level, eh? Well, you never could stop in time.
Waiting for problems to find.
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DON'T BE A NOOB, JOIN A.D.V.E.N.T.U.R.E.
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Ted
Promising
Supreme Hero
Peanut Exterminator
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posted October 25, 2007 08:02 PM |
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this will be interesting, i think the old thread should be locked too, just to keep everyone on this thread, i know what alc can do and how he can do it, but reserveing spots for the post, its a new high for alc
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Visit my Site!
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted October 25, 2007 08:48 PM |
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He he first part is up ... Not too much in this, but some of it will have relevance for part 2.
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Nirual
Famous Hero
Imbued Ballista
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posted October 25, 2007 09:32 PM |
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Edited by Nirual at 21:46, 25 Oct 2007.
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Interesting stuff, although I think some of the new/changed perks are a bit over the top, such as Mana Flow. Nothing against the idea of regenerating mana, but 25%? Archmages would never run out of mana with that and 2 pieces of the Saar-Issus set or a week of magic...
Or Healer. 2 more uses and a 100% boost? Bit too much considering Tripple Ballista effectively only provides a 50% boost (one more shot).
Hmm, those gaps are ugly. Mind if I try my hand at providing some edited graphics for those new skills? Probably mostly going to be recoloring and little tweaks, but I've done that before (albeit with smaller icons) for a different project and would like to give it a try.
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In ur base killing ur doods... and raising them as undeads.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted October 25, 2007 10:35 PM |
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Quote:
Nothing against the idea of regenerating mana, but 25%?
Yeah, numbers are picked more or less at random. Perhaps lower percentage or even fixed number (0.5 x unit level?) would work better.
Quote:
Hmm, those gaps are ugly. Mind if I try my hand at providing some edited graphics for those new skills?
Of course you can give it a shot if you want to. Normally, I don't bother with graphics, because I know I can never do something which is remotely as good as official stuff, but if you feel like giving it a shot, go ahead.
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Homer171
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted October 25, 2007 11:10 PM |
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Really nice 
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Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
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mamgaeater
Legendary Hero
Shroud, Flying, Trample, Haste
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posted October 25, 2007 11:13 PM |
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted October 26, 2007 12:49 AM |
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Thanx. Part 2 is up. 
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Moonlith
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
If all else fails, use Fiyah!
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posted October 26, 2007 01:19 AM |
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Edited by Moonlith at 01:23, 26 Oct 2007.
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Hmmmm, this extended list of optionable ultimate abilities accesable to any race is very interesting. A few questions though:
Does each race have decent options this way? Or as many likely options as other races?
What's with the Heretic, Overlord, Cleric, etc? Your own concept heroes or did ToE add more heroes?? O.o
I'd definately support the idea of a less chaotic skillwheel, but there is still the problem that choosable abilities are just so darn random... Odds are you won't obtain the proper ability branch you desire.
Spirit of Despair, by the way, really doesn't seem to fit Clerics....
I'll reply more later, when I take the time to thoroughly read it all again xD
So far liking this though!
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kraken
Famous Hero
I just love being elemental
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posted October 26, 2007 04:16 AM |
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I'm a big fan of you too alc
I'm a bigger fan then rogue lord because he's a vermin and I'm an untamed cyclops
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted October 26, 2007 08:41 AM |
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Quote:
Hmmmm, this extended list of optionable ultimate abilities accesable to any race is very interesting. A few questions though:
Does each race have decent options this way? Or as many likely options as other races?
I have not done the exact statistics on the distribution yet, will do some of that later, just to check that it's reasonable balanced. As all classes have two skills at 15 %, two at 10 %, four at 8 % and four at 2 %, all classes should have roughly the same amount of available combos. There will be some small differences though, because some skill comboes are not used in any abilities.
Quote:
What's with the Heretic, Overlord, Cleric, etc? Your own concept heroes or did ToE add more heroes?? O.o
That comes in part 3. Basically, part 3 is a re-introduction of the dual Hero classes of Heroes 3 - thus, Cleric is Haven Magic hero class, Heretic is Inferno Magic hero class, and Overlord is Dungeon Might hero class.
Quote:
I'd definately support the idea of a less chaotic skillwheel, but there is still the problem that choosable abilities are just so darn random... Odds are you won't obtain the proper ability branch you desire.
Hmmm yes ... the randomness issue is also present in current game - when you have no basic ability, you will be offered one of the three at random. Can't see a way out of that, and I think that's ok. If you are skilled, you will know how to get offered two abilities from the same skill, which increases your chances for the desired choice considerable.
Actually, I would vouce for an even more random distribution than now. In current system, once you've taken the basic ability, you WILL be offered the advanced ability rather than another basic one. Rather, I'd have you offered, say, 50 % chance of an advanced ability, and 50 % chance of another basic ability (so, 25 % for each of the two remaining once) - because often, you might wanna go for several basic once, rather than one specific branch, and I don't like that you currently does not have that option.
Quote:
Spirit of Despair, by the way, really doesn't seem to fit Clerics....
I'll reply more later, when I take the time to thoroughly read it all again xD
So far liking this though!
Thanx, would like to hear more. About the "Dark Cleric" - Dark Magic IS one of the favoured classes of Haven, whether one likes it or not. That results in the Fallen Knight ability, and therefore also causes Spirit Of Despair to be a likely class for the Haven Magic hero. This is just a natural reflection of the dark side that Nival added to Haven.
Oops, just noticed a couple of typos in Nobility ability - should read Recruitment ability in description, not Nobility.
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Daystar
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Back from the Dead
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posted October 26, 2007 01:11 PM |
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Edited by Daystar at 13:13, 26 Oct 2007.
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Quote:
Placeholder
I think of all your works, this part is deffinitely the best!!
lol, jk. Acutally, what you are doing is great, it feels good to have good ol' Alc at work in the Altar again. Just so I'm clear, is it possible to get 2 ultimate abilities? Because if so, there is a chance for some REALLY uber heroes out there. Eg, if a hero got Absolute Enlightenment and Mastery of Sorcery.
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How exactly is luck a skill?
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted October 26, 2007 02:21 PM |
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Quote:
Just so I'm clear, is it possible to get 2 ultimate abilities? Because if so, there is a chance for some REALLY uber heroes out there. Eg, if a hero got Absolute Enlightenment and Mastery of Sorcery.
Currently, that's not possible, because Hero can only have 5 skills, and you will require 2 x 3 skills to obtain two abilities. Choosing two abilities with a common skill will not help you, because each skill requires a separate base ability. Thus, the answer is no, with one exception, as Logistics > Pathfinding currently unlocks two skills (as Navigation is excluded).
If I had my will, Heroes would be able to learn a total of 6 skills beside the racial skill. That would potentially allow you to have two Synergy skills, although that would require you to obtain level 37! Of course, one could always place the constraint only one Synergy skill per Hero to prevent abuse.
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Daystar
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Back from the Dead
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posted October 26, 2007 10:28 PM |
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True. I think 6 makes good sense. The racial skill should be a seperate thing.
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How exactly is luck a skill?
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