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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted August 08, 2011 10:48 PM |
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Edited by Elvin at 22:50, 08 Aug 2011.
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Poll Question:
Reputation Options Poll
A poll on another problematic issue, the implementation of reputation. I think we can all agree that it was an interesting addition with plenty of benefits, however it is not without its flaws and could have been designed better. I have been thinking about it these days and concluded on three simple solutions I would like your opinion on.
1) Keep the current system (attack fleeing units for 5 blood and full xp, let them go for 10 tears and 75% xp), possibly introducing some minor tweaks. Like increasing blood points a bit, decreasing the xp gain for tears, maybe give a penalty to the fleeing units you engage since they are afraid of your might.. The benefit of this solution is that it gives more variety between tears or blood gameplay, however a blood player will feel forced to waste his time on pointless fights. He cannot afford to lose blood points which can be a pain in a long map - the reputation system gets in the way of personal freedom.
2) Change the pursue option into slaughter, where you win the battle instantly and get an equal amount of blood points as compared to tears if you let the stack flee. Slaughter is the equivalent of let them run only to chase them and cut them down  Since the points are the same and you can skip the battle with both paths, blood and tears are more equalized. It speeds up the gameplay which is essential given that neutral battles can be long and that there are no sim turns, however it loses its distinctive gameplay.
(We could allow a replay battle option after you pick the blood or tears choice should the player want to check something or try a new strategy though he would be unable to gain extra blood/tears points from the use of corresponding abilities.)
3) Introduce a new option and make this a dilemma between reputation and experience. Option 1 would be leave them for 10 tears and minimal to no xp, option 2 slaughter them for 10 blood and minimal to no xp and challenge where you fight the stack on equal terms for full xp but zero reputation bonus, not even during combat. I am not very fond of this solution because I do not believe that the gain of reputation vs xp is balanced, also because reputation is only useful up to a point - whether the map only has enough reputation for lvl 1 or you hit lvl 2 and you have no further use for it. And finally because it gives a good incentive to the player to play a long pointless battle when he could avoid it. It's not like you cannot fight all other non-fleeing stacks..
You no doubt have your own thoughs on the matter but please keep it simple. If they fall into a variation of the above please choose the one that feels closest to them, if you have another similarly simple solution that is radically different from them you pick other thoughts.
PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT YOU READ AND UNDERSTAND THE OPTIONS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS BEFORE YOU VOTE.
While at that I'd like your opinion on the xp gains of leave and slaughter. Should they give equal points? Should they give some xp or none at all? Option 2 for instance could be 10 tears, 0xp versus 10 blood, 0xp or 10 tears, 0xp versus 8 blood, 25% xp or perhaps 10 tears, 25% xp versus 5 blood, 50% xp.
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted August 08, 2011 10:55 PM |
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I vote to make pursue option similar to leave - that is reduced XP as when you let them flee, but with full blood bonus. As for the last question: They should give equal - for instance 5 Tear + 25 % XP for letting flee vs. 5 Blood + 25 % XP for pursuing.
I think it's important that the flee/pursue option should only happen when neutral army is trivial compared to yours. One way to measure could be that if autoplay yields zero loss to your army, this pops up instead of regular play.
I think it's fine that if opponent is indeed trivial, you don't get the option to fight them for full XP - as long as XP from battles in general are increased at the same time. This means that fighting real opponents give real (significant) XP, "fighting" trivial opponents give only little XP but give reputation. That'd work for me.
One final note: Notice that giving different XP for the two things will skew the idea of having the player determine his evolution (blood vs. tears) by his actions. Therefore they need to give same XP and same reputation imo.
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What will happen now?
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Jackson
Known Hero
Random Spirit Lover
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posted August 08, 2011 11:37 PM |
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I voted choice two, making the pursue option similar to flee, primarily because this would speed up a lot of trivial battles and especially long games. This would put the spotlight on the more interesting battles.
I think the experience gained from these choices should be all or at least most of the normal amount. If you're automatically given these choices when the battle is trivial, I don't want to feel like I'm losing out on something (experience).
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Mithrandir
Hired Hero
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posted August 08, 2011 11:46 PM |
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Yeah, mostly like Alciblades said.
Other thoughts on topic. As it is now, I kind of like the "pursue!" resulting in combat, because even when the fleeing army is weaker you can still lose some of your units to their casters and shooters, so it's not only blood because of the "Shoot 'em in the back!" but also because "I don't care if you're gonna die, bring me their heads now!" But although I like it roleplay-wise, I must agree that gameplay-wise it's a disaster, gaining tears is sooooo much easier. In such cases, roleplay must go. Creating a "slaughter" option would really be nice and user friendly. On the other hand, it would shift the whole Blood and Tears thing even more towards simple Good and Evil and I hoped it would be more. Decisions, decisions...
And while I'm at it, mana using abilities / abilities with cooldown should give you more reputation than free to use / no cooldown abilities, because this way my magic heroes keep spamming Stand Ground/Heroism when grinding reputation.
Edit: Oh, and on the XP thing, with option 2 I'd go with the same amount of blood/tears points and 50%XP for both Slaughter and Let go and for the new Pursue 100%XP and reputation could be gained by abilities.
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English ain't my native language, sorry for any mistakes.
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Nelgirith
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted August 09, 2011 01:05 AM |
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Voted for the 2nd option too. Going blood is time consuming, unless you activate quick battles (which costs you the extra blood points from fighting since the AI doesn't seem to grasp the concept of reputation and as such, uses random abilities through quick battles.
As Mithrandir suggested, they should also give long cooldown abilities more blood/tears points than abilities with no cooldown (like Healing vs. Stand your ground).
They should also either increase the max amount of reputation points you can get per fight to 10 (instead of 5) and remove that +10 tears per neutral joining your army (that's plain non-sense and a HUGE advantage for tears players).
I would also push the system even further by making opposite alignement abilities weaker the more you gain points - a blood player's healing and a tears' player attack spells should be weak. Imo, it makes no sense that a tears player can pick an attack spell (when it's against his "philosophy"), be as efficient as a blood player with it and just keep the spell in his spellbook for the final battle against the player (where he won't care about his reputation anymore).
I'm absolutely against Erwan's philosophy of the "christmas tree" where everything we do should be rewarding. At some point, we should have to make choices and have to accept the consequences of our choices. As such, blood and tears points should be mutually exclusive - either you go full blood or you go full tears and not decide to go blood, but pick a healing/regen spell to save troops against neutrals.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted August 09, 2011 02:57 AM |
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I absolutely hate the reputation idea and system, and I will no doubt support modding it away on release.
I hope it never ever returns.
But number 2 makes the most sense since they should be equally boring.
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Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted August 09, 2011 07:51 AM |
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Some excellent points here, I agree with Nelgirith that the whole "both tears and blood" makes no sense. It completely undermines the credibility of the "your actions determine your path" concept, and makes it pure calculation.
I can't help but make a little note on the actual amounts of Blood/Tear points gained "per event". Notice that UbiSoft in their eternal wisdom (*snicker*) chose to BOTH change the amount of B/T needed to advance in level AND let the points scale with your XP level. That means that not only will you only need half as many points to advance, you'll also gain them at tripple rate on standard play (and ten times rate on fastest rate - really, UbiSoft?).
To put this into persepctive, this means that you actually only need 84 B/T points on "normal" (fast) game mode to advance. If you get a default 10 when creatures flee, that means you'll advance VERY fast, at least if the current frequency of creatures fleeing (which happens all the time) is maintained. And that's not counting points earned in normal battles.
So what does this tell us?
1) If they keep their current levels and progression, they need to be very carefull with finding the right amount of B/T points per event, less gaining full B/T will become trivial.
Otherwise they might either:
2) Take back one but not both of the changes made, so that either less B/T are needed or it scales with XP progression, or
3) Tie up B/T points to the "normal" (i.e. fast) level (just like I think they should with XP from chests and learning stones), so that you gain standard B/T points when playing standard SP/MP mode, gain only half B/T in campaigns (to secure slow advancement) and get double B/T in fastest SP/MP mode.
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What will happen now?
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Kitten
Known Hero
Roar
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posted August 09, 2011 09:47 AM |
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Edited by Kitten at 09:50, 09 Aug 2011.
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The main source from gaining Blood/Tear points comes from spamming spells in battles, for me anyway. It's very easy and doesn't take too long. So getting 5 or 8 points isn't that helpful, unless you don't spam of course. Which you shouldn't have to but it really helps, even if just casting few times each battle.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted August 09, 2011 10:25 AM |
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I was actually among the people advocating the XP slider affecting Reputation points and I'm happy to see it implemented, because on "regular" setting, I never got past 250 reputation hence never seeing racial skills at all. However, 50% amount needed to unlock levels was slightly not necessary, and I think at x10 maxing out the poll is child's play. But x3 is still too slow progression which locks people at level 8, and if we assume x10 is standard MP speed, things go too fast, on the other hand, both for exp and reputation.
I'd love to see x5 or x6 option, that would be perfect.
Second option is fine, as long as we get XP in both cases. Otherwise, powergamers may cry. For even "trival" battles, if you get 0 exp, you're throwing like ~2 levelups (if you cumulate them) out the window. Which could win you the game 
Another thing to balance this out would be to tie the threat rating with XP growth, in a dynamic way. High threat = lots of exp. Trivial? you get next to none even if you battle (hence slaughtering/letting them flee is highly recommended). This way even power gamers wouldn't care for killing every neutral stack. This however is exploitable; i.e. "deadly" threat level for some cases is pretty trivial, but you'd get more exp than necessary.
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Oz
Adventuring Hero
Preparing
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posted August 09, 2011 10:44 AM |
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I like the idea of changing pursue into slaughter, however not just with a click.
First of all your units sourround the neutrals in the middle. They should get a massive penalty to their stats, to the point where you simply play god and they have barely any chance of killing 1-2 cores trough the whole combat, if they gang up on one stack. This way, the blood path would give the feeling of a powerful and merciless hero.
10 blood, 75% exp, just like for tears.
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Nelgirith
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted August 09, 2011 10:55 AM |
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Quote:
I like the idea of changing pursue into slaughter, however not just with a click.
First of all your units sourround the neutrals in the middle. They should get a massive penalty to their stats, to the point where you simply play god and they have barely any chance of killing 1-2 cores trough the whole combat, if they gang up on one stack. This way, the blood path would give the feeling of a powerful and merciless hero.
10 blood, 75% exp, just like for tears.
That's just as boring as having to fight them. Why should tears gain XP and points without fighting and thus without wasting time and without losing troops when blood has to go through every single fight and risk to lose even 1 creature ?
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B0rsuk
Promising
Famous Hero
DooM prophet
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posted August 09, 2011 11:00 AM |
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Quote:
As for the last question: They should give equal - for instance 5 Tear + 25 % XP for letting flee vs. 5 Blood + 25 % XP for pursuing.
Then they would be identical in all but name. You could as well make a dialog box "Do you want 5 Blood or 5 Tears ?"
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo RSA Animate - Smile or die
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted August 09, 2011 11:03 AM |
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Actually I think that's a pretty good idea. If they were herded in the middle with weaker stats it could be glorious for single player. More experience at the cost of a small casualties risk should be alright.
Of course we could make it optional, with the instant slaughter being the default multiplayer option.
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted August 09, 2011 11:25 AM |
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Quote:
Quote:
As for the last question: They should give equal - for instance 5 Tear + 25 % XP for letting flee vs. 5 Blood + 25 % XP for pursuing.
Then they would be identical in all but name. You could as well make a dialog box "Do you want 5 Blood or 5 Tears ?"
Yeah, but isn't that what this boils down to: Do we want there to be a vast difference in how the two types of points are gained, or do we just want it to be a question of which advanced class you prefer?
That being said, I think the idea of reputation would be much more interesting if there were other consequences than just your advanced class. Such as if you had an 'evil' reputation (blood), it might affect the chance of certain creatures joining your army, whereas if you have a 'good' reputation (tears), it could be the other way around. So that your reputation would actually influence your diplomacy.
Yeah, and like someone else said, if you choose Tears path, Tears abilities become more powerful, and Blood abilities less so. Maybe even advanced levels of abilities that are tied to your reputation, similar to previous "master of" effects from H5. That would be awesome.
Quote:
I was actually among the people advocating the XP slider affecting Reputation points and I'm happy to see it implemented, because on "regular" setting, I never got past 250 reputation hence never seeing racial skills at all. However, 50% amount needed to unlock levels was slightly not necessary, and I think at x10 maxing out the poll is child's play. But x3 is still too slow progression which locks people at level 8, and if we assume x10 is standard MP speed, things go too fast, on the other hand, both for exp and reputation.
I'd love to see x5 or x6 option, that would be perfect.
Don't get me wrong, I was all for an increased rate of B/T points. But increasing rate AND lowering limits was just the usual UbiSoft of going from one imbalanced extreme to the opposite.
Like I said before, I would prefer to have the game modes revised, so that there was:
- Slow (campaigns): Half XP and B/T compared to normal.
- Normal (current fast x3): Normal XP from chests (500/1000/1500) and battles, normal B/T.
- Fast (x6 instead of x10): Double XP and B/T compared to normal.
That would solve a lot of problems, because it would means fastest was not broken, plus B/T and XP gain on normal (x3) level would be much more balanced.
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What will happen now?
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Oz
Adventuring Hero
Preparing
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posted August 09, 2011 11:45 AM |
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Edited by Oz at 11:56, 09 Aug 2011.
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Quote:
That's just as boring as having to fight them. Why should tears gain XP and points without fighting and thus without wasting time and without losing troops when blood has to go through every single fight and risk to lose even 1 creature ?
In H6, where your basic units are much more resilent and you can't just take them out in one hit, it'd feel good to just attack and destroy everything. It'd be a fast battle, usually ending within the first turn, and probably even before the enemies could act. The actual possibility of unit loss, is only present if you use auto-combat.
edit: Basicly you can either view it as a waste of time, or some laid back fun. Actually thinking about it it'd be cool if it had a different music, a reworked battle theme from H3. That never gets old.
Also, I don't think it should reward more exp, as there is virtually no risk in it. Maybe add an "until next battle" type of buff, to compensate for the loss of time.
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Mithrandir
Hired Hero
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posted August 09, 2011 01:07 PM |
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Quote:
Yeah, but isn't that what this boils down to: Do we want there to be a vast difference in how the two types of points are gained, or do we just want it to be a question of which advanced class you prefer?
I definetly want the two types to feel different, but there should be more consequences to your choices (yeah, the 'reward for everything' idea is just stupid) and though it should affect gameplay, the two ways should feel equal. Right now it feels like endless fighting for blood and points for nothing for tears.
Also, I think we need more rep. gaining options. So far we have quests in campaigns (ok, but very limited); Pursuing or Letting go fleeing stacks (imbalanced in terms of gameplay); Accepting or Killing joining stacks (imbalanced as hell and very very dumb) and finaly using active abilities in combat which also has it flaws (BTW, what's the point of having passive abilities marked as blood or tears when they add exactly nothing? Or is it stg. not yet implemented?). There should definetly be more, but can we (or better, Ubihole) come up with something balanced?
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English ain't my native language, sorry for any mistakes.
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The_Polyglot
Promising
Supreme Hero
channeling capybara energy
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posted August 16, 2011 08:29 PM |
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Making pursue a bit more like leave is a good idea indeed. Currently, the possibility of shirking a fight while still gaining a bit of exp is tipping the scales a bit too much towards Tears. Alternatively, one could alter the leave option itself - the majority of the neutrals would be overwhelmed, and flee like roadrunners, but suppose that a few stout-hearted "generals" could still marshal, say 30% of the original troops.(XP gained would be equal to 30% of the total, in this case). You wouldn't be pursuing the cowards, only disposing of the hopelessly fanatic/drunk/head-full-of-propaganda guards.
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Friend-shaped
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seddy
Known Hero
Spinner of delicious cupcakes
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posted August 16, 2011 08:58 PM |
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Voted for the second option.
The game should give a fair, if not totally equal even, chance to go in either direction. Currently, with the imbalanced healing spells, letting creatures flee and join you (all streamlined for efficiency) favor tears.
The idea of making tear spells more powerful for a tear-based hero sounds good to me, and the idea of extra perks on advanced levels sounds glorious (though unlikely). It would add to the customization in a system that currently favors cookie cutter builds.
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