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| Thread: Skill System Redesign |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 · NEXT» |
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted December 01, 2012 05:47 PM |
bonus applied by kiryu133 on 18 Mar 2016. |
Edited by Elvin at 12:52, 03 May 2015.
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Skill System Redesign
Lately I have been thinking and looking back, no heroes game has a skill system that I find fully satisfactory.
- The first three games set the cornerstone for the future skill systems but are rather simple by today's standards.
- The fourth focused too much on specialized trees, losing sight of skill variety. Not to mention all those clone skills with different names.
- The fifth revisited and evolved the core system by categorizing the skills under 15 distinct categories and setting perk branches within them. Opening up a new skill allowed you to pick one more perk and certain perks opened up the way for more advanced perks. There were three problems however: First, the passive skills were too strong and that could win you games regardless of your actual skill in the game. Second, you could not pick more than a few skills without turning the future level ups into a lottery as the accessible perks were numerous and only a couple could appear per level up(one basic and one advanced perk to be precise). Third, the rare(2%) skills were strong enough to make or break your game. In short, successful and/or lucky skillpicking could easily trump tactics and strategy.
- The sixth game decided to tackle the randomness and strong passive effects which instead made the game bland. Gone were the skill trees and ability requirements(for the most part) and spells were incorporated into the system as pickable abilities. But with the spells competing with skills, it was inevitable that people would pick as few spells as possible and stack on passive abilities. The passive abilities were less potent than the active but you can only cast so many active abilities in a battle. The abilities were categorized by tiers which avoided the strong ones from coming into play early but each tier was not composed of equal or even similar abilities. One would expect that the first tier would correspond to earlygame, the second to midgame and the third to endgame but this was far from the truth. Now consider the fact that all classes have the same skills(apart from some tier/magic restrictions), many of which give a mundane +x to something and you will get an idea of why the H6 system was considered flat.
If we are to make a good skill system I believe that we should:
- Separate the spells from the skill system.
- Get rid of the tiers, they are not really needed. Especially if the spells return to magic guilds.
- Divide again the skills into distinct categories and add branching paths to give a sense of specialization.
- Add class/faction unique abilities as well as abilities they have no access to compared to the rest.
- Make sure that the might/magic classes have different degrees of specialization and available skills.
- Avoid low level resurrection effects.
- Avoid burdening the player with a vast amount of options.
- All skills should appear in one single screen, without multiple tabs.
So what should the system be, random or manual? I think that a combination would work well enough. Picture this: On level up a pop up screen appears making you choose between two basic and two advanced skills, let's say basic attack, basic sorcery, advanced luck and advanced defense. You pick attack and you access the attack tree where you can manually pick a perk of your choice, let's say archery. When you pick advanced attack, you will have the option of picking another basic perk or pick the advanced perk that archery unlocks, for instance focused fire. Alternatively, instead of accessing the attack tree, you get an overview of the existing skill trees(ie advanced attack, basic luck, basic defense) you have unlocked and pick an available perk from the skill of your preference. I'd much prefer this approach, you have a sense of freedom while keeping the amount of options limited. It should make your decision faster and easier.
Like I said the skills should be categorized in some broad categories like H5. OFFENSE(archery, offensive formation, rampage, slayer, pressed attack), LEADERSHIP(tactics, reinforcements, reserves, recruitment, empathy, diplomacy), DEFENSE(vitality, evasion, counterstrike, parry, last stand, stand your ground, LUCK(resourcefulness, soldier's luck, spoils of war, warlock's luck, dead man's luck), LOGISTICS(navigation, scouting, pathfinding, ambush, warpath, snatch), WARMACHINES(ballista, first aid, plague tent, catapult, flaming arrows), SORCERY(arcane training, banish, mana regeneration, mana syphon, arcane ward), ENLIGHTENMENT(eagle eye, scholar, intelligence, dark revelation, mentoring, meditation, magic insight), RESISTANCE(corrupt mana, sap magic, mana burst, counterspell) and of course the 7 MAGIC SCHOOLS.
Each class would have some restrictions according to its offensive or defensive and might or magic orientation. Orcs being more offensive, they would lack defensive abilities such as preparation, parry or defensive formation but they would have toughness and stamina. Being a might class, they would be unable to pick sorcery but they would be able to pick resistance. They would have easier access to rampage than say dwarves. For thematic reasons they would only have air and earth magic schools though they would be able to learn and cast other spells. A wizard would have more advanced sorcery abilities than a cleric but less advanced leadership abilities than a knight and while lacking some of his more advanced attack abilities he would be able to get teleport assault due to his magic orientation. And so on. All available skills should be useful for any given class, if not the 'useless' skills should become unavailable or get useful perks that are tailor made for his faction.
To avoid inflating the skill system with superfluous advanced abilities, certain perks' effect would be tied to the mastery of its corresponding tree. For instance enlightenment contains the intelligence perk. I neither want intelligence to be a separate skill as in H3 nor a single perk that gives +50% mana instanty. Instead it would give +20/30/50% extra mana according to your enlightenment level. Similarly, there is no need to make scholar into a separate skill nor allow it to exchange lvl 5 spells from the first level. The level of exchanged spells would be decided by your enlightenment mastery. Same for scouting, scouting II and III feel like dead weight but if it was tied to logistics mastery it would be well worth picking.
Some finishing touches:
- Which skills appear is based on each class' percentages. Like knights getting leadership and defense more often than other skills.
- Toughness would give a physical resistance only, not just +x% to hp.
- Warmachines would have structural points to avoid the enemy destroying them in one go. First aid would heal only the top unit from the stack but would resurrect a small portion of of the fallen after battle. That way they wouldn't be too strong in earlygame like in H5 where tents could bring back 21 centaurs per battle nor as useless as in H3.
- Warcry effectiveness would be tied to offense or leadership.
- There would be a number of summoning/destructive/etc counters to allow for mind games between human players.
- Some powerful perks would require perks from more than one skills for instance preparation: Before the unit moves on the first turn and after defending on subsequent turns, it may retaliate before the opponent's attack harms it. This is a feat that would require an offensive as well a defensive mastery.
- Each class would have a number of unique abilities tied to the racial but you would have to pick them instead of gain them automatically.
- Advanced classes should they appear, should be tied to skill specialization instead of reputation - a feature I would rather not see again to be honest. An advanced class should be just that, a specialization of your class like a knight focusing on slaying undead/infernal enemies.
I think that based on the systems we have seen so far, this would be the next logical stage of evolution. I do not believe that we need something decidedly new but rather a merging of what has worked fine in the past, spiced up with some new possibilities. What do you think?
LINKS
Skill System Layout
Magic System Redesign
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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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Gameslayer989
Known Hero
Always looking for a fight!
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posted December 01, 2012 06:09 PM |
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agreed for the most part, but it would take a long time to implement. Also i eblieve that a barabarian shoudl allow defense and stuff like that, jus thave less chance of getting it like with heroes 5
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Dave_Jame
Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
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posted December 01, 2012 07:01 PM |
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I really like this summery you made. And in most ways it mirrors my idel image of the system.
One thing I disagree with is the reputetion question. I think it would be nice that your game play would influence the skills you could get. For example some higher perks could require Blood or Tear reputation.
For a wierd reason I think the tactic skills should get its own grupe.. I think they do not fit well into leadership.
And Im also missing some Building based, economy based skills. Like Merchant, Builder economist etc.
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I'm just a Mirror of your self.
We see, we look, we gather, we store, we teach.
We are many, and you can be one of us.
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Simpelicity
Promising
Famous Hero
Video maker
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posted December 01, 2012 09:47 PM |
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You really need to get your new computer going. You keep on going like this and your brain'll overclock itself 
Didn't read alll of it but I think I get the jist of it.
Here's another idea to consider, just on the topic of fighting the randomness.
You know how each hero in previous games had probabilities on what they'd get for skills? It didn't take it that far away from random, but you knew at least a couple skills you were about certain to get. Now, you want to go back to a system kinda like this. That's fine, I don't like how you're fighting the randomness though. I suggest for every hero, you have to choose a "class". There could be 7-8, for all I care, that have different probabilities each. So, you choose what you're likely to get. It's still kinda random, but randomly favorable to what you want. You could maybe even have some kind of class editor where you can custom make some classes, though it would require some work to not allow people to make some completely unbalanced classes.
A similar system can apply to magic guilds. If we keep more or less 3 tiers of magic, early-mid-late, that's 3 different levels of a magic guild. You could again, every time you invest in a guild, have to decide what it should prioritize. So say you tell it to prioritize fire and it's supposed to give 3 spells, it's gonna give 2 fire spells and one of something else, probably dark or air magic. That whole thing at random, but you're still having some control over it. You could also possibly have the guilds cost a little less but allow for the possibility to build the level 1 guild 3 times and the level 2 guild 2 times, each time choosing the priority, each time adding some new spells to what's already there.
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"You r the shakespeare of heroes vi, in every single battle i say: "he is gonna to loss"." - Cumulo88
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Protolisk
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted December 01, 2012 10:01 PM |
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This is pretty much what I was hoping for in H6... basically, a semi random H5, with better tiering, and medium control (can't choose EVERYTHING, but, you can still choose a few things, and not end up thinking "thanks computer, these two choices are terrible, now i can never win...)
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted December 02, 2012 05:10 PM |
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Edited by Maurice at 17:11, 02 Dec 2012.
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One thing that I am not seeing in the detailed post is a difference between Adventure Map perks/skills/abilities and Combat perks/skills/abilities.
In my opinion, Adventure Map stuff should be generic and be available to all Heroes (be they Might or Magic) and factions. Only difference might be terrain type stuff, where each faction has a benefit over other factions on their "home ground" (in fact, each faction should be home to one of the bunch of specific terrain types).
Combat perks should set the Might and Magic Heroes apart, as well as the different factions. It's ok if they have similar spells and abilities shared between factions, but in my opinion each faction should have stuff specific to itself.
And I mean for them to co-exist: in other words, when a Hero levels up, he gains both a skillpoint to invest in Adventure map skills and a skillpoint to invest in Combat skills.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted December 02, 2012 09:09 PM |
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Edited by Elvin at 21:21, 02 Dec 2012.
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@Gameslayer989
No rush, it's not like it will happen in H6 days. I don't like balancing with chance percentages, after all the problem is not the orcs getting defense. The trick is to make 'their' defense feel more crude than a faction that specializes in defense. Toughness is more orcish than parry or counterstrike.
@Dave Jame
Tactics does feel more of a core skill but if it had to be merged to lessen the amount of skills, I would prefer it to be in leadership. Sorcery and enlightenment could probably merge as well but I kind of like them separate, for thematic purposes. But I'd rather enlightenment was about improving the hero's learning capabilities, mentoring, exchanging spells, meditation etc while sorcery would focus on arcane techniques only ie empowering spells, making them cost less mana etc.
@Simpelicity
And you haven't even seen what I've been posting in the closed forum since I joined. Custom classes sounds a bad plan for many reasons. First, each faction class is supposed to feel different from another and dividing each into numerous custom ones would take away what makes each class so unique. Secondly it would take a lot of balancing that feels unnecessary. Randomness is not a problem anyway, H5 kind of randomness is what can create problems.
@Maurice
If you mean that a skill point can be used to unlock either sure. But then this has always been the case.
Btw one of the things I liked in H5 was doing away with the traditional resistance as a chance to avoid a spell altogether. So I would welcome a resistance skill with a chance to weaken incoming spells by x%. I also think that hero and unit spells should be separate from unit magical damage. Units require magic defense to withstand the damage from magical units but that greatly reduces the hero's destructive. A champion can easily reduce magic damage by 50% and more. It feels.. messy. It would be much better if you just knew that the damage you see in the tooltip is final and not further reduced for each unit separately.
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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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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted December 02, 2012 11:55 PM |
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Quote:
@Maurice
If you mean that a skill point can be used to unlock either sure. But then this has always been the case.
No, that's not what I meant. I want to see a talent tree (I will name it talent to cover everything for ease of speaking, instead of using spell, skill, ability, whatever...) specific for the Adventure Map - where talents like Logistics, Economics, Architect and such go. Basically, everything that you're not using while fighting on a Combat map. Every time a Hero levels up, he gains a talentpoint to spend in this tree. This should be available to every Hero and every Faction, besides perhaps the concept of "home terrain" which should be specific to each Faction.
And I want to see a Combat tree, which covers Might talents and Magic talents alike, attuned to the Hero type. Basically, every talent that you could be using while fighting on a Combat map. It should include Faction specific talents, but also have talents which are shared by more Factions, including generic ones that all Factions have access to. Might talents are composed of Reinforcements, Pressed Attack, Battle Shouts and such, while Magic talents are either spells (if not coming from Magic Guilds) or talents that boost Magic schools in interesting ways. Every time a Hero levels up, he gains a talentpoint to spend in this tree.
Just to be clear: this means a Hero gets to flesh out the Adventure portion each level up AND the Combat portion. But talent points gained in the Adventure tree can't be used in the Combat tree and vice versa.
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seddy
Known Hero
Spinner of delicious cupcakes
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posted December 03, 2012 11:53 PM |
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For once, I can say I fully agree. (Not much else to add atm, but wanted to say this sounds like a very good blend of randomness/replayability and unique heroes while not making it into a bananas chance game thing)
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted December 04, 2012 09:21 AM |
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Haven't read it all in details, but basically what I see your post boiled down to is more or less what I've said all along, namely return to H5 skill system, but let us choose the perks manually once we have gained acces to the skill through random choice. That way we will have the certain random element that secures variance between game, but we will avoid the frustration of planning a build and then have chance ruin it all (I'm looking at you, Mana Burst and Searing Fires).
And PS: 7 Magic schools are too many. Way too many.
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What will happen now?
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted December 05, 2012 12:47 PM |
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@Maurice
Isn't that a bit forced? Why make a hero get BOTH a combat and an adventure ability instead of make his own choice and prioritize? To decide whether he wants to get an edge through combat, adventure map navigation or improved town building or a mix of them. There aren't loads of adventure skills anyway and I'd rather they were kept optional.
@Alci
There are indeed a lot of schools which is why having 7 magic skills might be counterproductive. Unless each class gets two or three of them to avoid cluttering the system. A more elegant solution would be to make the sorcery skill universal and perhaps give it specific element perks for each faction - like guardian angel for haven, cold death for necro etc. Rather streamlined but it could work.
To be honest I am rather fond of elemental magic and would like my orcs to primarily have air/earth, my haven light/air, my inferno fire/prime and so on. A guild with 2 guaranteed spells from your primary faction magic and 1-2 random spells would be just the thing as far as I'm concerned. A sense of identity but also enough room for more exotic spellcasting 
____________
H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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Falconian
Adventuring Hero
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posted December 05, 2012 01:09 PM |
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The best skill system for me would be the H5 one without the RNG but with a free choice system like H6.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted December 05, 2012 02:15 PM |
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Quote:
@Alci
There are indeed a lot of schools which is why having 7 magic skills might be counterproductive. Unless each class gets two or three of them to avoid cluttering the system. A more elegant solution would be to make the sorcery skill universal and perhaps give it specific element perks for each faction - like guardian angel for haven, cold death for necro etc. Rather streamlined but it could work.
To be honest I am rather fond of elemental magic and would like my orcs to primarily have air/earth, my haven light/air, my inferno fire/prime and so on. A guild with 2 guaranteed spells from your primary faction magic and 1-2 random spells would be just the thing as far as I'm concerned. A sense of identity but also enough room for more exotic spellcasting
It's not only the number of magic skills that is the problem, but also the fact that there are simply not enough different spell areas to fill out 7 unique magic schools. If you look at the Heroes 6 magic schools (apart from Prime), and don't count different levels as different spells, and don't include the magic "skills", the number of spells in each is very underwhelming.
I think H5 was much better in this regard, because the 4 magic schools were very distinct in their application yet also had a good variation within their spell range (even if H5 also had too few spells in each school). I previously worked with the idea of each school having 4 subschools, for instance Chaos would have the 4 elements as its subschool, with appropriate specialization (similar to Master of Fire/Ice/Lightning in H5, but supplemented with one for earth), but I know some people are very fond of the H3-like elemental schools - let's just say I'm not for various reasons discussed previously.
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What will happen now?
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted December 06, 2012 12:06 AM |
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Quote:
@Maurice
Isn't that a bit forced? Why make a hero get BOTH a combat and an adventure ability instead of make his own choice and prioritize?
Well, there should still be ample and meaningful choices in both trees, never to get all the "useful" skills. The thing I would like to see, though, is a strict separation between the two. I seriously dislike the fact that H6 gives Might Heroes more Adventure map skills than Magic Heroes. Regardless of Hero type, all Adventure map skills should be available.
Quote:
There aren't loads of adventure skills anyway and I'd rather they were kept optional.
That's just limited by imagination  .
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Astromidas
Hired Hero
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posted December 06, 2012 03:48 AM |
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I have been thinking that wouldn't it be simpler if perhaps you placed the ordinary magic spells and the "might spells" (aka War Cries), like Heroism, in a (or separate) Guild(s). And instead of getting random spells (which always bugged me) you would have to buy them with gold and later also rare resources for the more powerful ones. Also, there should be some sort of skill checks along with that I think, and perhaps some of the Perks/ Adventure Map Skills would be needed for some spells. Just a thought.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted December 08, 2012 07:57 PM |
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I think random mage guilds are an essential part of securing variation, just like H6 has proved that random skill offerings are. I wouldn't mind the ability to "research" a specific spell, but this should be something that's time and resource consuming, possibly require a certain skill level within a school, so that this will be something that comes into game fairly late compared to when you achieve your mage guild.
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What will happen now?
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Dave_Jame
Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
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posted December 09, 2012 08:05 AM |
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Quote:
I have been thinking that wouldn't it be simpler if perhaps you placed the ordinary magic spells and the "might spells" (aka War Cries), like Heroism, in a (or separate) Guild(s). And instead of getting random spells (which always bugged me) you would have to buy them with gold and later also rare resources for the more powerful ones. Also, there should be some sort of skill checks along with that I think, and perhaps some of the Perks/ Adventure Map Skills would be needed for some spells. Just a thought.
so you basically purpose a Disciples like system.
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I'm just a Mirror of your self.
We see, we look, we gather, we store, we teach.
We are many, and you can be one of us.
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Astromidas
Hired Hero
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posted December 10, 2012 12:47 AM |
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Never heard of Disciples before but if the Spell system is similar in that game of what I described, I guess so.
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Dave_Jame
Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
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posted December 10, 2012 07:50 AM |
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Well it is one of the best TBS games out there IMHO.
In Disciples II each of 4 races has aprox. 25+ spells. To use them, a player first has to build the mage guilde, and then, for a rather high cost, research the spell he wants, only after this can he use this spell.
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I'm just a Mirror of your self.
We see, we look, we gather, we store, we teach.
We are many, and you can be one of us.
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krs
Famous Hero
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posted December 10, 2012 12:40 PM |
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[Rant] I cannot refrain myself from saying this... no matter how much you want to like H6, how much of a super fan you are, everyone always ends up wondering "what if they did that one right?". For some it takes more time but the answer is the same.[/Rant]
Related to this post I ended up with a similar conclusion: My question was: what are the main reasons that stop me from playing H6. Answer Skill system. (There are many things I disagree and dislike but skill system is the one that really broke the game for me).
So... I would like:
Different skills for different factions.
Skill interdependency like in H5.
Skill allocation like in H5.
Reduce the umber of war-cry like skills.
Put spells back into magic guilds.
I saw this statement in the thread:Quote:
Well, there should still be ample and meaningful choices in both trees, never to get all the "useful" skills.
Many think it is good to have garbage skills to have randomness... My opinion is that there should be no garbage skills. All skills should be usefull, but some will be better in some situations than others. (lets say there is one skill that makes your army better against shooters and another that makes it better against no retaliation units) Obviously depending on opponents army you will pick one or the other. There is no need to create skills like eagle eye and such, just to fill the empty slots.
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