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| Thread: Skill System Redesign |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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okrane
Famous Hero
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posted January 04, 2013 10:13 PM |
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Edited by okrane at 22:20, 04 Jan 2013.
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Deterministic Skills make a repetitive game like Heroes even more repetitive, that is the major problem. There needs to be some randomness involved but not too much.
Heroes 5's model was pretty good but it suffered from too much randomness or more precisely too much variance of builds/skills/effectiveness. My problems with it are:
1. There were a ton of useless skills, a lot of filler stuff, which were nearly useless 90% of the time and extremely situational for the rest of the cases. It should be avoided to create extremely niche skills, only useful in specific multiplayer situations - it does not breed a healthy game. My examples of these would be: Suppress Magic Skills for the barbarians, Shrug Darkness, Elemental Balance, Scouting, Wizards Reward, etc...
Also not to mention the completely abusive perks which blew everything out of the water in the right conditions. It might be fun to kill millions of armies with Last Stand Necropolis or abuse the triple flaming balista but all in all there were things that needed toning down.
2. The really strong abilities were sometimes too hard to get which meant that luck played a too big of a role in the development of the hero, which meant that you could have gamebreaking perks either really early or never which led to an extreme variance in builds and games.This should be toned down by making dependancies less drastic, by either making perks more easily available (i.e. to be bought in town with level-up points from the local mage-guild) or making the requirements less steep. Example: Preparation would require Expert Defense and Basic Attack but no other perks.
3. Sometimes the dependancies between skills in the skill wheel made for really difficult choices which exacerbates the points 1 and 2.
Examples: Good Leadership perks for a main hero requiring the Recruitment perk, This to me contributed to a poor balance as sometimes it was impossible to get everything you liked in a tree and were forced to get useless stuff in order to obtain the good skills. This is without precedent in a Heroes game and I am not sure I like it because level ups are few and every level-up should feel like you've gotten something worth while.
I also enjoyed a couple of things from Heroes 4 skill system.
1. Going up to Grandmaster specialty (Tier 5) meant that your hero was more specialised in one aspect. This makes for more variety in approaches. In Heroes 5 you could get about half of the primary skills on the wheel and fill all of them by level 30 whereas H4 would allow you to max only 2 trees by a similar level. This created more variety in approaches. So a deeper specialization tree like say Attack with 5 tiers and 5 perks would breed more interesting ways of building heroes.
2. The Hero advanced classes which depended on skill choices. Felt good to get an ability in function of your skill choices. But this I believe they've done decenty in H6 with the Blood and Tears system.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted January 05, 2013 09:15 AM |
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Quote:
3. Sometimes the dependancies between skills in the skill wheel made for really difficult choices which exacerbates the points 1 and 2.
Examples: Good Leadership perks for a main hero requiring the Recruitment perk, This to me contributed to a poor balance as sometimes it was impossible to get everything you liked in a tree and were forced to get useless stuff in order to obtain the good skills. This is without precedent in a Heroes game and I am not sure I like it because level ups are few and every level-up should feel like you've gotten something worth while.
Your post contains many goodp points, but this quoted part, particularly the highlighted sentence, is imo. completely wrong. The very fact that the steep requirements cut you off from getting all the good things in a tree was what made for great balance (even if it was not always implemented properly). For instance, a very strong skill like Retribution should draw on Attack and Leadership, as it did in most trees. However, as the major perks of Leadeship arguably were Diplomacy, Divine Guidance and Aura Of Swiftnes, it made sense that the requirements for Retribution ment that you had to go though Recruitement, which might divert from the choices you'd otherwise make.
That is great game balance, because you have to give up something good in order to get something great. Giving you everything at the same time is the direct route to imbalance. The case Retribution was also a good example of some of the weaknesses of the Heroes 5 tree, for instance many classes still had the options to get most of the good Leadership perks while also going for Retribution was probably a contributing factor to the overpoweredness of this skill (Warlock could get Aura Of Swiftnes and Diplomacy also, whereas Ranger could only chose one of the three desired perks if he were to have Retribution, a much better setup).
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What will happen now?
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okrane
Famous Hero
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posted January 05, 2013 10:12 AM |
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It's one way of doing balance, which I don't particularly like to be honest. You can argue that it is something that works in other RPGs - the making tough decisions process - but I find it very hard to believe that it is actually a good way to balance simply it is very difficult to assess exactly how much power you are giving up by taking the useless perk.
The problem is, those relatively useless skills you had to take like Recruitment were not weak skills, they were just more useful on secondary heroes. It would have been perfectly possible to build a castle sitting hero with those skills who would get even more powerful by taking Recruitment instead of Diplomacy. For me it was just a matter of preference of the player, playstyle, as well as dependant on the map and hero you are building. This is why I said that I would have prefered that the perks would be equivalently strong and the player had to choose whichever of them.
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flonembourg
Known Hero
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posted January 05, 2013 12:06 PM |
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Quote:
It's one way of doing balance, which I don't particularly like to be honest. You can argue that it is something that works in other RPGs - the making tough decisions process - but I find it very hard to believe that it is actually a good way to balance simply it is very difficult to assess exactly how much power you are giving up by taking the useless perk.
The problem is, those relatively useless skills you had to take like Recruitment were not weak skills, they were just more useful on secondary heroes. It would have been perfectly possible to build a castle sitting hero with those skills who would get even more powerful by taking Recruitment instead of Diplomacy. For me it was just a matter of preference of the player, playstyle, as well as dependant on the map and hero you are building. This is why I said that I would have prefered that the perks would be equivalently strong and the player had to choose whichever of them.
I'm agree with this last statement: " This is why I said that I would have prefered that the perks would be equivalently strong and the player had to choose whichever of them."
If in H6 the skills were all as strong as the others, the replayability of this game would not be a problem!
ewample: many players complaints about "heal" skills like regeneration, resurrect... we can have this skill in the first level up, and it's an obvious choice for creeping but if we make also the others skills obvious for creeping the "heal" skills were not so obvious to take no?
To illustrate my point:
In the early game players usually take skills like regeneration to minimize the troop's loss but they can also going for "the catapult skill" (+1 of all structure damage) ,in a early game configuration, to take the opponent's castle faster...BUT the real problem is: the "catapult skill" is not a worth picking because of the randomness, if we can control the shot may be players in their first level up would chose to lose few troops by not taking regeneration but by taking the catapult skill they gain a castle easier by breaking the door and the game is over for the opponent...
I think is more a matter of how the skills are balanced that makes the game redundant.
To finish in H5 randomness was not as high as many players describe ( or we just don't play the same game lol)
My Necro build in H5 (for example): begin with summoning magic (creeping easy with fire traps, raise dead), mark of the necromancer (more mana), when i level up i avoid all but enlightment (more mana), and finally when my creepping is done i go for logistics to fight faster my opponent... the others skills were just to complete my build defense/sorcery ore attack/luck no matter....
What i want to say is 95% of my games with an effective necro build were the same (summon/enlightment/log)and fill the rest with whatever
No matter randomness! haven : leadership/attack/defense (enlightment if i was lucky) but the same effective build and the game was not so boring because all i want is an effective build to creep and to win (if possible)
My point is the problem (for ME) is not the randomness but: skills are not equally powerfull or at least useful.
thanks for trying to read me! If only i was english i could explain more easily my thought lol...
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted January 05, 2013 03:01 PM |
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Quote:
The problem is, those relatively useless skills you had to take like Recruitment were not weak skills, they were just more useful on secondary heroes.
I do agree that Recruitement was poorly designed (they should have stuck with the govenor concept of Heroes 4) but that being said, I still stand by my point that balancing through choice is a much better approach - plus, it deapens the tactical aspect of the game - than simply to "give it all" under some assumpotion that you can make everything equal (which you can't). But obviously you are allowed to disagree.
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What will happen now?
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RedEmperor30
Famous Hero
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posted January 05, 2013 05:20 PM |
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Elvin, I think you hit the nail on the head with your synopsis - the great thing about H5 is the sense of unique ability level up, that forced your opponent to consider all unique builds and try counter build. This allowed for a more chess like feel and actual thought process - the imbalances though were glaring for some factions which would have to be something considered [although in saying this, those imbalances created a great challenge to build uniquely different to counter].
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KaynaCrous
Adventuring Hero
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posted January 05, 2013 05:37 PM |
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Well, if I may add my 2 cp, I think there are too many ways to get across your opponent's field so quickly. I dont rememberso many different ways in past heroes to reach your enemies like that... You actually had a round or two to foward your units and form some formation closer, and shotters weren't so powerful either... am I wrong? Didn't play past heroes that seriously.
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flonembourg
Known Hero
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posted January 06, 2013 12:34 PM |
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Well, if I may add my 2 cp, I think there are too many ways to get across your opponent's field so quickly.
No it was already the case with heroes 5 game cerberus (level 2 unit) 8 speed and with tactic you can cross the battlefield before the shooter act!
In fact the average of speed in H6 seems to be lower than heroes 5 only blazing glory and centaur maurauder have 8 speed and they are elite.
In H5 vampire prince,Djin sultan/Vizier, Blood fury/sister, Grim raider/Brisk raider,Shadow dragon and upgrades (9 speed wow), Paladin/champion, Archangel/seraph, Cerberus/Firehound, Nightmare/ Hell Stalion, Green Dragon and upgrades (upgrades 9 speed again),Thane and upgrades (and the runes of charge!!!)have all 8 spped,only stronghold have no 8 speed's creatures.
So you see is just your feeling in fact.
i think is more the initiative system who make you feel that the creatures cross faster the battlefield!
and may be the fact that tactic's skill is avaible at the first level up make your creaure even more faster + the fact that heroes have specialisation that increase creature's speed like "ghoul rouser" who increase by +2 the movement of ghouls...
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SepSpring
Known Hero
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posted June 27, 2014 11:19 AM |
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Up!
Hundreds of hours spent in "Diablo III" made me think that several aspects of its skill system can be adapted to "Heroes" reality. The basement provided by the sixth instalment can also be taken into consideration, but only in its corrected form.
The "Might - Magic - Unique" division of the Ability Tree is OK, but the fourth section is really necessary in order to point out non-combat perks like diplomatic, educational, management and scouting ones. Including them into the "Might" branch is wrong, IMO.
"Might", "Magic" and "Adventure" sections should contain a set of really useful perks (not simply "+2 Destiny", for instance) unique for each faction. Unique in this context doesn't mean that the same skills should be shared between a group of factions. It means that heroes of different factions (even those that seem close to each other in terms of culture, spirit and mood like Sylvan and Sanctuary) should have no common abilities in their Trees. This can be achieved by making perks operate with faction creatures' possibilities and spells' mechanisms, increase their effectiveness or add something completely new to their capacities. Adventure skills should be tied to the faction's essence (for example, Dungeon should have extremely effective spying and sabotage perks, Sylvan - exploration, Sanctuary - water movement, Fortress - possibly logistical etcetera).
The "Unique" section should offer perks affecting the exclusive feature of a faction (like Alchemy for Academy, Necromancy for Necropolis, Gating for Inferno, Warcries for Stronghold, Runes for Fortress and so on).
Thus, on the example of Academy the structure of Ability Tree looks like "Might - Magic - Adventure - Alchemy".
Making skills free to choose is quite doubtable for many players, so we can combine it with the elements of randomness in the following way. Game should define the perks to offer when levelling-up according to the player's actions. Say if a player relies in combats mostly on might creatures, attacks with them and uses their abilities more frequently, than the magic ones, on his level-up he is offered to choose from abilities related, firstly, to might aspects of battles, secondly, to the creature types he favours. In other words, the system should propose the skills that conform to a player's style.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted June 27, 2014 12:03 PM |
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Edited by Maurice at 12:04, 27 Jun 2014.
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I actually like that idea very much, Sep. However, I am not sure if a 4th skill tree is needed. Why not integrate the 4th one into the existing 3? Like you already indicated, "Might" skills for one faction differ for the "Might" skills of another. Might as well include faction specific skills then in those 3 skill trees.
I'm not sure if I like the idea of biased choices presented to the player, however. I'd rather see a model like in Diablo, where the player gets 5 points each level up and the player is free to boost an existing skill to improve it a slight bit more or to get a new skill. In such a system, each skill point has an overall lower impact simply because there are more skill points in total.
As an example, consider the adventure skill "Logistics". It could be made to have 5 levels, each level adding +10% movement over native terrain and +5% movement everywhere else. "Scouting" increases visibility range by 5% each level. "Pathfinding" could be made a higher tier Adventure skill, having "Scouting" and "Logistics" as prerequisites, reducing terrain movement penalty by 5% each level, with a maximum level equal to whichever is lowest of "Scouting" or "Logistics".
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SepSpring
Known Hero
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posted June 27, 2014 01:07 PM |
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Quote:
I actually like that idea very much, Sep. However, I am not sure if a 4th skill tree is needed. Why not integrate the 4th one into the existing 3? Like you already indicated, "Might" skills for one faction differ for the "Might" skills of another. Might as well include faction specific skills then in those 3 skill trees.
I've thought about this, but, firstly, not every unique feature can be referred to one of these three sections. OK, Necromancy and Runes can really be placed in the "Magic" branch, Warcries - into "Might" (still not sure). Gating can be considered a sort of Chaos Magic. But Alchemy? Might? Magic? Nope. It's a range of scientific researches and experiments carried out by Wizards. Secondly, dividing unique perks between "Might" and "Magic" will make them less or more important for different heroes, and my general idea was to make abilities marked as "Unique" equally effective for heroes of both Might and Magic affinities. Finally, personally for me a separate section for unique features really makes sense. 
Quote:
I'm not sure if I like the idea of biased choices presented to the player, however. I'd rather see a model like in Diablo, where the player gets 5 points each level up and the player is free to boost an existing skill to improve it a slight bit more or to get a new skill. In such a system, each skill point has an overall lower impact simply because there are more skill points in total.
As an example, consider the adventure skill "Logistics". It could be made to have 5 levels, each level adding +10% movement over native terrain and +5% movement everywhere else. "Scouting" increases visibility range by 5% each level. "Pathfinding" could be made a higher tier Adventure skill, having "Scouting" and "Logistics" as prerequisites, reducing terrain movement penalty by 5% each level, with a maximum level equal to whichever is lowest of "Scouting" or "Logistics".
I'm afraid this idea will essentially result in some kind of the system present in "Heroes VI", and it's not a secret how irritating it is for numerous players. People will just use the same exact build in each session, and that's what "VI" is mostly disliked for.
I enjoy this suggestion, but nowadays the series needs a solution to bring old-school players back and simultaneously attract new audience. Unfortunately, free-pick is out of the picture in this case.
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Steyn
Supreme Hero
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posted June 27, 2014 02:12 PM |
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What I did not like about the heroes 6 skill system is the lack of prerequisites and that skills and abilities were grouped together (and of course the spells should not have been included). What I liked so much about the heroes 5 skill wheel was that there was also interconnectivity between the different skills, such as cold steel and teleport assault. Also I really missed the race specific abilities. If the heroes 6 skill system would have been more like that of heroes 5, but with free choice, it would already have been much less bland.
Why not have the skills give small bonusses, but also an ability point to for an ability of that skill. Like offence giving 1 attack per lvl + one offensive ability.
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flonembourg
Known Hero
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posted June 28, 2014 09:42 PM |
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And what do you think about a unique skillweel per hero?
So the idea is 6 heroes per factions (2 mights, 2 Magics and 2 Mixed), maybe 6 factions for the begining...
So 36 skillwheels with few common skills and lot of unique perks.
I know it's Lazy Ubisoft but the replayability would be.... how to say.... AWESOME!!!
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SepSpring
Known Hero
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posted June 29, 2014 12:54 PM |
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Quote:
Why not have the skills give small bonusses, but also an ability point to for an ability of that skill. Like offence giving 1 attack per lvl + one offensive ability.
Really worthy.
Quote:
And what do you think about a unique skillweel per hero?
So the idea is 6 heroes per factions (2 mights, 2 Magics and 2 Mixed), maybe 6 factions for the begining...
So 36 skillwheels with few common skills and lot of unique perks.
I know it's Lazy Ubisoft but the replayability would be.... how to say.... AWESOME!!!
Yes, awesome. But six factions is too many in terms of publisher's expenditures.  Four completely different (especially if speaking about gameplay style) like Academy, Stronghold, Fortress, Necropolis would be more suitable for vanilla, I think.
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JeremiahEmo
Bad-mannered
Famous Hero
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posted July 02, 2014 05:07 AM |
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flonembourg said:
And what do you think about a unique skillweel per hero?
So the idea is 6 heroes per factions (2 mights, 2 Magics and 2 Mixed), maybe 6 factions for the begining...
So 36 skillwheels with few common skills and lot of unique perks.
I know it's Lazy Ubisoft but the replayability would be.... how to say.... AWESOME!!!
great idea but this would be implemented in Heroes 7 which means it should be 7 heroes per faction (2 mights, 2 magics and 3 mixed), and 7 factions for the beginning. 
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flonembourg
Known Hero
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posted July 02, 2014 08:02 PM |
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JeremiahEmo said:
great idea but this would be implemented in Heroes 7 which means it should be 7 heroes per faction (2 mights, 2 magics and 3 mixed), and 7 factions for the beginning.
Ok I think i should wait for heroes 20 
Seriously, for me one skillwheel per faction is just not enough... Heroes 5 was good but the skillwheel was to common between factions and unique perks were not so numerous or interesting than the base skills ( attack, defense ....)
In term of different style of gameplay for every factions i hope they' ll try to comme with a DOC' s (duel of champion) Gameplay.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 02, 2014 09:52 PM |
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I have a great idea too!
Let's have 20 factions in H7!
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Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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kayna
Supreme Hero
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posted July 05, 2014 02:35 AM |
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Is this thread an actual project or just wishful thinking? Cuz I wont give my huge wall of crit text opinion if its just wishful thinking.
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Steyn
Supreme Hero
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posted July 05, 2014 08:25 PM |
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Probably a bit of both
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Gnomes2169
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Duke of the Glade
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posted July 07, 2014 04:42 AM |
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Personally, I would like to see a system of main skills (like, 6-8 general, overarching skills)+Racial skills that unlock certain subskills when a hero takes them... I'm probably going to have to make a new thread in the 6+ forum to explain this better, but basically it would work something like this.
Generic Knight Bobbert is level 1, and has three skills. Bobbert starts with Apprentice/ Basic/ Whatever Chivalry (Racial skill, better defenses when friendly creatures are nearby), Basic Attack (Main skill, adds to Bobbert's attack attribute) and Basic Defense (Main skill, adds to Bobbert's defense attribute). When he levels up, Bobbert gets two of his "base" skills randomly from the list, one main skill he does not have yet, and three potential subskills based on the skills he has. Some examples would be:
-Chivalry: Retribution (Hero marks a stack to be their "protected" stack. If attacked, the hero automatically attacks their assailant. Every extra rank allows Bobbert to "protect" an additional stack), Honor (Improve damage vs. targets that are able to retaliate, requires the attack skill).
-Attack: Archery (Increases the ranged damage of Bobbert's creatures), Weapons master (Further increases both attack and defense, requires defense)
-Defense: Vitality (Increases the HP of creatures in Bobbert's army), Phalanx (Improves the damage creatures in Bobbert's army deal on retaliation, requires Honor)
Sub skills would be upgradable, much like the main skills, and would take up a skill slot... again, much like main skills. Certain subskills will lead to "tier 3" subskills, which function in the same way. Any skill may be progressed to rank 5, giving heroes more time to pick up new skills/ subskills for their builds.
I would hope that this system would allow heroes to still have randomness without losing all semblance of balance and still giving heroes a chance to recover if they get unlucky. Hopefully, that would be a good balance between the H5 skill system (with perks giving more specialization and such) and the H3 skill system (where every skill is a linear improvement on the level before, and you are more certain to get the skills you want/ need)
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Yeah in the 18th century, two inventions suggested a method of measurement. One won and the other stayed in America.
-Ghost destroying Fred
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