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| Thread: HotA Secondary Skills Balance |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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hippox89
Famous Hero
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posted February 14, 2014 11:10 PM |
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Edited by hippox89 at 23:13, 14 Feb 2014.
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About First Aid,
I think that one of the major downsides of this skill is the randomness of the amount of points being healed. If you have expert First Aid then the range of the healing is not a pure 50, 75 or 100, nope, it's actually something like 1-50,1-75,1-100. That's maybe an average of 50 points on expert.
My thought is to maybe make the amount of healing fixed instead of it being minimum-maximum based. Maybe OP early game, though? In that case, maybe the minimum range could be tweaked, instead.
Also, I thought, what if the Tent had magic immunity? You'd have to commit more to killing it now then just using a cheap AoE spell.
But this is just random thoughts on it, though. If the skill is already good early game, then maybe that's just fine and dandy. I cannot honestly say that I know what I'm talking about with this skill because I used it so little myself, so far.
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted February 15, 2014 12:08 AM |
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I still think First Aid Tend should ressurect instead of just heal, then it would be an useful skill...heck, even healing 100 health points on EXPERT level seems useless to me.
Some numbers I'd go:
- No mastery: 1-20
- Basic: 10-50
- Advanced: 25-100
- Expert: 50-150
But of course, giving the tent a limited amount of "shots", so it isn't very exploitable to avoid loses.
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rubanani
Hired Hero
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posted February 16, 2014 05:13 PM |
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Edited by rubanani at 17:16, 16 Feb 2014.
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Storm-Giant said:
I still think First Aid Tend should ressurect instead of just heal, then it would be an useful skill...heck, even healing 100 health points on EXPERT level seems useless to me.
Some numbers I'd go:
- No mastery: 1-20
- Basic: 10-50
- Advanced: 25-100
- Expert: 50-150
But of course, giving the tent a limited amount of "shots", so it isn't very exploitable to avoid loses.
Great idea. I suggest to limit the resurrection skill to only lower levels. And what also is important, is to tag the secondary skill to the lvl of the hero (or the attack skill, the defence, the knowledge or the power skill) to avoid early abuse or late-game redundancy.
Maybe something like:
- No mastery: regenerates up to 50 health on top creature in a troop
- Basic: resurrect 1-2 lvl 1 creatures per lvl of the hero
- Advanced: resurrect 3-5 lvl 1 creatures per lvl of the hero
- Expert: resurrect 3-5 lvl 2 creatures per lvl of the hero
This way, when you are lvl 25 (having probably hundreds of troops).. resurrecting 125 lvl 2 troops can still be a very nice skill. First Aid tent needs a bit more HP to stay alive though.
Of course, a lot of thinking and balancing needs to be done to implement in nicely, but I totally like the idea.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted February 16, 2014 05:58 PM |
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The balance between tent life and bonuses given will be inaccurate as it is now so you need to raise its HP, right? Because with 75 HP a few goblins attack and is gone, bye bye resurrect and super tent.
And if you raise its HP then early battles will be broken, as neutrals always attack the creature inflicting the less damage, thus will be the tent. While you mass your archers on the other side and keep shooting, similar to wog enhanced catapult battles or tricks used with Gurnisson early game.
In fact, you would need to create the tent from scratch, and have dynamic health points, tied to Hero level, in order to avoid broken game. Is very hard to imagine such feature because if it is too strong, it will become a target from first round, if it is too weak, nobody will use the skill. And it will mainly depend on map template, on open map heroes don't get high levels, on closed templates they get easily 20, so tent should satisfy both concepts. Imo, this is impossible to balance out.
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Era II mods and utilities
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted February 17, 2014 10:15 AM |
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I don't think First Aid Tent heal power should escalate with hero level - that would be totally broken on high levels.
I don't think it'd be a problem it's most useful on early-mid game. Not all skills can and have to be great throught the entire game. However, making it useful at some levels it's already better than the **** is right now.
Maybe my numbers are too high for early game, but I still think it'd be a step in the right direction.
What could escalate with hero level are #of shots. Maybe with a low amount on early game (3-5) and winning one extra every 3 levels or something like that.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted February 17, 2014 02:22 PM |
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How about making the First Aid Tent a passive ability?
It just acts like a dampener on damage being dealt, when it's being dealt. Unlike the Artifacts that give a straight-up Health bonus, the First Aid tent has a limited amount of hitpoints it can cure.
That way, the First Aid Tent suddenly becomes very useful for low HP creatures, while not all that useful for higher HP creatures.
What I am proposing is something like this:
No skill, only the First Aid Tent: prevents 1 point of damage for each creature in the stack that gets damaged. Tent has 100 points of damage prevention.
Basic First Aid Tent: prevents 2 point of damage for each creature in the stack that gets damaged. Tent has 250 points of damage prevention.
Advanced First Aid Tent: prevents 10% point of damage for each creature in the stack that gets damaged. Tent has 500 points of damage prevention.
Expert First Aid Tent: prevents 25% point of damage for each creature in the stack that gets damaged. Tent has 1000 points of damage prevention.
To illustrate this, let's assume the Hero has Basic First Aid Tent and a stack of 100 Halberdiers (10 hitpoints each). Let's say they take 500 damage. Under normal circumstances, that would kill half the stack. However, due to field triage, each Halberdier absorbs 2 damage before succumbing to the damage. Effectively, each Halberdier has 12 hitpoints for damage and perish calculations. That means that only 41 Halberdiers die, instead of 50. The Halberdier at the top of the stack takes 6 damage (would be 8, but 2 are absorbed) and is left with 4 hitpoints.
At the same time, the 42 absorptions of 2 damage each takes off 84 restorative power from the tent. As it starts at that level with 250 points, 166 remain.
It gets interesting at the Advanced and Expert levels, where it will also greatly benefit higher level creatures. For instance, let's say an Archangel (250 Hitpoints) takes 200 points of damage. At Basic First Aid, the skill would only prevent 2 damage, causing the Archangel to take 198 damage instead. At Advanced level, 10% of the 200 damage is prevented, or in other words, 20 points of damage. The Archangel only suffers 180 points of damage, the restorative power of the First Aid Tent is reduced by 20 points.
Of course, exact values are up for balance testing; I've only supplied some static values here to illustrate my idea.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted February 17, 2014 03:33 PM |
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That's not a tent, it's a shield.
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted February 17, 2014 03:36 PM |
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artu said:
That's not a tent, it's a shield.
This.
It is however an interesting idea for a new skill or spell.
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Kivo
Famous Hero
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posted February 17, 2014 03:39 PM |
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Edited by Kivo at 15:43, 17 Feb 2014.
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Maurice said:
What I am proposing is something like this:
No skill, only the First Aid Tent: prevents 1 point of damage for each creature in the stack that gets damaged. Tent has 100 points of damage prevention.
Basic First Aid Tent: prevents 2 point of damage for each creature in the stack that gets damaged. Tent has 250 points of damage prevention.
Advanced First Aid Tent: prevents 10% point of damage for each creature in the stack that gets damaged. Tent has 500 points of damage prevention.
Expert First Aid Tent: prevents 25% point of damage for each creature in the stack that gets damaged. Tent has 1000 points of damage prevention.
I absolutely love this idea. Very interesting and I think that it would stop the problems of early, mid and long games if we were to have this instead of resurrection/healing above hit points. This would work much better in my opinion even it implies a shield slightly.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted February 17, 2014 04:06 PM |
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artu said:
That's not a tent, it's a shield.
I realise it's a shield, but I see no easy other way to make the Tent useful for low HP creatures, considering how damage is not equally distributed through a stack, but each time dealt to the top creature of the stack. By making it a passive effect, you can at least influence the effect of damage on each unit - and, effectively, you save some of the soldiers who would otherwise die (in my example, 9 Halberdiers live instead of dieing). It reduces your casualty rates, without introducing micromanagement and avoiding Resurrection type effects.
You could perhaps present it in a different way, if you look at my example:
"Lightning Bolt deals 500 damage to the Halberdiers."
"50 Halberdiers would die, but the First Aid Tent saves 9 from the brink of death and only 41 die!"
Same deal, effectively.
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hippox89
Famous Hero
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posted February 17, 2014 04:13 PM |
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Edited by hippox89 at 16:16, 17 Feb 2014.
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Remember, HotA is by design meant to be a true expansion to HMM3 and so changing the tent to something that's radically different from what it already was, is wrong. As it stands, the tent can already be meaningful to use early game if a hero starts with it, at least - and as long as the tent serves just a small role in the game then it can be meaningful enough. I rather see a subtle tweak, if anything, to make it somewhat more useful. Resurrection is certainly interesting if it can be balanced out, and if it isn't proven to be too abusable/OP.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted February 17, 2014 05:09 PM |
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Doesn't the same apply to for instance the suggested changes to Eagle Eye?
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hippox89
Famous Hero
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posted February 17, 2014 06:03 PM |
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Edited by hippox89 at 22:47, 17 Feb 2014.
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Well, I think that First Aid already serves more of a purpose than Eagle Eye does, and I don't think that First Aid is fundamentally broken, and so First Aid doesn't need a complete remould, imo. Eagle Eye is much more tricky, I admit - but if Eagle Eye could be made more useful in a way that's truer/closer to what it already is, then I'd rather see that happen. I could speculate that Eagle Eye might be removed for random maps (maybe depending on the map size) if it cannot be made meaningful enough to have a place in the pool of skills, and maybe the skill will be superseded by something more useful in the future, if wanted and possible, for random maps. Eagle Eye might already be useful for smaller maps and certain scenarios, though.
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krs
Famous Hero
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posted February 17, 2014 09:31 PM |
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Quote:
However, making it useful at some levels it's already better than the **** is right now.
This pretty much sums it up. Now it is close to useless. HotA crew can safely buff it up a little and see how it plays out. Even change it change it in 3-4 increments until they get the right solution.
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valgaav
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 18, 2014 04:12 PM |
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Eagle eye could just be combined with learning . It would make sense that a hero that has learning gets not only extra exp but also has a chance to learn spell . I mean it is learning skill is it not?  ...
This way it wouldn't be great skill (both learning and eagle eye are not great now) but at least now it wouldn't be as bad as eagle eye is right now.
pros - this doesn't change original game mechanics much and slightly makes both skills more useful
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hippox89
Famous Hero
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posted February 18, 2014 05:04 PM |
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Edited by hippox89 at 17:33, 18 Feb 2014.
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I don't remember if it has been suggested before, but that actually sounds like a pretty good idea to me, valgaav. I only don't say 'great' because I'd have to think more about it. The only con I see at the moment is that there'd be one less skill.
The percentage gain of Learning could still be tweaked, of course, and, if so, it'd be a very reasonable skill combined with Eagle Eye.
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted February 18, 2014 06:44 PM |
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That Eagle Eye + Learning combination sounds nice. By no means it looks OP (heck, I'd even make 10/20/30 for learning when combined with EE).
The only problem I see - it may leave compatibility problems with Roe/SoD/AB maps? Maybe that could be avoided with a new ability replacing one of the two slots, I wouldn't midn a well-thought skill, but HotA team also said they didn't want to add new skills
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valgaav
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 18, 2014 07:43 PM |
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hippox89 said:
I don't remember if it has been suggested before, but that actually sounds like a pretty good idea to me, valgaav. I only don't say 'great' because I'd have to think more about it. The only con I see at the moment is that there'd be one less skill.
Thank you. There is another good thing about it. There are 3 currently useless artifacts for eagle eye right now. Those could be also changed to besides chance to learn a spell also increase exp gained by hero.
Yeah it's one less skill, but right now eagle eye was not in the game anyway. Nobody choose the skill willingly. When given a choice on a hero I would take everything but eagle eye.
BTW yeah % for learning should be increased anyway probably.
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hippox89
Famous Hero
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posted February 18, 2014 09:06 PM |
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Edited by hippox89 at 12:33, 19 Feb 2014.
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valgaav said:
Thank you. There is another good thing about it. There are 3 currently useless artifacts for eagle eye right now. Those could be also changed to besides chance to learn a spell also increase exp gained by hero.
Yeah it's one less skill, but right now eagle eye was not in the game anyway. Nobody choose the skill willingly. When given a choice on a hero I would take everything but eagle eye.
BTW yeah % for learning should be increased anyway probably.
Okay, let's think about this. The three artifacts for eagle eye give the bonuses of 5%, 10%, 15% for a total of 30%. If these artifacts were also to increase the learning skill by the same amount then you'd be able to rise your learning skill to 45%!, which is probably way too much. I find it hard to imagine that it'd be possible for these artifacts to provide two different bonuses for the same, combined skill - but that could be a solution in theory, too. Another solution could be to make the percentage chance for the eagle eye part of the skill fixed, and make the artifacts only increase the learning part of the skill, instead. Say, 2.5%, 5%, 7.5%. for a total of 30% possible. If learning in itself was also buffed to, say, 10%, 15% 20% then a total of 35% would be possible. The artifacts names/looks would have to be changed to make sense then, though. These are not exactly easy/simple solutions, if even possible.
Edit: this post didn't make much sense, I realize. I only looked at the percentages and not the actual effect thereof.
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Maciek
Known Hero
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posted February 19, 2014 12:29 AM |
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Edited by Maciek at 00:59, 19 Feb 2014.
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hippox89 said:
(...) then you'd be able to rise your learning skill to 45%!, which is probably way too much. (...)
Not really. According to this site, every level past 13 requires 1,2 times the experience required for previous level, so:
20% extra experience is barely 1 level (assuming level 13+ and the bonus active from level 1),
44% is 2 levels (because 1,2*1,2=1,44),
73% is around 3 levels (1,2^3),
107% - 4,
149% - 5,
199% - 6,
259% - 7 etc.
That is, assuming you get that percentage for free at level 1 and got to at least level 13. At lower levels and/or if you get the skill later, the bonus is smaller.
Keep in mind that you need to use up 3 levels to get the skill to Expert level, refusing other skills. And it takes a skill slot. I think 30/50/100% experience bonus for Basic/Advanced/Expert Learning would've made it worth it sometimes. Or maybe the percentages would still be too low.
EDIT: Oops, sorry, I misread. The difference between levels increases 1,2 times with each level, not total experience needed. Fortunately, using the wrong formula we get results that are wrong by less than 500xp for all levels>7, which is an insignificant difference.
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