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| Thread: Travel Magic/Skills + + | |
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Niion
Tavern Dweller
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posted February 13, 2008 07:50 AM |
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Travel Magic/Skills + +
I have some ideas to enrich the current school of Adventure Magic.
I would call them Travel magic/skills in Homm6(if ever there will be one )
-----just a reminder, the ones in Homm5 are------
# Vessel of shalassa: summon a ship
# summon creatures: from nearest town
# instant travel: really short ranged teleportation
# town portal: selfexplanatory enough
my goal is to offer a much bigger group of magics for the player to be able to use much more regularly during traveling in order to achieve the following:
> alternative movement(teleport, elevateion, etc.)
> change accessibility (of terrain/landscape):gain shortcut for yourself, slow down your enemies
> improve sight
> gain combat advantage
the Travel magics can be learnt from
- logistics
- destructive magics (the ones you also use in battles)
- straightforward adventure magics
but such magic/skills can be hero/profession/faction specific...
========okay, here is the first list I quickly come up with========
# elevation: allow hero to float above ground and travel for X distance (so he could overcome some previously unpassable landscape)
# tremor: alter the elevation of possibly a hill to make it flat enough to cross
# implosion: break the obstacle that blocks the entrance to a cave...
# incinerate: burn the bridge down after you cross it
# freeze: make ice of the river so you can proceed
# owl's soul: summon a spiritual owl and control it to scout in one direction
# town portal: as it was
# unit protal: teleport 1/some of your units back to town
# cry of fury: lower moral of all neutral creatures within radius
...
the list might go on with your input
TRAVELLING is actually anyone spends most of his time doing in any HOMM game, it is about time it contained more fun and provided more options.
guess what, with luck we might even be able to fool around with an engine that boasts decent physics effects that the system can take great advantage of.
comments pleaze.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted February 13, 2008 09:12 AM |
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Not sure about many of those spells, so I'll list the ones in HoMM3
View Air
Disguise
Visions
Dimension Door [Instant Travel]
Fly
View Earth
Town Portal [Town Portal]
Summon Boat [Vessel of Shalassa]
Scuttle Boat
Water Walk
As you can see, we have a bevy of spells that could be used.
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Daystar
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Back from the Dead
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posted February 13, 2008 01:07 PM |
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What about a few blessings that you can cast on all/one of your creatures. It takes a lot of Mana but it lasts all day/week or something like that.
Also, curses that work in a raidus (eg, a necromancer could cast one and weaken all creatures in a SP radius.
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How exactly is luck a skill?
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted February 13, 2008 01:10 PM |
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Personally, I'm very ambivalent on this subject. The whole topic of the Town Portal spell - Heroes 3 vs. Heroes 5 version - has taken up pages and pages of previous threads, and that's just the top of the ice berg. To sum it up briefly, these are the pros and cons of extensive travel spells (Heroes 3 style):
Pros:
- Saves you a lot of traveling, i.e. boring game-time.
- Allows for huge maps with epic storylines, i.e. "from start to finish" maps.
- Is a great help on many vs. many maps.
Cons:
- Removes the tactical element - you can always just "zap home" if attacked.
- Breaks down map planning for the map planner, in that obstacles will no longer be obstacles.
I guess which model you favor - Heroes 5 or Heroes 3 - will depend very much on what type of games you normally play. I was always a fan of the huge epic maps in Heroes 3, and therefore sorely miss the old Town Portal spell that makes this kind of maps virtually unplayable in Heroes 5 - but on the other side, I also recognize that it's very true that Town Portal will offer a boring "instant win" on many multi-opponent maps.
My suggestion would be to severely limit the number of spells that allows you to traverse obstacles - Water Walk, Dimension Door (Instant Travel) and Fly, for instance, only offers what is to me a very unfair advantage to the player. Ironically, Heroes 5 made the decision to severely cripple Dimension Door, which was good - but instead of taking out the bad thing, which was the jumping-over-obstacles element, they limited the distance (to a point where the spell is mostly useless anyway, except for crossing borderguards). I would have done the complete opposite thing - make a spell that reduces movement cost to let you travel longer in one day, but not over obstacles - possible draining mana depending on the distance traveled. That would have been useful but not broken I believe.
On the other hand, I sorely miss the old Town Portal spell. That spell opened the option for playing a whole range of maps you can only play with loads of cumbersome travel-time now. Spell could be made optional - select in settings whether you prefer Heroes 3 or 5 Town Portal for instance. That would make it possible for people to choose whatever they prefer.
As for other spells, I think there are a lot of relevant spells like View Towns, View Heroes, View Mines, View Artifacts, etc. Good and useful spells that can potentially save you a lot of boring wasted time.
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What will happen now?
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted February 13, 2008 07:06 PM |
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Quote:
My suggestion would be to severely limit the number of spells that allows you to traverse obstacles - Water Walk, Dimension Door (Instant Travel) and Fly, for instance, only offers what is to me a very unfair advantage to the player.
Dimension door wasn't exactly 'that' overpowered, even with expert air magic it cost 20 spell points, reduced your movement by two tiles per cast, and could only be cast four times per day. Fly and Water Walk might be a different matter, but that's perhaps because of their low (in comparison to comparably leveled spells) cost, which could be ramped up if need be.
Quote:
I would have done the complete opposite thing - make a spell that reduces movement cost to let you travel longer in one day, but not over obstacles - possible draining mana depending on the distance traveled. That would have been useful but not broken I believe.
An interesting idea, or maybe you could twist it so that you use no standard movement cost, but expend (for the sake of argument) 2 mana per tile.
This system could also conceivably be used for Water Walk and Fly, using, say, 3 and 5 mana per tile respectively, so their distance is limited. You could even use it for Dimension Door (cost of 4 mana per tile distance.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted February 13, 2008 09:10 PM |
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Yes, something like that I had in mind.
My main objection with Dimension Door and Fly is that they allowed you to skip all boundaries on the map. This was annoying for map-makers, because you could no longer arrange a plan of events - but it was also extremely unfair to players, because it was all to easy to make surprise attacks and/or escapes where you could not be targeted because opponent had no means of taking same path.
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What will happen now?
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted February 14, 2008 02:51 AM |
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Quote:
My main objection with Dimension Door and Fly is that they allowed you to skip all boundaries on the map. This was annoying for map-makers, because you could no longer arrange a plan of events - but it was also extremely unfair to players, because it was all to easy to make surprise attacks and/or escapes where you could not be targeted because opponent had no means of taking same path.
I don't know what could happen with Fly, but maybe Dimension Door could act like a temporary Monolith (one-way or two-way) that lasts until your next turn.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted August 08, 2019 07:16 PM |
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No need to remove the fun stuff. H5 introduced the limited town portal at lvl 20 and it could similarly introduce the improved version at lvl 25 and have it deplete your movement points. H7 mechanic quite welcome too: One building that gives you the spell and transports to closest town and a building upgrade that allows you to teleport to that town in particular. I found that well thought out.
Fly and dimension door are a bit trickier and I'll agree that jumping above obstacles can be problematic for many maps. Maybe if they were limited by hero accessibility (whether the hero already has access to the teleported area by travelling normally) to work as travelling shortcuts. You could blame the restriction on line of sight or not actually flying but levitating.
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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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Oddball13579
Supreme Hero
Grandmaster of the Hunt
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posted August 08, 2019 07:32 PM |
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I agree Elvin. However that town portal mechanic was introduced in H6, not H7.
Also good job on necroing a nearly ten year old thread! You have promise!
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"Just slide her down a bit farther. I could wear her like a hat." - Gnomes
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted August 09, 2019 12:28 AM |
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Weird, I was pretty sure it appeared as latest thread on the altar.
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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 August 09, 2019 10:12 AM |
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Could very well be that I deleted a spam post from it. I've noticed that even when deleted, the topic order still gets presented odd at times.
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The last Reasonable Steward of Good Game Design and a Responsible Hero of HC. - Verriker
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted September 05, 2019 02:57 AM |
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Examining the other games each has its own unique additions. Heroes 2 for example has the "Set X Guardians" spells, while Heroes 4 has the "Mire" and "Pathfinding" spells, and Heroes 7 has the "Ylath's Clairvoyance", "Malassa's Tempation" and "Sylanna's Bounty" spells.
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