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| Thread: Racial abilities |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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kornuletz
Hired Hero
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posted October 07, 2010 04:09 PM |
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Racial abilities
I think the concept of racial abilities was one of the best innovations in the heroes series. However some implementations of said abilities for several races was rather poor IMO in H5.
Inferno's Gating and Necropolis' Necromancy concepts were the best, and others were just bad. (e.g. counterstrike of haven, upgrade units and retaliation stuff).
For this I wanna discuss possible new racial abilities:
Hold-Your-Ground (Haven):
All Haven creatures will receive the Buff "Stand-Your-Ground" after X (2?) consecutive turns of standing on the same hex. Moving makes the unit lose the buff. When a unit with S-Y-G gets attacked by another creature, it will receive only 50%/25%/0% (I dont wanna give exact numbers) damage and lose the buff. Magic attacks are not influenced by/don't influence this buff.
PROS: Racial ability that emphasizes the defensive nature of haven.
Simple, straight-forward, intuitive.
CONS: Too weak on its own, as it obliges You to defend?
Certain units of haven like knights want to charge usually, so they'll rarely use this ability.
In-touch-with-nature (Sylvan):
Stacks that "touch"(border) other friendly stacks recieve a damage bonus. The more friendly units touching, the better the damage bonus.
PROS: Offensive ability that rewards keeping your units in formation.
Nice name.
CONS: If the damage bonus is too big, it becomes imba?...
Not original enough?
Discuss. Add your own if You feel like it*.
*Racial abilities should be relatively simple, intuitive and feel natural for the race.
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MrDragon
Supreme Hero
Eats people with Ketchup
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posted October 07, 2010 04:20 PM |
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Edited by MrDragon at 16:21, 07 Oct 2010.
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Haven's faction specific ability has already been confirmed.
It's called Guardian Angel and it grants the stack complete immunity to damage and debuffs temporarily.
*Que MC Hammer's Can't Touch this.*
Necromancy in HVI works actively, every time a unit dies in battle, friend or foe, it feeds a gauge for the Necromancer who can spend it to increase the unit count of friendly stacks, and a % stays after combat.
Inferno is keeping Gating.
What we know.. for now.
But I'll try and think of mechanics for the possible unannounced factions.
But yeah, the 3 I just mentioned, all from the faction PDFs they released.
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kornuletz
Hired Hero
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posted October 07, 2010 04:37 PM |
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Oh I didnt know about Guardian Angel.
Sounds interesting and fitting.
Hold Your Ground would have been a nice name... Oh well 
Also the new Necromancy is interesting, makes it more dynamic.
And YAY Gating!
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kornuletz
Hired Hero
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posted October 10, 2010 12:55 PM |
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Other abilities--->
Sacrifice the Weak (Dungeon or new race):
Two stacks are selected - the protected stack and the sacrificed. A % damage done to the protected stack will be dealt instead to the sacrificed stack. % of damage transferred and turn duration up to balance team.
Spell Swallow (Naga or H3 swamp inspired faction):
A stack can use one (several, if needed balancewise) turn to learn a basic spell from the master hero's spell book. Future attacks of this stack will be preceded by the swallowed spell on the attacked stack.
*Only low level debuff type of spells can be swallowed. A fixed spellpower will be used for the stack, after a formula depending on number of creatures.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted October 10, 2010 01:09 PM |
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I'm not particularly bothered by who gets what, just as long as they don't preload the heroes with them, because I want to be able to use different faction's heroes like I did in H3.
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bixie
Promising
Legendary Hero
my common sense is tingling!
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posted October 10, 2010 04:21 PM |
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I was just about to make a thread about these ones.
Personally, I really like the racial skills, it made all of the factions feel complete, and really added a new level of tactics to it.
Having said that, what Ubi are doing is trying to make the skills more combat focused, which is something that could work, but on the other hand, some of the skills like the Training skill really helped people playing haven.
I personally think it would be better if they one skill set for combat, one skill set for exploration stuff. Admitedly, it will make it extraordinarily complex, but still.
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Love, Laugh, Learn, Live.
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radox
Known Hero
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posted October 11, 2010 01:47 PM |
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Why do you say that racial abilities in H5 sucked? Runelore, Artificier and Bloodrage were nice and natural. I think however, that they came up with crap like Counterstrike and Irrestistible magic simply because they couldn't invent better ones for these two races. While we are at it, I think that Guardian angel sounds too powerful. We'll see.
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MrDragon
Supreme Hero
Eats people with Ketchup
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posted October 11, 2010 03:13 PM |
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Quote:
Why do you say that racial abilities in H5 sucked? Runelore, Artificier and Bloodrage were nice and natural. I think however, that they came up with crap like Counterstrike and Irrestistible magic simply because they couldn't invent better ones for these two races. While we are at it, I think that Guardian angel sounds too powerful. We'll see.
Completely agree.
Some people whine that faction specific skills were to strong, well that's a balance issue, the core mechanics were fun and interesting.
Sadly two of the ham-fisted ones got revamped into boring passives.
(Talking about Counterstrike and Irresistible Magic obviously.)
I also think Rangers had a lousy one, I regularly used non-ranger heroes while playing that faction to for the stat growth and skill chances other hero classes provided, like the Knight, Wizard or Runemage.
And whilst I liked them I think Artificier will get axed as well if (or rather: when) Academy comes back.
It was tough to balance properly, was barely worth the resources until you had finished building your town(s) but your units were significantly weaker if you ignored it until you could afford it.
I mean, I liked it, I loved the concept, but it just is a little hard to balance.
If they change it to make it workable, that could be REALLY cool.
I think Guardian Angel will be decent but there is one moment where it will be awkward:
When you have only one stack left, the enemy CANNOT win until your GA wears off, in the mean time you might get a whole extra round, maybe even more, to whittle down his troops with the stack and your hero.
It could potentially lead to cheese tactics such as the week 1 or week 2 Dragon Utopia that Haven can pull off in HoMMV.
I think it will be a fine ability for large battles, but it's exploitable in early game/small army fights if it works the way I suspect it does.
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Nelgirith
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted October 11, 2010 03:41 PM |
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The main issue with H5's racials is that they couldn't apply to creatures not belonging to your factions. As MattII said, it sucked that H5 was the only Heroes game in which you couldn't use cross-faction heroes to lead your armies because of how the racials were designed.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted October 11, 2010 04:58 PM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 17:00, 11 Oct 2010.
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Quote:
The main issue with H5's racials is that they couldn't apply to creatures not belonging to your factions. As MattII said, it sucked that H5 was the only Heroes game in which you couldn't use cross-faction heroes to lead your armies because of how the racials were designed.
Not only. The HoMM V heroes were designed to lead exactly and only their own armies and make use only of their own towns. A Warlock has a good chance for Destruction Magic, but very low for Light Magic, so the Haven magic guild is next to useless for him. Also each army is constituted of creatures that are supposed to be led, if not exclusively, at least predominantly by the hero of the same faction. The Inferno creatures are mostly low on HP and their lower tiers have bad stats overall, so if it's not for the Demon Lord's very high Attack rating to make them (quite artificially, in my opinion) capable of good offense, they are as good as bunch of corpses. The Dungeon creatures on the other hand are very resilient and quite deadly and in the hands of a hero with high Attack and Defense skills, they'll be almost unstoppable - that's why the Warlock is relatively incompetent when it comes to improving the stats of his own army. All this however makes the factions not only unique, but quite limited and many of the combos possible in the previous games are completely lost for the player. More negatives than positives in my book.
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MrDragon
Supreme Hero
Eats people with Ketchup
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posted October 11, 2010 06:34 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
The main issue with H5's racials is that they couldn't apply to creatures not belonging to your factions. As MattII said, it sucked that H5 was the only Heroes game in which you couldn't use cross-faction heroes to lead your armies because of how the racials were designed.
Not only. The HoMM V heroes were designed to lead exactly and only their own armies and make use only of their own towns. A Warlock has a good chance for Destruction Magic, but very low for Light Magic, so the Haven magic guild is next to useless for him. Also each army is constituted of creatures that are supposed to be led, if not exclusively, at least predominantly by the hero of the same faction. The Inferno creatures are mostly low on HP and their lower tiers have bad stats overall, so if it's not for the Demon Lord's very high Attack rating to make them (quite artificially, in my opinion) capable of good offense, they are as good as bunch of corpses. The Dungeon creatures on the other hand are very resilient and quite deadly and in the hands of a hero with high Attack and Defense skills, they'll be almost unstoppable - that's why the Warlock is relatively incompetent when it comes to improving the stats of his own army. All this however makes the factions not only unique, but quite limited and many of the combos possible in the previous games are completely lost for the player. More negatives than positives in my book.
Fortunately they are bringing back Might and Magic Heroes (pun intended) to both factions, that should mean they won't give creatures stats designed to be led by a hero with certain stat growth preferences when it comes to spellcasting or army strength.
My guess is H5 put those MASSIVE morale penalties for cross-faction heroes and units to "hide" that particular weakness.
Didn't stop me from NOT using Rangers to lead sylvan though, don't like their stat growth, don't like their faction specific skill.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted October 11, 2010 09:21 PM |
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Quote:
Fortunately they are bringing back Might and Magic Heroes (pun intended) to both factions, that should mean they won't give creatures stats designed to be led by a hero with certain stat growth preferences when it comes to spellcasting or army strength.
Yeah, but it doesn't mean that Warlocks are going to be any better at leading a Haven army than they were in H5, which is exactly my complaint.
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kornuletz
Hired Hero
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posted October 11, 2010 11:04 PM |
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I wasn't bothered by that fact TBH. In fact it makes sense that you should be encouraged to pick a hero of your faction. You CAN pick also another hero but will have the drawback of not being able to use the racial ability. I think it is fair as long as it is equal between factions (if one racial doesnt work with other armies, none should).
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted October 12, 2010 12:09 AM |
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It'll also have godawful morale penalties a lot of the time. Decreasing replayability for something so minor as an option like that was IMO a seriously bad idea.
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Vadagar
Hired Hero
Master of knowledge
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posted October 12, 2010 12:33 AM |
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Hmmm maybe they will let some racials apply to (evil/good) units instead of faction specific!!
but at any rate I think the guardian angel thing will make the protected stack immune to damage but also unable to attack, since its defensive, which will make it more balanced I guess.
hmmm I can come up with something for academy:
1- Arcane flux: Give a caster unit some of the hero's mana (like the mage or jinn or the wizard)
2- Expansive Knowledge: All casters in the hero's army will be able to cast level 1 spells that the hero knows, in addition to their own spells.
3- Spell Amplification: as the mana pool of the hero/caster units is diminished, all spells gain a percentage bonus to damage/duration/effect, might work well against undead that are trying to last longer and your mana is just getting lower and lower.
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Sometimes I feel like I'm taking crazy pills
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted October 12, 2010 08:58 AM |
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Quote:
I wasn't bothered by that fact TBH. In fact it makes sense that you should be encouraged to pick a hero of your faction. You CAN pick also another hero but will have the drawback of not being able to use the racial ability. I think it is fair as long as it is equal between factions (if one racial doesnt work with other armies, none should).
I disagree. The racial abilities add certain degree of uniqueness and another level of tactical depth, but remove several other. In HoMM I - IV it's perfectly possible to have armies made up from several factions and still capable of fighting together quite well (Leadership and a lot of Morale-boosting artifacts are available for the purpose) and this army can be commanded by basically any hero, which allows ever more combos. HoMM V does not encourage you, but forces you to use only your hero and only your faction. Sure, you can try something else, but against a capable opponent with a "pure" army of only one race (a bit Nazi-like, eh?), you don't really stand a chance. In certain cases the respective army is bound to the respective hero and town - Stronghold to the Barbarian through Blood Rage, Inferno to the Demon Lord through Gating, Academy to the Wizard through Artificer, even Fortress to the Rune Mage through the runes. This means that all these armies or at least the majority of the creatures from them are much less effective without the respective hero from the same faction. And this makes the game much less diverse and monotonous after several scores of replays. I really hope they will not make the same mistake in Heroes VI.
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Elvin 
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted October 12, 2010 09:14 AM |
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Was intended and with good reason. That reason was balance, nuff said.
Worth noting that certain factions could play quite well under a non native hero, sometimes even better. Example, high lvl wizard mentors a knight and gives him artificered army. Even with less levels(sometimes same lvl if wizard is lvl 30 and there are some lvl up trees) the knight will cut down enemy heroes without much trouble. Even a lategame sylvan will have trouble against this exploit - all you need is defense, retribution and light. Likewise I believe that a ranger can have favoured enemies and command a fully trained haven army which could be sick. These things shouldn't even be possible but at least ubi made an effort to reduce them.
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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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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted October 12, 2010 09:39 AM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 09:40, 12 Oct 2010.
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The balancing is an adequate excuse, but far from perfect. Not to mention that the balance between the factions in HoMM V is just better than in HoMM III, but still quite bad, so even if this was their aim, they failed to achieve it. If good means + and bad means -, then the calculation is definitely resulting in minus.
I agree that certain combos are possible, but their number is insignificant and their application - relatively difficult. In a standard situation you will have a racial army vs racial army. As I said, some factions have no chance to even inflict some considerable damage without their corresponding heroes.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted October 12, 2010 09:44 AM |
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Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but can't Wizards only give artefacts to their own creatures?
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted October 12, 2010 09:49 AM |
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Indeed. And said units can be transferred to a non native hero.
I disagree about ubi failing in that respect. Besides those few cases they actually succeeded in avoiding different hero/faction imbalances.
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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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