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| Thread: Skillwheel Theorycrafting |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted April 06, 2015 10:27 AM |
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Edited by Elvin at 10:28, 06 Apr 2015.
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I'd much rather have 12-15 skills per hero class with the maximum amount of skills being a couple more. Every class would more or less have the same skills minus a few banned ones.
You just can't get the same amount of replayability with 10 skills per hero class because not all combinations are as effective. The fans will always find the more potent combinations and skip the rest, some classes may turn out underpowered due to the skills/schools they get, some classes may not fit the player's aggressive or defensive mentality, may not feature your favourite magic school..
What H5 did was no small feat. It gave you one highly customized class whose orientation could range from might to magic, from offensive to defensive or any of those combinations. Naturally some classes were better in some approach than others but you could make it work with the right artifacts/stats/spells.
The level ups could be chaotic for the average player who could not plan ahead or did not know how to manipulate the odds in his favour. Which skill to pick first, which to skip, whether to advance in more skills or stick to the ones he has, whether to wait for a skill ability or not etc. But there is a simple solution for that as well.
Imagine a level up giving you 4 random skills. You pick one, the skill tree opens. You can then pick a skill mastery or an ability, provided its requirements are met. Shouldn't be hard to implement, won't confuse you with too many options.
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PandaTar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Celestial Heavens Mascot
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posted April 06, 2015 11:54 AM |
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I do prefer many options, as long as they have a true and intelligent purpose, usefulness, not vanity or simply number. But having many options is better, at least in my opinion, than having fewer. You opt yourself having fewer or more options when you have many. When you have few options, you have few options and that's that.
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"Okay. Look. We both said a lot of things that you're going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster."
GlaDOS – Portal 2
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Pawek_13
Supreme Hero
Maths, maths everywhere!
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posted April 06, 2015 12:01 PM |
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I think that first few improvements that need to be implemented are:
1. Increasing level cap to 40. It would allow for greater range of possible skills and therefore make one hero more interesting to use.
2. Increase number of possible skills to pick per class to 15. This increase would skyrocket number of possible sets of skills.
3. For random skills implement a button that would show skillwheel of current hero class. In my Heroes V I have a mod for that and oh boy, this simplifies planning so greatly that I believe that it is a must-have for all random players.
Do I want more? Sure. Faction specific abilities, abilities dependent on other abilities, improved specializations, etc..., but these are in my opinion priorities of dev team.
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Neovius
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 06, 2015 12:14 PM |
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Edited by Neovius at 12:15, 06 Apr 2015.
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Elvin said:
You just can't get the same amount of replayability with 10 skills per hero class because not all combinations are as effective. The fans will always find the more potent combinations and skip the rest, some classes may turn out underpowered due to the skills/schools they get, some classes may not fit the player's aggressive or defensive mentality, may not feature your favourite magic school..
What's the difference really? A player always picking the same class and abandoning the other classes (other skills) vs a player always picking the same skills anyway as he would with the class system.
Now, that would only apply if there wasn't any random system implemented. If it was balanced around a random system, then having more skills per hero would really benefit it.
Elvin said:
Imagine a level up giving you 4 random skills. You pick one, the skill tree opens. You can then pick a skill mastery or an ability, provided its requirements are met. Shouldn't be hard to implement, won't confuse you with too many options.
That's somewhat how I imagined it. You level up, the skill wheel opens highlithing only a few wedges picked randomly.
I wish they would make it like that instead of having complete freedom.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted April 06, 2015 01:57 PM |
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Edited by Maurice at 13:58, 06 Apr 2015.
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I'd say the skill wheel opens whenever you get presented with a skill choice. You can highlight any skill level and perk and see its benefit by hovering your mouse over it and see which skills and perks depend on which others (by simply automatically highlighting all those prerequisites as well, preferably with connection lines).
In the case of a random choice, the game preselects some skills, which are the only viable choices the player has. All the others are greyed out and unavailable to choose for that particular skillup, but you can still mouseover on any to get a description and see underlaying dependencies. Of course, this assumes a preset skill wheel, not one with "open" slots where no skill is present yet.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 06, 2015 03:33 PM |
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castiel_789 said:
Let's look at it this way
8 out off 28 for H3 29% ; 5 out of 9 H4 for 55% ; 5 (excluding racial) out of 12 in H5 give you 41% (correct me for the number as there coming from the top of my head)
H3, H4 and H5 had an 100% availability on skills for a hero. H7 has a 33% availability as a hero is literally stuck with the skills of his skillwheel, which are 10 in total. That's the problem.
castiel_789 said:
I also agree that we don't know much about the system yet.
Really? Cuz I took my time to explain it even to the point of repeating myself.
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Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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Protolisk
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted April 06, 2015 08:12 PM |
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Stevie said:
H3, H4 and H5 had an 100% availability on skills for a hero. H7 has a 33% availability as a hero is literally stuck with the skills of his skillwheel, which are 10 in total. That's the problem.
Well, no. I dunno about H4, but H5 has more racial skills (which are still skills) so, no, not ALL are available, but, indeed, the non-racial ones are. Futher, Barbarians don't have typical skills for 5 either: they'll never be able to cast Light spells, Dark Spell, no matter how hard they try. No other race could lower enemies magic schools as well, either. There are some (very special) lockouts.
And, when compared to H3, no, even then, not all heroes can gain all skills. Necromancy wasn't a racial, and others besides necromancers and death knights could obtain it, but then only a few. Some skills were similar. Here's a chart that I believe is accurate, which shows that not all skills are allowed for characters. Of course, I suppose there are the scholars and witch huts that can allow some to be technically still learned, but you'd need to be able to both be restricted and offered your restricted skill for it to work. Just use control+f to find all the zeroes, barring the tens. You'll see that some are indeed locked out. Or just look under the chart for an easy overview on skill lockouts per magic/might hero chart.
Furthermore, that is 28 skills right there, with only 4 magic schools and one "racial". It isn't that hard for me to fathom a selection of 30 skills considering there are maybe 6 schools now and 6 racial skills, even if some of these are fused together, or perhaps made into perks (I'm looking at you, Eagle Eye, Mysticism, Estates).
True, these aren't as exclusive as H7 is right now, but things aren't as 100% as you make it out to be.
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castiel_789
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 06, 2015 09:09 PM |
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From the start yes. I took it from the angle of a fully leveled hero.
Stevie said:
H7 hero is literally stuck with the skills of his skill wheel, which are 10 in total. That's the problem
My point exactly I mentioned it many time also in past post. I'm I to understand you didn't have any problem with the skill feeling flat has in H6. Didn't you see any copy paste from H6?
Stevie said:
Really? Cuz I took my time to explain it even to the point of repeating myself.
You did a wonderful job at that. I was merely stating that the skill perk and what they do is unknown yet at least to me.
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Roohana
Tavern Dweller
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posted April 06, 2015 09:55 PM |
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Edited by Roohana at 23:09, 06 Apr 2015.
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Stevie said:
H3, H4 and H5 had an 100% availability on skills for a hero. H7 has a 33% availability as a hero is literally stuck with the skills of his skillwheel, which are 10 in total. That's the problem.
It's far too early to make such comparisons as we don't know anything about the random skill system which I'm sure of will be the one preferred by most players. If you'll get to choose 10 skills out of about 22-23 (racials and some restrictions excluded) then the "skill availability" will in fact be higher than in H3 (8 of 27 for most heroes).
Anyway, I'm fine with the currently known 10 of 30 (or 33%) availability as well as it provides more unique builds and higher diversity (for both classes and races).
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Protolisk
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted April 07, 2015 08:10 AM |
bonus applied by alcibiades on 07 Apr 2015. |
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The Bad Math Rises
Before you, stands a symbol of potential. Heroes 7. Which has languished in the shadow of one game: Heroes 5, which has been held up to us as a shining example of mechanics. We have been shown a false equivalency, to stop you from understanding differences in opinion. Let me tell you the truth about Heroes 5, through the method of bad mathematics, written by your resident persistent idiot, Protolisk.
"Okay, so, after my last mini-rant about skill and perk numbers, I decided to try again. I asked if anyone wanted to check my rough math, and if they wanted to, they could be my guest. I guess I'll be my own guest since this was actually bothering me a bit. I wanted to see exactly how many perks we could get with the skills available to each hero, back with H5, and now.
I am not trying to write this in any way towards or against H7 or H5 or any system, just trying to get some facts straight.
My reasoning for doing this is to show how perks, which tend to be excluded, are as important as the skills removed. In H7, a seeming 66% of skills are not for all classes, mostly around 33% seem to exist. This may go for perks too. Though some are touting "100% skills for all in H5", this is misleading because in the H7 count we have racials likely included in that 30 skill count, but "100%" to me sounds like they are saying Necromancers can get Bloodrage in H5, which is likely not what they are trying to say. Just by this, H5 at best had a 65% skill total for each class. You shouldn't use a false equivalence here. If we really wanted to say H5 was "100%", then instead of our heroes having 10 out of 30, it's more 10 out of 25 (the other five factions racials are likely not ever available to be learned) or 40%. True, 40% compared to 100% looks bad for H7, but 33% compared to 65%, though still looking bad for H7, humbles H5. But, as I feel perks are just as important, this massive rant will be going over this.
My numbers include Barbarian Shout mixed with Sorcery, and all Shatters with their respective school, due to similar perks such as Corrupted Soil and Mana Regeneration. I even included Shout Training as a different perk compared to Arcane training, since they had different images and pics, though their effects seem similar, they technically affect different things. This is similar to things such as the "typical" Suppress Light, which is actually more powerful than the Barbarian Corrupt Light thus they were also separated. "Non-typical" perks were those not allowed for all classes. Conservative non-typical is for those who may think if only 1, 2, or even 3 classes go without, then that perk should still be typical. These will be important later.
Here goes:
War-machines had 11 perks. The non-typical were Goblin Support, Plague Tent, Tremors, Imbue Balista, Runic War Machine, and Remote Control. 6/11 non-typical. (Haven skews this by having a bare-bones 5 perks, but many don't have Tremors or Plague Tents, so no conservative bonus)
Enlightenment had 14 perks. The ones allowed for all classes are really only Mentoring and Intelligence, though that's because Barbarians exclude many perks, but have others to supplement. Ignoring Barbarians loss but counting their unique, the actual non-typical perks are Dark Revelation, Tap Runes, Know your Enemy, Lord of the Undead, and then Stamina, Bloodfire, and Battle Lore for Barbarians only. That's 7/14 not typical if conservative, but 12/14 if going all out. This seems unfair.
Logistics had 12 perks. Swift Gating, Teleport Assault, and Familiar Ground, and March of the Golems are non-typical, 4/12.
Leadership had 12 perks. Necromancers skew this, there are only 4 typical skills here due to them. Even so, the non-typical skills are
Battle Elation, Gate Master, Herald of Death, Battle Commander, Runic Attunement, and Artificial Glory, with Aura of Swiftness and Divine Guidnce not allowed for Necro, and Aura also not for Dwarves. An astounding 8/12 not for all classes. For the conservative, it'd be 6/12.
Luck had 11 perks, Luck of the Barbarian, Warlock's Luck, Swarming Gate, Elven Luck, Dwarven luck makes 5/11 non typical.
Defense had 12 perks, Defensive Formation, Chilling Bones, Hell Wrath, Defend Us All, and Power of Endurance (only not for barbarians) for a 5/12. Conservative 4/12.
Offense had 11 perks, Cold Steel, Stunning Blow, Power of Speed (barbarians excluded), Retribution (two classes go without this), Nature's Wrath, Offensive Formation, for 6/11 non-typical, 4/11 conservatively.
From here on, I'll "ignore" Barbarians for the non-typical counts for similarity, but they will count for things they have others don't, usually the "Shatter Basics" which other trees do not have any copies of. Since I am counting these skills as yet another perk in the bucket, it's only fair they are included in the non-typical counts. For example:
Shout/Sorcery had 13 perks. Mighty Shout, Shout training, and Shout of Rage, with Soulfire and Bone Ward, a 5/13 non-typical conservative note (for the extreme, it'd be 11/13 because the barbarians only share 2 perks with others, but I won't count this even for the "extreme" count, nor for any shatters.)
Shatter/Summoning had 14 perks. The three Shatters basics, Back to the Void, Runic Armor, Haunted Mines, Exorcism (not for 3) 7/14, 6/14 conservative.
Shatter/Destructive had 13 perks. The three Shatter basics, with Searing Fires. 4/13
Shatter/Dark had 12 perks. The three Shatter basics, Weakening Strike, Fallen Knight, 5/12
Shatter/Light had 13 perks. Shatter basics, Guardian Angel, Twilight, for 5/13
Then there are 3 basic perks plus 1 ultimate for each racial. The fact that they are a racial automatically makes all of them non-typical, but for a basic hero, we can assume they have one set, so only 28/32 are non-typical.
What does this all mean? Let's add up the total, and all the non-typical.
Total perks: 180 flat as far as I can tell, 152 with only one set of racials.
Extreme non-typical: 72 non-typical base perks + 28 non aligned racials = 100 flat non typical perks
Conservative: 57 non-typical base +28 non-aligned racial = 85 non typical perks.
So what do we do with these?
If going by "100% all skills allowed for H5", then we'll ignore racial skills and focus on just the idea that they have only 1 set of racials and that's it. So, what perks are allowed for everyone, since "100% skills" are? I'll say this differently, hopefully it'll make sense further down: What is the percentage of perks available to each skill for the typical hero, which can only have 13 skills?
Extreme: (152-72)/152 = 52.6% perks of the 13 skills allowed for all heroes.
Conservative: (152-57)/152 = 62.5% perks allowed for the 13 skills for all heroes.
But what if we included all those racial skill perks? After all, the touted number for H7 is 33%, and we shouldn't have any false equivalences.
Extreme: 44.444% of all 20 skills
Conservative: 52.777% of all 20 skills
We'll stay in "65% of all skills for H5" mode from now on, to keep the same situation at hand, that is, counting racials as skills. But, I will concede that each hero in H5 gets about 52.6% of the perks of the skills that are allowed for them (with the extreme count: my reasoning is, if the hero in H7 has those 4 skills without top ranks and only 3 ultimates out of a possible 30, then H5 can deal with having the extreme values).
So why am I doing all of this?
Because, where H7 heroes get roughly 33% of all skills, how many perks do they get for these 10 skills? How many perks is this anyways? Well, if my math still serves me:
4 skills per hero gets 5 perks, with 6 skills getting 6 perks, plus three ultimate perks. That's 59 perks. Likely out of how many? If somehow every skill gets all ranks plus an ultimate, the grand total possible would be 30 skills * 7 (being 3,2,1, plus 1 ultimate) equaling a staggering 210 perks. If we exclude all ultimates, it goes down to 180 (though, if we did this, we'd have to remove all the ultimates from up above for H5, and I don't feel like doing this) So, yeah, even with perks, we get maybe 59/210, or 28% or perks for all skills in the whole game for any hero. Gosh, this sucks compared to even the extreme value of 44.444% of all skills in H5. But, with this thinking, we are falling prey to the "100%" line of thinking, lets stay to the 65% line. This means the better way (as far as I can tell) is to compare the perks of the skills allowed for a typical hero.
Clearly H5 didn't get 100% of all perks for each skill they were allowed, H7 should not need to follow suit either. Of the skills that are given to H7 heroes, we get a maybe 59 out of 70 (again, if all skills had a possible 7 perks, but a hero can only have 3 ults and 4 don't even get master perks for all skills) then that ratio is 84.2%, which looks pretty good. 84.2% of all the perks they could get based on the skills that are available to them.
For H5's access of skills, their chance to get any perk that is available to them skill-wise is about 52.6 by the extremes. But H7's heroes, though losing out on many skills, can easily access the perks that are available to them skill-wise, which is always about 84%. One's better about skill accessibility, one's better about perk accessibility.
For me, they are pretty equal. On the older hand, you have access to about 65% of all skills, 52.6% of all those skills' perks for the typical class, for 8 classes. On the newer hand, you have 33% of the skills, but 84% of these skills' perks for the typical class, for 36 classes."
And do you accept this man's terrible mathematics? We give it back to you, the people. Gotham Your opinions are yours. None shall stop your interpretation, do as you please. This great franchise: it will endure. Heroes of Might and Magic will survive.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted April 07, 2015 09:20 AM |
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Protolisk said:
For me, they are pretty equal. On the older hand, you have access to about 65% of all skills, 52.6% of all those skills' perks for the typical class, for 8 classes. On the newer hand, you have 33% of the skills, but 84% of these skills' perks for the typical class, for 36 classes."
And the latter leads to overall less flexibility and freedom with Hero builds than the H5 setup, even if it is more than H6.
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castiel_789
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 07, 2015 10:05 AM |
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There one more thing to consider secondary hero might play a bigger part in H7 has Explorer, Economy & Diplomacy (depending on how you feel about them) from what we see in the picture are skill so the main hero might never take them. In H5 they were all perk name wise for some.
Impressive math by the way 
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted April 07, 2015 10:23 AM |
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Protolisk, I think you bring up many good points, even if there are also many things I disagree with. A few short thoughts from my end:
- Can someone say whether the 30-skill count we hear from H7 is indeed with or without the racials? It would be nice to have a list of these 30 skills (or 24 skills, if that's what it actually is), even more nice if we could have some info on what each of them does.
- I don't agree with you that you can compare the cut-off perks from H5 directly to the unavailable skills in H7. In some cases - like H5 Retribution not being present in two of the skill trees - I agree it is quite the same. On the other hand, I think there's a vast difference between H5 Elven Luck only being in the Sylvan skill tree (i.e. unique faction ability) and H7 Stronghold flat being cut off from learning Water Magic. In the latter case, it's not a question of Haven being cut off from Elven Luck as much as Haven having something else than Elven Luck in this perk position (or even if this position is empty, they can pick another perk instead).
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What will happen now?
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Protolisk
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted April 07, 2015 03:50 PM |
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alcibiades said:
Protolisk, I think you bring up many good points, even if there are also many things I disagree with. A few short thoughts from my end:
- Can someone say whether the 30-skill count we hear from H7 is indeed with or without the racials? It would be nice to have a list of these 30 skills (or 24 skills, if that's what it actually is), even more nice if we could have some info on what each of them does.
- I don't agree with you that you can compare the cut-off perks from H5 directly to the unavailable skills in H7. In some cases - like H5 Retribution not being present in two of the skill trees - I agree it is quite the same. On the other hand, I think there's a vast difference between H5 Elven Luck only being in the Sylvan skill tree (i.e. unique faction ability) and H7 Stronghold flat being cut off from learning Water Magic. In the latter case, it's not a question of Haven being cut off from Elven Luck as much as Haven having something else than Elven Luck in this perk position (or even if this position is empty, they can pick another perk instead).
Although I do agree on these points, another thought I've had is that every time someone points out "prerequistes allow for greater diversity", it's kinda backwards. I mean, sure, it feels more interesting, due to needing to plan, but, I feel it also adds up to less diversity. You can never have Elven Luck and Warlock's Luck at the same time, for example. In order to get Elven Luck you MUST get Resourcefulness and Soldier's Luck, no other way around it. I feel that, too, cuts out diversity. Lets try a small numbers game with just the Ranger's luck tree, and imagine that H7, too, is limited to just 3 perks in that tree, for a moment.
The Ranger has 1 set where he got all the basic perks. He has 2 where he gets Soldier's Luck and Warlock's luck, but can get either of the others. Another two for Tear of Asha Vision, and another two for Spoils of War. Then one additional one for the set needed for Elven Luck. That's a total of 8 different sets of perks.
Of course, that's a single hero type. I suppose I should add all the other types that would be special. So: two more for Barbarian's luck. 4 new ones of Swarming Gate, 3 for generic Dead Man's curse, plus 3 more for Neco's easy access dead man's curse (due to not needing Soldier's luck, you could get the other two basics, or Resourcefulness and one of it's post reqs) . And two more for Dwarven luck. A grand total of 22 combinations, with no way to get more.
Now let's imagine a H7 hero with the luck skill. They can get all 3 basic perks, three different sets of two basic perks and one advanced, a whole other 3 for getting two basic perks and the other advanced, 3 different sets for each basic per one advanced and one master, then another 3 different sets for each basic, the other advanced, and the master. That's 12 already. Those all seem to be feasible numbers. Then you have (what might be possible) the master and both advanced. Or the master and two basic perks, three different ways. That's a total of 16 different combination of perks. And that's only if you are maximally limited to three perks. A little similar to H5's great diversity of perk combinations. But we could still go for having 4 points, or 5, or 6, or even 7 if there's an ultimate there. There are 1 total combinations of having 7 points, 7 combinations with only 6 points, and the 4 and 5 points are quite large in numbers of combinations. Even without the 4 and 5, that's 24 combos. This adds up combinations quite fast. And that's just one tree. There's supposedly 30 of these trees? I still feel H5 and H7 have pretty equal diversity, it's just in different sectors of choice.
I feel the primary difference between H5 and H7 are that H5 back loads diversity with perk diversity, while H7 front loads it with skill diversity. And even when it does come to the diversity of perks, H7 has more theoretical combinations of perks than H5.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted April 07, 2015 07:01 PM |
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Protolisk said:
Although I do agree on these points, another thought I've had is that every time someone points out "prerequistes allow for greater diversity", it's kinda backwards. I mean, sure, it feels more interesting, due to needing to plan, but, I feel it also adds up to less diversity. You can never have Elven Luck and Warlock's Luck at the same time, for example. In order to get Elven Luck you MUST get Resourcefulness and Soldier's Luck, no other way around it. I feel that, too, cuts out diversity.
That is definitely true. For all the virtues of H5's skill system, it had some inherent flaws. One of them being that synergy skills also inevitably let to fixed builds - I mean, given the chance, who would not go for something as good as Retribution, but in most classes that locked you down not only on two skills but also which perks to get. While this was good for gameplay (challenge to get the right skills, satisfaction when you got there) it was bad for replayability.
Obviously that is a weakness that's partially built into the H5 system, but it was definitely emphasized by the fact that some perks were extremely poorly balanced in H5 (I mean Resourcefulness, Tear Of Asha Vision - wtf!?) and the fact that many skills only had one path leading towards a synergy skill, making this the default path within this skill. I think as an improvement on the H5 system, there should be two or even three "perk paths" within each skill leading to different synergy ("ultimate") perks - because this would offer an actual choice rather than the de-facto choice you were often faced with in H5. However, that's a sort of different discussion.
Protolisk said:
I feel the primary difference between H5 and H7 are that H5 back loads diversity with perk diversity, while H7 front loads it with skill diversity. And even when it does come to the diversity of perks, H7 has more theoretical combinations of perks than H5.
I just disagree completely. First off, from what we hear, you can currently get all perks within each skill, which means you basically have one combination for maxing out in each skill - and while I am aware that most likely you will not max out in one skill because of skill point demands, this is still horrible game design for me. Secondly: Leaving a hero with not only a fixed subset of 10 available skills but also fixed limitations on which skills can actually be taken to the max level is just downright horrible. This seems to me to all but lock your progression path with each class in stone - not only are we talking default builds because they are best or most likely, no we are talking default builds simply because there are no alternative builds to aim for!
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What will happen now?
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Protolisk
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted April 07, 2015 08:17 PM |
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alcibiades said:
I just disagree completely. First off, from what we hear, you can currently get all perks within each skill, which means you basically have one combination for maxing out in each skill - and while I am aware that most likely you will not max out in one skill because of skill point demands, this is still horrible game design for me. Secondly: Leaving a hero with not only a fixed subset of 10 available skills but also fixed limitations on which skills can actually be taken to the max level is just downright horrible. This seems to me to all but lock your progression path with each class in stone - not only are we talking default builds because they are best or most likely, no we are talking default builds simply because there are no alternative builds to aim for!
"This is horrible game design because I feel the player's option of over compensating in single skill while ignoring others is a bad idea" isn't really the game's fault. Yes, you can do it, but as you say, nothing says you have to, and if you do, it's no fault but your own. What if filling an entire tree is good? What if you need versatility? That's already two builds with very vague description. The fact that you seem to assume that each class has a single perfect skill path, I feel, means you are predisposed to the idea that once you get comfortable, no experimenting will occur, or maybe you are assuming there are going to be many, many terrible perks and only a select few are worth choosing. Yes, there may be bad perks here and there, but you are assuming there is somehow a "single build with no alternative", which means that somehow out of the 59 perks and 26 skill ranks, there is some how a single overriding way to spend 30 points. Even if you attempted no over lap in builds at all, you could squeeze out nearly 3 builds right there (roughly 30 points out of 85 available things to spend points on). With over lap, you could easily fine tune heroes, even if some perks are a bit better than others or some skills more important, their still is much to choose from. So how do we even know there is a "perfect build"? Could different situations not call for different perks?
I really don't get the arguments of "The game allows for a imbalanced tree that people will fail with" (if you assume that any extreme spending is a bad idea) or that "The game has a single perfect tree and there is no way anything is equal" (if you think there can be only one way to play this game per hero). They just seem like you are yelling at the game for something either an incompetent player will fall to (the imbalanced tree spending) or the stubborn player will fall to (only believing one skill path beats all) yet call these player errors a fault of the game.
You are still free to believe this, I won't stop you. But I really feel those arguments that "A player will only choose the best skills, and thus a single path" is a fault of the player, not the game.
However, if what you say is true, and it turns out that a single build is the "one true build" for a hero every time, and that many hero classes have their own "one true build", then I will concede to you that the system is flawed and often produces no replay-ability between a single class. But until then, we really can't argue on what may happen to all 36 hero types until we A) get all 36 heroes revealed, B) see all the perks, C) actually understand how each perk works, and D), have then tested and experimented with each perk all the way through for each hero, all 36, and perhaps an additional E) more stagnate rules, i.e. no longer in beta, with minimal patching. Until then, I don't think we can argue much on the grounds of if a "perfect" build per hero exists or not until we can actually form such perfect builds for each hero. Sadly, this probably won't happen until after launch (unless little change is needed between beta and the release version), but even ignoring this, we still need to see all skills and perks and see how they stack up.
On one side, I have seen people say with H6 that the old argument was "H6 has potential!" "But it may suck." and then when it comes out "It still sucks." "Well, it had potential." I think this still can work the other way around. "This game has the potential to suck!", but if it does work, people tend to forget its potential to suck, because it worked. We really can't prove the "potential" of anything, good or bad, until it is truly in action.
I'd love to argue more about this, but I feel (at least at this juncture) we've rather reached a point where we can't much prove or disprove anything until more information comes out.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted April 07, 2015 11:13 PM |
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Protolisk said:
"This is horrible game design because I feel the player's option of over compensating in single skill while ignoring others is a bad idea" isn't really the game's fault. Yes, you can do it, but as you say, nothing says you have to, and if you do, it's no fault but your own. What if filling an entire tree is good?
I'm still skeptic. I mean, if we take that Stronghold class from that screenshot, if I want to do a wacky build and go magic, I can do what ... one skill point into Earth Magic, and one skill point into Air Magic, and then what? Some perks, but even then, where does that take me? I'm cut off from learning higher levels in the skills, so I can't put any more skill points in that direction, and it ends up being a no-build because I can't even learn higher level spells from these schools.
Obviously this is an inherent problem of the free-pick skill system; H5 balanced out the odd and wacky builds by having small chance to make them appear, but when you can pick your skills at will, you need to hard-control builds by other measures, and this makes game worse imo.
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What will happen now?
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Protolisk
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted April 07, 2015 11:33 PM |
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alcibiades said:
I'm still skeptic. I mean, if we take that Stronghold class from that screenshot, if I want to do a wacky build and go magic, I can do what ... one skill point into Earth Magic, and one skill point into Air Magic, and then what? Some perks, but even then, where does that take me? I'm cut off from learning higher levels in the skills, so I can't put any more skill points in that direction, and it ends up being a no-build because I can't even learn higher level spells from these schools.
Obviously this is an inherent problem of the free-pick skill system; H5 balanced out the odd and wacky builds by having small chance to make them appear, but when you can pick your skills at will, you need to hard-control builds by other measures, and this makes game worse imo.
My thought that, from Stevie's explaination, that both Earth magic and Air magic for that perticular hero allows up for 2 levels of mastery, and still has capability to get 5 perks, the novice 3 and advanced 2. If you really wanted a spell based Chieftain, you still have 14 points total of spell mastery. I mean, it's possible, and if it works, it works, but still, we can't tell just how good it can be until we try. It may totally suck, we don't know. It would indeed be a wacky spell based might hero.
I suppose you are right: a game with no system of help does end up being a bit skewed. We supposedly will have random, but since we don't yet, odd and wacky builds are likely to be found. I'm not a true believer that this system is amazing, but I feel it's not a disaster as many claim it to be. I feel that it may still be worse than H5, its true, but otherwise would be the 2nd best system so far at worst, as of right now. I may change my mind for the worse later if more flaws are found.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted April 07, 2015 11:44 PM |
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Well from the screenshot we saw hero had Air Magic 1, if I'm not mistaken, and Air Magic 2 was not available, neither lit nor unlit, so I took that as indication this class could only learn Air Magic 1. But I might be mistaken. Anyway, I don't think I can get much further with my opinion on this skill system before I know more, and on the bottomline, I guess I will always be against it because of the non-random nature it builds upon, which is just a personal preference.
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What will happen now?
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Protolisk
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted April 08, 2015 12:32 AM |
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alcibiades said:
Well from the screenshot we saw hero had Air Magic 1, if I'm not mistaken, and Air Magic 2 was not available, neither lit nor unlit, so I took that as indication this class could only learn Air Magic 1. But I might be mistaken. Anyway, I don't think I can get much further with my opinion on this skill system before I know more, and on the bottomline, I guess I will always be against it because of the non-random nature it builds upon, which is just a personal preference.
Hmm. Perhaps you are right, there is some ranks not red at all, some dull red, some bright red. I'm not certain exactly what that means, but I thought Stevie said that there would just be 4 skills capped to the 2nd tier rank, not less. If that was the case, that even tier 2 was locked out, it would be pretty bad.
I really like the idea of non-random myself, but I also see the purpose of random. It's just in H6, with the choice, it never really was choosing perks and skills, but spells and combat abilities. I feel like this time, we'll finally have what I'm looking for, that is, a choose-able perk and skill system. But, if it sucks, I'll convert to the church of randomness.
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