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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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mammothhunter
Tavern Dweller
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posted April 08, 2015 05:05 PM |
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Elvin said:
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.
I can imagine that would instead make some skill combinations overused in all builds across all factions while others underused, much like in VI. Without external dependencies and class or faction specific percs within each skill. Just find one or few good working combinations and arrange them from the same pieces. These few combinations will still be less in number than those "forced" by the current system.
MMH6 skill system has 7 magic "skills" and 5 might ones, two of the magic schools are always closed for your hero so its 10 out of 12, 83% availability. It is this kind of freedom what you propose.
When the build is composed from identical pieces for all factions you will not get away from reusing them.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted April 08, 2015 05:18 PM |
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H5 did not have that issue or at least it wasn't that pronounced. H6 did because there were no faction unique skills, ability requirements that vary from faction to faction or random skill percentages.
Not all builds were top but there were more than a few good ones. And I did not feel the need to copy skill combinations from one faction to the other with few exceptions like retribution or pure destruction builds.
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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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mammothhunter
Tavern Dweller
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posted April 08, 2015 05:39 PM |
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H5 didn't with its single class and unique wheels. In H7 it seems skills are not going to be unique except the racial ones. So I'm expecting two builds with warfare and defense like on the screenshot developed to master level would still play similarly. And with more skills available, or worse - also more skill points available, you can incorporate more of these into any build further reducing differences between them.
Unless faction specific percs are going to be there in every skill, not just the racial ones. There can also be class specific percs.
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Protolisk
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted April 08, 2015 09:53 PM |
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Elvin said:
And I did not feel the need to copy skill combinations from one faction to the other with few exceptions like retribution or pure destruction builds.
Then why does it matter if heroes have skills that literally can't share the same combinations?
Unless you mean perks, which I can understand.
However, due to my last massive rant of perks, due to some discussion on the differences between single perks that are faction specific, when compared to H7 where they don't appear.
I think some of these extra perks tend to have been removed from the "skill", and instead added into a racial perk system.
To understand this:
Acaemy: perks only allowed for Wizards that aren't specifically a Artificer related perk are: Remote Control, March of the Golems, Artificial Glory. Those are all the ones I can see. 3 faction related perks.
Dungeon: They don't seem to have much that is at all just for them. 0
Fortress: Runic Machines, Tap Rune, Runic Attunement, Dwarven Luck, Offensive Position, Defensive Position, Runic Armor. 7 perks just for them.
Sylvan: Imbue Balista, Know Your Enemy, Battle Commander, Elven Luck, Nature's Wrath. 5 perks just for them.
Necropolis: Lord of the Undead, Herald of Death, Chilling Bones, Bone Ward, Haunted Mines. 5 perks just for them.
Haven: Appears to just be Fallen Knight and Guardian Angel. 2 perks.
Inferno: Swift Gating, Gate Master, Swarming Gate, Hell Wrath, Soul Fire, and Searing Fires. 6 perks.
Stronghold: Since the many skills are outright replacements for other skills that they just can't access at all (wow, how about that, skills they can't access) the perks that are extremely unique are: Goblin Support, Bloodfire, Stamina, Battle Elation, Defend us all, Stunning Blow, Shout of Rage, and Back to the Void and Mighty Shout, for 9. (if you really wanted to count the ones that did replace things, like the "Corrupt, Detain, and Weaken"s for all the "master of", as well as Battle Lore as opposed to the Scholar and Intuition, or Shout Training as Arcane training, then this, I suppose, raises up to 22)
Using the minimal of Barbarian's perks due to outright skill lock outs (fancy that), the average of perks that are only allowed for a single faction are 4.6 extra perks beyond the simple 3 perks + ultimate for each racial. That's a total of about 8.6 perks only allowed for a single faction. Funnily enough, a large amount of these are direct affects to their basic racial (Blood Fire, Shout of Rage, Battle Elation, Know your Enemy, Swift Gating, Master of Gates, Swarming Gate, Tap Runes, Runic Attunement, Herald of Death, Lord of the Undead) so it makes sense for it to not be part of any other faction's skills tree. The others, especially the rest of the Demon Lord's, are just modulations of the "perk abilities" that are gained under the umbrela of the racial system, like Hell Wrath, Searing Fires, Soulfire, or Imbue Balista.
But wait, now instead of each faction having only 3 perks plus an ult for their racial, now they have 6 perks for their racial, plus the ult. 7 perks. And this is without requiring very specific skills needed (which lowers diversity for the other skills it might be obtained) as well as perk prereqs (if Elven Luck necessitates Expert Luck and two specific perks, then although Elven Luck is unique to Sylvan, the luck skill must be very specific to even reach this unique perk, which makes any Ranger who has Elven Luck to not be so unique between themselves).
But 7 doesn't seem to stand up to 8.6.
Or does it?
Lets count an entire faction as one group, shall we? Otherwise, we'll get into the fact that a Necromancer is similar to an Embalmer because it has Necromancy as an ult, which I feel is silly. Since H5 had a whole faction available, lets continue with a whole faction being together.
So far:
Necropolis as a whole has Dark Magic solely.
Academy has Air Magic, Earth Magic.
Haven has Fire Magic, Warcries, Leadership.
As of right now Stronghold has nothing unique.
Honestly, I have to admit, it doesn't look too good. Likely, Warcries will be a Stronghold thing too, and Dark a Dungeon thing. Probably Earth or Air as Stronghold too. But even so, Dungeon might have things that are unique to them, same for Sylvan, without overlap.
Looking at the 3 factions totally revealed right now, we have about 2 Main skills per faction that are mostly unique to them, besides racials, but I feel this may drop down to an average of roughly one, half the number, when the others are revealed. If so, then instead of a faction being privy to only 7 perks alone, they also might be able to get a special 8th perk via an Ult in a main skill that the other factions as of right now don't. They'll prop up the numbers to perhaps 8, which is still a nice comparison to H5's 8.6. However, even with just 7, that's still pretty close to 8.6, especially considering some of the racial perks in H5, such as Powerful Blow, Retaliation Strike, Mark of the Damned, are sort of the same ability, just with slightly different conditions. They aren't all that unique.
Edit: As an addendum, most of the large faction specific perks in H5 aren't even attainable together. Doing my darnedest to get as many perks as possible for the faction with the second most faction perks, Fortress, because Barbarians could get really ridiculous but even if I tried to get as many of the 9 perks in their repetoire, plus the 4 racial perks, I could get at most 8 perks if I did my best to get the Ult, or... 8 perks if I tried to avoid the ult but get as many Fortress only perks as possible. And that requires all of my skill slots to try to get these, since typically there's only 1 faction only perk to a skill, and you can only get 5 skills beyond the racial, so 9 tends to be the absolute max for the rest of the factions, and that's if the three skills needed to obtain the ult all have a faction perk (fortress can't because they need Destructive Magic, but no perks just for them are in that skill). For Stronghold, it's 11 while trying to get the Ult, but needing to grab Enlightenment and Shout, no Shatters at all. That'll be an effective build, right? And if I'm trying to not get the ult... that's kind of it. I'd have to get less, because the best two skills for getting extra perks for Stronghold that are only for stronghold are indeed Shout and Enlightenment, two each (stamina+bloodfire, and mighty shout+shout of rage) and the rest of the skills can only supply you 1 perk, so if you want the most perks, it's the ult. And those two have the biggest amount of perks to choose from. Dungeon still can't really get more than the 4 racial perks, and some like the Necromancer MUST eschew a special faction-only perk, Haunted Mines, to even try to get the ult.
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Wellplay
Famous Hero
Poland Stronk
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posted April 08, 2015 10:53 PM |
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People just got spoiled by H5.
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted April 09, 2015 07:28 PM |
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Trying taking from the discussion thread: THE SKILLWHEEL IN HEROES 7
I left my (brief) thoughts on the blog, should be enough to get the idea.
Quote:
Fixed skills per class and complete lack of pre-requisites between abilities spills doom.
This just looks like H6 system without the level requirements, urgh. H5 skillwheel was excellent, it only 'failed' because:
- Atrocious RNG.
- No visual representation in-game, leaving the player blind on to what choose to achieve any possible build.
For a Best-of Heroes I expected something better in this department, it doesn't look good at all 
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 09, 2015 07:29 PM |
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So, The Skillwheel in Heroes 7
"Hello Councilors,
Today we’ll explain the skill system in Heroes VII. We use the term skillwheel because of the shape of the interface and as a reference to its inspiration, the Heroes V skillwheel, but as you’ll see, it’s different in many ways.
HERO DEVELOPMENT PHILOSOPHY
The default skill system in Heroes VII aims at giving the player the control of his hero’s development, so he can shape his abilities to serve his chosen strategy.
Each hero belongs to a class, and a class already defines a general style, but the skillwheel lets you specialize your hero or balance him. Some will think specialization is the way to go, and it might be true if you have a dedicated playstyle, but balance can also be a weapon in a long game. Also, Grandmaster abilities must not be mistaken with Heroes V’s ultimates, they are great abilities, but not game-winning must haves.
THE HERO CLASS
As you already know, each hero belongs to a faction and is either a Might or Magic hero. This has the strongest influence on the skillwheel. Amongst these, three classes can be found. One is generally more offensive, one is more defensive, one is more balanced.
You can find examples of such classes in our previous articles about heroes: https://mmh7.ubi.com/en/blog/post/view/necropolis-magic-heroes
THE SKILLWHEEL
The skillwheel structure allows you to see all the potential of your hero on one screen. You can immediately identify his strengths. We provide the possibility to show all content or only what you have immediately access to, for a clearer view.
Right panel allows you to have a direct access to all details about selected item.
https://ubistatic-a.akamaihd.net/0004/prod/images/150409_Skillwheel/Skillwheel_Full.jpg
Stronghold Chieftain skillwheel (Show All option: enabled).
Bursting Rage selected, ability from Novice Rank.
SKILLS & RANKS
You can see right away that each skillwheel provides 6 Major Skills and 4 Minor Skills, each divided in 3 ranks : Novice, Expert and Master. A minor skill is limited to Expert rank, though.
Skill ranks provide rough, simple benefits like hero stat improvements, and give access to abilities.
Novice rank gives access to 3 abilities.
Expert rank gives access to 2 abilities.
Master rank gives access to 1 ability.
You can also see that 3 of the Major Skills have a fourth “Grandmaster” ability.
To unlock a new skill rank, you must first unlock the previous rank (except for Novice) and unlock at least one ability of the previous rank.
https://ubistatic-a.akamaihd.net/0004/prod/images/150409_Skillwheel/Skillwheel_Hide_Mini.jpg
Ready to unlock Blood Rage rank 2! (Show All option: disabled)
ABILITIES
Abilities are more specialized than skills, they provide the hero with a variety of rule modifiers.
Grandmaster abilities are really great, especially since they stack with previous ones. To unlock a Grandmaster ability, one must simply have already unlock the master ability.
https://ubistatic-a.akamaihd.net/0004/prod/images/150409_Skillwheel/Skillwheel_Ability.jpg
Ability selected: Native Terrain (Explorer: Rank 1)
SKILL POINTS
To unlock either a Skill Rank or an Ability, you need to spend a skill point. Each hero level grants you one point to spend. You can stack those points but there is no advantage in doing so in Heroes VII.
Notice that your hero might gain Skill ranks or Abilities freely thanks to certain adventure map buildings, though it doesn’t happen so often.
MAGIC SKILLS
Magic skills are critical for heroes since they give access to spells of the same magic school. All basic spells are available to all heroes, but the most powerful ones require to unlock Magic Skills ranks.
The abilities within a Magic Skill improve the power of spells in many different ways.
The Magic Skills accessible to a hero depend mostly on its faction, as you can imagine Haven heroes are Light Magic specialist and forbid the use of Dark Magic, for instance.
MIGHT SKILLS
Might skills are available to all heroes, except for Warcries, which is accessible to Might Heroes only.
They are mostly aimed at making heroes and armies more powerful in battle.
NEUTRAL SKILLS
Those are aimed at making heroes more efficient on the adventure map, for exploration, town development, economy, etc.
AUTOSKILLING
For beginner players, an option to let the game chose skill points spending automatically is provided. Using this system, you ensure the building of a solid, effective hero, at the cost of customization.
RANDOM SKILLS
As you may know, we also provide an optional random skill system. It is close to Heroes V’s system, and provides the player with a small number of choices each time his hero levels up, but still within the structure of the Heroes VII skillwheel.
HERO SPECIALIZATION
In addition to the skillwheel, the same screen lets you check your hero’s specialization (on the left panel).
This skillwheel has been an important topic of discussions since the fanday and we are aware that some elements aren’t as clear as they could be (for instance the fact that you need to unlock ranks and then abilities). We are currently working on an improved visual design of this skillwheel to offer a better understanding of it thanks to the precious feedback we received 
Work in progress concept (shields everywhere!)
Tomorrow we will come back and illustrate this article with a first Skill as example: the Warcries!"
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Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted April 09, 2015 07:30 PM |
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Let the rage begin!
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kiryu133
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Highly illogical
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posted April 09, 2015 07:32 PM |
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Edited by kiryu133 at 19:34, 09 Apr 2015.
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i like it. it's flexible without being too complicated. some crossover would be nice i guess, but overall a big improvement over h6. 
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Protolisk
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted April 09, 2015 07:33 PM |
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Storm-Giant] said:
Fixed skills per class and complete lack of pre-requisites between abilities spills doom.
This just looks like H6 system without the level requirements, urgh. H5 skillwheel was excellent, it only 'failed' because:
- Atrocious RNG.
- No visual representation in-game, leaving the player blind on to what choose to achieve any possible build.
For a Best-of Heroes I expected something better in this department, it doesn't look good at all
"This has fixed skills!" So it has skill prerequisites.
"This doesn't have ability prerequisites!" That's likely because it has skill prerequisites as a replacement.
It still has a random function, and now has a visual representation.
Funny, to me, it fixed a problem, and has a similar problem to H5 in terms of prerequisites. Just on skills, not abilities. But it can't be classified as "Best of" because...?
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The_Green_Drag
Supreme Hero
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posted April 09, 2015 07:39 PM |
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The abilities you get from the skillwheel is the worst thing about it imo. They affect the armies way too much. One that i remember specifically from the demo was under the defensive skill and gave your army Preemptive strike (Minotaur's ability from H6). I can't remember if it was just for one turn or one attack or for the whole battle, but either way, the ability alone makes a HUGE difference. It was obtained after like one or two points in defense. What abilities am I to expect from the offensive skill? Double attack for all creatures? No retaliation for all creatures? Small percentage increase to stats is all we need, not throwing new abilities at every solider whenever the hero gains a level.
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Protolisk
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted April 09, 2015 07:41 PM |
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The_Green_Drag said:
The abilities you get from the skillwheel is the worst thing about it imo. They affect the armies way too much. One that i remember specifically from the demo was under the defensive skill and gave your army Preemptive strike (Minotaur's ability from H6). I can't remember if it was just for one turn or one attack or for the whole battle, but either way, the ability alone makes a HUGE difference. It was obtained after like one or two points in defense. What abilities am I to expect from the offensive skill? Double attack for all creatures? No retaliation for all creatures? Small percentage increase to stats is all we need, not throwing new abilities at every solider whenever the hero gains a level.
Okay, so that actually would be a problem. That does indeed sound quite powerful for being so early.
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted April 09, 2015 07:43 PM |
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Protolisk said:
"This has fixed skills!" So it has skill prerequisites.
Those are two different things.
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ThatRedSarah
Famous Hero
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 09, 2015 07:50 PM |
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kiryu133 said:
i like it. it's flexible without being too complicated. some crossover would be nice i guess, but overall a big improvement over h6.
I agree! It does have room for improvement, but it sure is a huge improvement compared to the H6 skill disaster. With random skills enabled this is pretty much like the system in H5 which i enjoyed.
I'm happy that it is in such a good condition at the moment
Lets just hope that the abilities are well balanced and different enough to provide variety to the skill picks. If there is a clear "path to victory" that you will end up taking every time that is just too boring. But i think the random skills will help in this problem also.
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Kronos1000
Promising
Supreme Hero
Fryslân Boppe
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posted April 09, 2015 08:38 PM |
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I'm not yet sure how I feel about this skill system. It is most certainly better than Heroes 6's system, as spells are separated from it, and abilities require skills rather than a certain level, but it does not look as good as Heroes 5's system. However, Heroes 6's greatest flaw was that you would end up choosing the same path every time after finding a successful one, and random skills will fix this problem. So all in all, I think it may just work, but I don't think it will beat Heroes 5.
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Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago?
Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa? - 'The Wanderer'
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kiryu133
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Highly illogical
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posted April 09, 2015 08:40 PM |
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the tiered system (and not limiting the perks in each category) is what really makes it so great for me. in h5 you could only choose 3 perks. now you can get up to what? 6? that will allow for heave specialization! really nice.
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Zombi_Wizzard
Famous Hero
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posted April 09, 2015 08:51 PM |
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Protolisk said:
Funny, to me, it fixed a problem, and has a similar problem to H5 in terms of prerequisites. Just on skills, not abilities. But it can't be classified as "Best of" because...?
Problem I had in H5 - altho I like that skill wheel a lot - is that some abilities had prerequisites - even cross skill prerequisites. So to get for instance: "tripple flaming balista" you had to have the exact skills (usualy attack + war machines) AND exact abilities inside of those skills. Basicaly, if you took first aid tent in war machines categories, you were screwed, coz now, you had no chance. And because skill system was RANDOM ONLY, it was realy annoying, that sometimes you had all correct skills + abilities, but your final desired ability just didn't pop up, untill you HAD to pick something else, and give up on it.
So to me prerequisites in H5 work only if skills are not random, where you can plan those in advance (hence, you take skills that are needed for the "final wish skill"). For random skill system, no prerequisites are realy the way to go.
In short. I like H7 skillwheel, as I think it improves on H5 one, and fixes the shortcomings of it - it will work realy great and offer great replayability with random skill option ON.
The only downside are the classes I guess, as there's realy no impact on how skill wheel works, if all classes would share one big wheel, instead of limiting skills per class. But this comes at no surprise to me, as I expected this, as soon as "each class has it's own skillwheel" has been revealed. Personaly, it won't be so limiting, since because there's no town conversation, you will once again use 2-3 heroes per game (more on huge maps), provided you have random skill option ON. If you have none-random skills, and want to play like that, it will unfortuantley reduce replayability as it looks like it. But as always, we will know how it is only when we play the game ourselves.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 09, 2015 08:52 PM |
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Inside a system where you can pick everything without restriction the random skills system of Heroes 5 makes little sense. There, you had 5 skills you could pick out of 12, excluding racials, and abilities had internal and external prerequisites. So there was a real chance that you might've ended with a different build than that which you wanted at first. Here in Heroes 7's system the randomness won't have the same effect, because you can pick 9 out of 9 skills and 6 out of 6 abilities. The effect is not the same.
And no, it sucks balls. It feels devoid of complexity and boring. I couldn't help thinking of Heroes 6 when I played with it at the event, it has the same feel.
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Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted April 09, 2015 08:53 PM |
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@Zombi_Wizzard: Do you realize that perks (abilities) prerequisites could exist in H7, without the problem you are pointing out?
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adriancat
Famous Hero
Protector Of The Peace
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posted April 09, 2015 08:53 PM |
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So, Ubersnow lied us about the random skillwheel, no ? Why I am not surprised ? 
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