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| Thread: Creatures gaining XP, what do you think? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 16, 2016 03:27 AM |
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Within a realistic framework I reckon that imagining capable developers does not stand for miracle workers, so there's just that much you can expect from a dev team if you want to remain reasonable. There's natural limitations for what is feasible as well as worthwhile to implement and xp gains for creatures translating into multiple development branches is just not one of them.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted May 16, 2016 06:27 AM |
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Just give the series to triumph already 
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted May 16, 2016 12:22 PM |
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Edited by MattII at 14:06, 22 May 2016.
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dredknight said:
I like the idea but I am completely against been done as it is in H3 WOG.
What I would enjoy is every time a creature level ups his owner can chose between two abilities. Where each ability push the creature a little bit to certain side (offensive/deffensive/support/mage/obstacle?).
If anyone has played remake of X-COM enemy unknown you know what I mean.
Here is a screen shot of a max out X-COM solider skill tree.
You realise this will mean combining stacks will be unbelievably clunky right? The computer would then have to keep track of how many creatures have upgrade X and how many have upgrade Y.
That was the real strength of the WoG mechanic, it was incredibly simple, stack 1 has X experience and stack two has Y experience, and when you mix them, stack 3 has X+Y experience. This is calculator-grade mathematics, so simple even Ubisoft should have trouble mucking up (Though since they somehow managed to screw up Tetris...).
Stevie said:
Within a realistic framework I reckon that imagining capable developers does not stand for miracle workers, so there's just that much you can expect from a dev team if you want to remain reasonable. There's natural limitations for what is feasible as well as worthwhile to implement and xp gains for creatures translating into multiple development branches is just not one of them.
Unless of course you go WoG way, which adds no complexity (it's a single path), is scaleable, and still allows experienced creatures to get quite a bit tougher than just-produced ones.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted May 16, 2016 12:35 PM |
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Not if the upgrades are hero-based. It would be like a more complex version of the hero creature specials and the specific creatures would get specific bonuses when led by that hero.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted May 16, 2016 12:46 PM |
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So ditch the added abilities and make it so experience only ups stats.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 16, 2016 01:49 PM |
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LizardWarrior
Honorable
Legendary Hero
the reckoning is at hand
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posted May 16, 2016 03:18 PM |
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I'd say it's an interesting concept and it makes sense (battle worn veterans will be more skilled than new recruits  ) But there needs to be some smaller bonuses, no crazy abilities like in WoG and maybe 4 experience levels instead of 10. Perhaps only +1, max +2 stats per level and one new ability at 4th rank. And IMO it would be nice if experience could increase stats that heroes can't normally add to creatures, like speed and health.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted May 16, 2016 08:25 PM |
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Yep, in wog wasn't bad at all, just go less crazy with abilities, some tweaks here and there and I think it would rock.
Ps. dredknight would you mind please resizing or linking huge picture? It makes it a pain to read the other posts from previous page, thanks in advance. 
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted May 19, 2016 09:40 PM |
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Stevie said:
What exactly do you think upgrades, primary stats and hero skills do?
Tell you that a level 10 hero with a novice army will have significant advantages over a level 1 hero with a veteran army?
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 20, 2016 11:27 AM |
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The "improvement curve" of any given army is based on
a) XP gain via fights
b) Creatures (growth)
c) Improvement via building (dwellings, mage guilds).
The factor, "improvement per day" - or IPD - is limited insofar, that your power gain per day must not exceed a certain limit (so that power doesn't increase too fast because then things get too easy too soon), but must be above a certain minimum (otherwise there isn't enough "change" and things get stuck and boring).
If you look at WoG, then Creature XP gain is basically putting more weight into a) and reduce b). Essentially, if you increase the numbers, quality drops. So if you want increased quality you must keep numbers lower than you actually would be able to. (You might send out more than one hero, equipping them with creatures as well, depending on map layout and so on, but still you have an optimizing problem here, high creature growth being a production goal.)
The easiest way to imagine things is, that heroes simply lose the ability level of gaing XP, because instead of Heroes gaining abilities for all the creatures they lead, each creature would get their own abilities (more or less like H5 Stronghold's racial).
Possible, yes, but needlessly convoluted, considering that HEROES of M&M is supposed to be a fast-paced game.
The way HoMM works, it's better to overhaul the upgrade system. Having one upgrade for each and every creature is pretty unimaginative after all this time.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted May 20, 2016 12:52 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
The easiest way to imagine things is, that heroes simply lose the ability level of gaing XP,
You lost me here.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 20, 2016 01:12 PM |
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It's a simple exhange: you take away the abilities (H5) from Heroes, so that only skills are left (H3) and give the abilities to creatures.
Imagine, hero and creatures gain a level. With only hero gaining a level he may get Battle Frenzy, so every creature in his army gains +1 damage. Instead of that Hero may gain a skill, and all creatures participating in the fight get something.
That links XP to the bunch of creatures the hero leads; if he takes town full of nice creatures, because they have no XP, his old bunch of creatures will be better, even though the vanilla creatures may be a lot worse.
That puts focus away from hero development and turns it to creature development which doesn't make sense in a stack-based game (the underlying idea of the game is to allow stacks and make heroes the focus of their development).
This works well in Disciples. It also works in AoW. It doesn't work in HoMM.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted May 20, 2016 01:49 PM |
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Edited by Galaad at 14:02, 20 May 2016.
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No, it doesn't work the way you suggest it, doesn't mean it couldn't work in HoMM. WoG showed it can work, some mapmakers even made good use of it (another problem though was they weren't unique, you could get crusaders being also dread knights or pegasi being also harpies and such, but that just needs more imagination in design). Granted, it's in h3 and there is no hero abilities as in h5, but creature abilities are different than hero perks! They don't fulfill the same role, thus of course a simple exchange can't cut it.
The main idea in creatures gaining XP as Lizard says is that units who did more battles are more experienced at war thus stronger than a fresh recruit, which makes sense. In wog things got crazy but also because there is insane battles. I don't think units needs to be discrete as Maurice said either...
General units buff stats shouldn't be a lot imo, just enough to feel a difference that can change the outcome of a battle, but unlocking abilities just makes it worth it in my eyes, after X amount of battles suddenly shooters can shoot close? Awesome! The system also made units loose some XP while stacking them like Kiryu mentioned first post, but I never saw that as a bad thing, on the contrary it changes the "bigger the better" general feeling and give more importance to supportive heroes, which I don't find is a bad thing either, overall it makes you plan more carefully and think more since there is this other parameter to take into account, be more cautious with casualties too, at least in my experience. And like Sal mentioned also, cheesiness must and could be avoided in order to not exploit too much the system.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 20, 2016 02:24 PM |
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*Sigh*
There is already a creature upgrade system in place!
It's called "creature upgrades" and it does NOT work automatically via XP, but instead it works via gold and resources. (Since the Hero boosts their troops, that's where the XP improvement goes.)
As was mentioned by someone in this thread who obviously has a pretty good grasp on things, H5's Academy racial comes QUITE close to an individual unit upgrade system, and I agree that this might have been taken as a general concept for H7 (or 8 or whatever).
It's everything you need in Homm when you want more micromanagement with creature improvement.
In addition there is also the general upgrade - as I said, having a uniform one upgrade per troop via building is just underwhelming at this stage and having different options.
The more you base on XP, the more you base on battles, and the more you base on battles, the less is based on empire-building.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted May 21, 2016 01:18 AM |
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JJ, you know I value your opinion but we happen to disagree.
Creatures gaining XP does not remove anything regarding hero development or empire-building... And in h5's Academy creatures artifacts is really not the same, as 1) units do not get those extra buffs from fighting and 2) there is no extra abilities to unlock. I have trouble to see how it is superior, I even found crafting those arties was a bit tedious and repetitive, while wog's creatures XP gaining kept me excited.
And you can base as much on both battles and empire areas, it's just expanding...
I do agree with what you say about the actual upgrade system though, and I'd be more than happy to see expansion here regardless, imo tote's alternative upgrades was a great addition and h2's system with third upgrades is awesome, it's the concept that matters, the rest is just intelligence in design and balance.
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dredknight
Honorable
Supreme Hero
disrupting the moding industry
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posted May 21, 2016 09:04 AM |
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MattII said:
dredknight said:
I like the idea but I am completely against been done as it is in H3 WOG.
What I would enjoy is every time a creature level ups his owner can chose between two abilities. Where each ability push the creature a little bit to certain side (offensive/deffensive/support/mage/obstacle?).
If anyone has played remake of X-COM enemy unknown you know what I mean.
Here is a screen shot of a max out X-COM solider skill tree.
You realise this will mean combining stacks will be unbelievably clunky right? The computer would then have to keep track of how many creatures have upgrade X and how many have upgrade Y.
That was the real strength of the WoG mechanic, it was incredibly simple, stack 1 has X experience and stack two has Y experience, and when you mix them, stack 3 has X+Y experience. This is calculator-grade mathematics, so simple even Ubisoft should have trouble mucking up (Though since they somehow managed to screw up Tetris).
Firstly, I believed we are discussing best options and not real work.
Secondly, Wog was simple but skill distribution was amazingly unbalanced.
Thirdly, if there is just one path for the creature to grow then you dont have a choice thus it is the same with or without the XP because the fun is lost.
On the contrary the coding mechanic for the XP will be one of the easiest. The formula will be
Level = (Kills*flag)/(number_of_weekly_population_in_stack*number_weeks_passed)
Where flag is multiplier depending on the tier of killed stack Tier 1 is one flag, tier 7 creature is 7 frags you get the others.
Basically this way one may have either a strong stack (many castles and dwellings population combined in one) or a small but experienced stack with a good amount of a good combination of abilities. One should keep the stack low in numbers and constantly feeding it with kills to maintain experience.
This will make the game very very interesting because you will have a number of choice to make like:
1. Better management of PvE fights like which stack will get the kills so it will advance faster?
2. Management of economy/building - do I need those dwellings for more population or am I satisfied with lower count of the stack but big experience.
3. Numerous ways to play in PvP - Currently the HoMM5.5 mod supports above 150+ (based on vague memory) different tactical setups based on alternative creature upgrades.
Imagine how much this value can increase if each creature has the ability to be developped differently with the time passed (or not and just be a huge meat stack).
4. Because the stack experience can actually go down tactical situations where one player will block other player from killing PvE will be a very good new strategy because it will dampen the experience in his stacks during the time he go to another area.
Of course have in mind when commenting on this that the formula above is just and abstract idea and has not been tested extensively and a lot of unbalancing issues can occur so please dont focus on that  .
P.S.
the most important thing is to make this feature optional so everyone can enjoy the game he wants to play. After all this is the heroes game everybody wants to like
@Galaad, sorry for the picture issue.
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yasmiel
Supreme Hero
Former Chessmaster
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posted May 21, 2016 02:05 PM |
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I find creature upgrades completely beating the purpose of hero level up, creating the alternate leveling system instead of improving the existing one. So my vote is NO.
I never enjoyed it in WoG, and sincerely believe it would only hamper the core game-play.
I also believe some of the charm of earlier hero games is simplicity in design - path from which later games have deviated too much.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted May 21, 2016 03:54 PM |
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The only way I see this happening is if Heroes' games shift from individual units to regiments (where regiments can still be composed of single units, especially for larger creatures like Dragons). Regiments can have attributes based on experience accumulated over time. Experience can be diluted by adding fresh recruits to it (potentially losing attributes if it puts them below their threshold) or increased by adding veterans from another regiment.
To make these regiment labels distinct, one can refer to them and see which attributes the regiment has. One might argue that a regiment has to have a certain strength before it can even be considered a regiment, so a single pikeman might not qualify for a regiment on its own, whereas a single Dragon could be.
Still, it would alter the fundamentals of combat within the game too much and cause it to no longer be Heroes, but more like Total War. I am not sure the game should head that way, to be honest.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted May 21, 2016 04:27 PM |
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yasmiel said:
I never enjoyed it in WoG, and sincerely believe it would only hamper the core game-play.
The thing is, in wog 3.58 the experiences features are generic, they give random benefits, which most of time are brainless.
But the point is, you have control over the code, so when you know how, experience ranks become a new world, like a complex quest and starts ties with role playing dimension. Basically, by setting on/off depending on ranks, you can give to a each creature up to 10 different behaviours.
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avatar
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted May 21, 2016 05:15 PM |
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So there's a chance we'll see reworked creature experience system in next version of ERA2?
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