Heroic: skills

[Kristo]

Does that replace the continuous skill-up-as-you-go model or is it in addition to it? A hybrid approach could be very interesting - and it would help with the balance issues too. You could divide the skills into two groups: the normal stuff that everyone gets over time, and the special skills that are offered randomly at level up. There's less of a chance that random skill offerings would be truly game-breaking when everyone is still gaining the normal usage-based skills as well.

I think the traditional random skill offerings are frustrating to people at times because some skills are significantly better than others. The idea that players would want to "forget" a skill is ridiculous to me. It shouldn't be necessary, but we have adventure map locations that do just that. The Diablo 2 skill system is even worse. Players have a chance to forget *everything* and reassign all of their skill points. It's crazy. I fear that's where the H6 skill system is heading. We should be able to do better than that.

[Panda Tar]

Players have a chance to forget *everything* and reassign all of their skill points. It's crazy. I fear that's where the H6 skill system is heading. We should be able to do better than that.

I agree it's completely odd. However, I do think that's the way, perhaps a good way even, to make your hero flexible to any sort of map which your hero will have a range of different roles to play, so you rearrange the hero to any different need. Of course, I'd think this is something more to the Mapmaking World, but I just can't believe the producers thought resetting skills something only "cool" rather than explainable and useful. The game was dumbed down, but I don't think not that much. Not yet.

[Groovy]

Does that replace the continuous skill-up-as-you-go model or is it in addition to it?

In addition to it. After my initial craziness with trying to make as big a skill set as I could, I decided to settle for several smaller complementary skill sets that work in different ways. As you say, it’s the best of both worlds.

The idea that players would want to "forget" a skill is ridiculous to me. It shouldn't be necessary, but we have adventure map locations that do just that. The Diablo 2 skill system is even worse. Players have a chance to forget *everything* and reassign all of their skill points. It's crazy. I fear that's where the H6 skill system is heading. We should be able to do better than that.

Indeed. I would just add that we should be able to do better in a game with multiple heroes. This is one of the great prizes of skill design for me – that players have no need to erase their heroes’ memories and start afresh.

[Groovy]

Regarding heroes, I liked mixing heroes from one faction with the town of another faction, but racial skills do not promote that. So maybe having the racial skills designed to be helpful in any faction instead of just one would be nice?

I find this difficult to answer as my idea of what constitutes a faction is somewhat fluid. If you don’t mind, perhaps this is something better explored in my forthcoming thread on factions?

With the faction topic out of the way, perhaps we can explore this now, if you like? How would you phrase the question in the context of factions that don’t have a fixed creature line up, but are able to share creatures and heroes depending on map conditions?

[mr.hackcrag]

Well, if you can mix "races" in your faction design, then you need heroes that are able to learn several racial skills if you want the whole town to benefit? Or you could just call racial skills something else and make the skill based on another trait.

[MattII]

I wouldn't say mixed races but if you remove the "animals" in a town and make them Neutral...well let's say a Stronghold with a Griffin instead of one of the normal elites would be interesting IMO. Would work better if each faction had at least one proper 'animal' (Haven has Griffin, Inferno has maybe Hellhound, Necropolis has maybe Lamassu, Stronghold has nothing, Sanctuary has maybe Kappa).

I figure such animals would be exempt from the normal Racial skills (except those like Artificier and Runing, which IMO ought to apply to everyone anyway, but their upgrades (faction dependent, Haven gets Imperian Griffin, Inferno gets Infernal Griffin, Stronghold gets Savage Griffin, etc.) are generally.

[Groovy]

Well, if you can mix "races" in your faction design, then you need heroes that are able to learn several racial skills if you want the whole town to benefit? Or you could just call racial skills something else and make the skill based on another trait.

One of the goals of my design is to cure the Superhero-and-errand-boys Syndrome. One of the features that I’m putting in place for this purpose is powerful and diverse hero-creature synergies, where it is strongly advantageous for the player to exploit them, but no single hero is versatile enough to exploit them all. I’m hoping that this will encourage players to create several fighting heroes, each with his own band of units.

I thought that you were after mixing heroes and creatures from different factions? I just wanted to point out that there are times in the Heroic design where a foreign hero is just as good as a local one, depending on the racial skill that the player is trying to take advantage of. Flying is an obvious example.

I wouldn't say mixed races but if you remove the "animals" in a town and make them Neutral...well let's say a Stronghold with a Griffin instead of one of the normal elites would be interesting IMO. Would work better if each faction had at least one proper 'animal' (Haven has Griffin, Inferno has maybe Hellhound, Necropolis has maybe Lamassu, Stronghold has nothing, Sanctuary has maybe Kappa).

I figure such animals would be exempt from the normal Racial skills (except those like Artificier and Runing, which IMO ought to apply to everyone anyway, but their upgrades (faction dependent, Haven gets Imperian Griffin, Inferno gets Infernal Griffin, Stronghold gets Savage Griffin, etc.) are generally.

The mixing of races follows from my topic on factions. I like the idea of having neutral animals, I just wanted to take it further.