Gazz_

Join Date 03/2004

+33

[Idea] Persistent XP, items, or units for a sovereign - RPG style character development.

Right now, every single game of WOM lives in it's own universe and there is no connection whatsoever.

What if one sovereign could progress through say, 10 games in a row, gaining XP and getting a little stronger for it?
Warlords Battlecry had such a system, IIRC.

The technical issues couldn't be so tough. Every game needs a unique identifier, much like the Metaverse games. When you end such a game (even by giving up), you'd get some XP and your sovereign could eventually level up - completely independant from the leveling in a game.
The played game history would have to be saved with the sov to avoid "winning" the same game over and over by reloading the savegame. =P

Maybe a higher persistent level would allow you to pick more advanced traits than the ones you can pick at the start. Or you'd simply get points to buy more traits/stats or buy off disadvantages.
Of course you couldn't unbuy things you bought before. That would defeat the whole purpose of development. =P

Items would also be a possibility. High level quests could rarely give you items that the sovereign could keep permanently. They couldn't be very powerful because it would ruin the whole game to start every new game with a 50 ATK sword.
Instead, their effects should be tied to the in-game level of the sov. Like a sword with (Sov.level / 2 + 3 ) ATK. You can let the player start with a weapon like that...

Such quests could also grant knacks for specific spells. Like +3 % damage with firebolt only.
Things like that would seriously make players reconsider the adventure tech tree...

It would be hard to allow the carryover of a "loyal retainer" unit.
Like... you buy the trait "Retainer" and then you could assign one unit in game to be your personal bodyguard or whatever. They would be able to enter the next new game with you.
The problems start when that just happened to be a company of adamatium plated elite heavy archer cavalry.
Maybe you'd only get the chance to assign such a unit in the first x turns of a game. That would limit what you could have researched / built by then.
Still - it's only a vague "would be cool" idea but I have no solid plan for balancing it.
In principle it would be like one of your "core units" in Fantasy General or comparable games.

It could be a rather generic unit like what the Warlord trait gets you. Only these would keep their XP (or rather some of it) if they survived to the end of the game.

All in all, it would create more incentive to... play games. A lot of players love to compare stats and rankings. That sorta stuff.
I'm more interested in some way to progress. To be able to beat higher difficulty levels that would be murder with a "noob sovereign"... =P

Of course, I could mod and cheat myself any sovereign I damn please but that would be boring. Why would I want to do that?
The whole point is in the development / growing procees so why would I bother asking for it and then completely bypass it?

If and how these "leveled up" sovs would work with WOM multiplayer - I don't know.
Multiplayer is no consideration for me...

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Carrying over stuff is better suited to multi-map campaigns (which might be a nice feature, story heavy campiagns can be easier to create this way because you can do a partial reset to keep the next part from being too easy), for the most part for unlockables it would be better to stick to recording stats and achievements.

Even when you are meant to carry stuff over (like in the HoMM3 campaign), it is easy to get too much and become over powered. Example: I defeated the final level of the original campaign (last non-secret level) by the start of week three because one hero had carried over the deminsion door spell.

To aid in adventuring, they need to provide a separate pool of points to pick starting spells ( level one and maybe two from your selected spellbooks only) and equipment so sovreigns can go straight to adventuring after founding a city.

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Quoting Gwenio1,

reply 1

Even when you are meant to carry stuff over (like in the HoMM3 campaign), it is easy to get too much and become over powered.

That's why a straight port of items or units is unlikely to work. Like a high level MMO raider romping around a newbie zone. That's no game.

If at all, then these should be items that scale with the progress in the current game. Only then would the items be worth keeping in a persistent manner because the relative worth of "points" does change throughout the running game.
Doesn't have to be weapons. Jewelry that increases stats by x %, dodge, what have you.

Okay, I'll admit it. I just want to collect stuff. =P

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Quoting Robert Hentschke,

reply 2

That's why a straight port of items or units is unlikely to work. Like a high level MMO raider romping around a newbie zone. That's no game.

If at all, then these should be items that scale with the progress in the current game. Only then would the items be worth keeping in a persistent manner because the relative worth of "points" does change throughout the running game.
Doesn't have to be weapons. Jewelry that increases stats by x %, dodge, what have you.

Okay, I'll admit it. I just want to collect stuff. =P

How would this work once modders start adding stuff to collect? I would suggest they add achievements, a hall of fame, and a 'trophy display' that store general stuff that comes from playing the game (like a record of batttles the player thought were epic that can be replayed like a video, or a list of cool gear they collected, a record of a particularly powerful hero / sovreigns stats, ect.) This would not effect gameplay, but would allow for collecting stuff to show off / say how well you did. Also there could be stats for sovreigns like how many enemies they kill, how many time have they won / lost a map, and sovreign achievments (did they manage to slay some super monster like a titan?). There could even be records / stats for factions.

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Dr Franknfurter

Join Date 08/2005

+22

I love this idea, really do (never managed to make a fully working custom camp' in HommV to get my heros to the highest levels)

I'm wondering if you could have a special type of custom game for this... ala progression wars in Sword of the stars. If you have benefits for the next game dependent on how you end the last you need to control the turn you select to move on, otherwise you would simply farm exp/gold/techs/units for a bonus.

So...

Progression wars in Elemental?

With the following additional variables:

-ending turn
-difficulty curve (from none to massive AI buffs and cheating increasing with each game)
-carryover setting (nothing, just specific artifacts, fraction of exp/techs, x units in capital... etc)

If you haven't played progression wars you start a seemingly normal game but at turn x you get to take y ships at the start point on to another map, you carry over techs but lose a couple in transit and a fraction of your money (making your fleet have higher firepower than you can build for a while) you get z turns on the new level and after that time you can take another set of ships to move on to the next map and so on. The balance of it was really affected by the turn you jump on... making some of the first few jumps either amazingly easy due to a large advantage or making it feel like expansion just wasn't worth it because you don't have time to return the investment. It functions a little like a randomly generated campaign.

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