Traits are largely the best part of the game right now. Leveling is fun. This is why every game you play nowadays uses it. There will obviously be more content added to traits as we get closer to a finished product. What I want is to give the devs my vision of where I see traits headed. Right now they are fun, but not particularly well balanced. Many common traits are undesirable unless I roll all common traits and have to pick the least worst. This makes the mechanic less fun. The Path of [Class] traits are the best traits one can get. Granted these are rare and granted you generally only get two per hero by level 15. But the problem is that these traits don't feel connected enough to the traits they unlock. We also need a better description of what each Path is specializing in. (Also, in the XML I get a rarity of 5, but seem to always get them on my first level. How do I set traits to do that?)
Right now I know that Path of the Mage will let me cast more powerful offense spells and lower the cost. That is the best Path because it feels specific and useful. Path of the Assassin, Defender and Attacker are okay as they give tactics to the player to fight different kinds of enemies. They need a little more content before they are going to seem very different from each other. Assassin is just weaker due to lack of strength bonuses. Path of the Governor is not really that useful. The problem is that too much of what I get after choosing a path feels random. I may be a mage and get +10 Initiative on the first round, breaking the Blizzard and Fireball spells and causing a win button. I might also get +2 to Constitution, which is totally useless to a Mage and arguably any other Class. Because most of the traits have no prerequisite, it feels more like feeding time than level progression. I am just going for whatever is there. For traits to be at their best, they need to have a measure of progression, connecting them to the choices made in previous levels. Afterall, leveling is a mechanic that simulates getting better at what you are training in. Traits are essentially the products of that training.
A more interesting way to handle what traits pop up when I level would be to make the system less random, while preserving the thrill and disappointment of randomness. I propose you increase the number of traits that pop up to at least 8. If at every 3 levels I made a class choice, and every choice opened up new random traits for my next 2 levels, I would start to feel as if I was making progress. My hero would start to feel more like a character. I need the option to cross to a new path, choose a new specialization within my current path, continue in the specialization I last chose, get a random trait, or get a rare path or specialization trait. Here is a rough idea of what it would look like for specializing:
Chart of Basic Progression.
I like getting some randoms and I like getting traits in my path or in this proposal, specializations. If i could choose a new specialization every three turns, I could have some levels focus on using the class progress I have, and others choosing a new area to focus on. If each specialization offered 4 traits, I would have some real class choices to make. Let alone if I somehow get a random rare trait from randomness that I choose over one of the 4. Now Paths feel unique. Heroes have solid classes. Randomness is preserved, lending to replayability.
