mdonais

Join Date 01/2010

[Suggestion] How to fix hero creation

Some of the recent 4X games have had a lot of minutia in hero creation. 5% bonus to some mechanic that the new player barely understands. Get 10 different small bonuses to math-intensive mechanics and you are done creating your race/hero/civilization/etc.

This is not really fun or new player friendly.

What it needs to be:

Part 1

It needs to be just a few choices, but each choice changes how you play the game in some fundamental way.

Examples:

- All your military units are stronger - make lots of them this game

- All your heroes are stronger - focus on heroes this game.

- Your towns grow faster - make lots of settlers this game.

- You are a master summoner - Summon lots of creaturs this game

- You are really good at taking nodes and they produce extra - Focus on taking nodes, be a spellcaster this game.

These ideas (taken from MoM basically) are single specific choices that tell you to play the game differently and even a new player can understand why he would choose them.

Having 2-3 choices that are clear and meaningful instead of lots of small math tweaks is a lot more fun and a lot easier to understand.

You could have one of the optons be +5 strength or +5 armor if you want to include stats in the choices. That isn't quite as bad as having stat points that you spend.

I hope you can see the value in a few meaningful options instead of lots of small tweaks.

Part 2

Combine 2 meaningful options to produce a new game play experience.

Say the system lets you make 3 choices. One of the choices you make is Master Summoner and the other choice you make is Caster of Death Magic. These 2 choices combine to make you want to summon lots of undead. If you changed Death Magic to Life magic then you might summon Angels instead and give yourself a slightly different game play experience. Another time you might keep death magic but change summoning to stronger heroes. In which case you would use your death magic to buff your heroes.

Give the players just a few choices but have them combine to create new game play experiences.

Conclusion

Although Master of Magic basically did this, a lot of the more recent games have lost sight of this and overcomplicate creation and include things like +1 dex. I can't really evaluate +1 dex or +5% city production vs +1 strength etc. It isn't fun to choose between those things.

Please consider this simplification to make things more fun and replayable.

Thanks for reading.

Mike Donais.

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Though I see Mike's point I disagree. I love to spend hours creating my character and the more stats I can control the more I enjoy it. (skills, abilities, feats, etc). I get put off when I have limited choices. I think that having pre made models to cater to players like Mike would be more in line with Elementals vision *flexible and fun*

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Mike not sure if your in beta but the soverign character creation screen allows you to put the points you receive where you want. What I'm saying is that is already in place. You don't don't have to do too much if you don't want to. For players who want lots to tweak their characters its important to have little variations as well as big ones. I think flexibility is gonna be one of the big draws of Elemental. Its already headed in that direction. Also, Frogboy has already brought this exact topic up in a forum called Let's talk about Master of Magic. Many have already stated similiar views to your own. Hope you can write/help a couple quests for Raven X's Dragonlance mod, Wintersong's Dying Sun and maybe Elemental Dee aN Dee by Chirmaya? The list can be found here List of Elemental Mods. Oh, an I'm soliciting on their behalf without their consent.

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Well, I wanted to post the problem and how to fix it.

I was hoping the designer would recognize the problem and take steps to fix it before the game was released.

If it does end up this way, I will be sad but at least I can say I tried to help.

Mike Donais.

Game Designer.

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I like your idea, and I think leveling up should look similar - a few options to choose from instead of spending points on increasing stats.

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I like your idea too Mike D. To be honest, I've never really thought of that, but now that you mention it, unless the weaknesses and strengths are hefty, they do not really change how you play too much.

Take for example MOO 2. you create a race. There was never any point in selecting just +10 spying, it wouldn't give you a big enough difference to actually go all out spying. you had to pick the + 30!!! then you could go to town!.

This does sound more of a balancing issue though. Making sure that the strengths/weaknesses are large enough to force you to play differently, not just give slight, ever so slight, advantage/disdadvantage for going a specific route.

leveling up though, I think should stay pretty much the same. Unless you make it so you don't level up for an extremely long time!!!

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Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

Quoting mdonais,

reply 3

Game Designer.

Is that your way of saying that your opinion is by default superior?

You ask for talents. We have talents. But it's true that right now are more Gal Civ based than anything else. Considering how betas go, I don't know when to expect some serious talents going on and how they will actually be. I'd vote for Stardock already considering talents like in MoM (aside from some % ones?) but at this point I'm quite tired of speculation about these things. Cannot wait for beta 3 and real game mechanics.

Wintersong.

No one of interest.

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This thread got me thinking about the differences between character creation in Elemental and MoM. In MoM your choices made large differences in how you played the game and used your wizard.

You could spend points to give you a stronger race. (Dark Elves) You could also use points to drastically change your starting position. (Plane of Magic) In Elemental all of your choices affect only your Sovereign or the city he happens to be in.

Your choices also affected what kind and how strong of a wizard you wanted to be in the form of spell books (you could choose how many books to take from each school) and talents like enchanter. You could specialize, generalize, be an enchanter or just a warlord.

Right now I feel Elemental lacks these sorts of large choices. The original poster is correct in that the flat % changes are not very interesting.

I don't know if the developers plan on including alternate playing fields in the form of a subterranean underground or a plane of magic. If they were to do so it would be logical to let the player spend points to choose were to start.

Another idea would be to let the player spend points on racial abilities for their faction. The point would be to let the player come to power through the strength of his people rather than the strength of just his Sovereign.

Just a thought.

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Hey CAbhaal that is exactly what I was hoping for. A few meaningful decisions that change your play style or play experience instead of a lot of small numberic tweaks that only hard core players even understand.

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Exactly how I feel, Mike.

Percentages make me sad, to be honest. I don't want to be 10% better at X than my opponent. I want to meet another player who has a totally different skill set from mine.

I'm a superb enchanter and my towns grow really quickly, meaning I have heavily enchanted bastions of magic. The first opponent I meet has units that level up faster than mine, but cost more.

If there's going to be +% talents and such, at least make them interesting, and huge! Like a +20% or more bonus to unit movement. There's a roleplaying game called Scion; you're the spawn of a god of some sort. Everything is overpowered, but it makes it fun. Saying that, it's a terrible example of balance, because you only ever want to max out your Dexterity and Strength. Perhaps it's best to ignore that, actually.

But, my input is similar to Mike D's; give us more interesting options. Even if they are +% things, dress them up a little, make them change the way a Sovereign plays. I'd also like to see MoM-esque races, with each one being unique in some way, or give the player the power to make their own. I loved the differences between the Dark Elves and the High Men; Dark Elves had expensive units, but almost all of them had a basic magical ranged attack. The High Men had a balanced army, but had one of the best end-game units in the entire game! Even if their other units were a little weak to begin with.

Just my thoughts.

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