My feedback

from Elemental Forums

First off, this is an excellent game.  I played over 100 hours on the original and am coming up on 20 hours on the expansion.  Thus, most of my feedback is keep up the good work.  Now for some suggested changes and improvements:

1.  Levelling is way too slow.  This is coming from someone who quit WoW because it was too easy to level and still yearns for the old Everquest days where earning a level really meant something.  The reason levelling is too slow is that I have never gotten a champion past level 15 before winning a game, and that was playing Lord Relias where I could buy endless quest maps. It wasn't so bad with the original game, but with the new tiered system, it will simply be impossible to get more than a third of the way up before the game ends.  I'd like to be able to fully develop my champions.

2.  The auto battle system is broken.  Best I can tell right now it just looks for the unit with the lowest AC and hits it with all damage, either killing it outright or making it so low that you have to wait a long time for it to heal before you can do another battle.  That means if you auto battle, your ranged units are almost always killed or severely damaged.  I like to battle, but some times I just want to clear mobs quickly out of the way.  Right now I have little choice but to do every battle by hand unless the strength of the enemy is much lower than my troops, and I find that to be aggravating.

3.  Roads AI needs to be improved, or just give us the ability to create roads.  Too often I settle a city only to see it connect to one nearby city and not the other.

4.  I'd love an option that has mobs and quests constantly respawn within cleared territory, combined with the option that mobs destroy random improvements within a city rather than razing the entire city if they attack it (or lower the rate you need to pay for troops to defend the cities deeper in your empire).  This would give a mid to late game option to continue to fight mobs and do quests as well as attacking the other players.

6,557 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Yes leveling is one of the reasons heroes are so under-powered at the moment. You can only really afford to have your sovereign as trained units are simply better.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top



4.  I'd love an option that has mobs and quests constantly respawn within cleared territory...This would give a mid to late game option to continue to fight mobs and do quests as well as attacking the other players.

End of quote

+1 baby. I think QUESTS above all should spawn on their own, so there is always a new way to get XP. if your heroes always stand a chance at getting better, there's less chance of 'knowing' you've won or lost until the bitter end. 

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

On point number 3, you can always play as Capitar (the faction exists, but you need to make a sovereign) or create a faction with their bloodline.  Then you get the Road-Building perk that you can train on any unit (but is available on Pioneers by default).

You can also choose Commander when a hero levels up and (eventually) pick Road-Building.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I play as Mancers all the time, never have road problems. 

That said, if the devs could unlock this traits for all bloodlines, maybe just have it cost something for non-Mancers, that might make some people happy. 

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

I personally don't have a problem with slow leveling.

What concerns me is that the level-up doesn't feel meaningful/significant.

Right now, the choices are (individually) underpowered. The effort seems to outweigh the reward.

Even when I get to level 10+, I don't feel powerful enough to take on the deadly monsters.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

You are saying basically the same thing about levelling.  You will only get to level 10 to 15 before the game is finished and that is not powerful enough.  You can fix that either by keeping the current system and have champions level twice as fast so that they get nearer to level 30 by the end, or you can make each level advance so much more powerful that a level 10 to 15 champion will be significantly strong.  I just assume it will be easier to balance the classes using the current system, but allowing faster advancement than by totaly revamping the system. 

 

But I've been around long enough to realize that things I think are easy to program are really difficult and other things I think will be difficult turn out to be really easy to do.  Hopefully, they can just see that there is an issue here and come up with a solution.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

1. You might want to set your Monster Frequency to Dense.  I've been leveling up just fine.  Quest frequency, too.

4. One thing you might try is, don't cap lairs.  Lairs will spawn new units regularly as long as they exist, and they get more powerful over time.  This will give you a semi-steady stream of XP.  Of course, you have to avoid your Zone of Control from going over it, because that automatically cancels the monster-generation.  Also, for most lairs, if you defeat the residents, it will change to a "notable location" (the green HUD icon), which also won't spawn new monsters.  Not all lairs spawn units, though.  The only one I can think of like that are the Ruffian Camps, though (and they're the best ones to go after early game, so it kinda works out).

Also, if you don't have Wanderlust, you can venture into Altar territory and buy Quest Maps from the shop.  It's not ideal, but it's usually an available option.  

3. Mancers are really good now with the +1 movement rate.  I could see letting other races have the Road Building trait at a high labor cost.  It's not like you need a lot of units with it.  Road Building isn't even listed in the Mancer description.

 

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Changing the leveling progress, or making the traits more worthwhile, would be very easy to program.  The first would just be changing numbers in a database somewhere (I haven't found where), and the latter is just editing the XML files, which is very easy to do (look in the Mods forum).  It's not so much about programming as it is determining what's balanced.