indigav wrote:


In ES the Hero's seemed stronger as Dalwin pointed out. Here the Hero is a playable unit and I enjoy that. The problem seems to stem from the way they level up which is divided into 3 zones: Unit Class / Common / Faction Trait. Of the 3 zones only Unit Class is understandable, and I would bet most players are using only this side of the tree to upgrade their Hero.



It would be easier to understand and use these Hero's if they had sensibly grouped skill upgrades which were grouped in understandable useful ways in the Skill Tree. As you say, they are seemingly chaotic. For instance you'll often find a bonus buff for an army in the Faction Trait, mixed in with all the bonus buffs for a city, which is nothing to do with a faction. It's maddening having to pick other skills you'll not use to get to where you want.





Finally the game play of the Hero is such at present that there doesn't seem to be any value in the Hero being assigned to a city. The real benefit of the Hero is to get as many quests as possible, so you get stockpiles of resources to Boost your empire, or some really nice techs that can't be researched.

This is actually very true. In ES i use all types of heroes: fleet commanders, and 2 types of governors, and in each game they feel a bit unique. But in EL i use only generals type of hero and prefer to not use governors at all. And you bet is true for me , i only use "Unit class" part of tree.



I very like idea of multiple very specific theme skill trees (so there won't be a combat skill in governor part of tree). 2 basic linear skill tree (One for generals and one for governors, with some very good skills at the end of tree), and one non linear (something like tech tree): it will have faction skills in it. Something like this:



So you can create useful hero for you empire , and for better diversity of heroes they can have some random predispositions, in this situation one hero will have bigger bonuses in governor tree( for example: food skill will give +5% to food instead of +4%), but less bonuses in general one(skill that give hp will give +3hp instead of +4hp), another hero will have opposite situation, and some heroes will be in the middle, but all they will have same bonuses in theirs faction tree.



Big problem that it will require very big changes in skill trees, and i dont sure they have time to drastically change hero system before release. On other hand, other parts and ideas of the game is very good.

Was there a consideration in having overall weaker skills and have each skill apply a small bonus to each of the 3 areas (city, army, and hero)? Maybe 2 areas of choice like Army/City and Hero/City?

If I understand what you have suggested then the answer is no. Not because it's a bad idea but purely because we've been discussing how the skill tree works rather than the bonuses the skills grant themselves. I'm not aware of what the dev team did when they considered the skill tree and how the bonuses were decided upon. Perhaps one of the moderators or a VIP worked on it and could say here as I think the dev team are a little preoccupied with fixing bugs and bringing the rest of the game mechanics up to speed (like trading).



Right now the skill tree as stands spreads the benefits for the Hero unit, army, city and general bonuses around the tree. No matter which way the bonuses may work, the main issue is getting to that bonus in order to specialise your Hero. In the current format that may mean working through 4 or 5 skills to get the set you actually want for your specialist.

Once you are forced to take a few skills that you don't want, I am not sure you can even call the guy a specialist. He is just another generalist who doesn't use half of his knowledge.

indigav wrote:


Right now the skill tree as stands spreads the benefits for the Hero unit, army, city and general bonuses around the tree. No matter which way the bonuses may work, the main issue is getting to that bonus in order to specialise your Hero. In the current format that may mean working through 4 or 5 skills to get the set you actually want for your specialist.

I agree!

It is annoying to work through the seemingly "random" (as in not really thought through) skillbranches, only to get that certain thing.

I think it should be more like levels of skills, so there are combat bonuses, explorer bonuses and governor bonuses each on their own little tree, which are very distince and dont really mix.

I wanted to set up a governor character in my last game, to get rid of disapproval, and while clicking through the tree got +attack or some other army bonuses, which seemed ..horribly misplaced to me.

I think hero-specialization is very important to make them distinct, and at the current level, that just doesn't happen in my opinion.



Like in Rome2 I had a general that was all about Spears and shields, his army was build that way, and his skills were matching. Another General was the Master of Horses, and another was more the allrounder.

That was fun, that felt unique! Or having a governor that specializes in Dustproduction and one that specializes in approvalratings, and so on.



At the Moment for Generals you just choose their skills from the left tree mostly, because all combat skills on the other trees are "hidden" behind stuff you don't want.

And if you take the same races hero twice, you get the same skill tree, the same equipmentchoices, and the same model, making them extremely generic.

But having different heroclasses is a completely different thing I suppose.

Even though I find it very, very necessary to give more differentiation, especially as the vaulter and wildwalker hero essentially feel the same.

The more I play EL the less I like the Hero Skill tree.



Especially when you consider the fantastic game changer the research tree process is. You have to ask why remove the linear process from one and keep it in another?



Any member of the dev team willing to explain?

indigav wrote:
The more I play EL the less I like the Hero Skill tree.



Especially when you consider the fantastic game changer the research tree process is. You have to ask why remove the linear process from one and keep it in another?



Any member of the dev team willing to explain?

Even more ironic is that in ES the hero progression was much less linear. Sure certain skills were linked and some had prerequisites, but there were always something like 10 or so choices available when levelling up the hero. Some were simple stat bonuses, but it was never difficult to make a combat specialist or a governor. You could even make a hybrid if you wanted to do so.



So here they change research to a very freeform system while going the opposite way with the hero tree and making it restrictive and inefficient.

I agree with Indigav. The skill tree just feels too flat. When I get a level up, its almost an after-thought or a "oh, that's nice"



Plus there is nothing standing in the way of a flat progression within a particular skill. If there's an OP skill, you can just exploit it all day long. Some kind of choice when deciding skills would be nice.



Like more prerequisites, and perhaps needing to have a lvl 2 pre requisite before advancing on some skills. Or even a level pre req. to leveling up a skill, like the hero must be at level X before advancing this skill to lvl. 2.

I kind of wonder if the linear feel of the skill tree would be broken up somewhat if you could choose skills based on what they were connected to in the tree. For instance:





(Without saying this should be the order of things), maybe you could pick up the skill that gives boosts all FIDS production by 5% or the Expansion Disapproval negation after going for the %'age boost to a city's production of science. This would obviously have to be a little more balanced, but could maybe allow for some different build options than we currently have?

Lulz! wrote:
I kind of wonder if the linear feel of the skill tree would be broken up somewhat if you could choose skills based on what they were connected to in the tree. For instance:





(Without saying this should be the order of things), maybe you could pick up the skill that gives boosts all FIDS production by 5% or the Expansion Disapproval negation after going for the %'age boost to a city's production of science. This would obviously have to be a little more balanced, but could maybe allow for some different build options than we currently have?

I had noticed this too. You can with the linear system find routes that allow a rush to certain (supposedly) high spec skills. This could as you point cause an imbalance of the game (especially comparing heros against each other)



My own preference is to do away with the linear skill tree and go with the brilliant (my own opinion) Tech Tree style process of ever increasing costs to the skills. It could be implemented in a number of ways and just like the Tech Tree process specific events or quests could open up hidden, possibly random, skills that do not show when selecting the hero. Now that's exciting

Check out Lt_Miles thread on what the dev team are looking at. Impact on Hero and many other game mechanics too...



/#/endless-legend/forum/6-game-design/thread/3570-g2g-endless-legend-s-list-of-community-feedback

I think skill tree mechanics make sense only in case if subsequent skills are upgrades of the previous ones. There is not a whole lot of such skills currently (aside form multi level skills, that in essence are also mini skill trees, where this doest make sense).



Another problem is there's very little incenitive to mix hero skills - governor hero ideally would end up purely with governor skills and combat hero with combat skills, so why have the choice in the first place? Probably that was the motivation to do it the way it currently is, mixing some skills in the trees they do not belong to, but imo this is a bad design.



So what other options we have? I can come up with several:



1) Have combat and non-combat heroes as separate entities in the game. I don't like this personally but it's still an option.

2) Have each skill provide both combat and non combat benefits. Again, I don't like it, since here the player is forced to pick the skill even if he only likes one part of it.

3) Have some sort of synergies between skills - same as 2) but less direct.

4) Have separate skill points for each tree. Like this better than the previous options, but here the hero would end up equally developed in all spheres, which limits diversity. This also does not explain how in hell did the hero learn to lead the research effort by smashing heads.

5) Have separate skill points for each tree + separate experience level for each tree. This is the option I personally like the most so let me describe it in more detail.



The hero would gain combat experience for combat actions and it will determine his combat level and skills:

Combat actions: fighting other armies, participating in sieges, ???

Combat skills: Army or hero combat stat boosters. I think the hero shouldn't be locked in one class and weapon type, so there should be skills allowing to specialize in ranged or melee weapons etc. Some skills may be locked for certain races and there should be race specific combat skills as well, like Wild Walker using animals to fight or Dust Lord life leech.



Likewise explorations skills should be improved by exploration actions. Currently this tree has some of the most misplaced skills and also some of the weakest. Making it more balanced and diverse would require adding new game mechanics most likely. But still:

Exploration actions - Map movement, ruin exploration, ???

Exploration skills - bonus movement, bonus vision, ignoring terrain penalties, bonuses to ruin exploration (instant science boost?), maybe settler production bonuses and expansion disapproval reduction...



Finally, the same would apply to governor skills, which should be leveled by construction. I think they should be made a bit more generic, with each race having access to skills afecting all FIDS rather than heavy specialization we have now. Race specific skills giving boosts to race specific attributes should be present as well however.



As for chosing skills, there are several options as well:



1) Any skill can be chosen at any time (Some skills may have levels). In this case power of all skills should be normalized which is a bit difficult to achieve.

2) Skills are restricted by #of skills learned (akin to current tech system) .

3) Skills are restricted by hero level.



Any of these works imo, but 1) is a bit more difficult in terms of balance.

The modding side to EL will allow for Hero's skill tree to be modified, but it will still look linear according to the this dev post. Also it doesn't solve the issue of the hero as stands in game all looking and playing like each other. Nor the problem with the complete generalisation of the unit.

ThorTillas wrote:
Sorry for the delay guys.

We have had some discussions going on our side about your post, and modding aside, we are currently building up both the improve list and the feature list for the upcoming months...

And to be honest, writing a post in English takes some time ^^... at least for me...



First of all, thanks a lot to have taken the time to write your thoughts and wishes. It always amaze me how much time you guys spend on helping us to improve our(your?) game.



Then to the point: yes we will support modding as much as we can.



From the beginning – starting with Endless Space – we have built our games and our codebase with modding in mind.

There are two things you may want to mod in a game like ours:

• The data,
• The code.
  
  

Modding the data:



We started in Endless Space already, by providing an extensive amount of xml files, allowing the game designers and the modders to modify the game contents without the need of a programmer’s intervention.

We have extended the access to event more data customization in Endless Legend, you should be able to modify the following:

• The game economics,
• The factions traits and balance,
• The world generation settings,
• The units statistics, along with their equipment,
• The items database,
• The heroes and their skills,
• The visual mapping of almost every simulated entity in the game,
• The quests to be triggered, their mechanics, their rewards, the loot tables…
• All the AI parameters…
  
  

… and much more!



We have grown the game around databases of such xml content.

We will continue to use this data format and we shall improve and/or enlarge the different systems to expose more features.



Concerning the AI modding itself,

If I have to point out some of the AI tweaks which will be allowed by xml, I would say:

• City buildings
  
  
  • Improve the City governor choices (population and building),
  • Improve the repartition between building production and unit production.
    
    
• Unit designs
  
  
  • Improve the item/body choice based on units archetypes,
  • Improve the unit archetype needed for each "military" mission (city attack, region defense, etc).
    
    
• Empire
  
  
  • Improve the research choice based on city needs, resource needs, etc,
  • Improve the army behavior based on the overall mission (patrol, attack city, region defense, region clean up, etc),
  • Improve economics repartition (unit/building production, Unit/building buyout, etc) based on global empire state (at war, game starting, empire expansion, etc).
    
    
• Minor faction
  
  
  • Change the minor faction behavior based on surrounding cities, surrounding major empire, etc,
  • Change the minor faction spawn frequency, which unit design to choose, etc,
    
    
• Quest
  
  
  • Spawn quest armies with a specific behavior (chase the interacting army, patrol in the region, destroy the nearest city, etc).
    
    
  
  
  

And so more...

In fact every time we have to implement a new feature, we try to expose as many parameters as possible... Not only for you to modify, but for our designers to be able to change their mind and do some of the work without us.



--- Cut section. See full thread for code based modding comments. indigav ---



Thanks for reading and I will keep you posted about any improvements on the mater!!!



Cheers,

flo



(Thanks to Eric and SpaceTroll for the revisions)

So the faction creation competition moves to the G2G vote and we have 3 possible winners, concluding "Quest 1".

"Quest 2" then starts...

Quest 2: Hero, Units and City

• Submit your Hero, Units and City based on the winning Biography.
• Vote for your favourite proposal in the forum polls.
• The best three submissions will be chosen for a GAMES2GETHER vote
  
  

Just wondering what Hero and their Skill Tree would you like to see? Great opportunity here...

Actually i very dissapointed with heroes system in EL, i feel like this system currently is very weak point of the game. I dont really mind about linear skilltree (In ES it was linear but work perfect for me, because each hero have 2 specialisation) , but all this choices is very chaotic, and dont help to create required specialist for my empire.

I hope this situation will changed before release.

And i fully agreed the "MANoob" post , he post very good ideas.



Sorry for my bad english, but i really want leave my feedback on this topic.

sibir13 wrote:
Actually i very dissapointed with heroes system in EL, i feel like this system currently is very weak point of the game. I dont really mind about linear skilltree (In ES it was linear but work perfect for me, because each hero have 2 specialisation) , but all this choices is very chaotic, and dont help to create required specialist for my empire.

I hope this situation will changed before release.

And i fully agreed the "MANoob" post , he post very good ideas.



Sorry for my bad english, but i really want leave my feedback on this topic.

Don't worry about your English. It's better than my attempts at any language



In ES the Hero's seemed stronger as Dalwin pointed out. Here the Hero is a playable unit and I enjoy that. The problem seems to stem from the way they level up which is divided into 3 zones: Unit Class / Common / Faction Trait. Of the 3 zones only Unit Class is understandable, and I would bet most players are using only this side of the tree to upgrade their Hero.



It would be easier to understand and use these Hero's if they had sensibly grouped skill upgrades which were grouped in understandable useful ways in the Skill Tree. As you say, they are seemingly chaotic. For instance you'll often find a bonus buff for an army in the Faction Trait, mixed in with all the bonus buffs for a city, which is nothing to do with a faction. It's maddening having to pick other skills you'll not use to get to where you want.



Another problem is that the Skill Tree doesn't really make sense as a linear progression, as there are options you can take to bypass 2 or 3 skills to one at a higher level. This makes the Skill Tree neither truly linear or anything else. Here is where we have all been throwing ideas out to make the Hero useful and specialised.



Finally the game play of the Hero is such at present that there doesn't seem to be any value in the Hero being assigned to a city. The real benefit of the Hero is to get as many quests as possible, so you get stockpiles of resources to Boost your empire, or some really nice techs that can't be researched.

indigav wrote:
I've just been looking at the Hero skill tree and wonder if originally the dev team were considering 4 zones. That would match the 4 skill areas: Army General; Army Explorer; City Governor; Any.



Not sure why the skills to buff a city or army or unit are spread across the 3 zones as is. Would make more gaming sense, to me at least, if the zones where actually for Army, City and Generic/Unit/Explorer.

I agree with most of the above. If we are going to have linear trees, I don't want to have to bounce back and forth between city bonuses skills and army/hero bonus skills. So each area needs to be focused on that area. I don't mind SOME cross over between the trees but I should be able to go straight up the city bonus tree without having to choose any army/hero bonuses.



Was there a consideration in having overall weaker skills and have each skill apply a small bonus to each of the 3 areas (city, army, and hero)? Maybe 2 areas of choice like Army/City and Hero/City?

I dislike this

The hero was origin as military leader but with build-in 2 skill in orange branch.

vpchelko wrote:
I dislike this

The hero was origin as military leader but with build-in 2 skill in orange branch.

The orange section is representative of the hero faction. In this case the Wildwalkers.

You'll also note that to get to the higher levels, that you feel are useful, you need to spend your hero's xp on those skills that you'll not use.



It really makes me wonder why the dev team have chosen this as they have such a wonderful tech tree mechanic that could be used with heroes. You would then choose which of the skills you wanted allowing for a customised hero.

PS: Amplitude, we want full control over our heroes skill choices.

indigav wrote:
The orange section is representative of the hero faction. In this case the Wildwalkers.

You'll also note that to get to the higher levels, that you feel are useful, you need to spend your hero's xp on those skills that you'll not use.



It really makes me wonder why the dev team have chosen this as they have such a wonderful tech tree mechanic that could be used with heroes. You would then chose which of the skills you wanted allowing for a customised hero.

And Wildwalkers orange tree completely useless for military hero.