Heroes and leveling - boring? » Forum Post by bpalczewski

Quoting random_thoughts_7,

What about using a skill gives a chance of automatically gaining a pick based on the skill? So using a spear would give you a chance of receiving a spear bonus, throwing a fireball would give a chance of gaining a fire mage lavel, sitting in a town would give chances at +research/money/unrest skills.

This would be in addition to the normal leveling-up process. It would definitely help mages because if they have a large number of magics (life,earth,fire and water) their other skills suffer if they take picks in these classes all the time.

This is an interesting thought. My suggestion for fleshing this thought out is to have these "use" buckets slowly fill up and then at some point start having a %age chance to trigger a boost. Other RPGs, and even MOO have used this bucket method of giving new stuff. With MOO is was research. In the RPGs I'm thinking of - actually really old school MUDs - each skill the character had would gain its own experience and slowly level over time.

I'm not saying LH should implement this system - but it bears discussion. Having each Champion skill level as it gets used would be one way to add power back to the now nerfed Champions. It would also satisfy the common complaint of all Champions being the same since this skill leveling would be based on type of weapon/armor/spell is equipped/used. So a melee Champion using a sword for 20 battles would not necessarily want to start equipping that shiny new Doom Maul and have to level up the weapon skill all over again.

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Quoting Sythion,

reply 74

Everyone here who is talking about how necessary and important the +experience bonuses is horrible at numerical analysis.

Something pretty constructive and well written. I'm actually horrible at math so i decided to do some, because I found your statement hilarious.

- Have a hero level 7 without any xp booster. Typical sidekick of a powerful hero/sovereign.

- Have him and his group win a battle against:

1 LvL 17 Drake, 3x3 LvL 9 Pack Drake, 1x4 lvl 9 Pack Drake.

- Have your LvL 7 hero gain 47 xp out of his 122 xp bar to level 8.

Result? Cry in a corner! A LvL 7 hero without xp booster needs 2.89 of these groups of drake to reach level 8.

How many,many of these group would it take to get to let's say level 11? How many groups would it be necessary to get from level 1 to level 7 in the first place ? How many groups of Drake and pack drake usually roam in our games? Why do you want to nerf heroes even more than they are right now by removing the only set of traits that let them catch up to decent utility and below average power on the battlefield?

The thing is without these kind of xp boost your sovereign would be level 8 by the time the game is over, probably quite underpowered and you would have needed to make scarifices in your build to take traits that are absolutly mandatory, rendering your hero pretty much worthless on the battlefield.

Your secondary heroes? probably ranging from level 4-7 depending on your settings (unless you play wanderlust).

Quoting Borg999,

reply 70

Yes! And this is why I think sovereigns and heros should get to choose 2 spells/abilities per level instead of just one.

In the current state of the game a level 13 Sovereign would get 26 traits which would allow him to reach the end of one of his trait line, max his school of magic, pick up potential III, get some handy perk like life regeneration or spell mastery and still have a few points to play with. Interesting on paper but don't you think that would shift back heroes to a borderline op status?

Quoting ampoliros5,

reply 75

Now in LH I just competed my first game and did not unlock a single powerful trait. It simply takes too long and too many levels to get them.

If by powerful trait you mean the ones that are at the end of the tree then it is pretty normal. Some fo them were randomly accessible in FE (just like stun, which felt nice) but not at every level.

Introducing a sort of scaling along with the ones already existing (hp, spell resist, spell mastery and accuracy at +1/lvl) every level depending on the type of champion could be a great way to get rid of all those +1 here and +2 there trait, allocating some at each level up. In all honesty, it feels lackluster to have a Fire Archmage with ~80 spell mastery if you don't take spell mastery traits or don't have any equipment to boost this stat; lackluster to have your warrior finally reaching 13 attack only to realize a couple of city defender units with clubs would easily dispose of him; etc

For instance:

Mages: Spell mastery , HP or Dodge , Initiative or Spell Resist, Spell mastery or Spell damage and so on every level AND a trait.

Warriors: Initiative, Attack or Initiative, Attack or Defense, Crit chance% or Armor Piercing%.

And the list goes on

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Borg999

Join Date 02/2006

+59

Quoting 25Atan,

reply 77

Quoting Borg999, reply 70

Yes! And this is why I think sovereigns and heros should get to choose 2 spells/abilities per level instead of just one.

In the current state of the game a level 13 Sovereign would get 26 traits which would allow him to reach the end of one of his trait line, max his school of magic, pick up potential III, get some handy perk like life regeneration or spell mastery and still have a few points to play with. Interesting on paper but don't you think that would shift back heroes to a borderline op status?

Well I think that by late game, sovereigns and legendary heros should be a bit OP.

But anyway, we're still in early beta, so I would love to be able to test it out, and see if it works or not.

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Quoting 25Atan,

reply 77

Result? Cry in a corner! A LvL 7 hero without xp booster needs 2.89 of these groups of drake to reach level 8.

How many,many of these group would it take to get to let's say level 11? How many groups would it be necessary to get from level 1 to level 7 in the first place ? How many groups of Drake and pack drake usually roam in our games? Why do you want to nerf heroes even more than they are right now by removing the only set of traits that let them catch up to decent utility and below average power on the battlefield?

None of this is relevant, because even with all the xp boosts you will never be 3 levels higher with the boosts than you would be without. At low levels you might accomplish +2 levels above base, but that will soon turn to +1.

You are giving up 3 traits for 1-2 traits and a level up bonus or two. Traits are more valuable than level up bonuses (unless you are trying to do something stupid, like use your champions as combatants).

It might be comparable if combat champions are enhanced, and then only under certain circumstances.

The opportunity cost of getting the xp traits is not worth their benefit.

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Quoting 25Atan,

reply 77

Why do you want to nerf heroes even more than they are right now by removing the only set of traits that let them catch up to decent utility and below average power on the battlefield?

When a trait/skill become a nobrainer for anyhero/game, there is a balance problem. The +x% xp traits are boring, specialy if they are the only way to level properly. It's just better to remove them and rebalance the leveling system so all heroes can level without them.

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Quoting Sythion,

reply 79

None of this is relevant, because even with all the xp boosts you will never be 3 levels higher with the boosts than you would be without. At low levels you might accomplish +2 levels above base, but that will soon turn to +1.

You are giving up 3 traits for 1-2 traits and a level up bonus or two. Traits are more valuable than level up bonuses (unless you are trying to do something stupid, like use your champions as combatants). The opportunity cost of getting the xp traits is not worth their benefit.

What kind of level does your sovereign achieve in 200 turns without xp boost? You will hardly ever reach level 10 while a sovereign with x3 potential can easily reach 14-17 (more if mage) at which point he effectivly has 4 more levels than your "pure traits" sovereign, including the 3 traits that you picked instead of potential and another one, 4 more points in each of these categories: hp, spell resist, spell mastery and accuracy ; and in my case another hp/lvl since my sovereign of choice is defender and one of the trait I always pick is endurance: another 14 hp.

I reckon more traits in end game, more hp, more scaling stats and the ability to use a couple of paragon spell to boost my first or second hero 2 levels ahead outweight dramatically the fact of reaching a few traits faster, only to get stuck there forever, but that might just be me

Traits are more valuable than level up bonuses, except if you find a way to synergize a trait with the fact of leveling up.

Quoting Takkik,

reply 80

When a trait/skill become a nobrainer for anyhero/game, there is a balance problem. The +x% xp traits are boring, specialy if they are the only way to level properly. It's just better to remove them and rebalance the leveling system so all heroes can level without them.

To my mind the potential traits are just an option you choose if you prefer scaling up certain heroes towards end game. At certain times potential is not always the mandatory pick, as in a pinch you might need another level of magic or a trait along the way (usually on heroes though). Although, I agree with you that potential is not the most exciting trait to pick up. Revamping the whole leveling system would be nice but does not feel like the most pressing matter to me. Either way I wouldn't mind adapting to something else, but i'd rather see the AI fixed before having a shiny new leveling system.

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Posting my results for a 800+ turns game, where all efforts where made to maximize XP on heroes:

1. Cleared ALL the monster on map, even in enemy territory, all the Wildlands, everything.

2. Large map, challenging world, dense monster frequency

3. All heroes had xp boosting skills chosen as soon as possible, Tutelage always active on everyone.

4. Parties were kept at 1 hero per stack as much as possible, sometimes 2 heroes for harder fights. Full stack of heroes where used for Wildland boss fights and quests (quests do no share xp).

5. Whole kingdom set to optimize mana outpu, to cast the +25xp spell as much as possible (and I casted it A LOT, sometimes blowing 6k mana in a single turn)

Resulting levels: (using class because I renamed heroes and don't remember original names)

Sovereign (assassin): 22

Life Mage: 20 (this one got most of the xp spells)

Troll dude: 14

Cat dude: 14

Defender: 15

Fire Mage: 16 (second on the list of xp spell usage)

Warrior: 16

Earth mage: 14

Commander: 8

3 of these feels like "Legendary Heroes" (sovereign and life/fire mages). The others look like whimps compared to a stack of good troups. It all feels underwhelming considering the amount of work poured into leveling them.

If current situation doesn't change in the beta, I can see a future with just 2-3 main heroes and the other used as city administors.

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It seems to me that there is far too little experience in the game now. Levelling is slower and less interesting that it was in FE.

This is partly due to the fixing of Tireless March which used to stack on all champions and while this may have been overpowered...it was fun and allowed players to concentrate on the interesting parts of the game. Multiple instances of Tireless March allowed a stack of 6 champions on horses to complete 2 or 3 battles per turn or sometimes 2 quests. Now a stack can only fight 1 battle and all remaining movement is lost and many quests take 2 or 3 turns to complete.

The game seems to play about 3 times slower (in terms of champion progress) than FE did soon after its release last year. FE was already a slow paced game and now it has gotten slower, we need to speed up levelling somehow.

Generally the risk to reward ratio is far too high in LH, units get killed and heavily damaged far too much and this disrupts the flow of the game. Champions level slowly when they (or the support units they need to use) have to heal for several turns after every combat. The new abilities of monsters such as swarming and particularly the +100% damage for crushing blow of the mace are killers.

-------------------

Since this is beta I suggest we have some world or map options (like we can select monster frequecy or quest frequency). It would be good to have settings that give 2X and 3X the current exp for battles and quests. It would be interesting to see if the LH champion system was more attractive if they could gain ranks faster. That should go some way to redress the balance between melee champions and trained units since the champions should be higher level and have more HP, and more traits, while trained units will tend to stay at lower levels and don't gain as much per level anyway (except HP)

My hunch is that the LH champion system would seem more attractive if levelling was a lot easier, that's 2 or 3 times easier.

JJ

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I find leveling my sov one of the most fun aspects of the game. However the fact that if I have other heroes in his group they steal so much exp sucks. IMO they should remove the exp penalty with having more heroes in your group. Early game they're pretty bad, and late game they are usually greatly outperformed by 7 man paladin or baron units, or even archer units.

I end up just storing all my heroes in my cities and not using them, as it's not worth sharing the exp, I'd much rather level my Sov quickly than share it with 1-2 other heroes. Once my Sov is level 15 or so he's usually unstoppable.

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Quoting Lokitako,

reply 82

3 of these feels like "Legendary Heroes" (sovereign and life/fire mages). The others look like whimps compared to a stack of good troups. It all feels underwhelming considering the amount of work poured into leveling them.

If current situation doesn't change in the beta, I can see a future with just 2-3 main heroes and the other used as city administors.

Sums up the situation pretty well.

Pretty ironical that "legendary heroes" actually bring the power of heroes down, sadly.

Putting commanders in every fortress while going wide allows for a minimal amount of unrest% and retaining the large production boost of fortresses. Even as field heroes, commanders and their combat oriented traits are actually very nice.

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Quoting Lokitako,

reply 82

Sovereign (assassin): 22

Life Mage: 20 (this one got most of the xp spells)

Troll dude: 14

Cat dude: 14

Defender: 15

Fire Mage: 16 (second on the list of xp spell usage)

Warrior: 16

Earth mage: 14

I think that all these heroes are legendary, because at every level you can select exactly the trait you want and with 14+ levels the heroes are much more powerful. The heroes seem less powerful, because the swarm mechanic and the weapon abilities have improved the units and this improvement is amazing. Now the heroes need only a little boost and the balance is perfect, because otherwise units would be useless later in the game. The potential and knowledge traits should be removed and the xp should be increased by 25 %.

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I think that some buildings can give XP bonus like Barracks, War Academy etc (instead of picking must have xp bonus skills)

Also multiplied bonus from many cities can make huge maps more dynamic

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Hey everyone, Im kinda new here so Ill just jump on in! I have been playing this game for about two weeks now, and boy is the leveling speed of heroes a real pain. I have played MoM extensively, so pardon if I use it as a basis of comparison at times.

The simple fact is that parking all your additional heroes in cities to become administrators seems really odd, since my sovereign cant really afford the xp loss of taking them along, nor the loss of xp potential by allowing them to go on their own. Even so, by the time my sovereign who has fought every battle and never died with tutelage on and multiple +25xp casts is still only around lvl 12-14 by the time I win having never capped a single tree. Even on a strictly domination game I can clear a huge map and never go over lvl 14. Eventually my sovereign just ends up riding along for the xp while my endgame units do all the work anyways which makes the progession seem even more pointless (outside of the administrator role focused on army bonuses).

In MoM champions actually meant something. I could enchant items based on my spells and turn a once humble squire into a flying holy paladin of doom to conquer both worlds all alone. In this game they are meh at best by end game, and can hardly conquer a minor bandit uprising. I would expect a lvl 14 mage to be stomping most anything, instead one juggernaut can wipe out entire armies (due to the insanity of maul). I find the game's title completely ironic, since I have found the heroes to be anything but legendary. Their best role, outside of the sovereign, is enhancing city production. Seems awfully weird to me.

The only exception I find is the summoner. This is mainly due to the AI always targeting the closest summons, and eventually the summons are fairly decent. The warrior, mage (outside of summons), assassin, and defender trees are plain dull and weak from my experience. I hate to say it, but playing this game has just made me reload MoM and play it again. Honestly I just wish a game company would buy the rights to that game and recreate it with better graphics and some UI tweeks, or even an Ipad port.

Cheers!

+1

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Quoting vmoped,

reply 88

The simple fact is that parking all your additional heroes in cities to become administrators seems really odd, since my sovereign cant really afford the xp loss of taking them along, nor the loss of xp potential by allowing them to go on their own. Even so, by the time my sovereign who has fought every battle and never died with tutelage on and multiple +25xp casts is still only around lvl 12-14 by the time I win having never capped a single tree. Even on a strictly domination game I can clear a huge map and never go over lvl 14. Eventually my sovereign just ends up riding along for the xp while my endgame units do all the work anyways which makes the progession seem even more pointless (outside of the administrator role focused on army bonuses).

... I find the game's title completely ironic, since I have found the heroes to be anything but legendary. Their best role, outside of the sovereign, is enhancing city production. Seems awfully weird to me.

Exactly! The Champions are pointless as they are now. I would settle for a Champion to be equal to the at-this-time-in-the-game-top-of-the-line-trained-unit-group and the Sov being Mr. Stomp. This is a fantasy world after all, Heroes are supposed to be larger than life in fantasy, and with a title like Legendary Heroes, I would expect the Heroes to be larger than life.

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Quoting ampoliros5,

reply 89

Exactly! The Champions are pointless as they are now. I would settle for a Champion to be equal to the at-this-time-in-the-game-top-of-the-line-trained-unit-group and the Sov being Mr. Stomp. This is a fantasy world after all, Heroes are supposed to be larger than life in fantasy, and with a title like Legendary Heroes, I would expect the Heroes to be larger than life.

With right spells a hero is very powerful and can fight most battles alone:

Choose the Warlock profession (+ 50 % spell damage)

Select the Brilliant trait (+ 2 spell mastery per level) and the Staff of Souls (+ 25 % spell damage)

Water Disciple

Fire Apprentice

The hero inflicts 51 points of damage at level 10 with a Flame Dart if he has Evoker III and 1 Fire shard (20 + 2 (Fire shard) + 50 % (Warlock) + 60 % (Evoker III) + 25 % (Staff of Souls)). Enough damage to kill every hero of that level with one hit.

The hero inflicts 23 points of damage against every unit in a group with a Blizzard if he has Evoker III and 1 Water shard (8 + 2 (Water shard) + 50 % (Warlock) + 60 % (Evoker III) + 25 % (Staff of Souls)). 92 points of damage if the spell hits a single group of 4 units.

The mana cost of the spells is very low, because the hero can reduce it by 75 % (25 % (Mage) + 10 % (Affinity) + 40 % (Mantel of Oceans)).

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Interesting point Wizard12, but that does require very specific points in both sovereign creation AND leveling. And if this is the only way to make it worthwhile having a hero along with your army it really doesn't enhance the gameplay.

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Quoting N1ghthavvk,

reply 91

Interesting point Wizard12, but that does require very specific points in both sovereign creation AND leveling. And if this is the only way to make it worthwhile having a hero along with your army it really doesn't enhance the gameplay.

Yes, the difference between a normal hero and a min/max hero is huge in Legendary Heroes and i think the difference should be much smaller, because it would make it much easier to create a balanced and fun game.

To reduce this difference the professions should be on the same power level. For example Bandit Lord (+ 2 bandit units and the ability to convert bandits) is very weak compared to Armorer (+ 25 % defense) and Warlock (+ 50 % spell damage) is overpowered.

The traits have the same problem. For example Veteran (+ 1 level) is very weak compared to Discipline (+ 1 accuracy and spell resistance per level).

The scaling of the spells makes it even worse. Flame Dart inflicts 2 points of damage at level 1 and 51 points of damage at level 10 with Warlock, Evoker III, the Staff of Souls and 1 Fire shard (20 + 2 (Fire shard) + 50 % (Warlock) + 60 % (Evoker III) + 25 % (Staff of Souls)).

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Definitely agree with your point here. Maybe a solution would be to change the "point cost" of trait in the creation screen just like it is with factions traits (and how Spell Branches cost 2-3 points). That would allow for weaker trait like Veteran to be a 1 point trait and Discipline to be a 2 Point trait. Possibly give us one more trait point to balance it out.

Just as an idea that came to mind.

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1. Remove every +XP% bonus, even the Tutelage, and tweaks the numbers to compensate.

2. Start splitting XP when there are 3+ heroes in the partyh, allowing 2 heroes + units as a standar composition (would still have many active parties around).

3. Split quest XP too. Right now they don't split and it's a tedious min-maxing routine to bring all your heroes to do some quests.

4. Tweak the amount of XP rewarded based on difficulty of the fight. This was changed for LH, and I don't think it's a good change. A deadly dragon pack should reward way more than a bunch of timber wolves.

5. Give more way to passively earn XP, really slowly. The Adventurer's Guild is fine (25% chance for 1xp per season), but there should be a similar bonus in more than one city. Also path of the administrator heroes should have a way to get xp for administring. For example a skill that doubles the passive bonus for such buildings.

6. Put a small XP bonus for large groups (heroes + units), like many group based games. This would discourage the hero going around alone like he's a demigod.

This simple changes would be a fine starting point to balance it out, in my opinion.

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I'm agree with other that min/max isn't fun but you're forced into if you want your heroes to be usefull.

Lokitako ideas are fine. I would add more quests, in particular some quests that don't request fighting for administrators and ability (throught adventurer guild?) to spawn some low level quests for your low level champions so they can progress.

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Quoting Takkik,

reply 95

I'm agree with other that min/max isn't fun but you're forced into if you want your heroes to be usefull.

I love min/maxing, but the difference between a normal build and a min/max build should be smaller. This would make the AI heroes stronger, too, because they are no min/max builds.

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Sorry, what I mean it's not fun when it's the only way to play considiring the type of game. I just tried to play a fire mage without warlock, no fun to have spells like burning hand that do low damages even in first fights (and how you unlock spells, you can have warrior/defender/ass etc... using damage spells). Like you said the difference between an optimised build and normal one is too large ^^

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Quoting 25Atan,

reply 77

Quoting Sythion,
reply 74
Everyone here who is talking about how necessary and important the +experience bonuses is horrible at numerical analysis.

Something pretty constructive and well written. I'm actually horrible at math so i decided to do some, because I found your statement hilarious.

- Have a hero level 7 without any xp booster. Typical sidekick of a powerful hero/sovereign.

- Have him and his group win a battle against:

1 LvL 17 Drake, 3x3 LvL 9 Pack Drake, 1x4 lvl 9 Pack Drake.

- Have your LvL 7 hero gain 47 xp out of his 122 xp bar to level 8.

Result? Cry in a corner! A LvL 7 hero without xp booster needs 2.89 of these groups of drake to reach level 8.

How many,many of these group would it take to get to let's say level 11? How many groups would it be necessary to get from level 1 to level 7 in the first place ? How many groups of Drake and pack drake usually roam in our games? Why do you want to nerf heroes even more than they are right now by removing the only set of traits that let them catch up to decent utility and below average power on the battlefield?

The thing is without these kind of xp boost your sovereign would be level 8 by the time the game is over, probably quite underpowered and you would have needed to make scarifices in your build to take traits that are absolutly mandatory, rendering your hero pretty much worthless on the battlefield.

Your secondary heroes? probably ranging from level 4-7 depending on your settings (unless you play wanderlust).

Quoting Borg999,
reply 70
Yes! And this is why I think sovereigns and heros should get to choose 2 spells/abilities per level instead of just one.

In the current state of the game a level 13 Sovereign would get 26 traits which would allow him to reach the end of one of his trait line, max his school of magic, pick up potential III, get some handy perk like life regeneration or spell mastery and still have a few points to play with. Interesting on paper but don't you think that would shift back heroes to a borderline op status?

Quoting ampoliros5,
reply 75
Now in LH I just competed my first game and did not unlock a single powerful trait. It simply takes too long and too many levels to get them.

If by powerful trait you mean the ones that are at the end of the tree then it is pretty normal. Some fo them were randomly accessible in FE (just like stun, which felt nice) but not at every level.

Introducing a sort of scaling along with the ones already existing (hp, spell resist, spell mastery and accuracy at +1/lvl) every level depending on the type of champion could be a great way to get rid of all those +1 here and +2 there trait, allocating some at each level up. In all honesty, it feels lackluster to have a Fire Archmage with ~80 spell mastery if you don't take spell mastery traits or don't have any equipment to boost this stat; lackluster to have your warrior finally reaching 13 attack only to realize a couple of city defender units with clubs would easily dispose of him; etc

For instance:

Mages: Spell mastery , HP or Dodge , Initiative or Spell Resist, Spell mastery or Spell damage and so on every level AND a trait.

Warriors: Initiative, Attack or Initiative, Attack or Defense, Crit chance% or Armor Piercing%.

And the list goes on

If you were playing a multiplayer game you might have some points there about not being able to get high level Sovs and Heroes but playing against the ai's you don't. I can beat them with lvl 8 sov and heroes.

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Quoting joeherbert48,

reply 98

If you were playing a multiplayer game you might have some points there about not being able to get high level Sovs and Heroes but playing against the ai's you don't. I can beat them with lvl 8 sov and heroes.

And that is EXACTLY the problem!!! It is not FUN to play a game that has heroes in it, esp one called Legendary Heroes, where your heroes are completely overshadowed by even cannon fodder type units.

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Quoting joeherbert48,

reply 98

If you were playing a multiplayer game you might have some points there about not being able to get high level Sovs and Heroes but playing against the ai's you don't. I can beat them with lvl 8 sov and heroes.

I am not sure which level of difficulty you are talking about.

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