animageous

Join Date 03/2013

[0.8] [suggestion] Defender tree... much better, but still too long

I would first of all like to compliment Stardock on the great job they did with the Defender tree.

The Defender tree has all sorts of interesting and exciting abilities on it that are numerous and frequent enough to make me feel like my hero is actually gaining fun and tangible benefits at every turn, rather than long strings of uninteresting numbers. So great job, Stardock!

My only gripe at this point is, in a game where 15 or 16 is considered end-game levels for your hero, you will still be hard-pressed to reach the end of one of the extensive paths on the tree of the defender, quite aside from if you actually want to pick up a few spell levels along the way. I don't know if that's a problem with the tree, or the leveling up system, but I just want to suggest that maybe putting even more of the functionality into branching pathways (maybe that can be reached from two different initial starting positions, creating cross-tree diversity) would make it more possible to reach within the given level confines.

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I completely agree. This is not just a problem with the Defender, and is even worse if you want to take something from the general tree. I find myself never getting to try out the mid and late-game class options. Three possible solutions:

1) Make heroes level up more frequently. Considering how weak heroes feel compared to trained units, this may not be that unrealistic of an idea.

2) Have more, shorter class branches that require certain levels to begin. Break the longer branches up into three or four bubble-length choices, but have the stronger paths require a certain level. This way you can try out multiple paths without having to go all or nothing down one long path.

3) Heavily trim the trees to remove scaling abilities (combine +10 defense, +15 defense, ect into a "+2 defense per level") and anything that seems boring.

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mqpiffle

Join Date 10/2010

+44

If you want more levels, bump up world difficulty (=higher level mobs) and set monsters to dense.

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NaytchSG

Join Date 03/2006

+19

I play on challenging/dense and I was really irritated when my 3 heroes got 2 xp each after defeating the 70 hp Harridan spider in the Brother Sparus quest. They got rid of the hero xp split thing, right?

I actually got so frustrated I used a Paragon spell for the first time ever to get Magar from level 4 to level 5 so I could equip a toxic longbow I found. Damn the -5 sov HP and full speed ahead!

But I would like to see some XP adjustments or the slider option on start up for hero pacing...

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

They didn't dump the hero split, but some monsters give way too little xp these days, or hero split needs to end, or some combination of both.

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Yeah, the XP split is still in.

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NaytchSG

Join Date 03/2006

+19

Oh that explains it... I thought they had dumped it... Thanks, guys!

I agree that XP in general and esp. Army vs. Army XP needs a tune-up.

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Isn't one of the .80 changes an increase to xp gain? either way on a huge map with 11 opponents and fast production and research I still haven't been able to max out a mage character, my turns run out before I get enough xp

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yeah some XP modifier was increased from .05 to .06 ,so i guess that means about 20% more XP compared to patch 0.75. i think we will see more adjustments in later stages of the beta. don't forget that one of the complaints about FE was that you could essentially win it with just a handful of champs and no trained units at all, so they probably set XP fairly low on purpose to get some feedback on the city devlopment and trained units, too. they can still make the heroes more "legendary" towards the end of the beta when the other stuff is done.

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Quoting mqpiffle,

reply 2

If you want more levels, bump up world difficulty (=higher level mobs) and set monsters to dense.

My main objection to this is that on hard difficulty settings and with dense monster concentration, the AI starts having a significant problem dealing with monster mobs and gets a lot of their cities razed by wandering monsters. It's rare enough at moderate coverage that I don't mind, but I feel bad for them on dense.

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I think the main problem here are the intelligent monsters, look in the monster xml file and look for the monsters that have an intelligence setting above 8. These monsters have a much higher likelihood of attacking cities that are close to them, and units. With lower density settings there are less monsters to starting locations so when you set the densities higher there are more intelligent creatures that once a patrol spawns or they are loosed by city zoc can then attack npc cities.

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Quoting Naidrev,

reply 1

1) Make heroes level up more frequently. Considering how weak heroes feel compared to trained units, this may not be that unrealistic of an idea.

2) Have more, shorter class branches that require certain levels to begin. Break the longer branches up into three or four bubble-length choices, but have the stronger paths require a certain level. This way you can try out multiple paths without having to go all or nothing down one long path.

3) Heavily trim the trees to remove scaling abilities (combine +10 defense, +15 defense, ect into a "+2 defense per level") and anything that seems boring.

I would prefer 2) and 3), because every level should be important, but instead of adding scaling by level the bonus should be % based (+ 10 defense and + 15 defense > + 50 % defense).

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First off, I really like the trees and that even at high levels a hero cannot max out the tree. That way two 'warrior heroes' can feel completely different.

However, I do agree the trees are too long. It stinks having to take 3 levels of defense to get 'diamond skin', or 3 levels of 'quick' to get 'finesse'.

Therefore I agree strongly with pairing down the trees. Maybe have to pick 'defender' once in order to get diamond skin.

However, these trees are a HUGE improvement from the random fallen enchantress method. keep it up!

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