Heroes, Skills, and Equipment - A step backwards

[Asmodean]

At least for me. I really like the old Age of Wonders titles because a storyline was told and your heroes tagged along, got stronger and developed and got equipment which carried over to other scenarios. This satisfied my inner packrat as well :) In AoW 4 the skill trees for the heroes feel bland,,,Fighting I, Defense I....it feels all the same and very generic (sorry) but the biggest turndown is that you do not really feel attached to your heroes because they are there for one scenario and afterwards they start over (if you choose the same one at all) by zero.

Don't get me wrong: the strategy part is really good but the reduction of the aforementioned roleplaying elements ripped at least a part of the game out.

[TirAsleen]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3021508335&searchtext=

The devs should consider a collaboration with this modder or put more effort into heroes and leader development, its too generic for this title. Generic hero development did work in the first 2 games, because the focus was more on units and spells.

AoW4 is way more hero dominance - which would be fun, if it wouldn't be so classless and generic - and certain tomes and society traits.

[Yodarkore]

TirAsleen lähetti viestin:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3021508335&searchtext=

The devs should consider a collaboration with this modder or put more effort into heroes and leader development, its too generic for this title. Generic hero development did work in the first 2 games, because the focus was more on units and spells.

AoW4 is way more hero dominance - which would be fun, if it wouldn't be so classless and generic - and certain tomes and society traits.

This. Cant play anymore the game without it + lvl 30 heroes + 2 SP per level. AI have also access to it, at least we got (sometimes) challenging heroes from the AI :)

[sinobas]

I really like the new hero mechanics. Managing equipment, and waiting 15 turns for it to slowly go across the world was a major pain in the ass. I also love the item forge being a separate que, the fact that enhancements depend on the magic resources you have access to.

The generic titles you refer to are usually just the prelude to more specific skills.

The prison/convert/execute thing is also nice. They should add a feature where you can ransom a hero out to another faction.

[Godsheal Powerloader]

I will agree the hero customization in this game is bland, but it is leagues beyond aow3. Still a lot of space for improvement tho, they should work more on that.

I personally do not like the "new classes" mod. It is a good idea but the fact that it doesn't override the old options you had feels a bit off imo.

I think one of the problems this series is having ever since aow3 (I would even go as far as including 2 and aowp in this list) is that it has become too much of a multiplayer pvp game and too little of a roleplaying game like some players, myself included, like to play it.

[Waschbär42]

sinobas lähetti viestin:

The generic titles you refer to are usually just the prelude to more specific skills.

That'd be nice. Unfortunately, after you got the +dmg and +def skills, there is only like one last +dmg left and that's it. Options are the same for every hero, too. Only the tome skills bring some variation here.
That's part of what made the dragons interesting IMO - new hero skills (for dragons).

[aclyte]

Actually, i would also like to have some classes for heroes with class branching (instead of signature skills).
And classes available are tied to your affinities or/and random.
Skills available to pick, of course, would be based on class.

[TirAsleen]

Waschbär42 lähetti viestin:

sinobas lähetti viestin:

The generic titles you refer to are usually just the prelude to more specific skills.

That's part of what made the dragons interesting IMO - new hero skills (for dragons).

Yeah, indeed, Because of that i consider the Dragon DLC way more important than the second one. its small but provides content where the game needs it, i hope we get even more leader types...giants for example, different variants do exist, e.g. fire giants, frost giants or how about a Cyclop? The cultprint is avatar of a god in dominions and the devs mentioned dominions in their podcast, they mentioned stellaris more often, but at least 1x they mentioned dominons a much more fitting game in terms of fantasy game design.

In the meanwhile, champions and wizard kings could be made more different and heroes should be an own thing. I consider champions, wizard kings and heroes too similar in their level progression and signature abilities, but thats also tome system related and is hard to change.

But some flavours could be added for variance, after some 500 hours playing the game stuff like this becomes very noticeable.

[Xerberus86]

TirAsleen lähetti viestin:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3021508335&searchtext=

The devs should consider a collaboration with this modder or put more effort into heroes and leader development, its too generic for this title. Generic hero development did work in the first 2 games, because the focus was more on units and spells.

AoW4 is way more hero dominance - which would be fun, if it wouldn't be so classless and generic - and certain tomes and society traits.

erm ... i actually like the classless system, there doesn't have to be a rework of it. it would be pointless and wasted dev time.

also the current system is not "generic" but just simple yet in depth. just because there isn't a small graphic telling you that "Oh boy, you are a paladin now" doesn't mean its not an indepth system or that its generic.

you have signature skills and a huge list of other traits and skills you can pick. you can combine them how you see fit and create a "paladin" by yourself. the ladder will be possible if you pick some order tomes and get the appropriate skills.

the only thing i would like to see added are some specialization skills which make you lean into certain aspects some more and make you focus on them more (magic casting, single enemy damage, AoE damage, healing, buffing etc.). also i want some trait picks that give you more meatier bonuses but also some negatives to it.

all this can be achieved without bigger rewrites (which aren't necessary). the game has an excellent system which goes beyond some +1 stat and doesn't waste your time, yet is indepth enough matter if you want to play on highest difficulty and min-max.

[TirAsleen]

Its very generic with or without a class name to identify the hero it hardly matters, exactly like in all the other AoW titles, just this time, its also broken and we have to bother with it everytime, because you always use the same broken hero signature skills in competitive games, like Spur to Action and Killing Momentum.

Classless systems simply do not work. A class and as well pre-defined races can limit player power, allow some balance and gives it identity, which in AoW4 right now is impossible to achieve without mods.

[Xerberus86]

TirAsleen lähetti viestin:

Its very generic with or without a class name to identify the hero it hardly matters, exactly like in all the other AoW titles, just this time, its also broken and we have to bother with it everytime, because you always use the same broken hero signature skills in competitive games, like Spur to Action and Killing Momentum.

Classless systems simply do not work. A class and as well pre-defined races can limit player power, allow some balance and gives it identity, which in AoW4 right now is impossible to achieve without mods.

you can have very well defined classes right now and i build them differently too depending on the faction i play and what my strategy is. i mainly play single player vs brutal or sometimes if i want to relax more hard AI.

nobody wants a sh*t show which is only geared towards some cheesy players which try to game the system to grift some human players.

killing momentum is ok but very limited, you only get 1 action point but aren't allowed to move since last patch. its meh ... ok for ranged attack..for one single attack on an enemy within reach, but no game changer for me.

spur to action is neat and all but its a once in combat ability and there are better ones. i main dark cutlure necro and all my heroes can revive each other and uther units, not only giving them one more turn but one more life, vastly more powerful than this spur to action bullcrap. also its the ultimate support skill, meaning you have to waste so much skill points to get this one level... is the multiplayer scene really that crazy to go all support builds for this mediocre skill? LOL

i rather build a nuking wizard with great AoE damage and cascading powers or an undying frontline tank where the enemies kill themself just by attacking you. or a hero shock unit which one shots everyone and which melee weapons have AoE abilities...almost instakilling everybody around them. way more fun than the build of going all support just that one time per battle one unit can act twice lol. sorry but i don't build heroes like that. sounds way too unfun too.

EDIT: and because there are no classes i can have a tank with some support abilities or a wizard with some support skills. many rpg's nowadays go class-less or free form system because you can create something unique. the current system still awards you for specialization with expert and master ranked skills, but its far from generic.

classes also would NOT work in the modular AoW4 game design, because which classes do you wanna create? not every fictional race has paladins or whatnot ... having no predefined classes also keeps this problem away. and you get the option of building a paladin class when you pick order tomes, you can be a druid or ranger when you pick some nature tomes. a warlock with chaos tomes or a cryomancer with shadow tomes. they not only unlock units, spells and buildings but also hero skills which then can complement your build and create a befitting class. they could maybe put in a name tag which you can define or maybe gets suggested based on your tome for visual appeal or thematic reasons. but i would hate to be restricted to a fictional class with skills i might not want. i was one of those guys who hated the AoW3 class system. when i picked a wizard...why do i have to be a lightning wizard with summons. why not a ice or fire wizard. the spell specializations you picked back then hat like only 1 damage spell and 1-2 other valuable spells, then only node harvesting and terrain altering. AoW3's magic system was one of the worst ones i saw and AoW2:SM hat a much better version of it (with much more spells per school and level). the current iteration where classes are broken into thematic tomes you can combine is brilliant and one of the reason the game is so popular. but hey, you can't satisfy everyone...so bye :-P

[TirAsleen]

Classless systems work best in insane games like the elder scrolls series, i hardly have time to check at steam, because all my time is spent in Daggerfall Unity. You should try it, its free. A good, classless RPG, Arena though, ES1, had typical D&D classes and even D&D systems and did not allow customization of classes. It worked, too. Both games were unbalanced, because 90ies. Point is, in a RPG balance does not matter at all, AoW is a tactical war game with some RPG elements, however they are too much in AoW4 compared to AoW2:SM heroes were never dominating compared to enchanted T4 units which you could quickly produce, there are merely domain carriers for their immortal wizards, the item forge was vastly ignored other than to build a wizard's hat to increase max CP of a wizard, this made the game way more tactical and less a power grind rpg. AoW1 had this too, but it was limited, your leader died for good no respawn mechanic and you heroes could not be as customized as your leader and had very high gold upkeep that incrased with hero level and it mattered, because the first game had low gold and mana income sources compared to its sequels.

So i hope you understand the importance of some structure in a strategy game that is flavoured with rpg elements and set in a world of high fantasy, which typcially refers to tolkien or D&D like world building. I would not mind some kind of low fantasy war game with a more Conan aka Robert E. Howard like approach. SM had both fantasy concepts looking at the nomad Barbarians and Tigran Catmasters. It even had 2 alien races to add some to the cosmological layer.

My guess players like this hero class mod, because it adds some more specialized high fantasy tropes into their game and direction.

The GotY is BG3, and its hard to imagine that game as classless, even though i did not care about D&D after D&D 2nd the 3rd D&D ruleset was allready to liberal for me, could as well play a classless system like in ES. I do not like rulesets that are neither fish nor flesh.

Xerberus86 lähetti viestin:

AoW3's magic system was one of the worst ones i saw and AoW2:SM hat a much better version of it (with much more spells per school and level).

I said that several times, needless to say that SM is my favorite AoW, spent kinda 30K Hours in it in PvP and made sure the spell system is even better in the upatch1.4. With this patch you can get basicly all spells in a purist spell sphere game, spells were wildly distributed in the original patch 1.3. And you can get the black dragon summon spell which you couldn't because of a bug with the war spirit quest and 15 racial priests that were an original idea in AoW1.

If anything was really good in SM it was the balanced and fun -meaning every magic sphere felt very strong- magic system. AoW3 allowed classes to have more identity, but at the cost of a poor designed magic system and too repetitive synergies with races, as races had no high tier units like classes did, which wasn't the case in AoW1 and Aow2.

For AoW4, i definately would like to see a wizard king more distinctive in its development path than a champion or hero you can just hire. They all share the same hero singnature abilities, but i would like to see champion signature abilities, wizard king signature abilties and hero signature abilties seperated and they could still be based on the modular tome system.

Bye? Yeah, i will disappear into the lands of Daggerfall its a great very ambient game not for the light hearted quite the RPG of the most jump scares with its screaming Skeletons around each corner and i had my 500 hours of AoW4 so there is nothing else to do for me than waiting for balance and system patches and DLCs.

Their next season pass DLC content better has something dedicated to necromancy, because thats the fun stuff, i did not take AoW3 serious, until Eternal Lords was released and it was still hindered by its poor magic system regardless. When you can play undead as race with T3/T4 units baseline and choose your dediated magic path, it adds flavor that was simple, but effective. i think the alignment system played a big part, too. Now everyone can be good or evil, even order and nature can be pure evil, and shadow can be good, there is no "dedicated to evil" or "dediacted to good" anymore that AoW3 had, as an excuse for removing fixed alignments.

[rane]

Classless could work if the tree was WAY more robust, or at least inlfuenced by things outside of the hero itself. As it is it's about as entertaining as a bowl of porridge.

because which classes do you wanna create? not every fictional race has paladins or whatnot

Actually, I was told over and over and over again that the cultures cover exactly that (of course they don't but that was the excuse du jour). I personally was saying that the system was bland in its entirety but some people would never admit.

[ItchyDani3l]

I honestly think that the devs did a wonderful job with AoW4.
It seems to me like the idea of having classless heroes and classless skills for heros was intentional because in AoW3, the entire empire inherited the class of the leader.

And, Heroes are just Leaders without an empire. If leaders are classless, heroes also need to be classless.

I think what people are perhaps upset about is that not enough Tomes create abilities for Heroes. Because the idea for AoW4 is that tomes will add unit and empire specialization, which replaces the classes. So it stands to reason that Heroes should be able to get skills related to your tomes, and this is sometimes true.

And to be fair, in AoW3 the Heroes were very generic in the beginning of the game. The only difference was your starting weapon. It's in the endgame of AoW3 that your different classes of heroes look different.

So, my guess is that the research options in the Tomes need to be buffed to also unlock Hero abilities at the same time you're unlocking unit abilities and spells.

[Midas]

ItchyDani3l lähetti viestin:

I honestly think that the devs did a wonderful job with AoW4.
It seems to me like the idea of having classless heroes and classless skills for heros was intentional because in AoW3, the entire empire inherited the class of the leader.

And, Heroes are just Leaders without an empire. If leaders are classless, heroes also need to be classless.

I think what people are perhaps upset about is that not enough Tomes create abilities for Heroes. Because the idea for AoW4 is that tomes will add unit and empire specialization, which replaces the classes. So it stands to reason that Heroes should be able to get skills related to your tomes, and this is sometimes true.

And to be fair, in AoW3 the Heroes were very generic in the beginning of the game. The only difference was your starting weapon. It's in the endgame of AoW3 that your different classes of heroes look different.

So, my guess is that the research options in the Tomes need to be buffed to also unlock Hero abilities at the same time you're unlocking unit abilities and spells.

All the tomes grant hero abilities, if I'm not mistaken. The problem is that most of them are just enhancements that you have to spend levels on, and aren't very distinctive or character-defining. Between that and the random signature skills, heroes all feel very generic or random.

It would be drastically better if they either leveraged the signature skill system to tie into your faction's affinity more, or made more interesting hero skills from the tomes.

[ItchyDani3l]

All of the Class-related hero skills from AoW3 were also level-up skills. You had to spend your points to get them, although you were given more granular control because some upgrades costed more than others, and you gained lots of points at each level.

And while most of the tomes probably do give one hero upgrade, they're not the big ones.
The class-like abilities from AoW3 let you gain summoning and charming abilities, while those are restricted to Signature Abilities in AoW4 (which can be taken regardless of your empire or Tomes)

Honestly in my opinion, signature abilities shouldn't be an opportunity to gain more Elemental Points for your empire, they should instead be chosen BASED on what elements your empire already has.

For example, if my empire has 4 Dark and 2 Chaos, the abilities I have access to should all be Dark and Chaos.