what do you guys expect out of the next 2 DLC ?

[GuiGuix[Pedro]]

Giant rulers and return of the archons
Giant rulers sound like a strange deal to me, they're shapers of the world and all, but they're never very smart in the lore tibits i'm allowed to read through the wonders that let you recruit them.
Archons sound like a massive deal tho.
As for the gameplay opportunities they said new exploration will come with the Giant DLC, but they also said in their streams no more planes switching because umbral underworld and surface is already a pain, so what do you guys think we're going to get ?

[⎝Wyrd Deofol⎠]

The content of the DLC is always great because there's more toys to play with.
Personally, i am looking more to the accompanying patch that delivers tweaking of the mechanisms of the game after careful consideration by the team.
This has always been a huge gamechanger.

The patches are where the meat is for me. The DLC itself is just more stuff.

[GuiGuix[Pedro]]

Originally posted by ⎝Wyrd Deofol⎠:

The content of the DLC is always great because there's more toys to play with.
Personally, i am looking more to the accompanying patch that delivers tweaking of the mechanisms of the game after careful consideration by the team.
This has always been a huge gamechanger.

The patches are where the meat is for me. The DLC itself is just more stuff.

do you think we're getting the feudal refont after so long ?

[GrandMajora]

I hope we get a major Giant Transformation for our race. Was disappointed we didn't get a Fey form with the Primal DLC.

[Repairman Mack]

I'd like to see more variation in human faces and forms.

[⎝Wyrd Deofol⎠]

Originally posted by GuiGuixPedro:

Originally posted by ⎝Wyrd Deofol⎠:

The content of the DLC is always great because there's more toys to play with.
Personally, i am looking more to the accompanying patch that delivers tweaking of the mechanisms of the game after careful consideration by the team.
This has always been a huge gamechanger.

The patches are where the meat is for me. The DLC itself is just more stuff.

do you think we're getting the feudal refont after so long ?

I think we will, hopefully some new diplomacy as well.
I've heard that due to the hero rework there wasn't any time to do more. Which is fair.
I believe there will be a underground rework as well, as i heard it mention in the stream for WoW.

[Terrkas]

About the exploration: Its probably the special regions we saw already. Like huge dragon skeleton covering a mountain range. Strange underground buildings/Gates etc. I guess they come with eventlines when exploring them. A bit like in planetfall.

Giant DLC: Well it has a dwelling with crystals. So my guess we get crystal creatures from it. Like a crystall ogre, snake etc.

About Archon DLC: Archons as dwelling and the culture probably is more like a counterpart. Or it might be gloomwatch culture.
Eldritch Realms after all got us an order tome to deal with the umbral demons. So why not some evil stuff in archon dlc too? It probably needs some new big bad enemies anyway.

[Soft-Hands]

The description for Archon Prophecy (or whatever the name is, can't recall off the top of my head) mentions a as-of-yet unrevealed new form and a new culture. And my assumption is that one or both of those may be the Archons themselves, although they may be just a dwelling, as they've been taking less and less of an active roll in every game since AoW2, so I wouldn't be surprised if they don't show up directly. Granted AoW4 has never been a game that has followed the trends sent down by previous instalments, so who knows.

One thing I am almost dead certain of, however, is that if the Archons do make a direct appearance, they are almost certainly going to look drastically different than what they did in AoW1 and AoW2, the only games where they made direct appearances, as they were only present as undead spectres in AoW3. Not only because they already looked very similar to tall, angelic humans, which was a similar reason for the Syrons being retconned into space-fish people (because they looked too much like small, decrepit elves), but they had this whole celestial Grecco-Roman vibe going on, with accompanying glowing skin palette, and, well....

I cannot see a game coming out today where a race of angelic, divinely-chosen super beings whose heavenly mandate is to protect and safeguard all life and the universe being depicted as so uniformly.... pale....

Honestly, as much as I'd like for them to return as close as possible to the original version, I think a great way of sidestepping the whole issue would be for them to look kind of like the creature on splash art for the DLC; a dark humanoid-shape wreathed in swirling energy and clad in golden armour, the only discernible feature being a set of brilliant glowing eyes. They'd still be both angelic and humanoid, otherworldly yet familiar, while avoiding stepping on that whole landmine.

Either way, I am kind of excited. I always wanted to play as a giant/giants, even in previous games, and the Archons were always one of my favourites, so I'm glad they're making some kind of return. I missed them in AoW3, and was wondering where the Hell they went this whole time.

[GreyHuntr]

Originally posted by Soft-Hands:

The description for Archon Prophecy (or whatever the name is, can't recall off the top of my head) mentions a as-of-yet unrevealed new form and a new culture. And my assumption is that one or both of those may be the Archons themselves, although they may be just a dwelling, as they've been taking less and less of an active roll in every game since AoW2, so I wouldn't be surprised if they don't show up directly. Granted AoW4 has never been a game that has followed the trends sent down by previous instalments, so who knows.

One thing I am almost dead certain of, however, is that if the Archons do make a direct appearance, they are almost certainly going to look drastically different than what they did in AoW1 and AoW2, the only games where they made direct appearances, as they were only present as undead spectres in AoW3. Not only because they already looked very similar to tall, angelic humans, which was a similar reason for the Syrons being retconned into space-fish people (because they looked too much like small, decrepit elves), but they had this whole celestial Grecco-Roman vibe going on, with accompanying glowing skin palette, and, well....

I cannot see a game coming out today where a race of angelic, divinely-chosen super beings whose heavenly mandate is to protect and safeguard all life and the universe being depicted as so uniformly.... pale....

Honestly, as much as I'd like for them to return as close as possible to the original version, I think a great way of sidestepping the whole issue would be for them to look kind of like the creature on splash art for the DLC; a dark humanoid-shape wreathed in swirling energy and clad in golden armour, the only discernible feature being a set of brilliant glowing eyes. They'd still be both angelic and humanoid, otherworldly yet familiar, while avoiding stepping on that whole landmine.

Either way, I am kind of excited. I always wanted to play as a giant/giants, even in previous games, and the Archons were always one of my favourites, so I'm glad they're making some kind of return. I missed them in AoW3, and was wondering where the Hell they went this whole time.

Anon wasn't very pale. I wonder if the culture or form we get is Archon in nature. High culture and Order tomes basically already recreate the Archons from the first two games anyway. The writers seem to have backed themselves into a corner a bit by showing that high culture human in 4 are decidedly NOT Archons. I am very curious how they are depicted and if they will be playable. Some kind of dwelling is probably the best way to go.

[Midas]

I'll be kinda disappointed if they make an archon culture. It will feel like a cop-out when High culture was already clearly meant to be archon-themed with its whole sophisticated ancient culture good guy theme. You SHOULD be able to make a convincing archon culture from High Culture humans, and that's fundamentally what Archons are. An actual archon culture would feel very thematically restrictive and specific.

[easytarget]

I've been doing this all wrong, I didn't know you were supposed to take the lore seriously.

[IlluminaZero]

I myself look forward to the inevitable double chaos Archon culture.

On a more serious note I would be surprised if the new Archon culture was unironically regurgitation of High culture. Although High culture itself tends to not play as a "good" faction anyways despite the developers heavily implying as much. IE:

1) High Culture gets its soonest and; arguably best, bonuses at "Neutral." With incentive being to stay neutral for the massive economy boost OR to transition into max Evil lategame.

2) Oathsworn Righteous does the good alignment mechanic thing better than High Culture. They even get spirit damage + Stability bonuses (iirc... Can't check ATM).

Addendum:

I suspect for High Culture to feasibly use the high alignment bonuses in a practical way they would either have to be like Oathsworn and allow iterative bonuses OR start at 100 alignment as a baseline. It just takes too long to reach 100 alignment to start getting any culture benefits.

Addendum2: Different baseline alignments for "High" culture would be one way to have all three paradigms represented. IE basically split it into 3 subfactions like Oathsworn.

[Soft-Hands]

Originally posted by easytarget:

I've been doing this all wrong, I didn't know you were supposed to take the lore seriously.

Not with AoW4, at least. It's almost completely different from the previous games.

Originally posted by GreyHuntr:

Anon wasn't very pale. I wonder if the culture or form we get is Archon in nature. High culture and Order tomes basically already recreate the Archons from the first two games anyway. The writers seem to have backed themselves into a corner a bit by showing that high culture human in 4 are decidedly NOT Archons. I am very curious how they are depicted and if they will be playable. Some kind of dwelling is probably the best way to go.

True, he was not, having that whole 'Magic Morgan Freeman' thing going for him. But he was also specifically stated to not be an Archon himself, only a powerful wizard of such virtue and nobility that the Archons willingly chose to serve him, much as they did with Archmage Gabriel.

[Midas]

Originally posted by IlluminaZero:

I myself look forward to the inevitable double chaos Archon culture.

I know you're joking, but I would actually prefer something along those lines. With what happened to the dead archons in AoW3, and with what we've seen happen to some other characters in AoW4, I think it would be an appropriate twist if the Archons end up being corrupted into an evil force when they finally return.

[Blessed Heretic]

I'm hoping for a Major Transformation for Materium and a way to compete with templars and Storm bringers without just using them but weaker.

Materium has been struggling to ever succeed on it's own for a long time, and the hero rework made a lot of the tomes lose a lot of luster. For example, artificer losing Golem Assistant makes the tome significantly less of a power bump.

[Sifer2]

Originally posted by Midas:

I'll be kinda disappointed if they make an archon culture. It will feel like a cop-out when High culture was already clearly meant to be archon-themed with its whole sophisticated ancient culture good guy theme. You SHOULD be able to make a convincing archon culture from High Culture humans, and that's fundamentally what Archons are. An actual archon culture would feel very thematically restrictive and specific.

I agree. Between High, and Oathsworn it feels like they already covered all the culture ideas they could use for Archon's. I was expecting an Archon leader instead to be like a Paladin counterpart to the Eldritch Sovereign. But apparently were getting a culture according the dlc description.