Leader level up

[Oubley]

What was the reasoning behind the leader skill change, feel the lack of choice makes the skill level worse.

I miss the old more open options, the older games had better options too for units with the choices. All these trees and auto levels for things are terrible design choices imo and takes tons of fun out of the game.

what are other's thoughts?

[Daedric Arbiter]

People wanted heroes and rulers to have more identity and not feel obsolete/expendable. Especially with the AI rulers and the heroes having the most random and out of place skill choices which made them an absolute joke in terms of gameplay, even on higher difficulties.

Imo, the options of the old system were too vast, and many skills were just useless and not worth picking up, and there are too few skills that were actually good and useful. It doesn't help that if you wanted to set up a hero/ruler to actually be good, you would end up picking the same skills over and over again as it felt mandatory in order to make them good.

This may be my only post in this forum as this topic is very... Dividing. No middle-ground.

[Astronimo]

It's all fancy bsht about the "choices" in the old system. 90% of the time you were picking the same identical perks in warfare tree with the archery/fighter path, them boosted the same support stuff. Other 10% were mage skills.

In other words, old trees weren't actually trees, they were extremely boring.

Now, you actually have options, because most perks have their use, and you can't pick all of them.

[Partholonian]

What lack of choice? There's always way more things to choose from than you have points to choose with. I think that's a good thing.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

The reason was that heroes where interchangeable.
You didnt pick a hero.
You pick a buff bot that existed purely to make your army better.

The new class system(And i hope they are more veriaty) makes heroes more then:
Body to slap the same skill on every time.

Before the upgrade i just grabbed whatever and made it an other army boosting, lighting spamming, melee master.
Now i accauly have to make do with different heroes.
I can still create army boosting lighting spamming mages.
But they can no longer also be melee gods.
Even spellsword has limits as in cannot just equipe a gun and be overpowered.

I like the new system because the skills are vastly more interesting.

[Oubley]

Originally posted by Daedric Arbiter:

Imo, the options of the old system were too vast, and many skills were just useless and not worth picking up, and there are too few skills that were actually good and useful.

I don't disagree with this part as I went out of my way to be different at times,

Now stuff is stuck behind layers of an onion and way to linear for me. My games are going to be over before get to even use half the stuff or going to feel super grindy as still don't want or need half the "perks"/buffs.

So I think your comment highlights the bigger issue, in that majority of "choices" just flat out suck or pointless/non impactful to begin with.

Originally posted by Partholonian:

What lack of choice?

~ Before when I upgraded leaders I got to choose between a vast list of options what I wanted. Now I have like 5 choices and the rest are stuck behind a node tree.


Also In old AoW games I remember I got to choose what units upgraded to. Or in cases like Conquest of Eos (diff developer) they at least give you a couple options. Now units are "stuck" with this is what you get/live with it.

[Astronimo]

You didn't have choices.
Old system was pick fighting 1, than 2, the searing blades, and so on. You could pick them in a bit different order, but the result is the same.

Now, instead of picking the same stuff all over again, you have options. And affinity skills to add to them.

[Blanch Warren]

I don't really have a wortwhile opinion because I feel that Mage is more functional than it used to be. I'm not sure about ranger, but someone else might.

[Terrkas]

Originally posted by Oubley:

Also In old AoW games I remember I got to choose what units upgraded to. Or in cases like Conquest of Eos (diff developer) they at least give you a couple options. Now units are "stuck" with this is what you get/live with it.

You mean 2? There each level up gave you 1 of 3 choices depending on class. Mostly it was a statincrease. Like hp and move, def and res or attack and dmg.

Most skills were classlocked. Like warriors get leadership but never casting. Priest can get most casting. Rogue a bit of everything.

In 3 you got 5 points per level. Hero class level decided what you can invest them in. Like army buffs, spells, stats, special abilities.

[Godsheal Powerloader]

Before we had exactly 5 non-meme ways to build a hero and a lot of "+ thing" lukewarm upgrades, oftenly sporting also low values (3 picks for 30% dmg? Rly? No wonder ppl did auramancers). The new one gives much more choices and they are much more relevant. The old hero system in this game was my number one problem with it.

[Kasmir]

With a systematic change like this, reactionaries always complain bitterly about what they've lost and discount or ignore what they've gained.

A useful exercise with such changes is to imagine what a reversal of the change would look like to try to assess whether more was gained than was lost.

A huge amount of new functionality was added in the hero rework, so much so that it is inconceivable to imagine removing it all just to restore the less restrictive aspects of the old system.

This kind of reactionary complaint would be best addressed (if at all) by considering adding more flexibility to the new hero system, not by reverting and losing the new massive new functionality and UI gains.

But of course that would likely be futile anyway, as this poster no doubt is unhappy with everything about AoW4 that makes it something other than a re-skin of older titles in the series.

[Oubley]

Originally posted by Kasmir:

With a systematic change like this, reactionaries always complain bitterly about what they've lost and discount or ignore what they've gained.

I think you're taking this to much old vs new. The "new" is very lackluster, the old had it's faults too.

I didn't mean to imply I wanted to "revert" but finding the "new" system to not have a lot of meat on it's bones

"A huge amount of new functionality was added" lol no.... it feels more like they moved the furniture around the family room and put in a new centerpiece.

[badger vortex]

it was weird how the devs said a problem was people picking the same skills too often - leading to some skills never being picked. you would think the first step then would be to buff the weaker skills to make them more attractive, for whatever reason they skipped that bit

[Terrkas]

Originally posted by badger vortex:

it was weird how the devs said a problem was people picking the same skills too often - leading to some skills never being picked. you would think the first step then would be to buff the weaker skills to make them more attractive, for whatever reason they skipped that bit

There never was a way to compete with stuff like killing momentum. On the right heroes that doubles the damage output. What should they do? Make all skills "do 100 % more damage"?

[badger vortex]

Originally posted by Terrkas:

There never was a way to compete with stuff like killing momentum. On the right heroes that doubles the damage output. What should they do? Make all skills "do 100 % more damage"?

situationally, yes, you could have more skills that offer a large damage boost. it doesn't have to be on par with killing momentum but you can make other skills have extra effects that give you a reason to use them rather than looking at pure damage numbers - there will always be a best skill whatever you do but there were just too many skills that were just way too far behind to be considered

[Repairman Mack]

This is just so interesting. It is amazing no one has ever discussed this before this wonderful moment. It dazzles. It shines. Oh, the blinding light!