Concept Idea: Affinity Hero Classes

[Gundalf]

In the Beta for 1.3 two new Hero Classes are included, Spellbalde and Deathknight. However I think that Deathknight feels a bit off as it heavily related to Undead and subsequently the Shadow affinity. It would feel a bit weird for me if my Nature/Order Empire for example would suddenly have a Deathknight.

So, I thought it might be a good idea to have classes which require a certain Empire Affinity to recruit or choose for the Ruler for example:

Shadow: Deathknight
Nature: Druid
Chaos: Demon Warlock
Astral: Astral Sea Summoner
Materium: Engineer
Order: Paladin

Your thoughts?

[TirAsleen]

Yeah, sure i would like more restrictions and rules, but there are certainly other players that feel this is against their freedom or something. It was a little bit discussed in the beta forum, allready, but related to class specific gear.

[Apothecary Michael]

Well the question is, what makes a Deathknight a Deathknight and not a "Darkknight" ? Or Dark Paladin? I would say its the skillset and well before the skilltree and classes it was more "free" to make what you want. Now you cant have a warrior Mage Hybride anymore. I loved to combine A bow with some Spells. Just to give an example. On the other hand the new class system gives us new oppertunitys. So except for the names, what should be the difference to the exiting classes?

[✧Starshadow Melody✧]

My thoughts are that you people want a different game. Go play 3. This isn't the game for you.

[✧Starshadow Melody✧]

Originally posted by TirAsleen:

Yeah, sure i would like more restrictions and rules, but there are certainly other players that feel this is against their freedom or something. It was a little bit discussed in the beta forum, allready, but related to class specific gear.

There's plenty of other games on the market that already provide the experience you're looking for. Go play them, you don't have to ♥♥♥♥ up our experience any more than you already have with the hero rework- this one wasn't made for you.

[JustACorpse]

Originally posted by Gundalf:

In the Beta for 1.3 two new Hero Classes are included, Spellbalde and Deathknight. However I think that Deathknight feels a bit off as it heavily related to Undead and subsequently the Shadow affinity. It would feel a bit weird for me if my Nature/Order Empire for example would suddenly have a Deathknight.

So, I thought it might be a good idea to have classes which require a certain Empire Affinity to recruit or choose for the Ruler for example:

Shadow: Deathknight
Nature: Druid
Chaos: Demon Warlock
Astral: Astral Sea Summoner
Materium: Engineer
Order: Paladin

Your thoughts?

I think having different hero classes that match the affinities of the empire, with the generalist/physical being the default ones would be the way to go in the future if they wanted to add a ton of hero trees.

[originaljuke]

Maybe rather than forced affinity matching, we could hope for continued implementation of classes, maybe one new class with each expansion? to get to the point where there are enough classes that can be roleplayed into a lore for whatever story you are creating.

Additionally, with how they are creating classes there are at least two prime versions that can be made, so one version of a class could fit with with order/materium, and one version could fit with astral/nature.... etc.

I think it's an awesome gesture to their players that they are including these two new classes. It seems clear to me at least that they are listening and responding to some of the strongest requests.

[Partholonian]

ISTM the fact that cleric, druid, summoner, and necromancer are currently all *the same class* should be a higher priority. Because if you're implementing this idea those should all have *different* affinity requirements, but how can you do that if they're mashed together?

And in order to split them apart you need more stuff to fill out their trees -- druids could have an animal side in addition to the current plant skills, clerics could have the current healing side and a buffing side or some spirit-based smiting, necromancers could have undead specific heals/buffs in addition to summoning/raising and probably curses, etc. A lot of that already exists in spells or tome units, you just need to give the relevant hero class the ability to duplicate some spell effects as active abilities (or have stronger/upgradable versions of the regular unit skills). Well, I say "just" but it's a ton of work to implement and ten tons to balance.

Ultimately I think it would be more interesting to not have heroes bound by the empire affinity, but leave it up to the player whether to hire "outsiders". You don't *have* to take a DK/necro in your Pure Good Order/Nature faction, unless you can't afford to shuffle and even then there will probably be some unaligned classes for hire.

[Godsheal Powerloader]

I could get behind this but only if it had more than one class for each affinity, which would be quite troublesome to implement. For example, chaos would have "Demon warlock", but what If I wanted to pick a chaos affinity class that is a frontliner? Logically we would, per OP's suggestion, have "generic classes" that have no restrictions, but it still, having only one class for each affinity would bottleneck this approach for classing too much. And that's before we consider hybrid affinities! Seems troublesome.

[Terrkas]

Not sure how you imagine it. If i hire a hero from a nature city and my empire is astral order, would that nature hero be able to be a druid?

[Aurumworks]

With the established system you could go and combine a lot of things. Culture, Tome and Affinity can be combined with Hero Type, Ambition and Governance. Each unlocked under certain conditions.

[Estellese]

I wouldn't lock it to those affinities, but having it thematically match the affinity in the same way the death knight kinda goes with dark could be neat.

Need a few more that mix more classes. Like still need a mix of support and melee/magic/range. And magic with range.

Would also be nice if the tome skills came back. Just toss them in a bar on the left, same as the affinities.

[Syrris]

I'd generally be leery of something like this, both because I'm not so keen on affinity-locking an archetype, and because the hero class system works best with a few broad archetypes that can be built out lots of ways.

Beyond that, a focus on churning out more hero classes means that other aspects of the game will get less attention and development, and I'd rather see an overhaul of some of the other systems that could have a much bigger impact on general gameplay - in particular, diplomacy/alliances/deal-making could use at least as much of a facelift as heroes have already received.