Legacy Points a bit of a misnomer

[jellitin]

I love this game, but I wanted to talk about one of the things that confused me most when I was getting started, Legacy Points. I think it's mostly down to the name. It sounded to me like they were intended to count toward your score at the end of a story, so I had ~30 of them saved up at the end of my Age of Ulstryx campaign only to realize that hoarding them did absolutely nothing.

Could be I'm in the minority and most people intuitively understand this, but I think changing the name to make it clear they're more of a currency than a score would be helpful.

[Worldwalker Games]

Thanks for the feedback, that's useful. We've gone back and forth on having a proper end game score - if we did, legacy points would definitely factor in. But yeah we want you to spend them and we should make that more clear.

[pelias117]

Originally posted by Worldwalker Games:

Thanks for the feedback, that's useful. We've gone back and forth on having a proper end game score - if we did, legacy points would definitely factor in. But yeah we want you to spend them and we should make that more clear.

Thoughts about using Legacy points to "change our destiny" and maybe force between a few events? (Something to do with them, if you end up with way too many of them...I know I haven't been with the no longer able to stop incursions feature!)

[Syrris]

I don't like the idea of adding a score. It inevitably creates the sense that there's a "correct" way to play (whatever pushes the score up) and you're doing the story wrong if you take any other approach. That would undercut the feel of the game pretty badly.

[Worldwalker Games]

Originally posted by Syrris:

I don't like the idea of adding a score. It inevitably creates the sense that there's a "correct" way to play (whatever pushes the score up) and you're doing the story wrong if you take any other approach. That would undercut the feel of the game pretty badly.

Interesting point!

[jellitin]

Originally posted by Worldwalker Games:

We've gone back and forth on having a proper end game score - if we did, legacy points would definitely factor in. But yeah we want you to spend them and we should make that more clear.

For what it's worth, I think either approach is fine. Having them contribute to post-game score could create an interesting risk/reward dynamic if you could spend either the score or leftover points on improving your Legacy. But the added benefit of being able to spend them on improving gear between chapters has really enhanced their utility, so keeping them as is is also a good idea.

I've only been playing since 0.33, but the changes I've seen to the strategic layer have only been for the better, so I am confident whichever you choose you'll make the right decision.

As an aside, I was a big fan of the way Thrixl campaign's second or third chapter added another layer of complexity to the world map. The imposed urgency as well as the optional additional risk in the final fight made for a really fun challenge!

[RedPine]

There aren't any good words for the concept of "Legacy Points", so they should probably keep the name they already have. Similar terms such as "Fate", "Destiny" and so forth are equally vague.

The best way to address this is probably just a better tutorial/tooltips for legacy points... but even then, it only takes 1-2 campaigns before you figure out what they are worth.

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My only issue with LPs is that it feels like cheating whenever I spend them on removing enemy cards. I can understand using tales of my exploits to recruit heroes or get a discount on gear, but I can't think of an immersive way to weaken a mysterious enemy using LP.

If the "spend LP to negate cards" screen had an oracle/fortuneteller NPC on it, that would immersively explain why I know which enemies are coming, and why I can spend LP to bend fate.

[Syrris]

I don't think it's a case of bending fate so much as the fact that you've made a difference in the world. LPs generally come from doing things that make the world better; in addition to the people that you directly recruit because of that, it's reasonable to suppose that there's more background opposition to the bad guys' activities, making it harder for them to achieve their aims.

[DNLH]

Don't think of it as removing enemy cards, but rather preventing them from coming into play, which is more accurate.

Think of it like that, you haven't paid those LPs to weaken enemy, the way you earnt them thwarted their plans and now they won't gain the upper hand they planned to have. They were spent the moment you earnt them that way, the UI is just catching up ;)

I wouldn't like presence of any all-powerful NPCs to barter with as part of core mechanic, to be honest. It takes agency from the heroes, who have to work hard from being mere peasants who were at wrong (or right) place in wrong (or right) moment to become saviours of the world. I much prefer such beings to appear as through events, like Lochias, Crow lady, Guardians, marking their presence and pulling the strings away from the eyes of the player and whether certain things happening is their doing is just something we can wonder about, but never know.

[RedPine]

Originally posted by DNLH:

Don't think of it as removing enemy cards, but rather preventing them from coming into play, which is more accurate.

Think of it like that, you haven't paid those LPs to weaken enemy, the way you earnt them thwarted their plans and now they won't gain the upper hand they planned to have. They were spent the moment you earnt them that way, the UI is just catching up ;)

I see, I like that way of looking at it. It still fears a little weird to me, I'd prefer the "Guerrilla Ops" mechanic XCOM2 had, where you choose which location to attack to sabotage a specific event. It had a few interesting aspects:

1) You could only cancel one event out of three, maybe two if you're lucky.
2) You had to take an extra risk (attack an extra location) to cancel the event.
3) Cancelling events took time that could have been spent on missions or overland tasks.

It feels too easy and meta-gamey to cancel the nastiest cards and let the useless cards slide through. Sure, earning the LP feels earned, but spending the LP doesn't feel earned.

[Indure]

I really would like to see legacy points used for rerolling an ability choice. Sometimes the three choices you get are terrible for your character and it would be nice to get a new set to choose from.

[RedPine]

Originally posted by Indure:

I really would like to see legacy points used for rerolling an ability choice. Sometimes the three choices you get are terrible for your character and it would be nice to get a new set to choose from.

That's what legacy heroes are for. Even if a hero winds up with 5 abilities and only 2 have synergy, you can recruit them as a Tier 2 Legacy Hero that has the 2 good abilities... and repeat the process when you find 3 abilities with synergy.

I still like your idea, just giving a tip to work around your problem.

[Indure]

Originally posted by RedPine:

Originally posted by Indure:

I really would like to see legacy points used for rerolling an ability choice. Sometimes the three choices you get are terrible for your character and it would be nice to get a new set to choose from.

That's what legacy heroes are for. Even if a hero winds up with 5 abilities and only 2 have synergy, you can recruit them as a Tier 2 Legacy Hero that has the 2 good abilities... and repeat the process when you find 3 abilities with synergy.

I still like your idea, just giving a tip to work around your problem.

You are correct, in the long run you have the ability to better shape your characters as legacy heroes, but I've been really been put in a bind a couple times when leveling up abilities. For me this mainly happens on hunters where I make them melee oriented and then on level up all of the choices are range options. Or visa versa. I also tend to stockpile +20 legacy points and have nothing to really use them on except for avoid invasions.

As for legacy heroes in general; in custom games they work well to customize in the process you described, but for people still going through the main campaigns, legacy heroes have strict rules on when they can join the story and when recruited after the campaign starts you only get a randomized hero so it becomes harder to customized them.

[RedPine]

I've had ranged hunters with one (or ZERO!) melee abilities that wound up making melee attacks, and melee hunters with one (or ZERO!) ranged abilities that wound up making ranged attacks. Being able to set up ambushes, flanks, and so forth is quite valuable even without the bonuses... at least on lower difficulties.

[Syrris]

I agree. There's a tendency to want to create a 'melee build' or 'ranged build' for hunters, and that's kind of understandable given how 'specs' work in many other games, but it's a bit misplaced here. Sure, a given hunter might focus more on one or the other, but treating them as mutually exclusive wastes a lot of their tactical potential.