The Karagh moves pretty fast, and he's only using his feet. For that matter, the Doom Wolf does too, do heroes have to be humanoid? For a race that has slow units (e.g. dwarf) slow moving heroes too would be a huge disadvantage. Or maybe that's an opportunity to encourage players to use transport (make the steam cannon faster). But the AI probably isn't smart enough to figure that out.

This is far and away the biggest thing that discourages me from playing Upatch 1.4 and mods that are close to it, such as MultiPlayer1.7 mod. I simply find the standard heroes boring now. Once you have played mods such as Dwiggs 5 or Brave New World 3 or Children of Many Ages SE, and experienced the new heroes in those mods, standard ones just seem very bland.

So I definitely vote for changing them.

I agree to 101% to Roger.
If I had a vote for one single thing that Iīd like to see changed in the upcoming patch I would choose exactly this one.
No need for the 1201st income structure
No need for the 565th recruitment site
.
.
.

(only) mounted heroes suck, sorry to say it so harsh.

Regarding the hero-movement speed: Havenīt spent much thought on that one. I think there are indeed some slower and some faster moving heroes in Dwiggs 5.0 which is sometimes a little bit annoying, so they should somehow have simliar movement/combat animation speed independent of the race.

I found out in BNW3 mod (which is - from graphical point of view) probably the best mod out there (at least from those I saw so far) that many units/heroes are perfectly animated but their movements/combat animation last sometimes quite long which would probably bother me if I had to play more than one turn at a time (pbem...)

Mods like Dwiggs & BNW offer so many examples how new heroes could look like... Will be hard (impossible?) to find even better ones ... so steal the best ones for 1.5 !!

[This message has been edited by morgul666 (edited 01-03-2009 @ 04:26 AM).]

- Do you like this idea?

I do like, although with some concerns.

- Do you have any concerns?

Yes. Isn't it a patch? Making all Heroes unique is totally on the Mod direction.

We already have Mods like Dwiggs and BNW that have Heroes with unique graphics. Why 'compete' with the Mods? I mean, if people want unique Heroes, it's already there. From my part, even if 1.5 has custom Heroes, I'll still play BNW because it has the Heroes AND tons of other new stuff.

I also think it would throw mayhem into the balance aspect of 1.5. If a Dwarf Hero or an 'on foot' Orc Hero is slower than others, for example. And it would not make sense for a Dwarf to walk at 40 MPs.

- Do you have any suggestions?

Keeping the unique Heroes optional could be fine. Meaning that for random maps the standard Heroes are used, but for custom made maps map makers have the choice to use unique Heroes (like 1.4 Djinni Hero).


On the other hand: how bold do you guys want 1.5 to be?

I mean, adding all custom Heroes but keeping the rest mostly unchanged (like buildable Units, although AFAIK there will be new items) does not make much sense to me. Its' like saying 'hey this is new' and then 'hey this is actually the same, gotcha'.

Part of me wants a really bold 1.5 with many changes, and if the Heroes are changed, why not go all the way and add tons of other stuff including new Units, etc that do affect random maps? Some people might miss the original version/gameplay (part of me would) but they could always play 1.3/1.4 :P Perhaps going crazy on changes and not calling it a patch could be a good idea.

Got carried away there, but I think feedback about heroes has to include the larger scope

[This message has been edited by Merkraad (edited 01-03-2009 @ 05:33 AM).]

As long they wonīt get unbalanced like in these 2 mods

Edit* Iīd like to see difference in hero classes, fe warrior having more HP or Defence, when rogue having more attack and less HP generally. Allthough I think all heroes should move same amount, duno is 40 too much.

[This message has been edited by Munataros (edited 01-03-2009 @ 10:56 AM).]

Ragarding the move-points: Of course mounted Heroes tend to have higher movement as walking heroes, but donīt see any problem here. Everything can be compensated.
Itīs the same as with the dwarven class in general. (almost) all dwarven units are very slow - but they compensate this with other strenghts. (Donīt know which ones but Iīm sure they do )
So: In terms of balancing the only thing that has to be ensured is that slower heroes have other strenghts, thatīs it. There are also flyers (both mounted flyers as well as normal flyers) which are both even better than normal mounted heroes.
The possibilities to ensure proper balancing with this huge amount of abilities and stats are endless, it has to be done carefully though.
And if you give any race the same (or almost the same) amount of mounted heroes, flyers and so on everything is again balanced.

[This message has been edited by morgul666 (edited 01-03-2009 @ 09:49 AM).]

Yes. Isn't it a patch? Making all Heroes unique is totally on the Mod direction.

Yes, this is my main concern too. However, one of the objectives of the patches is to make the original game as it 'should' be. There are a couple of strong indications in the game that certain decisions were made by TS from a time/efficiency perspective.
Take the priests as an example. There is absolutely no reason why these couldn't be more diverse, other than that it would simply take TS time and resources to design more graphs. And so, v1.4 implemented these with great success, cause we have all the time in the world...

The same can go for racial boats/machines, but also heroes!

Here are some reasons:
- Currently you cannot quickly see what class a hero is, which should perhaps make a difference for strategy and atmosphere. Those who play mods, know you notice more of the 'character' of a hero when the graphics are more unique! At least I do.
- Do you, good-experienced-player, often take the +4MV/+2HP upgrade when it comes up for heroes (playing standard)? I doubt it... why? Not only is +2 hp a bit low, but the movement bonus is not as powerful if all your heroes are 40MV already. It would make a lot more sense to have a hero with 28 MV take it. 44MV doesn't benefit you much when you travel with a band of warriors with an average of 32 MV.
This also brings me to the next point.
- A units' value is also determined by whether they can travel with your hero stack. If they slow your stack down, there is often no point bringing them, no matter how strong that unit is. It would make those lower and slower units a bit more valuable as well. This has often been a criticism of AoW-SM (valid, I think).

With this in mind, I have no problem making some large changes.

As for balancing, the idea would be to have (only) one or two existing classes per race be slower. They would get abilities and stats to compensate.

I'm all for it. It sounds like each race will just have hero bodies unique to each class so it won't be exactly like a mod, if I understand correctly.

Quoted from Merkraad:

We already have Mods like Dwiggs and BNW that have Heroes with unique graphics. Why 'compete' with the Mods? I mean, if people want unique Heroes, it's already there.

Because a whole raft of people won't bother playing Upatch 1.5 at all if it keeps standard heroes, because those standard heroes are so boring, and heroes add a big dollop of fun to the game for most people.

From my part, even if 1.5 has custom Heroes, I'll still play BNW because it has the Heroes AND tons of other new stuff.

Upatch 1.5 will be used as the basis for virtually all other mods once it has been released. Nobody is saying that we will stop playing mods, mods are the future of the game. The mods that are currently out there have shown what a big difference better heroes can make to the fun of the game, and Upatch needs to embrace that.

As other people have said, a lot of care will need to be taken to ensure that it is as balanced as possible, and there will still be some debate about whether it is balanced or not. That should not deter the Upatch team from taking the job on.

I like the concept of one or two classes of hero being slower, because it does make some of the upgrades - that we wouldn't usually consider - much more useful.

Quoted from bam65:

I'm all for it. It sounds like each race will just have hero bodies unique to each class so it won't be exactly like a mod, if I understand correctly.

That would be weird, in my opinion. If effort is made on that regard, why not go the extra mile and adjust the stats too? Instead of only graphics?

Swolte's and Roger's were very good towards 'selling' the changed Heroes idea. As I said part of me wanted a bolder upatch. So if Swolte says he has 'no problem making some large changes' I back that up, go for it with full force

I'd make Heroes stats varied though, like happens with the Mods. Instead of a specific class being slower for example. An orc Warrior might be slow as a Warlord, but there might be an Orc Warrior (Orc Cavalry themed) with 32-36 MPs and so on.

It'd also be cool theme-wise that only Rangers are fast enough to start with 40 Mps. Although Swolte has a very good point about the hp/mp level up, so maybe even rangers could start with 'only' 36-38 MPs.

I would also suggest totally revamping the level up abilities for Heroes and introducing race-specific upgrades. For example maybe Stone Skin for Dwarves, Devour for Shadow Demon Heroes.

[This message has been edited by Merkraad (edited 01-03-2009 @ 03:02 PM).]

I would also suggest totally revamping the level up abilities for Heroes and introducing race-specific upgrades. For example maybe Stone Skin for Dwarves, Devour for Shadow Demon Heroes.

Thatīs a great idea if itīs possible to do it race-specific!

Well, the idea is to incorporate extra units into the game for recruitment sites/guards, etc...
See main thread.

Enchantments as hero-upgrades may look odd (...but yes, racially specific upgrades, of course!). What if people have the idea to dispel them and discover it doesn't work?

As for more variety. When I just started working for TS, Lennart told me the initial balancing was done kinda rough. Most units were all the same except for some base abilities (e.g., undead had death strike, etc...). Unfortunately, we were already far in testing, so we didn't go overboard with adding variety for the balancing, but I am certain (racial) variety is a big priority (its the spice of life!).

No problem in pulling the races in a more unique direction where possible, providing the changes are not impact the balance too much.

i vote for everything new! new heroes, new buildable units, racial boats and maschienes etc. ^^
the best innovation (to my mind) were the new hero graphics. even though there were just 5 or 6 of them i really enjoy them to play. more then the normal ones. okay, i have to admit that i dont care much about balance, since i am only singleplayer.

to say it short: thumbs up for everything new.

Quoted from Swolte:

- Do you, good-experienced-player, often take the +4MV/+2HP upgrade when it comes up for heroes (playing standard)? I doubt it... why? Not only is +2 hp a bit low, but the movement bonus is not as powerful if all your heroes are 40MV already. It would make a lot more sense to have a hero with 28 MV take it. 44MV doesn't benefit you much when you travel with a band of warriors with an average of 32 MV.
This also brings me to the next point.
- A units' value is also determined by whether they can travel with your hero stack. If they slow your stack down, there is often no point bringing them, no matter how strong that unit is. It would make those lower and slower units a bit more valuable as well. This has often been a criticism of AoW-SM (valid, I think).

These are terrific arguments.

I really would like to see more diverse heroes, and yes, heroes with less MPs. Why not a hero with 20 MPs (or even less) that compensates with terrific spellcasting abilities? (For example.)

Why not a hero with 20 MPs (or even less) that compensates with terrific spellcasting abilities? (For example.)

I agree, however, this is not easy to do...

It reminds me of an old balance discussion, especially salient in Aow1. People were arguing what is most useful: Defense or Attack. Obviously, both are extremely valuable, however, in the long run, a higher Defense was deemed more useful for the simple reason that the defense statistic is used more often. Not only when engaged in melee (both stats are used), but also when defending against ranged attacks. Not to mention that the potential attacks a unit does per round are many times smaller than the potential attacks a unit receives.
Therefore, when asked for a stat upgrade, you should often pick Defense! And I bet that those who still play AoW1 (where stat increases are more powerful and fast) probably pick Defense a lot, and fast!

Ok, I may have strayed for a bit here, but the point is that abilities often do not compensate for a movement statistic which is used in practically every event. Furthermore, the types of abilities and stats that you can compensate a walking hero with are small. For example, it doesn't make sense to give a walking human warrior more HP than one that is mounted. Traditionally, being mounted is just better. It's going to be hard to make it balanced AND believable!
Luckily, we have lots of greats mods with excellent suggestions!

[This message has been edited by Swolte (edited 02-01-2009 @ 10:45 AM).]

I like the current hero setup. And yes, I often do take the 4mp/2hp upgrade, because I find the 2hp quite valuable.

Also by definition, heroes need to start fast. Mounts (or wings? ) distinguish the upper class from commoners, and speed separates live heroes from dead ones. MP 28 isn't very "heroic"

ANY change that punks a particular race's heroes will probably be majorly unbalancing. So be REALLY REALLY careful.

For safe changes, look at graphics.

As far as movement (hero or otherwise), that's never been consistent or realistic in AoW anyway. There are no movement penalties for swamp, desert, water, snow/ice, wasteland, and underground. Why are we worrying about hero movement when an Halfling eaglerider can go full-speed through a cavern tunnel untouched by melee units, or a swashbuckler can swim full speed for three days across an ocean? :P

If you are serious about movement, look at a comprehensive terrain effects chart first. That will affect not only hero speed, but all other movement issues as well. It is better to deal with the root of the problem, rather than one symptom

Until then, I like heroes just the way they are now!

---

Former PBEM singles champion.

I don't know if you play mods, but most people that have played mods with interesting heroes (e.g. Dwiggs 5.0 or Brave New World 3 or Children of Many Ages) find the standard heroes drab and boring in comparison.

Although, I cannot agree more that tinkering with the movement of heroes should be done with EXTREME care.

For v1.5, I don't think any standard hero-class should start off with less than 32 MV. Furthermore, if there is an adaptation of movement in existing classes, they will likely affect only one or two classes per race. And Mr Dafyth's help would be most welcome with devising and testing the appropriate compensation, as would anyone else!

[This message has been edited by Swolte (edited 02-01-2009 @ 01:57 PM).]

I had the same concerns when I designed Age of Glorantha, since some of the races there really do not have any cavalry, so mounted heroes make no sense. But since I redesigned everything from scratch there, I included lots of non-mounted heroes with little or no concern. Some of them (elves) have high MPs but are not mounted, others are slow but are heavy spellcasters.

The principles I followed were:

a) Rogues and Rangers should be fast (32 at least)

b) Warriors and paladins should be tough, but not necessarily fast

c) Priests and Shamans can be slow, but if they are slow they should START with a magical ranged attack, or Healing IV at least. Or another powerful special ability like web/entangle/whatever. Slow Dwarf heroes might have fire pistol from start.

Finally, what is the problem with gender specificity of the pictures? Use the new pictures only for the new "standard" heroes like in mods, and in this case you need not be gender-neutral as you know which sex your hero is, and leave the old bodies for custom heroes made by mapmakers. It can be done.

Well, if you want to get fancy with heroes, here are some complicated ideas: Change how "mounted" works.

a) Make mounted give a penalty of +2MP per hex for wasteland, desert, snow, ice (see (b) for exceptions); for forestry units in woods; for water mounts in swamp (see (b)). +4MP per hex for swamp, underground; and for water mounts in water (again see (b). Forbid mounts from traveling on mountains and lava; and water (except water mount, see (b)) regardless of enchantment (see c).

b) Certain race heroes can start with (or acquire?) special skills -- water mount, snow mount, desert mount, magic mount. Water mount allows a mount to swim (note that water walking skill/spell would NOT -- see (c)) and limits the penalties of swamp hexes. Snow/ice mount, desert mount would confer -2MP bonus per hex in that particular terrain. Magic mount gives the bonus to snow, ice, desert, wasteland (maybe swamp). In effect, these negate the original mounted penalties for some specific terrains.

c) Mounted units gain no benefits from the following enchantments/skills: floating, flying, water walking, mountaineering. Note that fire halo would not allow a mount to go on lava.

d) Allow for a "dismount skill". The skill can be toggled on and off. When dismount is activated, all mounted penalties and restrictions are ignored. However, hero's MP is reduced to 2/3 while toggled on.

To balance, you may want to adjust some of the terrain effects for walking units as well. It just all depends on how technical you want to make the game

[This message has been edited by Dafyth (edited 02-01-2009 @ 05:21 PM).]

I wish it was possible...

Nice way of systematically thinking about these changes, Rosen!

Great ideas, Dafyth, however, as PawelS points out, we have to work within the limits of what's technically possible.
Snow and swamp not having any repercussions on movement has been one of my big beefs as well.

So, yes, as you pointed out in your earlier post, there are a lot of 'unrealistic' aspects in the game regarding the movement, but some things we will not be able to change. Others we can, and with those I think its important to not make that realism-factor worse.

Finally, what is the problem with gender specificity of the pictures? Use the new pictures only for the new "standard" heroes like in mods, and in this case you need not be gender-neutral as you know which sex your hero is, and leave the old bodies for custom heroes made by mapmakers. It can be done.

The gender specificity of the pictures is not the issue, the unit graphics are. We'd like the Orc warrior graphic to be able to represent female as well as male, something which is currently the case, for example.

[This message has been edited by Swolte (edited 02-01-2009 @ 06:21 PM).]

Sorry swolte, I actually meant the unit graphs, not the pictures. I do not see it as a problem if you add gender-specific pictures for existing or new heroes, whose gender is known, and leave the standard ones for heroes generated by mapmakers (whose gender is unknown). If a race/class combination has more than one ILB, mMaybe there is even some trick via SEM or another software to assign a specified, gender-specific unit body to a map-specific hero.

This thread is already quite long, so instead of commenting to individual posts, I'll present my own ideas.

In general, I tried in the Gandalf mod to implement what ideas I had. This meant that
a) All races got 2 heroes in each class (actually, only in 5 of the 6 classes, as some classes of heroes were deemed 'unfit' for the different races; as an example, Goblin society was considered too primitive or barbarian for priests, so they have shamans instead, etc.). In principle though, it would make sense to make heroes available in all classes to all races.
b) The heroes were (and should, in my opinion, for upatch 1.5) be given start abilities AND upgrade options that suit their particular theme. For instance, priests should have healing and spell casting and other magical abilities available for upgrades, while warriors should primarily have fighting abilities, including block, extra strike, 1st strike etc. available. Finding out exactly what start abilities and upgrade abilities should be available to what classes was a lot of work, and would be for upatch 1.5 too.
It will probably also be something people will need to /discuss/ a lot, but initially I expect that people will agree that the start abilities and upgrades should fit the "theme" of the different classes. (RosenMcStern's suggestions in post 19 makes a lot of sense to me, and obviously follows the same line of thinking. In this connection I also support the idea mentioned in post 11 about race-specific upgrades. They would spiff things even more up; I already added a little of this in the Gandalf mod, but much more could be done - but needs to be done with care, of course).
c) With regards to how many movement points the heroes should have, and whether they should be mounted or not:
I made the heroes so that warriors were a bit sturdier and heavier (and 4 mps slower) than the other classes.
Rangers were made 4 mps faster, and the other heroes given a medium speed (36 mps). Then again, the races on
horses started faster than those on pigs, ponies etc. to reflect the movement points these steeds have in the game.
This could be done in many other ways; but again people will probably agree to fixing the heroes' move points
to a value around 36 +/1 10.
I don't think the upatch team should be afraid of making much faster or slower heroes; some creatures (astrals, efreets, spider queens) are pretty fast in the game, and heroes based on these templates should be equally fast, shouldn't they? But they wouldn't be mounted anymore.
A hero with an earth elemental body (HULK!) would by nature be slower, perhaps down to 28 mps, but if he starts with a lot more health points and melee abilities, obviously this will compensate for his slowness.
I'm aware that to implement this, one would need to make several templates for each class AND race of heroes, for is the priest template for orcs is given 32 mps, you can't MAKE a priest hero with less than 32 mps, etc. etc.

I think people would enjoy the greater variety this will create (as RogerRabid clearly indicates, but I know all the Dwiggs players share his opinion), and am not afraid that the existence of a number of faster or slower heroes will put people off - on the contrary. Abilities like pole arm has shown to be VERY powerful on heroes, and are awkward when given to a mounted hero, but with the right graphics available, a number of heroes could start with pole arm too.
Similarly with FLYING heroes. These should be constructed with great care, because they can be equipped with items that give ranged attack, and makes them very powerful (i.e. they must have weaker melee stats to compensate), but I still think some flying heroes should be included in the upatch.

I hope its clear from this that I'm very much in favour of Swolte's suggestions in the top post.

d) The gender thing: I don't see why heroes need to be gender neutral. Some unit graphics are obviously asexual
(astrals, treemen), but I don't have a problem with nymph heroes, for example (on the contrary, actually, esp. if the graphics were made a bit more...well...graphical )

e) I think it's important that a number of heroes are NOT mounted because of the penalty to range of ranged attacks
that ability gives (the penalty against pole arm is less significant, but also a factor, of course)

[This message has been edited by Gandalf_DK (edited 02-03-2009 @ 01:34 PM).]

When many summons move 36-40 mp I consider 32mp or less moving heroes pretty weak, another thing is over 40 mp heroes wonīt get help from explorer. What comes to hero upgrades, if thereīs powerful skills in some classes upgrades, fe. doublestrike, resurgence - it makes certain unbalance

There could be flying/floating heroes for each alignment, as now only neutral/draconians has floating heroes.

I actually think most heroes should not be mounted, would fix some trouble with them if they got a ranged attack and increase "slightly" their chance to survive a lvl1 pikeman.

as now only neutral/draconians has floating heroes

Syrons have one too

IIRIC, the range cap for Heroes is hard coded, and its not related to the Mounted ability. Any ranged attack heroes have are simply reduced to Medium range.

I think that if an attack is made to have Unlimited range in the editor, it stays unlimited for Heroes. But since I tested that 2 years ago I could be wrong.

I remember playing Morgul's Demonwar map where his heroes are both unmounted. Their ranged weapons have a wider damage range. So I think that's one advantage of unmounted heroes/unit when it comes to using ranged weapons.

As far as I'm concerned about hero MP. A unmounted hero (fewer MP) can possess certain terrain abilities that mounted heroes (more MP) won't have. A walking unit should be able to get through dense forest faster than one with a horse, so unmounted hero should have forestry while mounted hero won't. Unmounted heroes can have the swimming or mountaineering ability while mounted heroes won't (even through upgrades)...

The amount of MP only matters when units are on road or flat terrains. In maps there're not many occasions where you can take full advantage of that, especially when you're stacked with other slower units.

That's just my two cents. However if I'm allowed to decide, I'd still prefer classic/current heroes. Graphically speaking, their movements (in battles and on map) are much more natural and smoothier than modded heroes.

Yes, the more I read your comments (e.g., Gandalf's and Naeco's), the more I realize may be best to go all the way or none...
Those are some great ideas, and ways of systematically balancing out the mounted vs walking. Their implications are quite large for gameplay and I do believe it will be more fun (and strategic!). Perhaps v1.5 can be a bit bolder...
I do strongly believe the generic hero choice was one of scarcity (in other words, if TS had the time and resources, heroes would be more different!).

Keep the discussion going!

Naeco, though I understand your hesitation, mine are mostly based on balance. I have to agree 180 degrees with you regarding the graphics: I find there is great diversity and quality of hero graphics available. Often, the problem is that the AoW-ones look too simple by comparison!

[This message has been edited by Swolte (edited 02-04-2009 @ 03:58 PM).]