Friday, January 30, 2009

Gods and Heroes

We have thought of two different possibilities of introducing gods and heroes in the game.
The main idea is that each town has three heroes, an offensive one that will give bonuses to attacks, a defensive one that would help in defending the town, and a wizard that would improve spells and give new ones. All heroes will have their skills organized in skill trees (three of them) from which the user can pick.
We have thought of two different ways a user can gain the skill points and we need to decide which would be the best one.
The first method is the classic one, the user chooses a god in the begining of the game and the god influences the hero skills and maximum levels. The heroes gradually gain experience from their field (e.g. an offensive hero from the attacks made by the town) and when experience reaches a threshold the hero gains a new level and a skill point that the user can spend for upgrading a skill or buying a new one.
The second method is for the skill points to be given by the gods. A user no longer chooses a god in the beginning of the game, instead the town knows of three gods and prays to all of them. The three hero skill trees will belong one to each god. All "deeds" (attacks, spells, rejected attacks) done by a town can be dedicated to one of three gods in order to gain favour with that god. When the favour reaches a certain threshold the god gives a skill point that can be used for one of the heroes in the skill tree belonging to that god.

Please leave a comment about the method you would prefer and also, if it's not too much trouble, why. :)

12 comments:

  1. The second method for skill points sounds very interesting although I didn't see it in too many games, thus the question why isn't it so popular. My best guess is because it's a little more hard to implement.
    In the end I will stick with the classical method, that's my choice.

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  2. I like both ideeas. The second sounds really nice, but I wonder why it isnt popular at all yet.
    Mircea Capa

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  3. Well, I guess it's not that popular because it's new! I've only seen this in Rise of the Argonauts so far, but it could become very popular in the future.
    I think I like the second method better, just because it's newer.

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  5. I have another suggestion. How about building a shrine for a certain god. While you have the shrine you have the god's good will.

    You have two options here - either the god's will increases over time, giving you more skill points towards the god's specialty, or you just have the skill point once you build the shrine (having a money/time penalty for changing shrines).

    Also you can set up relationships between gods, which affect fights. For example if god A hates god B, then an attack made by someone worshiping god A against someone worshiping god B will have an extra attack bonus (or similar).

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  6. I'd go with the second option.
    You need something to set you apart from all other strategy games out there.

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  7. The roads less traveled are less traveled for a reason so I am not surprised at all that the second method is not very popular.

    Still I fancy the opportunity to come up with something brand new, because nowadays you can't follow the classic method and hope to succeed.

    There are simply to many games of this sort to leave enough room for a similar project so I strongly believe that you should follow the path where the skill points are being given by the gods.

    Paggy

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  8. First method seems lackluster meaning if u dont attack u dont get points for ur offensive hero

    second method may be not so popular but allows for more strategies to be made therefor second one as they are put now seems more appealing

    Iuli

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  9. Something was pointed out to me that might become a problem with the second strategy, concentrating on a single hero. Probably everyone will only strengthen one hero depending on each ones chosen strategy.
    I am still thinking how that can be dealt with.

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  10. indeed but first strategy is lackluster so u can limit strengthening one hero by making a cap level limit between any 2 heroes, thus allowing to focus on one hero but still leveling the other 2 as well. this will also allow a player to change faster from an offensive strat to a defensive one also

    Iuli

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  11. The first option sort of reminds me of AOM, but I think that the second would be a lot more interesting. I think that what Iuli said would work, but maybe also impress the need on the player to have a strong defense as well as offense via some sort of random attack system on the towns and the need to attack others to win.

    Iuliu B.

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  12. P.S: On the assumption of the presence of some sort of basic NPC

    Iuliu

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