The injuries we can get when a champion dies in 0.75 are pitifully weak. They have practically no impact on the game. I would suggest you increase their strength by a lot. I've made a "before and after" list below with my suggestions. The important thing here is to make injuries 1) more significant as to be actually debilitating and 2) to make injuries scale with the power of the character.
AmnesiaBefore: -10 xpSuggestion: Champion loses every XP gained in this level. Also, future XP gained is reduced by 33%
Blind in one eye Before:-2 accuracy Suggestion:-25% Accuracy, -10% dodgeBroken Nose Before: -1 Hitpoint Suggestion: -0.5 faction growth. -3 hitpoints.
Chipped Tooth Before: Nothing Suggestion: +20% vulnerability to poison
Flesh Wound Before: -1 constitution Suggestion: -15% hitpoints
Gangrene Hand Before: -1 str Suggestion: -15% str
Missing Ear Before: nothing Suggestion: -15% dodge
I haven't changed these
PneumoniaBefore: Double Damage from cold attacks (by the way this tooltip is wrong, the XML says its +50% damage not +100%)Suggestion: same
'Tis but a scratch Before: nothing Suggestion: nothing
Typhoid FeverBefore: -1 to army constitutionSuggestion: same
Further suggestions for new ones
Cracked Mind - -20% spell mastery
Disturbed Aura - -20% spell resistance
Nerve Damage - Double damage from lightning attacks
Hopefully this is something that can be moded.
Although even if you take that out of it, you can still have the AI losing with heroes and getting 2-3 beefed-up injuries and essentially being useless. After all, they can never "save and reload".
The AI just needs to use them more wisely. Just because they cannot die, doesnt mean that the AI should use them as cannon fodder and/or not protect them properly from those roaming monsters.
I will agree that the people trying to balance the game should NOT give ANY thought to the fact that people can save and reload if they get a result they don't like. It's something inherent in the nature of the game, if the game designers start worrying about it, they are worrying about the wrong thing. (now, if they make code that makes random events/quests/etc spawn in advance, so you can't dodge them by reloading to the turn before them, that's different, but for things like battles and scars the situation will be different every time a player plays, so there is no way to "force" it to happen)
How about some unpredictability, something akin to the trait Clumsy? Chance to hit allies.
For Example: Indecisive - Chance to take no action and skip a turn. or Imbalance - Chance to fall of a mount. Loses mount for the rest of the battle. or Enraged - Will not change targets once engaged.
What needs to be taken into consideration is that stardock is attempting to widen their audience to turn a profit on this game. Appealing to the 'average' gamer will require marketing a game that is not frustrating. If the player feels the need to reload the game every time one of their heroes fall in battle they will have a less positive impression, and also be less likely to recommend it to friends.
I really like the idea of army benefits at personal losses, but I think something as simple as "Your hero looks cooler" would suffice. Small penalties are the better way to go with this system, and higher difficulties could impose harsher hero injuries. The only penalty I care about is the -1 con to army thing. And I would reload for that! Otherwise broken noses, missing ears.. all of them are inconsequential.
Injuries that make me not want to let that hero die, but not make me care enough to reload. -2 to a stat, loss of xp (based on current level), temporary penalties (like moves -1 or coward for 20 turns) are the sort of thing I would like to see introduced. Certain injuries should have pre-requisites. Like champions can't get coward if that unit is level 10+ since the effect might be non-existant. That said though.. I don't see this as being a priority, and until we see the changes in balance to champions as a result of further playtesting, this is the last thing I want to see addressed.
Until the AI is fixed, increasing the penalties from injuries would be a very very bad idea.
Those who want to reload will do it whenever something they don't like happens, that includes "Oh, my Champion got -1 to Strength!". Back in WoM, dying in battle was permadeath for the Champions. Keeping your nuker after he died in battle even if he loses 15% of HP, is better than death (especially if the nuker is high level and had lots of magic items).
Reloaders gonna reload?
Do we really want heroes to become truly crippled? Are there enough of them for this to work?
What I want is to have a significant cost to dying. In 0.76 you will get injuries if your champ goes down even if you win. But I think with such weak injuries, they might as well not be given out at all.
Hey, I saw one random monster kill a non-recruited Champion in one of my last games.
One thing I'd love for them to implement is the small possibility that if you lose a battle against another empire your champion will defect to the other side.
How do you justify such crippling injuries with magic healing?
I would only see it as acceptable if it could be "cured" by spending some turns in a city (maybe require a magic technology and a city structure)
This should only happen on Hard Difficulty, its way too heavy handed to be fun for a majority of people to make it global. Yes, some people are basement dwellers who love the core' experience, cool, to each its own but not everyone is a core player, and im fairly sure this isnt intended to be a hardcore only game.
Saving and Reloading has been happening in games for as long as there has been games, people in general these days dont find fun in loosing because gaming is entertainment for most people not a lifestyle, so while loosing and living with the consequences are fun for few, its not for others. This is important to recognize otherwise your just a facist gamer.
You know, I wouldn't have such a hard time understanding your point if you kept yourself from the namecalling, LordRikerQ. It really drives away sympathy, don't you know?
Do I at least get a trophy that says something like "You're special, too!" on it?
Hmmm, i think game developers should care about the save and load option, because if the penalty for doing something wrong or bad luck is harsh a player will more likely load the last save, but there could be another option called "Ironman" for players who like a harsher penalty.
The one thing I don't like is army-wide penalties for injuries. It should be champion only.
People can lower difficulty to Novice and they won't be losing Champions. Or games for that matter. So they don't risk losing a game and have an unfun experience.
It's not about FE being an Excel file with fancy 3D graphics but neither a Powerpoint presentation.
This is true. The Tarth leader has killed my sovereign twice. Btw, I thought the game was supposed to be over once our sovereign dies.
It's up to the developers to implement a sound game design. Does the proportion of people who are saving and reloading in a strategy game have any bearing on whether the game is a market success or failure? Do people save and load chess games because they made a bad move?
To some extent, yes it does.
Put it this way - if you feel like you constantly have to save and reload because even one missstep can ruin hours of play, psychologically you're on edge - not a pleasant experience for most people.
The converse is that everything is so easy you feel like you can click end turn repeatedly to win, removing any level of interest in the proceedings at all.
Clever game design that hits you with penalties for poor play, but not so crippling that you fear to take any aggressive or dangerous action is the happy medium - if you can play around the penalties, it makes the experience more engaging, as you have to compensate for your error.
The injuries system is a sound concept for two reasons - the first being that it carefully skirts the problem of losing a hero you've invested hours of work in, and the second being that it allows the AI to recover from poor strategic decisions to some extent.
That heroes are currently ridiculous is unrelated to the injuries system - an injury or two from winning a battle might be considered acceptable losses for capturing a key enemy city, while losing two heroes permanently likely would not - the first means the player likely continues to play uninterrupted, the second means a trip to the reload screen for a lot of players.
When I play the computer I am hitting the redo button on my moves all the time...
Am I guilty of hitting the reset? Sure. Some games, like Mount and Blade Warbands, let you set the game so you can't do that, but you also don't die if you get defeated, you might have to go find your companions, and build up your army again after you escape imprisonment, but you live to fight another day. I think the wounds are the idea to do that, to give the players a playable consequence to their failures that is interesting, and something to try and avoid, but not be crippling.
But even if they are crippling, there could be ways implemented to heal the crippled, like a quest to find the Water of Life.
There's already restoration potions that heal all injuries...
Yeah I like this idea... After I've let my champion get <strike>killed</strike> injured a few dozen times to the point he's almost useless, I should have to make the choice to retire him as a city manager.
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