I cannot understand the reason for this design decision. It seems to add needless complexity and discomfort for the player without being fun or making any sense.
First, the making sense part. Champions are people who become developmentally handicapped in the presence of other champions. They are smart as a whip sitting back and letting 6 squads dismantle the opposition, taking notes and learning the ways of uber-pwnage. But with two champions, what happens, is there only one pen and paper for the entire squad? Do they have to take turns writing and split up each other's notes afterwards?
I know this rule was instituted when it was discovered that champions were so powerful that you could beat the game with them without ever building units. This strategy offended those in power long ago, and since then champions were neutered with exp split, general exp decline, and spiced up with that just three to six crummy levels til I get the cool ability feeling. At the same time, units got an extreme buff, and now you can beat the game easily without ever using a champion (or having a champion be useful), but there is no outcry. What gives there?
Now there is the effect on the player. Players have to build an army for each champion, or resign themselves to just having fancy backstories to their unrest reduction in some city. The player must manage these multiple armies, which will never have enough map to level them all, all the while wondering, is this how Peter Venkman felt when Egon told him to never cross the streams? I mean you CAN use them together to win that hard battle (maybe against a giant marshmallow man), with all that juicy exp... which gets split up to the point its just one more stride on the long mile to level 10 or 12, or whatever level a champion actually will feel heroic at. Fellow champions are each other's kryptonite, which makes it a difficult strategic decision whether to use them together, but it's like a choice between crummy or crummier to the player.
This forces a player who knows the split exists to play with far more micromanagement and complexity in the hope, in my experience in vain anyway, that your heroes will eventually be, you know, heroic. I mean make it to the level ups that are fun (the ones that aren't +1-3 to a stat that doesn't make much difference). Players who don't know it exists will just wonder "why are the trees so long"?
I know this is a negative post, but hey, I strongly feel this is a bad decision through and through. The game will be better and more friendly and logical to every newbie, at the least. But I think it may even make people who are strategy diehards have fun teaming up heroes without having to worry about fighting 2-5 times as many battles to get where almost no champion but the sovereign gets in a normal game now. It makes sense and it is a fun, simple strategy to band champions together, and it is bad design to discourage logical, simple, fun gameplay. It is not unthinkable there was another way to encourage more complex gameplay without killing the fun rpg parts of the game or forcing players to juggle making and using many armies.
Btw, I think the game is great and should get deep and wide acclaim, but I think decisions like this endanger it to a possible dilution with "meh" because it doesn't pander to the most visceral and powerful source of fun in games with rpg aspects, the ego identification with heroes and the player's character. I have posted about this before, but basically every game that has ruled this genre has been at best a decent strategy game suped up with a fat layer of ego satisfaction. I think this is a great strategy game that has been drowning out its own ego attraction in the name of balance.
Yep. Thanks for putting it into understandable words.
well that's an entirely different argument. and since it's subjective, there really isn't much to argue.
Your heroes don't feel heroic/legendary to you. My heroes do. who's right?
this leads nowhere. if you make them more powerful or whatever, they may be heroic/legendary to you, but to someone else (me, for example) they may be "over the top" or "cheesy".
What does that have to do with XP splitting?
Your issue is that heroes level too slowly and you find the level choices underwhelming. I'm not sure why you fixate on XP splitting. Why not complain about the lack of a magic XP fairy that grants XP to all your champs every turn?
I think you just invalidated everything you've said on this thread. You haven't even played the latest version of the beta once! Are you kidding me? You really have no business making the statement you're making here. For all we know, if you tried to play 0.87 you might find that your impression of the game is completely wrong.
Many people on this thread have provided numerous and specific examples of strategies that make level 5-6 heroes capable of doing things that no trained unit could ever hope to do. And they're likely just scratching the surface.
I've read in detail the changes between 0.85 which I played and the lastest version. Doesn't feel so overwhelming as to invalidate my opinon.
My complaints stay valid. Until you show me the major issues which I missed that change the game so drastically in the latest version.
I believe that you're trying to make me irrelevant because I raise real issues about the game; you like the game as it is. I don't. That's life. Be happy: you're likely to win anyway if the game goes out by the 22 as I've read...
Yves
Yes, asymmetric XP split is likely to stay, even if that's a bad idea (at least in my opinion).
I just want heroes as they were in FE. Heroes. And upgraded troops as they are in LH. That's fine.
Did you ever complain in FE that heroes were overpowered and needed to be scaled back ? No. So you've been changing your mind. I have not. Just give me back what we had before. There is no fairy involved... But there has been a bad witch working over LH...
PS: oh, and no. The level choice is not at all overwhelming. All heroes of the sameprofession now look like copy of each other. What a sad day...
I just want you to give the game a chance.
I tried hard. 5 full campaigns from the beginning of the beta. Lots of feedback. XP splitting just put it over the board : I just have NO fun pushing identical armies on all sides. And find that's a winning "strategy".
Where are the so important changes from 0.85 that would make me contemplate trying yet another boring campaign ?
For those of you who are curious about experience progression:
Champion Level. Experience to next level / total experience required for current level
This is (mostly) accurate for FE 1.32. As far as I know, it is the same for the current version of FE:LH. Trained troop experience progression is the same, except that they earn half of what champions get (after split, but prior to experience bonuses) from each battle. As for why it's "mostly" accurate, I'm unsure of the exact experience required at levels 10 and 11 - those are interpolated values using the cubic curvefit given below.
Also, it seems that the required experience to the next level follows a curve similar to
exp_for_lvlup = 0.004*cur_lvl^3 + 1.306*cur_lvl^2 + 7.915*cur_lvl + 1.033
or
exp_for_lvlup = 1.462*cur_lvl^2 + 6.475*cur_lvl + 4
at least for levels 1 through 21 in FE v1.32.
The XP split was the same in FE, wasn't it?
With LH, Stardock reduced the XP gain across the board and that is the problem you have. And, IIRC they actually partially undid that change with 0.87. (I believe I saw Dereck or Brad say that, though I don't think it's in the notes).
Right now, I would agree that champs level too slowly compared to trained unit strength. It feels like to me that Stardock are slowly ratcheting up the XP gain trying to find a sweet-spot where champs are legendary and units are useful.
Look, the Beta is about expressing opinion. I've been playing Stardock games for a while. There have been times when I didn't like one aspect or another, but the core of the game kept me playing. The Heroes are supposed to be central to LH. They just don't feel right any more. Because of how central they are, it ruins the over all game experience for me. I agree with moi-meme, the Heroes in FE were actually Heroes. The Heroes in FE could be leveled, regardless of what you you stuck them into. They also made a difference. Now, once you level one past a certain level in LH, which level is earlier for Warriors than Mages, they can kick tail. The problem though is that you can only run one per group or that not quite hero feeling lasts forever. The fact that I have to earn my heroes and yet can't use them just blows. The fact that a trained troop can actually devastate a hero and that a trained troop out performs a hero, is just sad.
As far as level speed goes, heck, the split is almost back to FE days, but they reduced over all experience across the board. Now odds are they did that to increase over all difficulty, because world critters stop leveling after a certain level, but it has just become unfun.
I think that part of the problem is that only two classes of champions (Commanders and Mages) specialize in doing something that trained troops cannot do more easily. Trained troops make better tanks than Defenders, since the troops have (2*level + 6)*figure_count health, and usually have about as much armor, whereas Defenders get (16 + 3*level + trait_bonuses) health. They also generally make better damage-dealers than Assassins or Warriors, since they generally have equivalent chances to hit for at least as much damage as the champion does (seriously - a champion with a 95% hit chance is less likely to hit the target than a 3-figure trained unit with a 70% hit chance and just barely more likely to hit the target than a 4-figure unit with a 50% hit chance, and it's rare for one of my champions to have a significantly better weapon than the trained troops have, if you've kept the troops anything like up to date, so this means that the champion is hitting at about the same rate as the trained units for less damage on average. Yay? Plus, usually my trained troops on average have better equipment than my champions unless I'm lucky with loot, because I'm not going to pay the ridiculous sums asked for decent equipment in the shops when I can rush-buy a unit of trained troops for the cost of just one of the items the troops are equipped with).
There are certainly some abilities which Assassin/Defender/Warrior champions have access to which are nice to have, but since trained troops are much more disposable and much better at general-purpose combat, and since not a whole lot has a sufficiently large advantage against multi-figure units to make single-figure units more advantageous, there isn't a lot of point to getting these three champion types.
judging by the numbers joeball123 listed, the XP split is nowhere near as devastating as people believe (assuming the chart is at least close to accurate)
let's just do a few examples, shall we?
say you have encounters worth 1000 XP in your immediate area that you can defeat (let's ignore the implications of whether it's harder or easier to do it with multiple heroes)
doing that stuff with 1 hero gets him to level 10 (almost 11)
doing the same stuff with 2 guys, splitting the XP in half for each of them gets both to level 8 (halfway to level 9)
splitting between 3 guys results in 3 level 7 heroes.
big deal, really.
let's do the same with 3000 XP total
single guy - level 16
2 guys - both level 12 (almost 13)
3 guys - all level 10 (close to level 11)
yeah, totally devastating
'nuff said
In all seriousness you have spells to "help" your lower level heroes / troops catch up. And they can be cast over and over again. The choice is yours, do I cast a Volcano or do I give some free levels to all my troops or heroes?
I have to agree on the hero feeling.
Assassins need beefier dodge, they should be super-annoying.
Many skills should have level prereqs instead of skill prereqs, If it's fun, it should be a lvl 4/8/12 skill instead, or at least only require 1 level of a skill instead of 3-4.
Level 5-9 heroes should have one of their advanced fun school skills, even if it's early.
I do think at the very least this is a moddable issue, and it's the big issue.
Oh! Very good. So you agree with me!
You feel that three level 10 heroes is almost as good as three level 16 heroes ?Then let us drop the XP split. You do agree ?Or, well, if you don't agree, then maybe you did not really think what you wrote and there is, after all, a serious difference between said heroes ? Maybe even a totally devastating one ?
In all seriousness, when you can afford to cast these spells in a way that makes a difference, then the game has been won long ago!
Yves, you are already on record in this thread saying you liked the way heroes were in FE.
FE had the exact same XP splitting mechanism. You are wrong. QED.
The XP splitting mechanism as it was made much more sense in FE than it does in LH.
the point is - 3 level 10 heroes are on par with one level 16 hero (sometimes better, sometimes worse). with the split - it's a choice. without it, there's no choice at all. you'd be dumb to not put them all in one freaking overpowered stack. sounds like a lot of fun rampaging the countryside with an army of gods. NOT.
You're forgetting that the troops with those heroes level slower too and that it takes a heck of a lot of battle in LH to even think about getting to level 16, much less when you start splitting XP between Heroes, and the only way that even that Hero level can be achieved is if all the bonus XP traits are picked. So sure, the Hero leveled, but he is still mediocre. So you're "'nuff said" leaves out a whole heck of a lot of stuff.
You know, you keep bringing up this 'choice' thing. The choice right now is to leave your heroes at the tavern. You can not have troops enough to give them all their own stack when you start getting them. You need to work twice as hard for half the effectiveness. What seems to have happened here is that Stardock took way too much input from folks that think playing a game should be work and not fun.
@Azunai_:
The problem isn't so much the "one level-16 champion vs 3 level-10 champions" as that level 16 champions feel like they are (at most) mid-level champions, and level 10 champions feel just barely out of low-level, yet this is essentially where the progression stops, especially when you keep multiple champions in the same stack. Champions feel like they are just beginning to become useful when they run out of ways to level up.
Then there's also an issue where it feels like champions of a given class all develop the same way, since the skill trees tend to be very narrow at the bottom and branches tend to either be very short with only one or two traits on them, or very long with no sub-branches.
No it doesn't have identical split. They reduced the split XP slightly. They also reduced over all XP. They also reduced a Heroes leveled ability at the bottom and lower middle of the curve to try to leave room at the top. They increased monster resistance and ability to do damage as well as reducing over all damage by letting monsters dodge special abilities. Now I actually like most of what they did as regards the individual parts and pieces. Unfortunately, the combined affect is icky.
you really don't get it, do you?
it doesn't matter at which arbitrary XP threshold you compare them - a single hero instead of 3 heroes will never be so far ahead that the other option is irrelevant. in fact, 3 guys that are about 2/3 the level of the lone superhero will more likely than not outperform him. it doesn't matter if they are in one stack and do all the encounters together or if each of them has his own army and each of them clears about 1/3 of the lairs. the Xp is the same. actually, having 3 guys in one stack is even cheaper, since you need 2 less trained units to get the stack to full strength.
troop level ups are a sidenote, nothing more. it's not like troops get so much better by having a 30% higher level. they get a handful of HP and some accuracy, and that's about it.
so yeah, there is a choice. use only 1 of them and get him to whatever level you can, or use all 3 and get each of them to roughly 2/3 the level of the single hero. both options are viable. it's up to the player to decide what they likes better.
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