First off, for those of you not familiar with our forum structure, I go by 2 handles: Draginol and Frogboy. Draginol came from the old idea that when I posted from home, I’d use a different handle. Bah. Now I never get them straight.
Anyway, I need your help.
As concisely as possible, can you list the things in Legendary Heroes that you find the most FUN. Not unique. Not stand-out. But FUN. Can be something that you love in many games.
After a few posts, I’ll list my own favorites but I really want to hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks!
Combat:
- Building up the perfectly cursed creature and then landing an infect
- Maul. There, I said it. I like Maul. a lot. and then some.
Map:
- Spreading death (changing the map to the dead tile and corrupting shards to death shard)
- Selecting a role for a city and then selecting the best level up choice
All the other things are merely good, but these things have me rubbing my hands together in giddy expectation.
My personal favourites would be running around with your sovereign (possibly with heroes) completing quests and stuff. City building is a little weak (it was a little stronger in GalCiv2 I think. Perhaps building space should be more limited?) in comparison but it gets the job done. Going around questing, meeting other civilizations, and having meaningful interactions with them (apart from "RAAAHH NOW YOU DIE!") have been the best parts of the game for me.
Oh, yes, it's pretty entertaining. I would be nice to see our El Presidente Sovereign, walking on streets too, should he be in the city at the moment.
Watching the evolution from base principles to final results. In essence, customizing factions and then learning how to use them well. Learning the implications of each ability, how they fit together, etc.
Note- this applies as much to flavor as mechanics. Learning how the faction wins is fun. Just learning how the result looks and feels is also fun.
Basically, Elemental's strength, is that it provides many early decisions, both in customizing sovereigns and factions, as well as where you put your cities, what resources you find, etc. and the results of each combination are interesting.
The tactical battles, I just wish they were more in-depth. The strategic part is quite boring, and mainly consists of pressing the 'END TURN' button.
* Tactical combat. This is why I play games like this in the first place.
* Leveling and equipping heroes and sovs. RPG elements are always fun.
* Summoning units. Not sure why I like this... But when I summon a bunch of units right in the face of an enemy that just attacked me ---> Satisfaction!
Aside from the standard fun of 4X, the most fun elements go to:
-tactical combat (I love it as is, but if it got more depth I'd love it more)
-leveling my sovereign and henchmen (not necessarily all champions - they are high maintenance because of the xp split!)
-terraforming with raise/lower land and birth of summer/twilight (alas, these aren't focuses - I'd love to see them have more presence in the game)
Glad to see you're still thinking about the game. I haven't played in a while, but it was definitely my favourite game of the last couple of years.
Back to topic:
1) I like that there are so many different tactical and strategic possibilities. There are a lot of races and sovereigns, and they have significantly different strengths and weaknesses, which massively increases the replayability. I enjoy sitting down and thinking out what the best strategy is, bearing in mind what this nation gets cheap, what it gets expensive, any unique units or abilities. I enjoy planning how I can maximise my hero's strengths, what order I should level up skills, what's important right now and what can wait. The number of spells is initially overwhelming, but when you finally work out (or read about) a successful battle winning strategy it's very satisfying. The spells are great, they really change how the game plays, and I think the balance is pretty good. I do occasionally wish some spells weren't "obviously" better than others, so I didn't feel I was casting the same spells time and again. Ongoing balancing, like the thread you did a while back, "what are the spells you never cast and why?" would be cool. Almost all of the spells have some benefit, the problem is normally that the mana cost is too high or it's just not worth spending a turn casting (in tactical) compared to some other spell. Relatively minor tweaking by reducing mana costs would suddenly make some spells much more interesting.
2) I enjoy the exploring at the start of the game, as you set out into the big bad world and hope you don't disturb anything too scary, work out what you can kill now, what you'll have to save for later, and all the while hoping you left your capital properly defended.
3) I enjoy levelling up my hero into some death dealing machine. Similarly I enjoy designing powerful units, taking into account my resource and research constraints, which smash all before them and can hope to survive to reach a high level.
4) The wildlands are quite fun. There are still some I haven't seen, which increases the interest. In many of my games it was probably suboptimal (in terms of time to complete the game) to beat a wildland compared to killing AIs, but it was invariably more fun to complete the wildland.
5) The quests are fun, at least up to the point where you've seen nearly all of them. (I often seem to get more than one Arena in my game, which seems excessive.)
6) I enjoy playing against an AI that is not an idiot. The problem with having a game with so many possibilities is that the AI may be spectacularly bad at understanding all the possibilities and generally play like an idiot or play in an extremely predictable way. I can still remember how impressed I was when the AI actually immobilised my Stack of Doom, after months of ignoring strategic spells! Thank you for all your ongoing work in that area.
These aren't in any order.
1). I like making choices. I like choosing what to build, what to research, where to explore. Legendary Heroes is a classic strategy game of that type.
2). I love the fantasy setting. I like to play in a rich and imaginative world.
3). The graphical style is fantastic. I love the look and feel of the game, it's models, terrain, buildings, spell effects, and monsters.
4). I love heroes and leveling up.
5). I love custom sovereigns, building your own ruler. Choosing traits, starting boni and penalties, the appearance, race and clothes. So wonderful and fun.
6). I love designing my own units.
7). I love defeating monsters and winning interesting loot and magical items.
I've played 411 hours of this game.
Cheers,
Sword
I wish faster pace in gameplay, at least 50% of immersion MOD speed and not just keeping waiting for things or cure the boredom with quests.
I wish more trade options (trade tech directly or even cities)
I wish more interesting AI gameplay - war can happens between AI player - i.e Empire vs Kingdom asking me to help where my decision impact the relationship in either side and not just keep bugging me for money or mad with me if I dont give. Civ series handle this better - even AI ask for something it offer something in return such as an equivalent technology or some money to compensate
The fact with the AI and gameplay also force me to be a warlord even I am a nerd who prefer keep researching and make city better. Even with 4 game objectives I have to keep fighting kill, kill and kill and only diffrent is to kill with sword or a spell.
I wish more different between Empire vs Kingdom , when I conquer the other faction city I gain many buildings / tech that I cannot access to, making kingdom more uplifting and empire more frightening. I don't know I enjoy SMAC / Fallout wasteland but the desert in LH is a bit depressing. Probably those in games like SMAC there is a lot of mysteries feeling and possibility behind just a piece of waste land
I wish AI research dragon also because that is such an insane disadvantage if it don't. Or at least nerf the dragon a bit by giving some heroes a powerful "dragon slayer" ability.
One thing i really also found fun was beast master,
Love having beast unit's in my army, This is a bit much but upgrades to the wolf and bear for leveling up would be nice, like wolf grow's into a dire wolf. Just to add a little extra power behind them.
Yes!
I kinda liked the summoner build but got bored quickly 'cause it feels way too powerful.
1) Building my stack of Doom out of custom units, enchantments, fortress upgrades, and the combination heroes/normal troops to offset each others weakness
2) Leveling sovereigns down the path of my selection, trying different builds to get a different "feel" when I play the game each time.
3) Building an Empire - Specializing cities, stacking improvements and the feeling of an "empire of doom". I actually yearn for a little more control/granularity on this.
Features
Traits/Factions- because each faction/trait is not balanced perfectly, some can be wildly more powerful in their own way leading to variety of methods to exploit.
Customizing units - I am more attached to the spearmen or swordsmen I custom made, even if their selection of traits/equipment was a bit of a "no brainer"
Wildlands & wild monsters & Quests - Once I have the stack of doom/Empire of doom that I'm satisfied with, I need something crush with it. However the gradual creep of my empire is also enjoyable. As I clear an area to build on it's a rewarding feeling of progression. More so than taking the AI's prebuilt town.
I am going to share what I find most fun about another 4X, albeit not fantasy based, game. The game is Endless Space. What I find most fun about it is co-op multiplayer with my friend. Turns are done simultaneously, but it is still a turn-based game. I would love to see multi-player with simultaneous turns in LH 2.0.
That being said, I hope the game will give us a way to play multiplayer not using Steam's servers because their servers are the most unreliable on the planet. They go down at least once almost every time we play. I cannot believe a company could be this unreliable and survive.
Except for their unreliable servers, Steam has a lot going for it and I understand why Stardock uses it. However, for future multiplayer games (LH 2.0, GalCiv 3), I beg Stardock to give us an alternative to Steam for MP.
This is very close to what I wanted to write. I really enjoy being able to create and customize my own sovereigns and then sending them against the world. I like the mix of 4x mechanics with the importance of heroes.
Very cool stuff. Taking notes for future updates.
Looking at the rules, options and choosing what "I" think will be a good 'build' - then playing it out
Starting with a powerful 'me' that I can then further customize with a bit of experience based on what I need. Do "I" need to be a research machine? A solo quester? Heavy movement to get more things done? Heavy defense where I can tank and have a bunch of ranged? Can "I" sacrifice mobility for some other benefit? How do "I" want to play this game.
Making those decisions and having them mean something - super powerful but takes forever to get anything done, weak but empowers multiple other actions, somewhere in the middle,etc.
Same with the empire - do I min/max with dramatic weaknesses to allow dramatic benefits and hope the benefits outweigh the negatives in the long run?
Sadly, while I save/reload - its not 'FUN', but it leads to 'Fun' by fooling myself that I didn't save reload to get to the result I wanted...
Real variety in choices - which race? which building? which weapon? Do I go left or right... if left, right closes. Oops (maybe a save/reload in there depending).
Losing is fun if it is not long term detrimental. I'll say it. I want my 'big guys' heroes and such to survive. LH has a great mechanism for that. I can have a hero die and its not a definite reload. Warlock... yeah, I'll reload.
I like uber loot. I like game changing loot that makes hero #5 REALLY special. Now he can fly, teleport, kill anything in one hit..etc. At the same time I'm ok with negatives to offset power. He can fly but has no defense, he can teleport but then can't act for two turns, he can kill anything but is reduced to 1 hp and is stunned for 2 turns, etc.
Incremental improvements are BORING... 2% increase to blah blah blah is important and a good long term decision, but...boring. I like "heartrender - can rend any heart from afar, but the damage applied is then applied to the caster - i.e. Do 120 hp in damage, take 120 hp in damage" (not necessarily more than an example).
Random events are fun - as long as the good are on par with the bad at least over the course of many games. it would be 'fun' to get a bunch of good events in a row. Hell, its 'fun' to get a terrible event that doesn't affect you and validates a prior choice. All undead, based on mana - world event that all food is halved and all mana doubled - hell ya.
/rambling off
Off to play warlock 2. Still, this is one of the few forums I visit regularly looking for updates.
1.) Exploring the world -- by far, this is my favorite thing in FE:LH. This includes finding loot, encountering interesting creatures/monsters, and running into (what I call) the "epic quest regions".
2.) Building your empire, especially with regards to developing your cities and planning their growth "path" (town, conclave, or fortress -- and what their specialization within each path might be).
3.) Watching your Sovereigns and Champions level and grow, and determining what path(s) you want them to take.
4.) Tactical combat.
5.) Interacting with the AI players.
6.) Customizing/designing your own Sovereigns.
7.) Customizing/designing your units.
8.) I love the hard choices you're forced to make with city development and research.
Making new and varied units with cool looks to slaughter armies wholesale. Slaughtering anything that moves. Bringing peacefull communism to everyone by doing the slaugther-thingie to them. Unifying, pacifying and developing all the lands after wiping out the previous inhabitants. Casting grossly overpowered magical spells at things to make em explode and die.
Yes, there's a theme.
I find the expand and exploration stage of the game most exciting, because that is the stage of the game where your choices in research, city management and tactical combat are most important and will direct the rest of the game. By the later stages I can research pretty much anything I want soon enough, have enough cities that if I don’t build something here I can always build it elsewhere and unless the AI is dominating can lose troops left and right.
One of the 4X games I still love and play is Master of Orion 2 because of how technology is handled. You can only choose one tech out of three from each one level, and that one tech could change the current nature of your whole game. I dislike being able to research everything eventually because in games like LH I end up with the same units in the end no matter who I play as, and that is boring. Not being able to get everything meant that every technology decision mattered because you are always in a race to adapt and improve.
What I want from a 4X game is to be able to play in lots of different ways and feel like every decision I make matters. That comes from having a variety of decisions which interrelate and affect how the game plays.
1) Racing the computer to build wonders... Ohh wait can't do that... If they take 50 turns to build the treasury vault so be it. Can't race them to the finish line. that'd be too fun for this game
2) Starting a game to find out there is no room to build or expand due to being hemmed in by mountains.
3) Not having a decent start location until you get tired of Pressing CTRL+N and go downstairs to watch TV. After all, your sovereign only spent (according to the game) a lifetime preparing, training, studying and practicing to found the first city. It only makes sense he chose the worst spot in the world.
4) Not being able to restart a map at the same location, having to use the CTRLN spell over and over.
5) Getting useless items from medium and strong mob camps that you can sell for 8 gold
6) Not having the ability to plan out your skill tree or see what's in the skill trees for heroes until you've already selected one and are locked into it
7) Having your hero on a weapon specialization path and all the high powered items you got later in the game are for something none of your heroes specialized in.
8) exploring for DOZENS of tiles to find the first hint of a new spot for a city... anything that shows even the option of founding a city, then later seeing the computer settle between that city and your capital, cutting it off.
Just to name a few.
Honestly I love the roll playing aspect the best, I always like to play the roll of an adviser that has to help a somewhat misguided leader help salvage their struggling kingdom, and make it a powerhouse.
I also enjoy the city building and research aspect of the game, making an empire with massive cities that each on their own is a powerhouse feels great.
The random events and quests I also like and wish there were many more quests and random events.
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