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ENDLESS™ Legend is a turn-based 4X fantasy-strategy game, where you control every aspect of your civilization as you struggle to save your homeworld Auriga. Create your own Legend!

Hero Skill Tree Suggestions

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4 years ago
Jan 2, 2020, 9:04:31 PM

I've read several complains about the Hero Skill Tree. I think we could classify the existing problems as follows:

  1. The Common Skill Tree is too weak. Only Inspirational Leader and Cold Operator are particularly handy, and both are usually accessible by the other Skill Trees.
  2. The only real choice is between whether you make Governor Heroes and General Heroes, with no inbetween.
  3. Cultists and Wild Walkers are overwhelmingly better Governors than everyone else in most cases, so it is really about buying the Heroes in these two factions whenever they are on the Market.
  4. Most Heroes can become good Generals, since pretty much every skill in the General Tree is always handy, but Wild Walkers and Forgotten can pretty much teleport around the map due to their Managed Torpor/Functional Insomniac Skill, so they are the most handy..
  5. Pretty much all General Skills are good for General Heroes and all Governor skills are good for Governors, so the only choice in the Skill Tree is whether you max out a specific Skill level or go to the next, and that is usually not that complex a choice..


My suggestions would be:

  1. Managed Torpor/Functional Insomniac probably shouldn't have a "level 2". Instead, some skills in the Common skill Tree could be boosted by an Assignment Cooldown bonus. In particular, I am looking at "Indiana Bones" level 2 and "Fast Healer" level 2. I think the Flavor would be justified somewhat, while also keeping Forgotten as the fastest Generals (due to Fast Healer being in the path of Managed Torpor to Lord of the Trance).
  2. Thrifty probably should come earlier in the Skill Tree, since most problems with maintaining an army usually are in the early-mid game. I would suggest putting it as second in the left side of the tree, while moving No Idle Hands and Siege Mentality up.
  3. I would consider powering up the Common Skill Tree in other ways as well. For example, making Defender only 2 stages that raise Defense by 100 each would make it much more attractive, but such things would probably require a playtest team.
  4. Cut off Cold Operator from being connected to the side trees of most Factions. Except maybe Cold Operator and Vaulter/Mezari, as that just makes sense. It is a really great skill, so I think it'd be fair to make you go through a bit of the Common Tree to get it..
  5. Cut off Cultists and Wild Walkers from connecting with Inspirational Leader from their faction Tree. Or maybe not. Maybe this is too much. But I suggest considering it. Even if it is kinda flavourful for Cultist
  6. Make more of the "General Hero" / Class Tree give a bigger bonus to Units of a Specific Class. Kinda like the Ranged Class can boost the range of all ranged units. So the Infantry Hero could have a Skill to boost the Defense of Infantry Units only (but more than the other Skill), Cavalry could boost the Initiative of Cavalry Units, etc. This for all except Support (as having an Army of Support Units seems so horrible) which could instead have the option of a Skill that grants Disease Immunity to the Army (or maybe something that gives a specific terrain bonus, but you get the idea, something situational but powerful).


These are all my suggestions. That said, I am still a relatively new player. Just went over 220 hours of play and have no experience in Multiplayer, so take all that with a grain of salt.

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4 years ago
Jan 8, 2020, 5:17:21 AM

Many of those ideas seem great, jojo_fr, the document was a great read, but I would refrain from making too many Skill levels too different from one another. For example, "No Idle Hands" being related to "Fast Learner 1" makes sense. It being related to Rapid Mutation just feels a bit random. Some Capacities getting unlocked after maxing out a Skill is nice, but having each level grant a different Capacity could probably make things a bit confusing for new players due to all the new terms that they'd be hit by when just inspecting the Skills. 


I also don't think that maintaining the Tree Links as they are should be an important constraint. For example, the issue with the Drakken as Governors, IMO, is that the Approval bonus often comes too late at level 4 and requires you to get at least 1 General skill beforehand. Moving a couple Skills around and letting them get Inspiring Leader more easily could make them decent governors.


And I do feel like my idea of moving some Cooldowns towards the Common Tree and away from WW/Forgotten could mitigate the clear intentions the Devs seemed to have with making some Heroes both Generals/Explorers and Governors. Drakken and Morgawr in particular, that seem like they have trees that intend them to constantly switch roles could probably also use at least a "-1/-2 Cooldown" somewhere as a level 2/3 in one of their skills. Maybe in "Lord of the Sea" (as a level 2) and "Battlesaur" (-1 on level 2 and level 3).

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4 years ago
Jan 8, 2020, 6:26:36 AM

Hey Jojo! Do you have someone working on this? If not, when I finish up one of my projects, would you mind if I try to implement these?

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4 years ago
Jan 17, 2020, 10:32:39 AM

Hello.

I answered you by Discord. The answer is no, no one is working on it.
I hope you will.  :)

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3 years ago
Mar 9, 2021, 5:42:22 AM

As a huge fan of Endless legend, I think the hero skill trees are ripe for improvement. 


The Good

These are the elements that I think work well to create fun gameplay:

  1. Unlocking a new skill at each level.
  2. Being able to plan ahead your strategy for your hero.
  3. Buying different types of heroes in the market to suit your needs.
  4. Dividing skills into General, Unit Class, and Faction.

The Bad

I usually end up buying the same heroes and following the same upgrade path, because these elements don't work very well:
  1. Poor balance across skills and factions.
  2. The skill trees on each faction are the same every game. (Even worse, as far as I know, all heroes of a faction are of the same class. That is, you never have a Support Necrophage, an Infantry Roving Clans, or a Cavalry Drakken.)
  3. The game encourages you to typecast a hero as either a city governor or an army general, with no in-between, as OP said. This starts with each hero's inherent capacities. (One hero has Army Damage Boost 2 and another has Industry Efficiency 2. Since specialization is so strongly rewarded, a skill point on a city governor skill is wasted on an army general, and vice-versa.
  4. The prerequisite lines are too limiting. You often see this with a combat skill on the Faction tree stuck behind several city governor skills. Also, Cold Operator is a top priority, so any skills that don't lead to Cold Operator get the cold shoulder.

The Fixes

First I'll propose some tweaks within the existing game system. Then I'll propose some radical redesigns for hero skills that I'd hope to see in Endless Legend 2.

Simple Tweaks

  1. Add more lines between skills to give players more options.
  2. Create new Faction/Class combinations. (I think this is doable within the mod/DLC framework, though it might require some new assets.)
  3. Buff and nerf some skills.

Big Tweaks

  1. Give most skills a city governor benefit and an army general benefit. For example, a skill that gives +5 defense to all units and also gives +1 industry on district tiles.

Redesign

  1. Skills are no longer in "trees".
  2. Instead, each game, each hero gets a unique random skill ladder that looks kind of like Endless Legend's tech "tree", drawing from the hero's faction and unit class as well as the General skills -- a pool of 22 skills in the current game. You can see the hero's skill ladder before you recruit them in the Marketplace.
  3. The skill ladder is divided into six tiers.
  4. At each tier of the ladder are four available skills.
  5. Each skill has a range of tiers in which it is allowed to appear. For example, "Indiana Bones" can appear on tier 1 or 2. "Cold Operator" can appear on tier 5 or 6.
  6. As in the current game, every time a hero levels up, they get a skill point.
  7. At first, only the skills in the 1st tier are available for skill points.
  8. After a hero has put at least one skill point in the 1st tier, they can put a skill point into a skill in the 2nd tier.
  9. After a hero has put at least two skill points in the first two tiers, they can put a skill point into a skill on the 3rd tier. (Like unlocking eras in the tech tree.)
  10. And so on.
Bam! More flexibility, new situations every game, tons more replay value!

I've also copied this post into a Google Doc. Comments welcome!
Updated 3 years ago.
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