There are healer spawn units  IIRC.  Maybe they are mages.  They are what the fatguys in the trailer are.

TYO GIMME MY PRIZE FOR FIGURING THIS OUT.

Also maybe some generals special units will have special abilties.  That'd be cool, yeah definitely! Infat, most of them should have some special ability IMO.

double post.

Haha! Nice work Innociv. They are indeed healers.

Hmm, you might be onto something here...

Innociv:

Hope he is, that sounds bloody amazing.

Hehe thanks..

I'd go on to say that those creeps special abilities should synergize with other some other Demigod's skills which aren't that Generals.    Like vampire lords revive-things leech life on hit.  And maybe Sedna has an aura that makes it where when people are healed they damge nearby enemies.  So Vampire Lord + Sedna = great combo.

The life leech on vampire lords revives would be healing, which triggers the damaging nearby enemies from the Sedna's aura, which is adding small aoe damage to all of their attacks.    Just an example, of course.  (Note, I just mean "spike"/"burst" heals, not "over time" heals.  A regen healing aura wouldn't be triggering the damage, nore would a units regen rate.  Healing skills and life leach would.)

Though.. I hope Demigod isn't life-leach heavy on items like DotA.  In DotA i think it breaks things.  I wish Life-leach only came from classes skills.    You can have much cooler things with the gameplay/skills when you don't have to worry about how it'll effect life leach items on all Demigods!

I like that form of synergy, but it could be hard to balance so that there aren't a few insanely comboed groups of demigods that make the rest unplayable. Making the synergistic abilities fall into a collection of catgegories and make sure that each god contributes to a combo and is the effect end of another combo in each type may work. For example, the rook has a self-healing passive ability, which lets him be a focus for abilities that add effects to healing abilities, so if we're using innociv's example sedna, then the rook has a minor damaga aura constantly, and other demigods have similar abilities. The Queen of Thorns would ba able to still deal some damage while in her flower (assuming that she can heal in there, which I think she can), allowing her to still have an effect while hiding and be played more agressively. It would be interesting to say the least.

Hey innociv a little late on the ball:

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/322644

I pointed this out days ago.

lol i was wondering why i already knew they were healers

No it's not hard to balance.

"Hey heres a replay of this combinationg owning really really hard."

It's looked over, decided whether the person is just crying that they lost or if it's really imbalanced.  If it's imbalanced, one of the two, or both skills/abilties, get nerfed, whichever way will effect other builds that use the skills least.

If it turns out they're they where nerfed too much, then noe of em gets buffed in between how they where before..  GW did this with 900 or so skills, not just 80(well, more than 80 since items)

Not to mention, that combination would have to be compared to the combinations of other demigods.  What happens with the Rook and Regulas work together in lane, what about the Torchbearer and Unclean Beast?  What if one is built one way, another way.   Not saying it should be RPS, i'm saying there should be equally powerful combinations both WITHIN each demigod, and when two work together, or three together.  Some demigod combinations might be really powerful with 3 Demigods, but 3 demigods in a lane with 3 lanes means the other 2 lanes would only have 1 person each.  But on a 2 lane map if there is such a thing, they'd be better.

I'm not saying how skills work together across Demigods should be huge.  Maybe they SHOULD, maybe they shouldn't.  There should be skills for your own Demigod that work together  very well, and also Benefits allies.  But this is a team game, and synergies between the Demigods would enhance that, in my opinion. 

If the response to having lots of synergistic skills, both obvious and not(and i'm not talking you have one skill that does, say, a lightning strike, and then another skill buffs that to make it chain lightning.  Also, not like diablo2 1.10+ where skills buff each other for each point.  I'm talking about skills "naturally" working together like how the cards you put in your Magic: The Gathering deck work together.) is "will be hard to balance" then the game will have less depth when it comes to the Demigods.. at least in my opinion.

*shrugs* I hopes that's part of why there is a 4-5 month beta.  Not like the game can't be patched after release too.

I didn't read it so i'm first.

How does that work?

Thing is GW had all activatable abilities, demigod has ~40 (as items arn't activatebal unless they're one use items)

Yeah but i'm not saying copy GW's, i'm saying be inspired by MTG like GW was.  The aura's can fit fine into the synergisticness.  I'll write a long post when Beta comes out.  Then I can see if I really think they're fit, personally.  I haven't played so what can I say now?  It just sounds good on paper and from experiencing other games skill design.

GW?

Anyway,

Times 56 (self combos shouldn't be all that good). That's quite a bunch. Then you add combos of three. That's 318. Fun with factorials is no longer fun in this case. I agree, it should be done, but if they're too powerful, there could be a lot of variability that would make for some bad balance.

Whats so great about GW people keep mentioning it when it comes to demigod controls and interface i personally hated guild wars but thats just me

And nothing worth it is easy...

And mooey I was joking.  Sorry I read over that bit about you saying they where healers.  I thought I was the first to say it, but I wasn't.  So you win.   *gives Mooey the prize Tyo gave him of nothing :P*

We aren't saying GW's had great gameplay and such (though i liked it, i dont think that applies to demigod)  But it is the most competitive RPG theres been AFAIK in the west.

It had very good skill design, more like MTG than diablo.

And most games click-to-move would get you stuck, and the auto attack would be clunky, but GW had good path finding, and something about the combat felt solid despite it happening automaticaly.

It's just a good game to look to for competitive stuff, and cool skills.  It was a love it/hate it kind of game though because it was completely Guild dependant. You needed to be good, be in a good guild, so you could Guild Vs. Guild and Hero's Ascent for the real fun.

yeah, GW has a great feel, and it's the best example of balancing i've ever seen.....there's basically nothing OP anymore that, if nerfed, wouldn't break the game

I'd say to leave possible special abilities to general units. Make them extra special.

Crap, sorry about that, I wrote this post but needed to check a different thread so I copied it and then copied something else and posted blind. Big oops, sorry.

Yeah, the balance of Guild wars is commendable, I wonder if there's any generalized lessons to be learned from it, because I only played it long enough to see that it was balanced, but not why. Any ideas why?

because people grabbed overpowered builds off the wiki and destroyed pvp

thus, the Great Crusade of Balancing began.

It was well balanced, but one build being 5% more effective than another is still a big deal in a game like Guild Wars.

There where hundreds of viable GvG and HA builds, but hundreds really isn't a lot out of 64 skills from a pool of 900.

But it's not like every combination of skills you can put together was supposed to be good.

And overpowered builds off wiki?  There are no overpowered ones last i checked.  There where some BROKEN builds(As in, a combination of skills having an effect far greater than ever intended.  Like there was one with etheral renewal and another skill to basically get unlimited mana.  And there was zealots fire giving more mana back from divine than you should i think.   I forget as it was so long ago, but something made zealots fire smiters extremely powerful a long time ago, but it got overnerfed into nothingness..)

I want GW

umm, off topic.

Special abitities for general-controlled units sounds like a good idea to me.

I'm a bit torn on this.  On the one hand simplicity probably helps with learning and playing the games, and means less resources going to modelling and animating new units (I suspect this last point will win out).

On the other hand, I can picture in my mind the creeps having a big interesting battle all by themselves as a result of simple programmed behaviours interacting.  This happens to some extent already: the angels circle and swoop, the archers hang back and pepper people, and the Fomorian Beasts pilfered from Warrior Kings lob their rocks.  Maybe it could still be added to though, perhaps by using some more of the standard party RPG archetypes.  Like say a backstabber type.  

Incidentally, do the angels low HP targets (archers, magic users I guess) by preference?  They probably should if not.

night, minotaurs and archers have the least health