DerekPaxton DerekPaxton

Design a Trait Contest

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Design a Trait Contest

from Elemental Forums

 

I love role playing game’s (RPGs).  At its core Fallen Enchantress is half 4x strategy game and half RPG.  The best mechanics for Fallen Enchantress are applicable at an RPG and 4x level.  In particular we are trying to push the RPG side of the game so that it feels like a 4x game set in an RPG world.

There are a lot of game mechanics and implementation details (flavor) that support this focus.  But one of my favorites in Fallen Enchantress is Traits.

Traits are used in a few ways.  They are assigned to monsters and champions much as abilities are in War of Magic (at an implementation level traits are abilities, the ability system has just received a lot of new functionality to support what we need traits to do).  They are also used when you design units.  So you can design a unit with their equipment, mounts and any special traits you want to assign to them (the amount of traits and the traits you have to choose from depend on your techs).

TraitsBut my favorite use of traits is that you no longer simply add points when your champions level up.  Instead you have a random selection of traits to choose from.  Some traits are common, some are uncommon and some are rare.  They are random so that players can’t simply choose their favorites every time.  It also allows us to make traits unbalanced, rare traits can be pretty cool without making common traits useless.  And it helps make your champions more unique if one of them got some cool ability when he hit 2nd level (instead of having that trait require a min level of 10 or another balancing control).

Fallen Enchantress offers 5 random traits for the unit to pick from when they level up and the player gets to choose one.  The traits offered may depend on the traits the unit already has, for example champions that produce gildar may get traits that allow them to improve that ability.  Champions will have the ability to improve their spell casting proficiency by traits (access to spells isn’t limited to intelligence in Fallen Enchantress), to improve their stats, or to gain new skills.

We have lots of fun traits planned.  But I’m excited to hear from you so tomorrow we will be starting a Design a Trait contest.  What abilities would you like units to gain when they level up?

Watch the https://www.elementalgame.com/contest for the contest to go live tomorrow.

 

Update on 3/17/2011: Conditional Traits

One of the most interesting features of traits is that they can be conditional in Fallen Enchantress (unlike abilities).  So they can only apply in specific situations.  we currently have tags for:

vsDamaged- This trait only takes effect when you are attacking a damaged unit

vsHigher- This trait only takes effect when you are attacking a unit with a higher (whatever UnitStat is specified).

vsLower- This trait only takes effect when you are attacking a unit with a lower (whatever UnitStat is specified).

vsOtherAllegiance- This trait only takes effect when you are attacking a unit of the opposite allegiance (kingdom attacking fallen or vise versa).

vsUnitType- Unit Type is a new attribute in Fallen Enchantress, all units are either Beasts, Elementals, Twisted, Humans, Construct or Dragons.  This allows a trait to only be active when you are attacking the specified unit type.

WhenUnderPercentHitPoints- This trait is only active when the unit with it is under the specified percentage of their hit points.

xActions- This trait is only active for the specified amount of actions in tactical combat.  This is how we give Plaguestalkers a huge movement and attack boost just for their first action.

255,666 views 153 replies
Reply #126 from Elemental Forums Top

Can't see it in any browser. They're simply not there yet. :)

Reply #127 from Elemental Forums Top

Broken for me as well.

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Reply #128 from Elemental Forums Top

i dont think its broken i think they didnt decide yet

Reply #129 from Stardock Forums Top

Unfortunately they have not had the time to decide yet. I've delayed the voting for 1 day until I can speak to Derek and figure out when he has the time to go through it.

EDIT: Just talked to Derek, we've decided to delay voting until Monday, April 4th. Voting will begin at 1PM that day.

Bara

Reply #130 from Elemental Forums Top

any top 10 favorites ?

Reply #131 from Elemental Forums Top

Does that mean we won't get to see who the top 5 are until the 4th, or are we just delaying the actual voting until then?

Reply #132 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting IronKaiser, reply 131
Does that mean we won't get to see who the top 5 are until the 4th, or are we just delaying the actual voting until then?

You will not see the top 5 until then.

Bara

Reply #133 from Elemental Forums Top
Very disappointed with the top five. All bias aside (meaning I'm not going to talk about my trait), these are very boring. I was shocked to find out that Demon Seed wasn't there. I can't believe these are the top 5 fresh and creative traits to implement that the dev team went to the community for. Bad form.
Reply #134 from Elemental Forums Top

No offense to those who were chosen and excluding my frustration of not being chosen, these top 5 are terrible and bland. Out of all the interesting and unique submissions, theses are what you think are the best?

FE expectations dropping <X3 XO :typo:

Reply #135 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting cyprian714bc, reply 133
Very disappointed with the top five

me too, first i tought i wont vote at all but i gave my vote to black market

Reply #137 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Kadrium, reply 136
The problem might have been that a lot of the submissions were too ambitious for the scope of what traits were meant to accomplish. A lot of the submissions might have made great spells, but were too high powered for traits. Hence, the viable candidates seem 'bland' compared to the effects that may have been really neat but didn't fit as what a trait is supposed to 'do'.

Exactly. Pages of information and world shattering abilities is fine for spells and quests but traits are supposed to be much more modest. Normal troops are supposed to be able to get them....

I voted for hidden assassin because the ability to actually train a champion to be a super assassin and send him out to murder enemy sovereigns or champions would be awesome beyond words. Especially when the dynasty system get fixed. Would add so much to the game. 

 

Reply #138 from Elemental Forums Top

i know what you mean but 100% they could find something better then the beast dominator :S (no offense)

Reply #139 from Elemental Forums Top

Disagree with all of the nay-sayers.  The five that were chosen seem like perfectly reasonable abilities. 

I was intrigued by the hidden assassin choice, but I couldn't decipher exactly how the effect would work (assassins jumping around like ninjas it seemed to me,) so I was forced to choose another option.  Bummer.

Reply #141 from Elemental Forums Top

W00T mine got picked! You're all just jealous :P

Seriously though, I agree with Kadrium and Dsraider. These are traits that should be nice bonuses or ways to differentiate heroes, not game changers in and of themselves.

Reply #142 from Elemental Forums Top

I like the Outlaw connections.  I would pick that, seems like a fun mechanic.  I always prefer to make friends, instead of killing the random strangers I run into in the woods...

Reply #144 from Elemental Forums Top

I've spent 100 years moving an army across the map. 

Reply #145 from Elemental Forums Top

I went with hidden Assasin, simply because the mechanics needed to implement that sounds interesting for future mods.

All in all I find the other very meh. They aren't bad of course.

Outlaw Connections can change early game quite a bit (getting more units faster and indirectly less enemies through conversion), as well as Beast Dominator (easier fights). Black Market Merchant (which needs a name change eventually that is more descriptive) at least forces SD to make the AI able to use the shopkeeper, else the ability would be pretty useless. ;) Pathfinder is useful of course, on the excitement scale though it's just slightly above +1 strength ability.

So yeah...

Reply #146 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Lord, reply 142
I like the Outlaw connections.  I would pick that, seems like a fun mechanic.  I always prefer to make friends, instead of killing the random strangers I run into in the woods...

 

Same, seemed like a really interesting (and helpful) ability.

Reply #147 from Elemental Forums Top

I chose the beast dominator trait because at least it's an actual ability rather than just some passive buff.

Reply #148 from Elemental Forums Top

The selection wasn't bad, but I have to agree with the blandness.  Maybe it was the implementation part that pruned some of the other entries, or they were aiming for more common or basic unit skills.  I figured the assassin one was the most interesting as it encouraged a change in tactics (making a single unit viable vs. a group of units), and being a trait that could be on a champion or normal unit. Plus the stealthed till detected/engaging part is cool.

 

I wonder if there will be a marching formations thing to set or in the background to set the aproximate location that units will appear on the tactical map.

Reply #149 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting crystlshake, reply 148
I figured the assassin one was the most interesting as it encouraged a change in tactics (making a single unit viable vs. a group of units), and being a trait that could be on a champion or normal unit. Plus the stealthed till detected/engaging part is cool.

My thoughts exactly.

 

I was a bit disappointed with the selection as some of you have expressed. They were of the mundane variety. I figured Stardock could come up with the more common traits themselves and were looking for an influx of ideas that were unique and perhaps powerful, and consequently rare in-game. But I can understand if they wanted traits to provide slight bonuses.

Reply #150 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Vandenburg, reply 145
Pathfinder is useful of course, on the excitement scale though it's just slightly above +1 strength ability.

I know its not a 'this-guy-is-actually-a-half-titan-only-he-doesn't-know-it-yet-but-this-is-going-to-be-epic' kind of trait, and that was intentional. I quite dislike worlds/games where every character worth naming is actually some uber powerful supernatural creature. Where does that leave your 'regular' heroes?

Besides, one of the reasons I went with this is because I had the modding potential in mind. I'm no expert, but I guess that to implement Pathfinder they'll need a bit of code that either detects what kind of terrain the unit is on, or that detects the fact that movement has been reduced. Either option could open up some nice abilities for modders.

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