Editing AC2:Announcements - 2005/05 - Legions (section)

== Letter to the Players #4 ==
{{AC2 Article
 |  Link = <nowiki>http://forums.ac2.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?t=13790</nowiki>
 | Title = Legions Letter #4: Hero 2.0 Overview
 |  Text = 
'''Hero 2'''
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It’s almost here: Hero 2.0, a complete re-envisioning of post-50 game play. What’s changed? Well, it’s easier to say what HASN’T changed. The Hero quest remains the same. The level range remains the same. Everything else has changed. Forget what you know about post-50 gameplay: your preconceptions may mislead you. Hero skills, Focus, how you gain powers… all of this has been altered, often dramatically.
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Over the coming weeks we will explore a new world of game play. To say that we’re excited about these changes is quite the understatement. This letter is designed to just give you an overview of the new Hero 2 systems – future letters will give more detailed information.
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'''Why Did We Do This?'''
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We started by just adding some new hero skills and calling it “Hero 2.0.” But before we had even released this, we realized it wasn’t enough. Hero-level gameplay needed dramatic readjustment, and that’s what it’s gotten. Here’s the problems as we saw them:
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- The difficulty shifts too much between pre-Hero and post-Hero levels. Monsters become too hard for many class templates.
- Most hero skills suffer from balance issues (they are either too powerful or too weak), and even putting balance issues aside, most hero skills are boring because you can’t use them often enough.
- The Focus attribute is not fun enough.
- There aren’t enough choices for high-level players.
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In short, the Hero levels are supposed to offer a new world of excitement to players, and they were just sort of “enh.” We really wanted to ramp up the fun.
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'''Focus Re-envisioned, Hero Skills Rebalanced'''
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In today’s game, Focus is either too precious, or too useless: either you don’t like your hero skills so Focus is meaningless, or your hero skills are so useful that you don’t want to “waste” your Focus unless you really have to.
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So it seemed like we needed more uses for Focus, but more than that, we needed Focus to be less “precious” and hoardable. We needed to make Focus a dynamic, fluid variable – something that is earned quickly and is spent loosely. In other words, it needs to really be an interactive part of the game.
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So, the Focus system was redesigned. Heroes will now have a max Focus of 100, not 1000. You earn 20 Focus from killing any solo monster your level or higher. Your fellowship earns 100 Focus from killing a group monster (unless the monster is much lower than the group’s level range). So it is now much easier to fill up your Focus bar.
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Hero Skills have been rebalanced as well. Now, they cost only a bit of Focus – say 20-30 Focus per use. And while they’re still powerful – more powerful than any normal skill – they are less powerful than they were in Hero 1. This new system allows them to be usable much more often – many times every play session – rather than being saved for rainy days.
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There are also many new hero skills, including another unique skill for every class, as well as more than a dozen new hero skills that are common to all classes. These skills also use Focus, so now Focus is a much more useful and tactical part of the game.
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'''Hero Credits'''
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In the past, the few Hero skills that were available were free – you simply got them by being the proper level. That’s all changed now. A new type of skill credit – called the Hero Credit – is used to purchase these skills.
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Unlike Skill Credits, Hero Credits are used in bulk. A typical hero active skill might cost 300 or 400 hero credits! You earn 100 Hero Credits per level that you are eligible to be a hero. So you earn 100 hero credits at level 45, another 100 at level 46, and so on. If you become a hero later in life (say at level 50), you retroactively earn all the hero credits you would have earned in the earlier levels.
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But there is another way to earn Hero Credits, too. Monsters now drop Tesserae, freely tradable objects that grant a Hero Credit when used. Tesserae can increase your Hero Credit count, up to a certain limit based on your level. For instance, at level 50, a player will have automatically earned 600 hero credits, but they may have earned up to 150 more by using Tesserae. (If a player reaches the maximum number of Hero Credits, and they find another Tessera, they can either hold on to the Tessera until they level up, or they can trade or sell it to others.)
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The Tesserae are an extra reward mechanism – you can also earn them by questing. But you never need Tesserae – the Hero Credits that you earn automatically by leveling will be enough to keep your character viable and interesting. The credits you are granted by level 50 will give your character power similar to what they had in the previous system. By level 60, the automatic hero credits will make your character much more powerful than existing level 60 characters. And Tesserae can make your character even more powerful.
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'''New Active Skills'''
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In addition to the Hero Skills you already have, and the new unique class-specific “tier 3” hero skills, there are a bunch of new skills that are available to every class. These skills were presented long ago, as the original plan for Hero 2.0. Now, they are just one part of the equation.
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These skills scale from 0 to 10 by spending XP on them. This unusual level cap was chosen so that each level of skill would be very significant. When you buy these skills, they start at 0 -- meaning they can't be used at all until you spend XP in them. This is a measure intended to prevent min/maxing behavior.
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There are three new types of skills: Bursts, Chants and Forces.
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- A Burst skill is meant to be used in a pinch; the magnitude of the effect will be quite large, but so is its cool down time.
- Chant skills are vital-boosting effects. They are aura effects, so they can be switched on and off, and affect the whole fellowship. While a chant skill is on, the chanter will constantly lose Focus while players gain health or vigor. If the player runs out of Focus, the skill turns off.
- Force skills are self-only buffs that grant things like armor or damage reflection. They cost a small amount of Focus to turn on, and they take additional Focus each time the player is hit. If the player runs out of Focus (or turns the skill off manually), the effect ends.
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There are also hero skills that mimic the portal/lifestone recall/summon skills, allowing players to spend hero credits on these powers instead of regular credits.
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These skills will go on the main Hero Skills Page for each class (we’ve separated the Hero Skills from the regular class skills, for cleanliness). But aside from these skills, there are also Perks.
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'''Hero Perks'''
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Perks are passive hero skills that have only 1 level of skill: on or off. A perk simply doesn’t go past “1”, the level you get when you buy the perk. So in essence, the only thing you lose for buying a perk is Hero Skill Credits – you don’t have to spend XP on them.
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Perks are modest permanent power boosts. You can only untrain one perk per 10 day period. This is to keep people from min/maxing their perks constantly by untraining them. When you train a perk, the game will warn you that you can only untrain one perk per 10 days.
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All Perks appear on a separate Perks GUI page, which can be reached from the Hero page for each class. You do NOT have to untrain all your Perks in order to switch classes – perks are class agnostic. You can buy Perks from the Perk Page as soon as you become a hero, although some Perks have parent perks that must be bought first.
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Note that perks do NOT have level requirements!
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Perks range from "Night Stalker", a skill that gives you a small bonus to accuracy during the nighttime hours, to "Pack Rat ", a perk that gives you one extra inventory slot, to "Fast Learner", a perk that increases how much XP you get when you kill a monster. There are perks for taunting, pet management, critical-hit chances, accuracy against certain types of monsters, and much more.
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There are more than 150 perks to choose from, allowing for an unprecedented amount of character specialization. Many perks come in several levels – for instance, there are six “Deep Pockets” perks, allowing up to 6 additional inventory slots. Some Perks, such as Jumping Mastery, are provided for flavor only, but almost all of them are useful to different types of characters.
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'''Passive Changes, Stat Rebalances'''
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The passive skills have been re-addressed. Arcane Lore has been left unchanged, but the other passive skills have been reinvented or completely replaced.
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In addition, regular skills that scale past 50 have been made more potent in those higher levels, so that there is much more incentive to raise them.
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These changes go hand in hand with a rebalancing of high-level monsters. The end result is a system where players are better able to hit monsters, evade monster attacks, and survive incoming damage. Pets at high levels have also been adjusted so that they are more in line with the sorts of monsters being fought.
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'''Combo Chains'''
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By working together, three or more players can form a “combo chain.” Each of them use a particular skill in the right order, and the result is a dramatic attack upon the monster. The combos vary in exactly what damage they do, but all combos have a couple of identical properties: in addition to damage, they also stun the monster for 2 seconds (even if the monster has already been stunned in the last minute). If the monster is killed during the 2 seconds that it is stunned, the monster is worth more XP than usual.
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Combo Chains always involve at least one use of a Hero Skill, and always require 3 different people (though not necessarily 3 skills). Aside from that, we won’t be giving too much information away about Combo Chains… there are some hints in the game that will help clever players figure out what the chains are on their own.
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'''Conclusion'''
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This letter has provided a broad overview of the general ideas in Hero 2.0. Taken together, these changes have altered the entire post-hero game, making it more fun, offering more character diversity, and providing greater opportunities for strategy and tactics.
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Stay tuned for more information on Hero 2.0 in the coming weeks!
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