The Hero Emporium

Suggestions for Heroes

from Elemental Forums

Fallen Enchantress has made great strides on improving the role and portrayal of heroes. For example, each hero now has their own list of traits, and heroes are now recruited through quests, which are presumably customized according to their characters and backstories. But there's still more that can be done! This thread is for people who want to suggest

1: A hero creator

A very simple idea, really. In WoM, we have the Sovereign creator, and heroes can be created with it and the XML. However, it would be far easier if the Sovereign Creator turned into a Hero creator, with a button that allowed you to switch between sovereign and regular hero. Of course, extra options like recruitment level, method of recruitment, and etc. would need to be implemented, but that shouldn't be too hard to overcome.

2: Fighting in style

So you've just spent the last fifteen minutes designing your new sovereign/hero. He's got the perfect colors, and this really neat jacket/hat combo. You can't wait to conquer the world of Elemental with your new hero. And then you get four minutes into the game, research padded armor, and all of your design efforts go flying out the window. If you want to stay competitive and really play the game, you've got to equip the armor, and your character suddenly looks like every other soldier on the battlefield. And let's face it, when you think "awesome fantasy heroes," the armored heroes of WoM probably wasn't what you had in mind. My suggestion is to add a cosmetic pane for your heroes that allows you to equip armor while keeping the look of a second article of clothing. Then your heroes can all look unique while remaining competitive in the game.

3: Quests assigned to particular heroes

The idea here is that heroes, once acquired, are not simply one-man army units, but characters with stories. Quests would be generated by our heroes, specifically for our heroes to complete. Some of these quests would emerge from backstory. Say one of our heroes, Darius, lost his sister during a bandit raid. What would happen in game is, after the quest is triggered (say, Darius defeats three bandits), Darius comes to the Sovereign (that is, you) and informs you that he's learned his sister might still be alive, a slave at X bandit camp. You are then given the opportunity to take up Darius' personal quest by attacking the bandit camp and freeing his sister. Success means special equipment for Darius, while refusing the quest or failing to act after X turns may cause him to leave your kingdom. Similar quests could emerge from in-game events (like being poisoned by a plaguestalker, picking up X trait, or governing a city for X turns). This idea is adapted from an earlier discussion with Kenata, who provides some great ideas for how to practically implement this idea. You could even use this idea to add some in-game character to the default sovereigns.

That's all I've got for right now. Let me know what you think, and add your own ideas into the mix! What other things would give heroes that extra edge and make them an even more exciting and unique part of FE?

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Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Thanks for the compliment, Szeretni. I appreciate it. Here are a couple other ideas that could be neat.

4: Party quests

As it stands, quests can simply be completed with one's whole army. Need to escort the nobleman's son? Just send your sovereign and two or three peasant battalions, and you're set. What would be really neat, though, would be quests that require you to set up a party. Say you unlock a quest to hunt down a treacherous wizard, hiding in the ancient caverns. Now the caverns are too narrow and treacherous to send an army down there, so you can only send up to five of your strongest soldiers (IE, heroes). What this quest would do is force you to create a cohesive, well-designed party of heroes. Have you spent the whole game equipping all your heroes with broadswords and exclusively leveling up their attack? That'll really hurt here, where you might need a swift archer and a smart healer to win the day. Doubly cool would be if there were a way for your hero party to fight another faction's hero party, thus providing the ultimate challenge of whose party was better.

5: Expanding the larger strategic function of heroes

One of the problems with heroes in WoM is that they don't really -do- a lot. They act as simply an alternative to soldier groups. What would be neat, if possible, is to expand the quest system to allow heroes to impact the larger game as a whole. For example, if a hero governs a city long enough, then a quest pops up for that city that, if completed, will provide a civic bonus for the city or the empire at large. Researching X randomly triggers a quest that, if completed, will immediately research Y tech. Being in a war with Altar long enough will trigger a quest that, if completed, gives you extra info about Altar's armies, or sabotages a city's production ability, or poisons the garrison, etc. You see how heroes can help your kingdom in building your empire, winning the tech race, or fighting subversive warfare? Improving on the functions of heroes and quests and distinguishing them from armies would be a big plus, in my book.

Any comments? Any new ideas? Any general thoughts on how awesome/waste-of-time heroes are, and what you want out of them? They'd all be welcome. Let's get a conversation going!

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

For number 2 I select my sovereigns metal color as something different from my faction metal color.   I also make both unique so they stand out from the rest.   My faction one would normally be blood red while my sovereigns would be imperial purple.   Not quite what you had in mind but ti worked well fro giving my sovereign a unique look on the battlefield once they were equipped with metal armour.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Re: 2.

This bothered me as well until they perfected the unit cards. Now you can have the card display any aesthetic you want and still be competitive in a battle. There should be lots of unique armor choices for heroes to make each one look different from one another and regular soldiers. I also wish there was a magical advantage to not wearing armor to differentiate units with specific roles. I would guess that we can look forward to magical robes and staves in that respect. 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

For item two, the easies way is using Surcoats that, you know, are actually wore over armor as opposed to instead of, as it stands now in Elemental.

Specially if you can add some iconography to said surcoat, and make some nifty Monthy Python Jokes to boot :p

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

1.  This just makes sense. Also support so that you can simply add these heroes to random spawn lists or whatever would be nice.

2. I believe that FE will have quite a few hero only items, so heroes would be somewhat differentiated. Still as I said in another post tabards and decorations that show over armor would be nice.

3. Maybe it might be a little unnecessary and complicated though.

4. Same as 3

5. There is definitely lots of room for heroes to take up more civic duties. Maybe let them gain experience from governing cities, and let more stats boost cities? Like strength giving a small production bonus, and knowledge a research one? Maybe special quests could take place in cities? Say randomly you get a request to hunt down some thieves and if you say yes your garrisoned hero goes to a tactical battle?