The "Generals" Discussion 2.0

All things Generals, Development and Discussion

By OrleanKnight on December 22, 2008 6:04:49 PM from

The "Generals" Discussion 2.0

Since Beta 1, we've been dealing with Assassins and we know them and love them for what they are. The introduction of Beta 2 brought a new side of the game into the light, Generals, and though we know they are far from finished this thread has been erected as a staple to help them grow into becoming something fun and unique to play. Join our discussion, express your ideas, and remember one fact when considering feedback:

Important Notes

* Consider how Generals can become more unique, within the bounds of what is already existing in the game of course.

* This is not the first thread of its kind, the original thread is found here: Demigod Journals: Generals

* Please provide clear feedback, following these guidelines:

- Title your ideas.

- List them in short, concise bullet points.

- Give details, in order, well below the list of bullet points.

- DO NOT quote other people's ideas in full length and type: "I agree"

- DO NOT quote other people line by line to "break down" their arguements.

Current List of Generals

Some Materials for this list originated from this thread: General Generals

For more details on each General, pleaese visit link provided above.

Oak

Lord Erebus

Sedna

Queen of Thorns

Primary Concerns from Community

Generals are, at present, nothing more than Assassins with the option of additional units.
Plays exactly like an Assassin.
Can do everything an Assassin can, but thensome.
Doesn't even remotely feel like an RTS element.

There is a lot of feedback from the community again Generals, this is why I'd like to make this thread more of the focus of that dicussion. In order to start things off on the right direction, I'll provide my feedback here as an example of the guidelines I've listed above. Thank you for your cooperation in this effort to expand upon the game in this open form of communication between community and development.

~ Orlean Knight

Suggestion: Generals and Assassins play 100% Differently

Right now, my largest concern with Generals, even though they are a new element that is far from complete, is that they share too many things in common with an Assassin. I feel that they should play very differently, and get rewarded in different ways. Assassins should play very differently from Generals, and in essense be almost two different games. Complicated indeed, but I think I have some ideas that may get things moving into that "gereral" direction.

Overview:

Things I feel that are WRONG with Generals

Generals hold their own against Assassins.
Generals have to enter the battle and lead their minions.
Generals can not develop or adjust their minions.
Minions are not a General's real strength.
Generals can wear equipment.
Generals have combat abilities to battle against Assassins.
Generals have no unique form of income.

Things I feel Generals MAY resolve these issues

Generals should be no stronger an Giants.
Generals can command and control their presence throughout the field, without leaving the base.
Generals can upgrade and adjust their minions attributes like the Citadel.
Minion's are the General's presense on the field.
Instead of Equipment, the Shop has sections for Generals to develope thier Minions.
Generals should have abilities which focus on healing and buffing grunts and minions and maybe area attacks.
Generals can earn gold to Upgrade Citadel, but a General's power pool could be generated from the death of mindless grunts.

Breakdown:

The enemy is breaking into the base, and more defense is needed on the front lines.
Your team is pushing hard on the base and they need an outpost to keep the push going.

A General should symbolize the measure of your war effort, and can have a lot of power when it comes to the direction and motivation of units on the field. Like in most RTS games, the General is the player themselves, the mouse pointer and the screen. The physical form of the General should only be a means in which to halt a player's command of an army for a duration of time. Making them a target which sits safely inside of the base behind defenses.

Unlike the Assassin, the General should use minions alone to try and take down enemy Demigods. Their Minions alone are their strength, and their only real physical fighting power. They can develop minions in the base using the shop as seen below:

Image Explaination:

This modified General Shop shows several unit types on the left that a General can summon via the Star Icon.
Selecting a unit shows upgrades for that unit type alone. Allowing you to increase armor and damage for choice units based on your play style.
The skull is an additional upgrade which adds effects to units on death. Making Assassins think twice before killing your minions.
The blue icon at the top is an idea, it represents Souls that Generals can collect and invest into upgrades.

Souls

This is an idea I have, I'd like to know what others think. But I feel there needs to be a proxy for the General on the field, and I feel that could be in the form of a Soul Reaper. This unit is the only thing I can think of that would actually be something 'new' that the artists would have to generate, so therefore it makes the suggestion questionable. But even so, I'll illustrate the idea as best as I can so help others judge whether or not something like this is a good idea or not.

Soul Reaper

This proxy can be a critical unit which, like the Oak's ward, can draw in souls from units that die near it. These souls can then be utilized by the Generals back the base to invest into various unit upgrades. These Soul Reapers become a prime target for shutting out the production of a General's units, and also makes them very precious for the General to keep alive. I would imagine they wouldn't be able to defend themselves, but instead have a good sum of HP to absorb some damage, and they protentially even be upgraded. This idea is variable, I just felt it'd be interesting and different.

Experience Points and Abilities

Well if a General is not in combat, how would they accquire experience to develop their abilities? This question could be answered with the soul idea listed above, but just incase no one takes interest into that idea - there would need to be a sound alternative. I feel the minions under a General's control could be able to amass experience points just like other Assassins. When they kill something or capture something, that experience is transferred into the General who can gain levels and put points into developing abilities that heal and buff their minions and grunts. Also, potentially Area Damage skills can be used as well to frighten off Assassins who try to hinder your army's movements.

Protection spells seems like very good alternative to attacks, such as putting up a shield against the Torch Bearer's Rain of Ice for instance. A high level Rain of Ice can sunder a whole army, but if a shield is thrown up to cushion the blow, the General's army can still push on and lead the charge. These abilities can be cast anywhere within a minion's range and proximity as the General remains in the base.

Fortifications and Outposts

Another idea that would make Generals interesting would be to turn them into physcial outposts, think The Queen of Thorns taking root and opening her bud. She is underguard by her Honor-Guard while in this mode, these units can be deployed by her and are seperate from her minions that she produced back at the base. This mode leaves the General very vulnerable, but can become a big help to a team on the move. Because a General can then spawn units from their location to quickly aid in the battle, furthemore magical orbs can appear which can be remote links to the Shop and the Citadel for friendly Demigods to use so they don't have to run all the way back the base and keep the forward push strong.

I would also image a General in this state can emit an aura the increases the defense of Towers of Light, making them a suitable defensive line against Grunts.

Death of a General

A General's demise should not spell the end of his/her units. Instead, they will no longer have a leader to command them. Minions in this state can go "rogue", attacking anything and everything in thier proximity, even friendly Demigods. This should make Generals think twice about leaving the base and making themselves vulnerable to attack. Once a General comes back to life, they'll regain control over whatever survivers are left of their once proud army.

Unit Flexibility

Aside from just be able to purchase units and upgrade them, Generals should be able to choose from a wide range of different types of units, including Angels and Giants, which will allow them to make an army more tuned to their play style. If they want slow, lumbering tanks on the field - allow them to summon Giants early on, but of course restrick their numbers. I'd like to see many different units, allowing for Generals to make an army they really can call their own, and plays the way they want to.

And that to me, is what I feel a Genral should be about. Any questions? ^^

+70 Karma | 183 Replies

To balance "Base Generals" with Generals that go out into the field, all you would have to do is reduce the recast time on the minions.

This would allow the "Base General" to keep sending waves of minions out.

If you go out into the field, then the General would be able to buff, debuff, heal, stun, etc...

Personally, I do not want to play a demigod were I sit in the base the entire time. I want to be able to buff, debuff, heal, stun, etc...

For balancing the game, I would hope the base General would only be ~80% as effective. My reasoning, is that the base General is not taking a risk of getting killed.

Zorph

I think that generals should have decent health but little to no damage output. That way you can hang out on the front line and cast spells to help his minoins if you want to but you do not have too. The damage output should be almost entirely from the minoins. There should be more minoins and they should scale better.

I think nerfing the generals damage output, buffing the minions and increasing the number of minions is all that is needed to make it feel RTS like.

I personally feel bad for the Devs at this point, almost EVERYONE has a different viewpoint of how Generals SHOULD work.

Quoting Zorph,

reply 1

the base General is not taking a risk of getting killed.

Zorph, face it, that's what Generals do in reality.

Soccer, I would humbly suggest you stop as your comments are not building anything, they are purely deconstructive and repetitive to points you've already made. Try to post when you offer new information to the table.

Furthermore, asking the question "What point do Generals have in the game if they are base bound" has been already answered by me, and I hate to have to repeat myself. So I'm mainly going to draw from my previous quotes.

If you don't wanna stay in the base, that's fantastic. You should be able to choose a General that is more offensive. If I want to stay in the base, I should be able to choose a General more built for that.

The power of choice is the key importance here. We don't "have" to have this or "have" to have that. With so many Generals, they all should differ somehow.

But a General should be able to bolster the strength of presently existing structures, either with spells, purchasable units, or their own aura. This way they can not defend all structures, only those within their defensive proximity.

The enemy is breaking into the base, and more defense is needed on the front lines.

Your team is pushing hard on the base and they need an outpost to keep the push going.

A base bound general could be an option, not a requirement. I feel I can answer the question by breaking down how a 1v1 game would play if an Assassin was pit against a General, and how would it work.

Minions are fragment's the General, like small chewable, bite sized pieces that the Assassin can gnaw upon the get the gold and experience points that they would normally accquire from the death of another Demigod. It would be the General's responsibility to keep units alive and intact, denying the experience to an Assassin just as if Demigods run away from them in order to not be killed. This means that the minions are but the long arms of a stationary General.

Other issues such as "A base bound general would have quicker access to Citadel Upgrades and use of Life Crystal for mana regeration" are true concerns, but can potentially by solved by allowing Assassins to effect upgrades of their Citadel, even from a distance. I break down issues with my ideas further below, as even I know nothing I say is the measurement of prefection.

Flag Capture

Some would question this as a paradox to the idea, how would a General capture a flag? If Minions could capture flag, couldn't a General in essense, capture all the flags at once leaving the Assassin vastly out numbered? Also, a Commander unit wouldn't work as that would also brings up more problems than it would solve. Perhaps the General could capture all flags at once with Minions, but the Flag capture rate could be reduced, versus an Assassin who would be able to capture much faster being as he's a one man army.

Abilities

Some people want units to have special abilities unique to them. I wouldn't go with such an idea, this would further denounce the need for a General Demigod unit on the field. Keeping abilities strictly to the Demigod would keep a need for their existance. Furthermore, a base bound Demigod General would need a different source of Power other than Mana, as that would cause concerns with them potentially just sitting on Life Crystals the whole game's duration.

An Active General on the Battle Field

No matter what I say or suggest, this is likely the route we'll be taking. To many variables make a base bound General possible, but simply a complicated Demigod to produce as you'd need to build a completely different game, within an already existant game. However, even with a General on the battlefield the minions need to be their arms and legs, but the General really shouldn't be the one 'doing' anything - such as attacking towers, forts, and capturing flags. That should be mainly the function of an Assassin and the General's Minions.

There are just too many gameplay similarities between Generals and Assassins at present. Some people like that, I don't. And that's my view, my opinion, and my prosepective. Whatever ideas I produce are irrelevant, because in the end we the community understand the problem that Generals are and that there does need to be changes. I also believe that the problem can not be solved by tweaked damage, armor, and adjusting the "equipment" Generals get. Demigod may not be an RTS, but it's a Action RPG/RTS. Which makes it a mixture of the two genres, and it needs to reflect both genres or this would have all been a big waste of time.

OrleanKnight not only is that blindly offensive, but not even valid. Soccer is only giving his own opinions on what Generals should be, the same as you. And to be honest, I'm not for a base sitting General either. Generals are always at risk of being assassinated, sadly they can't in Demigod if they are in the back of the base.

I'm well aware of the issues Klaleara, and I listed them.

Agreed let Soccer post his opinion please, he does have a right to just like everyone else. I like generals but the only thing I think that needs changing is the damage output (less).

id rather have a base siting general so i can focus on my RTS portion of the game which is what we were soppose to get and i would like to control my minions without having to worry about dieing that was how i thought the game was going to be when i heard about demigod and OrleanKnights idea is pretty much the same cept the soul thing which is a nice addition altho the demigod is called the hero of ur team like most RTS in most RTS if ur hero dies the rest of ur men dont but here they do taking u out of the game for a short while and have it rebuild everything its better to not have him outside

even with a General on the battlefield the minions need to be their arms and legs, but the General really shouldn't be the one 'doing' anything - such as attacking towers, forts, and capturing flags. That should be mainly the function of an Assassin and the General's Minions.

I agree with this.

Soccer is fun and enthusiastic, no need to "humbly" direct him to sit down and shut up

Quoting OrleanKnight,

reply 4

Quoting Zorph, reply 1 the base General is not taking a risk of getting killed.
Zorph, face it, that's what Generals do in reality.

Of course generals in real life don't risk there life often, but it hurts the mechanics of the game. Base generals not risking there life allows there minions to always be on the field of battle and lowers the opponents opportunity for gold/exp.

Quoting OrleanKnight,

reply 4

The power of choice is the key importance here. We don't "have" to have this or "have" to have that. With so many Generals, they all should differ somehow.

Agreed

Quoting OrleanKnight,

reply 4

I do not want more base defenses.

Quoting OrleanKnight,

reply 4

When I think of a General, I think of a miliatry tactition who doesn't stick their neck out in the face of combat. Instead, they focus on amasing strength in numbers of having youthful muscle run out and do all the fighting for them. A general shouldn't leave the base, and if they do it should be for two reasons:

The enemy is breaking into the base, and more defense is needed on the front lines.
Your team is pushing hard on the base and they need an outpost to keep the push going.

A general in Demigod is still a Demigod, he is much more than just a typical general would be in real life. A general should be able to add to a battle, ie buff, debuff, heal, stun, root, etc...

Quoting OrleanKnight,

reply 4

I agree with Frogboy, minions should not give experience and or gold. This makes it to hard to balance a general in the field.

I agree with you that there are to many similarities between generals and assassins. But if we reduce the recast time a general could sit on the mana crystal and send out a ton more troops. If they also increased the max number of minions would allow him to be more general like. Also if you could use waypoints, it would be more RTS like.

Zorph

Quoting OrleanKnight,

reply 8

Sparika, saying Generals have to participate in battle may be taking away from their General-Feel. I'd say the best route would be to make some Generals more suited to participate in battle, and others more suited to stay in the base. Let the player decide what they want to do with the General.

Lifekatana, you said "give us ways to deactivate them for a long time" - by them, you mean Portals. Well, at present you can. You can capture an enemy portal and lock it down for 30 seconds. May not be a long time, but long enough to at least ensure you get one good wave of units out of it before the enemy takes it over again. Also, you support the Assassin-type play style of the General, that is well and good, and I feel we should keep that to some degree! I'm not saying we should whipe it out altogether. I just feel there needs to be more to the Generals, and not just an Assassin knock-off.

If you don't wanna stay in the base, that's fantastic. You should be able to choose a General that is more offensive. If I want to stay in the base, I should be able to choose a General more built for that.

The power of choice is the key importance here. We don't "have" to have this or "have" to have that. With so many Generals, they all should differ somehow.

You miss my point.

I you have actually read my post, you would have seen that I already knew about the option of flag capping and use it regurly(spelling?) . if you have further read my post, you would have seen I'm not an assasin-general. I said that a good general will use his minions much more than he uses his abilities. The power of minions is way too low in lategame though:-(. Sitting in a base is boring, no matter what. You have read the descyption wrong: Demigod didn't promise us full RTS(the feature page) it did however promise us DG's with creeps, it also promised us a lot more minions(so giants,cats, and angels, and/or more). I agree the 2 remaining generals(the girls;-)) should be more RTS, but they should still be in the field and in your base.

Already Demigod generals provide more than enough units for RTS gameplay. I don't understand why people are so up in arms that Demigod is not RTS enough when the whole dang is. You can have up to 20 units with a general which can be even with what you get in many RTS games. Also on the point of what real generals do who gives a flying fuck this is a game not real life it is about demigods with magic get a grip. The only real beef with generals now is the lack of options when it comes to units but talking about having a general that sits in the base only completely goes against the spirit of the game because then the general isn't even fighting to get into the pantheon he is just waiting around.

Quoting SlipperySnake,

reply 12

I agree that generals already supply more than enough RTS gameplay.

First, players need to be able to control their units separately from their demigods. After that is done, I suggest making demigods all unique and play differently from one another. I really hate the idea of having to spend money to buy items to spend mana to buy troops. I also hate the idea of there being troops that are not unique to each hero. Why not just blur the line between assassins and generals and get rid of the names "assassins" and "generals"? With this done, the slots currently used to create troops could be replaced with skills for the assassin heroes as well.

Here are my actual ideas for the heroes themselves:

The vampire lord: Make all of his troops be generated from his kills. All of his melee kills should should result in weak ghouls. Upgrading skills gives higher chance that a worthwhile unit will be spawned from a melee kill. It could be a more powerful melee unit, a powerful ranged unit, or even a siege unit. It could even be influenced by the unit killed. Imagine if you have a 80% chance of generating a powerful siege unit if you kill one of the enemy's siege units. The strategies and gameplay for this hero would be totally different from any other hero.

Oak: Make him more traditional in that he summons units on cooldowns. Skill upgrades allow for better units, etc. One unit could drain mana from heroes on attack, another could deal better damage to buildings, etc.

The forest faerie hero: She could be a more swarming hero. The cap of 20 units could be removed for just her, allowing her to build 30-40 units. Most of them would be weak melee units and ranged units. Her upgrades could allow for more units and maybe make units close to her become resistant to aoe spells.

The Last hero: we could have a building creating hero. He could create 1 tower that slows heroes, or stuns them, or does aoe damage. Another tower could re-direct direct damage spells that are cast w/ in a certain range back to the tower (ie re-direct a fireball to the tower, protecting the hero). Another tower could be a small portal spawn that summons the battle ranking appropriate units complete with the correct citadel upgrades. The hero retains control of up to 20 of these units at a time. The units spawn faster the closer it is to the enemy's citadel.

Just some ideas.

I like the idea of Generals being able to choose the path of mini-minions that spawn out of the gates, allowing Generals to direct troops towards a specific front. I do see a problem with allowing more direct control of the mini-minions since I would be the type of guy who would just order all of them to hang out at the life crystal and prevent the enemy from getting easy XP at the start of the game.

Demigod is fun as it is but I do have to agree that when I read the early previews that Generals would be more RTS like. I was hoping Assassins would be restricted to a FPS view with a bare minimum mini-map for navigation (would be cool as The Rook!) and Generals in the current default view. That'd give the Generals more situational Awareness and they could mark objectives, waypoints or markers to let any of his fellow Assassins know what's going on, kinda like Natural Selection or Savage.

But that'd be such a huge game mechanic change now...

Imagine if you have a 80% chance of generating a powerful siege unit if you kill one of the enemy's siege units.

Wasn't there an achievement for Erebus in the Lua files from Beta 1 - convert 200 Catapultasaurs to zombies?

oknight if u dodn't use a demigod why even have him, why not just troops. The reason is because your supposed to be a mighty demigod and u can't call it demigod if u dodn't have a demigod, now can we. If people want to just control units they can play an rts game not demigod. They told us generals would have mostly rts aspects. i repeat things because people like your self say the same things over and over, well guess what the answers always the same unless u say whats wrong with my ideas. Another point is generals shouldn't control grunts because if theirs multiple generals on 1 side they would have to choose who to listen too. Also what if the general was a nub. Oknight u say generals in real life stay behind lines but this game has no sniper rifles to take them out, or an such easy ways to kill a general. Now if u go back in time to were this game most relates to, Greekmythology. Now lets look at Alexander the Great a king, a general, and a soldier. His army conquered most of the known world. Want to know why, because he used his brains which can relate to demigods as smarts. He used trickery and in our case its spells. He led his men which noone else did. he was an awesome fighter and him leading his men is what made him such a great general. His soldiers obviosly did most of the work but they couldn't have done it without him. Thats my oppinion of what generals should be like incorporating most peoples ideas. I won't list them to u all or else Oknight will have a fit. if u want to know them look at anyone of my previous posts.

Zorph he told us not to quote pick a part arguments or is this just me thinking they read that. OPf course if I remembered correctly that would make him a hippocrit which he is.

The issues with the general as they currently are built is that the power levels of the generals attacks/skills are equal to an assassins. If you provided the assassins the option of buying the 3 summon totems they would play exactly as a general currently is discounting the unique units which really are just an aoe spell effect..

On a similar point even the 3 unique to general summoning items really aren't that impressive given the lack of attack move guard and patrol commands it's just better to direct the general arround and have them act sas some sort of permintate non-controled swarm.

I think the gsugestion of balancing them in a general vs general context first then reintrocducing the assasins is valid beucase right now. it would illistrate at least how there is no deferentiation between the way the generals and assasins operate. There is nothing at all delinating them other then the three purchasable summons, nothing that says you have entered a differnt mode of play.

While i don't think that not bringing your general out of your pbase would be an option in a general and assinsn combined game. I do think it should be a fesible option in a general vs general match without any of the given general lossing more then a 1/3 of thier power. It seems at the moment that the minions don't even contribute 1/4 to a generals potential or play style and I think that is the issue.

Quoting Soccer194,

reply 17

If people want to just control units they can play an rts game not demigod. They told us generals would have mostly rts aspects.

No, you're wrong.

"Demigod...it's described as real-time tactical strategy with extensive role-playing elements." - Developer Interview, from a few weeks ago.

Demigod is RTS and RPG in equal parts. That means there has to be an RTS option in it that's at least as fleshed out as the RPG part is. That's not the case at the moment.

If people want to control units they can play Demigod - that's what the Generals are there for.

"Demigod...it's described as real-time tactical strategy with extensive role-playing elements."

I'm not arguing anything here, but I think it's interesting that the Devs put "tactical" in there. From Wikipedia:

"Typical real-time strategy titles generally encourage the player to focus on logistics and production as much as or more than combat, whereas real-time tactics games more commonly do not feature resource-gathering, production, base-building or economic management, instead focusing on tactical and operational aspects of warfare such as unit formations or the exploitation of terrain for tactical advantage."

Yes, the lack of resource and base management makes it more of an RTT than an RTS - or it should, neither of those abbreviations currently describe anything in the game. Honestly, I find it more interesting that they effectively put RTS first and RPG second in that.

Quoting DatonKallandor,

reply 21

makes it more of an RTT than an RTS - or it should, neither of those abbreviations currently describe anything in the game.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Great discussion. Don't mind me as I read behind the scenes and take notes...

Quoting Zorph,

reply 10

I agree with Frogboy, minions should not give experience and or gold. This makes it to hard to balance a general in the field.

To clarify this point; Minions do not award experience or gold, never have. If they do it is a bug.

Someone explain to me how controling 20 units isn't RTS mixed with RPG I just don't get it. Soccer is right when he says if you want a pure RTS play a pure RTS is you want a RTT game like this then play this it isn't a big deal but when you complain about core game components it doesn't make sense. The RTS component is that control of 20 units. They don't have all the commands for them yet or a good variety but that will change hopefully.

I said not a demigod. I'm sorry but they should have to use both their units and their general. Without their general I was saying they should do alot worse not because generals should be able to crush the opposing. More of their general inspires them to do awesome feats of carnage and how others have suggested the closer a generals units are to him/her the better they should do. Those people who only want to use their general units not their general should go play a normal rts.

sry slippery posted when I was writing

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The "Generals" Discussion 2.0

All things Generals, Development and Discussion