How should this hero work?

[nathanieljbrill]

I'm putting together a hero that evolved into different kits as the game progresses. So he has a laning stage set of abilities, then mid game, then late game. The open question is, how does he evolve? Does he evolve at set times, like 10min, 20min? Or does he evolve with ability points? So you out 5 points in an ability and he evolves into the kit associated with that ability?
Or maybe he just evolves with max souls?

 

[gibnewitems]

There's no correct answer, but I would go for ability points. I have a thousand hours in ms paint, so I drew some cool bugs for visual aid.



Set times works if you want to design a hero that's more simpler and sticks to a linear form of progression. If you do go this route, I recommend cutting the middle stage. The strength with set time is that it's linear, and a middle form only serves to complicate and detract from the early and late stage. Design with a system's strengths, not against.



Ability points lets you design a hero that's more complex and can flex to fill different roles in the team, at the player's wishes. It's anti-linear, since players can max abilities at any order. You'll need a lot more than just three forms, but it will pay off. It also works better in solo queue as well, since the player won't be forced to transition to one playstyle, and instead can fill an empty slot.

Most games don't reach max souls.

 

[nathanieljbrill]

There's no correct answer, but I would go for ability points. I have a thousand hours in ms paint, so I drew some cool bugs for visual aid.

View attachment 68259

Set times works if you want to design a hero that's more simpler and sticks to a linear form of progression. If you do go this route, I recommend cutting the middle stage. The strength with set time is that it's linear, and a middle form only serves to complicate and detract from the early and late stage. Design with a system's strengths, not against.

View attachment 68260

Ability points lets you design a hero that's more complex and can flex to fill different roles in the team, at the player's wishes. It's anti-linear, since players can max abilities at any order. You'll need a lot more than just three forms, but it will pay off. It also works better in solo queue as well, since the player won't be forced to transition to one playstyle, and instead can fill an empty slot.

Most games don't reach max souls.

This is helpful. What I've been working with currently is a design where the ult has a countdown of 7 minutes. When it activates you evolve and pick one of the 3 options given from your old ability slots. Thoughts?

 

[Nezantra]

This is helpful. What I've been working with currently is a design where the ult has a countdown of 7 minutes. When it activates you evolve and pick one of the 3 options given from your old ability slots. Thoughts?

That's really cool. Look into Invoker from DotA 2 for a little more inspiration. Idk if you can really make the base idea work though, having different abilities at different points is potentially horrible game design and could be redundant, confusing, or overpowered. A cycle/progression based on a small pool of skills could work, but you're still looking at quite a lot of learning compared to the average hero. Within Deadlock's current design limitations, the skill point upgrade system is definitely the best way to find some form of progression though. One thing you should keep in mind if you flesh this hero out: only the first nine minutes of the game are genuinely considered as a unique time period, "the lane" by the game, or at least the game's internal data parsing. Early, mid, late are really assigned by the players and attempting to balance a hero around those stages seems tricky

 

[nathanieljbrill]

That's really cool. Look into Invoker from DotA 2 for a little more inspiration. Idk if you can really make the base idea work though, having different abilities at different points is potentially horrible game design and could be redundant, confusing, or overpowered. A cycle/progression based on a small pool of skills could work, but you're still looking at quite a lot of learning compared to the average hero. Within Deadlock's current design limitations, the skill point upgrade system is definitely the best way to find some form of progression though. One thing you should keep in mind if you flesh this hero out: only the first nine minutes of the game are genuinely considered as a unique time period, "the lane" by the game, or at least the game's internal data parsing. Early, mid, late are really assigned by the players and attempting to balance a hero around those stages seems tricky

I think you're both right. I should make the evolution based off of skill points and limit it to 4 evolutions. The current setup before you two commented had 1 person who could evolve into 4 who could evolve into 7. So 12 total ability setups. I will instead have only 5.

 

[Nezantra]

I think you're both right. I should make the evolution based off of skill points and limit it to 4 evolutions. The current setup before you two commented had 1 person who could evolve into 4 who could evolve into 7. So 12 total ability setups. I will instead have only 5.

What if each of the five abilities has an ultimate like effect, and has "permanent" effects on use, and they all have that uber long cooldown. No idea if you can make skill upgrades work that way

 

[nathanieljbrill]

What if each of the five abilities has an ultimate like effect, and has "permanent" effects on use, and they all have that uber long cooldown. No idea if you can make skill upgrades work that way

That sounds like you want to use all 5, which would be confusing. What I mean by 5 is that you have your starter character, and then he can turn into up to 4 characters. The design currently is that his ult is Evolution, and when he evolves he can turn into one of 4 characters.

Though I just had a thought that's pretty good and maybe fits the character better...
What if every time he uses his ult he gets to change 1 ability, or his base stats? So he can switch between the support, DPS, Mobile, or Tank Stats, and he has up to 12 abilities (4 for each ability slot). So each time he uses his ult he picks if he's changing one of the base abilities or his stats, and then picks what he wants to change it into. After all 3 ability slots and his base stats have been decided on he gets a new ult.

I might make two versions of the Evolution Ultimate, one that uses turning into different people and one that changes one facit at a time.