If there is a second season of expansions and dlc, what would you like to see? What do you think Triumph should focus on?

[Praetor_IV]

I understand it takes time and energy to implement features fully and that's why what I would like the devs to focus on is the existing features.

Generally speaking I think they should try to consolidate the game to make it better and shouldn't add piles of new features. I personnally might be more inclined to pay for the opportunity to have a better game overall than for another shiny trinket even if it's filled with fey mist. I think some of us are loosing patience with that.

Maybe they should cool it on the forms and mounts creation.
I don't want to see a crocodile ridding an antelope just yet, as funny as it sounds to me, for the dev team it might be time and money that could go to another direction instead.

What I would like to see in a possible string of dlcs :

Rework of the old cultures to make them as appealing and unique as the new ones

More varied stories associated with heroes and cities with more complex and branched outcomes

More varied wildlife in general

More coherent infestations with units that have a commom theme : for instance dragon lairs with no dragons seems a bit strange and for most of them it's an assortment of different units that have little in common.

More varied recruitable units from ancient wonders that might also be more in theme with the scenario associated with the wonders.
exemple : you overcome a spider den, maybe you could recruit spiders

speaking of ancient wonders I would like to see them expanded a little more with more branched choices and outcomes, multiple combats etc a little bit like planetfall sites.

there is also a lack of atmopshere for each world (for instance they are quite different from their portal view and rather disapointingly similar in general) so more unique atmospheres especially for the premade realms, more biomes, more combat maps associateed with them

More tomes, more choice

More equipment of course

For new features : I think deities would be interesting, each associated with an affinity for instance, that you can interact with, compete for their favor, feel their wrath

undead rulers from the start of the game

 

[Bootymcboots]

Rework of the old cultures to make them as appealing and unique as the new ones

I'm an outspoken critic of Reavers and I haven't played Primal yet, so I would need to be convinced that the old cultures need to be brought up in line. And if they did it shouldn't be in DLC. But as spoken about before, this is also pretty normal for the AoW series. Later on additions are more specific and unique in function and play quite a bit differently compared to the early stuff.

If you say 'make the cultures better' I'd be happy to agree. But I don't think they're a problem now nor are they exactly worse than the new ones. Every build idea I have in my mind for the coming update actually has nothing to do with the Primal culture and more to do with new features, tomes and racial abilities.

More varied stories associated with heroes and cities with more complex and branched outcomes

I just flat out don't get why people want this so badly. It really flies over my head, I guess.

More varied wildlife in general

I agree, but I think it's contradictory to ask for this but shame the implementation of mounts, because every single mount has become at least one creature at the same time. And also they've just been doing it consistently. So you're basically just asking them to keep doing what they're doing.

More coherent infestations with units that have a commom theme : for instance dragon lairs with no dragons seems a bit strange and for most of them it's an assortment of different units that have little in common.

I think part of that is to due with the fact that not all infestations are the same level. And while I'm okay with this in concept, a cost of it is going to be less diverse battles and I always question how far people want to take this. I.E. should spiders be fighting with wolves and elephants? That doesn't make much sense. But do they get a pass since they're all animals?

More varied recruitable units from ancient wonders that might also be more in theme with the scenario associated with the wonders.
exemple : you overcome a spider den, maybe you could recruit spiders

At an ancient tower you get an undead dragon. At magical trees you get plant life. At idealist groves you get fey. In desert caves you get snakes. At hidden crypts you get spirits. At an ogre's den you get ogres. At a fiery forge you get a fire giant. At an ancient golden temple you get a phoenix. For the most part, I don't see the complaint. You seem to be asking them for what they're already doing. Unless you mean that you should just have full recruitment when you capture these places, skipping the rally of lieges.

speaking of ancient wonders I would like to see them expanded a little more with more branched choices and outcomes, multiple combats etc a little bit like planetfall sites.

Well you just said that you would like it, and I don't see anything inherently wrong with it so fair enough.

there is also a lack of atmopshere for each world (for instance they are quite different from their portal view and rather disapointingly similar in general) so more unique atmospheres especially for the premade realms, more biomes, more combat maps associateed with them

Have you played with the world map generator? I mean that as an honest question because if you're messing with geography, terrain type, infestation spawns, wide game rules, the presence or not of the underground and if there's a special scenario boss enemy for the world it'd be hard for them to look disappointing. Wanting more cover arts for the portals is fine though.

More tomes, more choice

Well we seem to be getting 12 a year so that's pretty sweet.

More equipment of course

We can have any kind of equipment now thanks to the forge.

For new features : I think deities would be interesting, each associated with an affinity for instance, that you can interact with, compete for their favor, feel their wrath

Nothing really to say here, just including it for completeness

undead rulers from the start of the game

Any particular reason?

 

[Blanch Warren]

Any particular reason?

There doesn't need to be a reason for undead rulers.

 

[Bootymcboots]

There doesn't need to be a reason for undead rulers.

Currently undead represent a specific set of mechanics in the game so I'm wondering why we want it since it's a powerful mechanic independently. For instance, if we want to start our race off as undead that's going to require a lot of changes to Great Transformation. A ruler able to start as undead would have specific advantages and I'm not sure what it would look like mechanically.

 

[seperamos]

More flexibility for the item forge, more items such as one handed spears or pistols, and being able to forge tier5 weapons.

And even though clipping is a current issue, some way to reflect item upgrades ingame for helmets, boots, and cuirasses without needing the "adjust appearance" button.

I'm aware its hard to implement now, its not necessary, and it can wait until season 2 or more, but ascended champs and wizards have the preset helmets and cuirasses in the faction creation screen that can be triggered for base items depending on race and culture. Boots may be the hardest to model over. I must advocate for these item visual upgrades every season because it is exciting to see your character improve from stock clothing during every campaign and would prefer the "adjust appearance" button be left on faction creation, or after victory or defeat in realmplay.

 

[Goblin-Cookie]

More types of government, I would want to see republics for instance so that every player isn't ruled by some god-king.

 

[seperamos]

More types of government, I would want to see republics for instance so that every player isn't ruled by some god-king.

We still need a faction ruler for each culture, but the option to set up a Court to give titles to your heroes, or to add your heroes to an "assembly of the people" , to make a Senate and your heroes raised to Senatorship...there are many possibilities to create governments that support the faction ruler and heroes while providing deeper gameplay.

 

[IHNIFN]

Personally I think that a lot of critcism comes from the fact that AoW4 is doing something completed new with it's base systems and modularity which might have made game feel more empty at the beginning, but gives it much more potential to grow. In my software development classes we were taught that by spending more time at initial planning phase on how all systems interact with each other, we can make it much easier to develop new features and make software much more scalable. And I believe that we can see this principles here with how modular all aspect of the game like forms, tomes, rulers, transformations or world creation are.

This gives aow4 a lot of potential additions and is the reason, why 9 months after it's release I'm checking this forum or posting my suggestions. If it was boring, or not this ambitious I would surely lose interest by now.

I also like this development process of the game, where we have a great base game (I had fun playing it after release) and devs listening to community which allowed us, as the community to impact the way the game is being developed. I started playing planetfall after it's final patch, and while the game is huge with much more depth, I got bored by it much faster after finding the strongest combos and getting my empire mode heroes to the point, where I was able to rush ai turn 1 with my leveled heroes.

Here every patch I get ideas for new builds, scratch this AoW itch by playing a few games and wait for next patch. With adult life in the way I find it much more sustainable and hopefully it will make aow4 one of my main strategy games for the next couple of years.

Another benefit of devs updating the game after release is all the feedback from community. It's clear that the community wants a deeper pantheon system and current implementation in my opinion is much better foundation than a "more power" implementation of planetfall.

As for the paid and free features I hope in the future, those would be:
- new stuff on map, special hexes to visit with army every x turn, more wonders, completely new map objects, etc.
- more tomes
- more wildlife units
- more mounts (steampunk and fantasy inspired) and forms
- mechanics to make mid and late game more distinct. For example magic corruption system, where by all players spending x world casting points the whole map changes and new events spawn/new global economic/combat effects get activated
- world spells that affect all map and don't automatically end the game, that can require multiple players to be casted. (So a sudo diplomatic council system, but you can vote for the same spell as your opponents because you share an affinity)
- ability for free cities to over time rise their tiers, gain new units for rally of the liegies and new transformations. For example as construct player with linked minds I'd like to be able to affect my angelized vassal city to research linked minds and cast on it's people to make them more synergistic with my armies.
- A pantheon update focusing on more interaction with our previous rulers, ai interaction with our pantheon, potentially godir factions (syndicates) offering us quests during our games, or for example units recruitable via rally of the lieges from magehaven.
- history tab showing us conquered realms with information which godir did it
- stat tracker for ascended godir
- challenge mode with random generated realms (for some reason I find it more interesting to play randomly generated realms, than ones created by me)
- a system allowing us to boost units by tags (like fey or dragons) on a stack level. This way in same playthrough I could have different stacks for fighting different enemies. I don't want it to be as deep as planetfall unit modding, but I'd like it to for example be a line of item enchantments, that only buff x type units in hero stacks.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

What happened with shift in direction when it comes to water combat? At release it seems you were going in one direction (like specialized units for water), but in one of the updates you went what from the outside looks like the opposite direction (land units are main naval units). Why the shift?

Dedicated naval units just didn't allow us the visual nor the gameplay space to do much interesting. We shifted so we could do unique boat visuals per unit type with improved & refined animations and effects.

And even though clipping is a current issue, some way to reflect item upgrades ingame for helmets, boots, and cuirasses without needing the "adjust appearance" button.

I've answered this before but this is just too minute detail for the scale the game is played at, especially on things that have rather small gameplay effects.

Rework of the old cultures to make them as appealing and unique as the new ones

We are aware there's a couple of cultures that are currently lacking. We'll look into updating some of these when and if the plans for that align.

More coherent infestations with units that have a commom theme : for instance dragon lairs with no dragons seems a bit strange and for most of them it's an assortment of different units that have little in common.

All of the Nodes & Infestation Defenders are already set up to be thematic. We use a very flexible tag system to fill up spawnsets based on Map Location, Type of Node/Spawner etc. A Dragon Lair f.e. should only take units that have the Dragon Type/Tag. Nodes in the Deserts should commonly have Defenders that use Fire Damage etc.

speaking of ancient wonders I would like to see them expanded a little more with more branched choices and outcomes, multiple combats etc a little bit like planetfall sites.

We specifically moved away from the Multiturn Events that the Planetfall Anomalous sites had because in the end these are not games where you want or should park a stack in one place for turns on end.

 

[Konzti]

We specifically moved away from the Multiturn Events that the Planetfall Anomalous sites had because in the end these are not games where you want or should park a stack in one place for turns on end.

like with the sieges? A lot of players are opposed to those aswell. I don't mind them and I didn't mind the anomalies.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

like with the sieges?

I don't think you can really compare the two as a Siege is much more involved and uses a different time scale. Medium & Large Anomalous Sites could easily take 10 Turns, while a Siege is generally no more than 5-6 with you having control over the duration through Siege Projects. During a Siege you're also constantly evaluating whether there's benefit to continuing it or engaging with reinforcements/approaching stacks, so you're still interacting with the Stack/Units. A Anomalous site you'd just park a Stack on and it was basically locked in for the duration of the event with other uses.

 

[Konzti]

I don't think you can really compare the two as a Siege is much more involved and uses a different time scale. Medium & Large Anomalous Sites could easily take 10 Turns, while a Siege is generally no more than 5-6 with you having control over the duration through Siege Projects. During a Siege you're also constantly evaluating whether there's benefit to continuing it or engaging with reinforcements/approaching stacks, so you're still interacting with the Stack/Units. A Anomalous site you'd just park a Stack on and it was basically locked in for the duration of the event with other uses.

yeah not sure about that, seems kind of similar to me in practice. Sieges could probably be a bit more swift in my opinion. cut down on siege time a little more, it gets tedious sieging down every city.

 

[ProphetOfDune]

yeah not sure about that, seems kind of similar to me in practice. Sieges could probably be a bit more swift in my opinion. cut down on siege time a little more, it gets tedious sieging down every city.

At the risk of further detailing the topic, I think sieges are an improvement over past titles. They allow more time for defensive counterplay and avoid the issues of surprise one unit stacks capturing huge cities in one turn, or the production micro needed to garrison internal cities, or the significant advantage militia gives. There are fewer cities overall so capturing one should be a big deal.
If anything I wish the AI was tweaked so defending sieges happened more frequently. Right now all those fancy Tome defensive buildings rarely get a use.

 

[Goblin-Cookie]

We still need a faction ruler for each culture, but the option to set up a Court to give titles to your heroes, or to add your heroes to an "assembly of the people" , to make a Senate and your heroes raised to Senatorship...there are many possibilities to create governments that support the faction ruler and heroes while providing deeper gameplay.

With the Feudal society you already kind of have that, in that you have Lord of this and Lord of that, but these are upgrades a hero has to buy.

 

[seperamos]

With the Feudal society you already kind of have that, in that you have Lord of this and Lord of that, but these are upgrades a hero has to buy.

They have it but the effects seem rather basic imo. Lord of War gives better hp replenish, lord of production and magic boost economic material gathering down certain paths.

Its there, but it COULD turn into a more complex court and title system depending on your heroes and city level. Just my thought on it.

 

[Kitschy]

Dedicated naval units just didn't allow us the visual nor the gameplay space to do much interesting. We shifted so we could do unique boat visuals per unit type with improved & refined animations and effects.

Thanks for the answer and again it is interesting to hear that from your perspective - specialized naval units didn't allow gameplay space to do much interesting.
Visuals are great I can't argue with that.

 

[Konzti]

Water gameplay needs a whole redo i think, I've never been a fan of just embarking on any watertile. I think it's unrealistic and lacks strategy. I prefer if units had to be transported by naval units. Basic transports could be build in outposts on coastal regions maybe. Would emphasize naval dominance a lot more, as you would either have to control the ocean or sneak through the underground for invasions.

 

[Goblin-Cookie]

They have it but the effects seem rather basic imo. Lord of War gives better hp replenish, lord of production and magic boost economic material gathering down certain paths.

Its there, but it COULD turn into a more complex court and title system depending on your heroes and city level. Just my thought on it.

The effects cannot be too great for game balance reasons, but the basic issue is rather that the positions are per-town rather than applied to all the towns, which is more fitting for a central government position.

 

[guiskj]

Water gameplay needs a whole redo i think, I've never been a fan of just embarking on any watertile. I think it's unrealistic and lacks strategy. I prefer if units had to be transported by naval units. Basic transports could be build in outposts on coastal regions maybe. Would emphasize naval dominance a lot more, as you would either have to control the ocean or sneak through the underground for invasions.

Please no. I seriously applaud their decision of making water gameplay effectively the same as land.

Everything you said sounds cool and would indeed add more decision points to the game. HOWEVER, the AI would not handle it well. Land warfare AI is well trained and is constantly being iterated on and tested when new features are added. Doing the same for water gameplay is a tremendous undertaking.

So, from a realistic perspective, even though a more complex naval gameplay would have been nice, I am extremely happy that AoW4 takes the approach of water gameplay being "same as land, but with unique battle maps and unit models", because it means the AI can actually handle it.

Lastly, so far I have not experienced any large bodies of water in any map I have played, decreasing even more the impact that a robust naval gameplay would have.

 

[Goblin-Cookie]

I am sure the AI could handle water gameplay, it just costs time and money.