new Skilltree: how will new Skills be integrated?

[Xerberus]

Dear devs,

I just wonder how it is planned that in the future with new dlc coming out, even a not-not announced season pass 3, will have its tome skills integrated (or the tome mechanics in general), or even how the current dlc tomes are integrated in the fixed skill tree.

the current / old system is basically a simple skill list where skills from tomes get added to one of the three categories (support, battlemage or warfare) in the list, simple enough.
its also flexible because its a simple list and because they get added from tomes which are in most games around 10 acquired, you get 10 more skills distributed in those 3 categories, mixed in with the culture skills. same with culture skills, each culture has has some unique skills which get added to their list to be picked by the ruler or heroes we hire.

now to the new reworked fixed skill tree:

a) if we get new tomes in dlc...how do we get those new skills or mechanics within the tome to our heroes? enchantments don't work on heroes, we in the past had to pick a skill equivalent to most enchantments and furthermore got some unique skills like eternal lord from the tier 5 shadow tome. now with a fixed skill tree there is no flexible addition of any skills. the skill tree won't change no matter what tome you unlock, bare those 4 sets (2 each) of affinity skills you get based on the affinities you have. but 2 skills for each affinity per tier (up to tier 4) won't cut it. because even if they implement all the currently available class-like tome skills within the affinity skilltree, we have an evergrowing amount of dlc with new tomes, how do our dear devs plan to incorporate their new mechanics in the newly created fixed skill tree? are they going to rework the affinities to include them as an option, maybe adding a third option for each affinity? what about people who don't own any dlc, are they stuck with two options per affinity tier? what if they only own a select number of dlc ... do they get the reworked skills or only if you own all dlc?

b) simliar with culture skills! every culture adds some (2-3 i think) unique skills to the list of our heroes, how do we get these skills? where are they implemented in the new system? same inflexibility problem with the tome skills. what happends if new cultures get added? same problems as listed above.

now personally i think having a skill tree with some choices / decisions, which lock other options, is vastly superior to just having a skill list of an assortment of skills. its both visually more appealing and with beforementioned skill choices can be a good option for some more touch decisions which are a core part of strategy games. but i personally think that the modular game design of age of wonders 4 doesn't work with a fixed skill tree (even the modular segments beign affinity skills being fixed to 2 predetermined options per affinity & tier).

so my question isn't mainly about skill tree good or bad idea, my question is how the fixed design of that skill tree suits in the modular environment of AoW4, especially considering all the different dlc options and their content.

 

[Xerberus]

i love to play necromancer with all the great hero skills: eternal lord, greater corpse consumption (much better than the society trait one, gives 40 hp and 3 strengthened), mind crush (+30% chance to influct insanity), blinding magic, weakening aura, soul collector, cruel weaponry, frost weapons, unholy leader. those are the vanilla ones, then dlc: boon stealing (tome corruption), master of disruption, manifest tentacle ... especially manifest tentacle!!!

those are 12 skills / traits, unholy leader being +10% damage and +1 resistance coupled with frost weapons might be the more generic ones and maybe merged with another skill or frost weapon enchantments maybe making this enchantment also applying to heroes. which the ladder they didn't do because the first signature skill they picked in the stream were "searing strikes" (aka old searing blades).

so we have at least 11 signature skill candidates and only 8 possible skill that can be implemented for shadow, because 4 tiers of signature skill and every affinity has only 2 skills per tear each meaning 4 x 2 = 8. not only do they have to remove some of those very unique skills, its also IMPOSSIBLE to implement new ones if they stay with the 2 skills per affinity per tier system, wich if they plan to expand could have already done so because there are already more skills than skill slots!

so yes...BIG DOWNGRADE! i am thinking to myself who was in their right mind to suggest: "hey, we have a bunch of unique and really fun skills, especially the ones in the dlc those retards paid for....maybe we should just delete them :-D!". the ONLY way it COULD work would be if they implemented several new classes for every theme in the game like "necromancer", "corruptor", "ice mage" and the likes ... which would have been an expansion to the game system for sure, mandated some more skills and some more pronounced heroes ...and yes made some most likely a bit stronger, which i don't think should be bad necessarily.

but the thing is, they only implemented 5 basic classes: warrior, defender, mage, ritualist and ranger ... .because "it takes work to do it" ... yeah sure ... but don't delete your perfectly working system with a huge amount of freedom and flexibility...then delete half of the skills, prevent new & interesting skills ever to be added and then only do a half assed job because "takes time mate".

i like triumph studios, since AoW3 i bought every game and dlc at release and was happy towards what they were heading with AoW4, it CURRENTLY (PRE 05.11.2024) is the best possible 4x fantasy game....but the more i see and think about the new skill system, i become frustrated and angry because a system which was fine...only lacking some content in terms of skill variety, is now gonna be replaced with a mechanically vastly more restrictive system that deletes big parts of the game and gives you some repetitive monotone skill options which are objectively worse because they every just allow 5 variants with each 5 subvariants ...so 10 subclasses in total...meanwhile you had your beautiful flexible skill system before which allowed dozens of different combinations.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

All of these questions have been answered in the 5 other threads that you have already responded in. Since you're simply spamming at this point I'm going to lock this thread.