58 replies to this topic

[Nazgûl]

Cool, I beleive you Ithron. You were the one that helped me get rid of the Red glow in the first place

[Lord of the Rings Junkie]

I think it would be good to just remove the FX and that be it, at least for enemy troops. As mentioned before, you're not going to have much of an idea of your enemies armament before you're actually in combat anyway. To tell which of your own soldiers have FB, I like the idea of having a dot or indicator by the life bar similar to veterancy indicators.

BTW, this brings up a question that I'm curious about... Do most of you play with all life bars visible or not? I'd prefer not to, but I think being able to see the amount of life left in my troops is more important.

[Strider]

I dont put in unit Health Bars.

Nazgul, do you mean we need an indication if you need to upgrade your own troops or if your enemys troops or upgraded? For your own troops, if you put your mouse over the Palintir picture it says the upgrades they have. Plus you can always tell because the button to upgrade the unit is colored and greyed out.

As for seeing enemy upgrades, i dont think their should be any indication. Nothing really works except the glow, and that looks stupid. So just remove the glow and I think were fine.

[Rob38]

I beg to differ a bit Rob38... I think we could use the word "realism" in a game just as in a movie. A REALLY good movie makes you cry, laugh, smile, shiver or even jump out of your chair... kind of - right? And even if you know it's a move, you still enjoy it and you can actually refer to it as being very realistic. Now this is a game and off course (with this engine) there are certain limitations on how far you can reach towards realism, but you have to agree that it sorta looks a bit more realistic now than in retail version? The term realistic is not meant to be read as "just like reality" but rather "as realistic as possible" and glowing swords is not

And dying BC's respawn pretty fast =) But I do like the idea of a symbol. Perhaps the subtle CaH star above the horde?

Well, I was talking about video games, not movies with living actors But hey, graphics for these new games nowadays are so amazing that it's hard to tell if it's real or not

If you remove the forged blade glow, then I highly recommend going with the icon above the horde suggestion

Edited by Rob38, 05 August 2007 - 12:11 AM.

[Garrison Nomad]

Maybe more of a "shing" instead of a glow? well, if it was possible i'd like completely different weapons....but its not. Unless you wanna spend a lifetime on it.

Maybe make the weapons smoke? or something similiar to a nazgul's dread visage?

[Nazgûl]

No God no.. that would only move from one unwanted FX to another and also ad extra work to it. The cause/goal must motivate the work, and the goal is to reduce as much FX as possible. I dont mind other FX as leadership and stuff like that, but this constand glow makes me crazy. The subtle blue is "ok" but the problem is they are not all that subtle...

@Strider: Yes I meant our own troops.

I am leaning towards the CaH star... just ONE mind you though, not one per soldier... lol

[Garrison Nomad]

dang...aight. I kinda don't like the star. maybe it shouldn't be forged blades...but advanced combat training? same effect, higher damage, but perhaps a new way to represent it.

[Nazgûl]

Not a bad idea, but we still need a way to represent it... I've spent 4 hours in WB now polishing bases and thinking about this, and currently I lean more towards different banners, and no FX at all

I think a basic banner that would be replaced by a more "advanced/beautiful" banner would do the trick, and it's just a change of banner texture. Should be "easy"...

[Dzhon]

I'd actually like to see how it plays out if you just removed Forged Blades altogether. Just make all units that can receive them build as though they have them. It never made a whole lot of sense that regular soldiers were taking to the field with mediocre weapons anyway (even less so with Tower Guards and other elite units). I usually reach a point where I just fully upgrade all units as I build them anyway.

I'd even like to see to purchasable banner carriers go. You shouldn't be able to buy veterancy, just earn it the hard way. Part of the beauty of this mod is that units tend to be more survivable anyway.

A Weapons Forge upgrade could be represented by slightly reduced costs and buildtimes for melee units. Maybe an expensive and time consuming upgrade at the barracks that allows all new units to be produced at level 2. It'd make those "Train Unit" and "200% Experience" hero powers a lot more vital...

I don't like the CaH star any more than I like glowing banners. I like the idea for different banners, but just as a cool representation of gains in veterancy. You could even have a contest to design them...

[IthronAiwendil]

You could make the glow much more subtle by darkening the fx files of the forged blades

[Eldarion]

Why not take the little icon that represents Forged Blades when a horde is selected in the world map in WOTR mode and make it hover over the horde along with the veterancy indicators? Is that possible? If it is it would be both subtle and a clear way of stating "this unit has a weapon upgrade - beware" . You could even take it a step further and add indicators for the other upgrades, but I won't push that one .

[Strider]

It would be redundant to put in an Icon for Forged Blades but not other batts. And I dont we want to see 3 Icons signifying upgrades. Hostestly, if you want to see if you own units have forged blades, just put your curser of the batt and it should say the upgrades in the desciption.

[Nazgûl]

And what if you have 10-20 hordes? 30?

[Strider]

Wow...I dont think Ive ever played a match with 10-20 Hordes of Soldiers that can get FB.

What I would do is drag out the curser to select all of them and see if I can click forged blades in the Palintir. If not, it means they are all upgraded, I dont have enough cash(I would check this in advance) or I forgot to reasearch that upgrade in the first place(which would be a stupid move).

[clonecommand]

Maybe have Sul work some more of his FX magic and have a special FX above or around or somewhere on the units with a special indicator of FB?

[Dzhon]

Is the thought of removing the Forged Blades upgrade altogether still on the table? Upgrades like torches or siege hammers are interesting since they change a unit's role somewhat, but linear +50% damage upgrades are just boring...

Heavy armor can be made interesting by incorporating other changes (speed decrease, more resistance to certain types of damage than others, etc.), not to mention interesting variations in unit appearance. Forged Blades doesn't offer that.

Since this mod (thankfully) has reduced the rush factor anyway, I find I usually have time to research upgrades before combat gets too serious and have the cashflow to fully upgrade every unit out of the barracks. I think it'd be interesting to see how the mod plays out if you just removed Forged Blades and give those units that had them damage values based on a halfway point between their non-upgraded and FB output.

[Garrison Nomad]

i like Dzhon's idea. Factions should get more unique upgrades. Mordor's thing where orcs due more damage when there are mroe of them could be an upgrade. Goblins could get barbed weaponry, which slows down enemy units. Lots of opportunities, and they don't have to have any FX.

[clonecommand]

Oi! I like that much more! Upgrades for faction specific things! Ex. Isengard crossbows SHOULD NOT have fire arrows...It would hurt if they did

[CapnAstroSponge]

That's yet another good idea from Dzhon..

lol, this guy's on a roll.

[Garrison Nomad]

Dzhon's great. He's a MeMWer....

I've ALWAYS wanted faction specific upgrades. Makes gameplay truely different for everybody.