General's balance issue

from Demigod Forums

The generals seem to face a problem with balance...Oak and Erebus both have ways of enlisting the dead into their service on the fly. Whereas Queen of Thorns and Sedna both have to summon to get their minions. I think both methods have some merit, but really, the lack of attention needed by the male generals (that probably has nothing to do with why their methods of acquiring followers is different...but the differentiation takes place along the same line) to acquire minions makes for something I think is imbalancing. The amount of mana required for the women's minions makes them...a bit of an investment, whereas the men can either do nothing and still get followers, or simply place a flag and pick up any in the area. I can imagine shamblers as a kind of zombie made when she kills something...Sedna I'm at a loss for.

Also; the women's spells/attributes that allow for them to inspire or help their allies is pretty weak and not as plentiful as their male counterparts. Rally and Divine Justice, and Erebus multitude of area effect spells, simply dwarf their female couterparts in terms of making troops more effective. Divine Grace is nice, so too healing wind, and may be sufficient. But I feel like it is only that...sufficient, where the male generals have well defined characters ripe with capablity for the role of a general, the female generals just don't.  The Queen of Thorns has it much worse, her role as a general seems...odd, one area effect spell and one attribute that is helpful to her followers. She makes sense as a general in that she runs around a war between demigods largely naked and would need some support, but the actual charater is lacking...she does not fit the bill as a general. I'm not saying you should make her an assasin, but, if she is a general, then perhaps she should actually fit the role somehow.

Also (sort of related, but somewhat off topic) the female avatars are much shorter than the male ones. 4'10" women are fine, but not the average, if you look at the more anthropomorphic male avatars, like Oak, Regulus, or Erebus, or even torch bearer, either they stand at 8' compared to the female's 5'6"/5'8" or they're five feet or under in height. I don't know how tall they're actually supposed to be, but it seems a little distorted.

 

This is copy/pasted from a thread I wrote during the Beta, I think it's just as salient now.

1,703 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Demigod Forums Top

hmm well to start with i kno oaks summons are weaker then lets say Sedna. And i will say that Queen of Thorns can use her summons as mini potions on the go which makes them a bit different from other summons who just fight until they die. (even tho some give bonuses like oak gets more power from his summons if he has the ability) on a side note there special summons all serve a different purpose but they ALL have idol summons that are equal to all of them.

If you are looking at a way to make it so they all get summons when they kill as you stated with Queen of Thorns. Sedna in her back story brought things back that just died to life. So if you REALLY want to have them all get special minions from kills she could bring back enemies to life and they pledge her alligence to her.

All in all i like the way it is now they all serve different purposes and you cant expect them all to be the same EMBRACE THE DIFFERENCES =]

Reply #2 from Demigod Forums Top

Have you seen Erebus' vamps do much more then roll around to be fair? ;)

Plus, QoT and Sedna can instantly summon their max in minions, regardless if creeps are around or not. Not true for Erebus or Oak.

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Demigod Forums Top

Erebus minions are literally rollie pollies, they are just there for children to make fun of.  Combat uses?  ummm I'll just quote Teseer for that.

 

Quoting Teseer, reply 2
Have you seen Erebus' vamps do much more then roll around to be fair?

End of Teseer's quote

Reply #4 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting Teseer, reply 2
Have you seen Erebus' vamps do much more then roll around to be fair?
End of Teseer's quote
They do, they just aren't very powerful until there are a lot of them.

Reply #5 from Demigod Forums Top

Personally I never use Sednas Yetis, it feels like they don't add that much support and I rather spend my skillpoints at skills that bring something to the game.

To get them decent I need to focus all my gear and skill points to improve them and therefor missing out on other important stuff and even if I do focus the gear and skills on them they will be wiped out in the next dual aoe combo.

Reply #6 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting Tebo11, reply 1
hmm well to start with i kno oaks summons are weaker then lets say Sedna. And i will say that Queen of Thorns can use her summons as mini potions on the go which makes them a bit different from other summons who just fight until they die. (even tho some give bonuses like oak gets more power from his summons if he has the ability) on a side note there special summons all serve a different purpose but they ALL have idol summons that are equal to all of them.

If you are looking at a way to make it so they all get summons when they kill as you stated with Queen of Thorns. Sedna in her back story brought things back that just died to life. So if you REALLY want to have them all get special minions from kills she could bring back enemies to life and they pledge her alligence to her.

All in all i like the way it is now they all serve different purposes and you cant expect them all to be the same EMBRACE THE DIFFERENCES =]
End of Tebo11's quote
You make a good point, but I'm not convinced entirely. I'm all for differences, however, in battle, simply collecting the dead for the purposes of fighting for you seems so...convienient perhaps? That I feel like there is still a disparity. I'm not entirely sure how to compare them fully, lots of cheap followers vs. a handful of expensive ones is obvious. Sedna's yeti do seem an amount practical, they can take some damage and dish a bit out as well. Shamblers I'm not fully convinced of yet. I've yet to mulch a shambler, whenever I'd need one, they're already dead :P. I guess this is a problem in fully contrasting these things, but I'm not convinced of balance. And I do feel like my other comments about QoT stand, she doesn't feel General-like some amount. But that is an aside to your point really.

Reply #7 from Demigod Forums Top

You kno you can also take the the opposite look at it.While im standing in the front line with my oak making more minions. someone can stand out in the fog of war creating Yeti and idol minons and sending them in all at once.  I kno quite a few people who use that tactic and end up being very hard to kill since they never having to run into the fray if they do not want to while reanimating the dead requires you to be up close at least part of the time.

not trying to downplay your balence issues just trying to put a spin on some perspectives =]

Reply #8 from Demigod Forums Top

The only General minion I feel has worth is Oak's.

I spent most of my time playing him hiding them at the base so I always had the max dmg boost and never lost it due to AE.

Now I still do this till Raise Dead III. By then the chance is high enough to get them rediculously fast and they can do a decent chunk of dmg.

Yeti's help with tower attacks due to high HPs.
QoT's...look cool. I hide those at base as well, so I always have munchies availible.
Erebus' take up space. They hide him pretty well to be fair, I guess.

Reply #9 from Demigod Forums Top

the only thing i'm gonna respond to is the Height issue.

 

all of the Demigods are pretty physically large, if you take the Soldier creeps to be the size of a normal human. this would make
Regulus, Torchbearer and Erebus only slightly larger than a normal person (maybe 7 or 8 feet tall) but would make most of the other DG's pretty enormous. Sedna seems normal size but her tiger is gigantic. she's obviously clearing 10 feet sitting on the back of that thing. Oak has got to be 10 or 12 feet tall, he clearly seems at least twice as large as the solider creeps. Unclean Beast has got to be 12 feet tall at the shoulder, and he's on 4 legs. would be 20 feet tall if standing on hind legs, clearly huge. With the Queen of Thorns, the Queen herself is normal sized but her beetle+flower chariot thing is massive and she's obviously like 15 feet up in the air on top of that thing. and obviously the Rook is a true giant the size of a Fortress. 

Reply #10 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting transitive, reply 9
the only thing i'm gonna respond to is the Height issue.

 

all of the Demigods are pretty physically large, if you take the Soldier creeps to be the size of a normal human. this would make
Regulus, Torchbearer and Erebus only slightly larger than a normal person (maybe 7 or 8 feet tall) but would make most of the other DG's pretty enormous. Sedna seems normal size but her tiger is gigantic. she's obviously clearing 10 feet sitting on the back of that thing. Oak has got to be 10 or 12 feet tall, he clearly seems at least twice as large as the solider creeps. Unclean Beast has got to be 12 feet tall at the shoulder, and he's on 4 legs. would be 20 feet tall if standing on hind legs, clearly huge. With the Queen of Thorns, the Queen herself is normal sized but her beetle+flower chariot thing is massive and she's obviously like 15 feet up in the air on top of that thing. and obviously the Rook is a true giant the size of a Fortress. 
End of transitive's quote
They're all tall compared to the creeps, true, but porportionally, if you took Sedna off Sila, and stood her up next to Regulus, Oak, any of the anthropomorphic Demigods, they'd be disproportionally short. Average male height 5'10", average female height 5'6". They're all obviously huge, I'm estimating Minotaur height to be about 10', but that isn't important, what's important is the ratio of male to female (or female to male) height.