Learning Passives...?

Okay, I'm in a delimma.

In this map of mine, I wanted to make it so that no heroes initially starts with passive abilities, but I'm trouble as to finding a good way to actually "learn" them. There's the old fashioned way, which is just through picking it through level up, but if I was going to do that, I wouldn't have posted this.

My plan A was to force the player to experiment a "set" of passives when they reached a certain level. To make things simple, let's just say that when a Hero hits level 10, they can choose to learn Passive A or Passive B. By some miracle trigger, the hero can experiment with whatever passive that they like most. They would be permanently stuck with the passive after the hero gains another level. This process would happen again with a second tier of passives on level 20, then the final tier of passives on level 30.

But, plan A doesn't really work. The drawbacks to that is that it strictly limits the hero on what they can work with. Not only that, but "tiers" gives me the idea that the effect of the passives gradually get better, and my original idea doesn't fully do that.

Then I found a plan B: I wouldn't set it by tiers, but would instead let the player choose the same six passives they want as they hit levels 10/20/30. This still limits the amount of passives they can learn by three, so it achieves the same goal as my plan A, but this lightens the amount of unneeded stress that plan A has when trying to pick a passive that is compatible with ones the player hasn't even seen yet.

But there's a problem with plan B, as well. To make certain passives not as useless as others, they occasionally get stronger as the hero hits a certain level. However, I'm afraid that this may provoke players into picking passives for the strict that fact that they get stronger than the ones that are too good to not need levels. Or, players might get stuck with the "Passive A is better than Passive B, but Passive A is useless later anyways" idea, which also doesn't work.

Then plan C appeared. Plan C provides passive abilities, but some of the "abilities" will be actual abilities that provide a benefit to the player and has no detrimental cost. Think of it an "innate" skill.

I found problems instantly with plan C. Heroes that wouldn't normally have a lot of usable abilities sudden gain more, adding on more spam factors that I would have to control to heroes that do not actually need them. Therefore, they are useless.

Honestly, none of these in my eyes do not necessarily work, unless there's someway to tweak them. Does anyone have any ideas? I'm looking for anything, really, so just long as it's not too complicated.

I know that some people don't like it when a simple thing such as passives gets too complicated, but that's the exact thing I'm trying to avoid: I don't want to scare players with some whacked out way to learn things, especially stuff that will benefit them in the long run.

That's a good thing. You need players to make meaningful choices. Awesomeness now, or payoff later.

Personally, I would randomise it. Screw the players, give them no control over what happens, because what happens, happens, right?

Well that's one way to make it automatic.

Another automatic way would be to do some insane triggering and give them an aura based on what they've done, e.g. how many kills or how much damage they've taken; essentially determining if the player is more defensive, offensive, or just plain fast. A variation of this would be to give the aura that strengthens that player's weakness.

Added to the randomisation, if the heroes are in teams, give each hero one of the passives. 'nuff said.

If we knew a bit more about the map, we'd probably be able to give you better advice, because at the moment it's just a case of "pick A, B or C".

You forgot, "or make our own suggestions". X_X

Hmm... I somehow knew that that was going to be the case. You see, I'm really, really... private when it comes to maps that I make. Captain Griffen asked me once, and I haven't told him, yet. (No offense, but I never planned on telling him, or anyone else, save a few friends.)

I'll just put out the basics: The map I am making is inspired off of FFF, without the abbreviations, Final Fantasy Forever. That's where the original idea came from, anyway. I've changed the map three times: the first time because the heroes and gameplay were killing me with how simliar they were to FFF, the second time because WEU screwed up on me and I basically had to start over with triggers and miraculously got away with all of my object data, and right now I'm on my third time going through this map. It's taking forever, about three months of actual work and two and a half years of planning. But honestly, I don't care how long it takes; it's my biggest commitment to my Warcraft 3 map making career. I don't want it to die like many hosted projects that would have been superbly wonderful if they had finished. Mine won't be wonderful, but at least I am going to finish.

I think the main problem that FFF faced was the spotlight of the map: the battles. They are surprising at first, but quickly become boring. Also, there was nothing in the battles to interact with, so every battle was the same old thing, over and over again. It bothered me, so much that it inspired me to think of ways to excite the standard gameplay. I grew obessed about it; I couldn't think of anything else at school other than making the map, so after a couple of months of planning, I pretty much had a full blown story that I made on accident with items and heroes in mind, and the map started. It's amazing actually: I went from 64 heroes to seven (I can explain that, if you want me to).

This thread isn't in the Map / Campaign Projects section however, so I can't really post everything I've thought of, and I never wanted a lot of publicity in the first place. Besides, it's a boring- er, long story.

How about making a quest that gives you a specific passive, and then one quest per passive?

If you want to reduce the effect of plan B, make all the passives scalable and percentage-based. Then try to balance them in a way that makes them all "equal", and players choose one based on their skill build, playstyle and their hero's weaknesses/strengths.

I don't really see your problem though, something like this should take second priority compared to finishing your story and battlesystem before you run out of steam.

By scalable, do you mean all static (integers and reals) numbers should be replaced with attribute based numbers or percents? Or, do you mean that all abilties will level up with the hero (not every level, but every ten or something)? I suppose that both offer the same benefits, but in a different perspective.

What I really want to do, is what your said: "Players choose [passives] based on their skill build, playstyle and their hero's weaknesses/strengths." Honestly, I'd like the playstyle part more so than the hero's already-set-out strengths and weaknesses. I do have a couple of things for that, but I may or may not be adding them.

Quests that give specific passives... I don't like the fact that one has to reach point A in the story to learn something. I was thinking about something related to that, actually. Not specifically passives, but certain abilities that certain heroes couldn't use until a certain part of the story had passed. But, that didn't really work out.

Yes, everything becomes a percentage, or scales according to hero level or attributes. I've made a ton of ORPGs with systems like this, I could upload a few examples if you want.

Well anyway, as I said, just make up your mind and continue making your ownage map! :D

I know what you're talking about, but if you do have examples, I'd love to see them, if you don't mind.

Attached 2 maps, Kalimroth and Sentinel ORPG.

The first one is the last RPG I tried to make, got bored of it after almost finishing 2 heroes are a second creep camp. All of the spells are scaled according to level or attribute.

The second one is a similar idea, just much more stuff.

Might be hard wading through my triggers, just ask if there is something you don't understand or can't find.

Hey, nice maps. I was wondering... I discovered that each map had some interesting stuff that I thought I could use. Do you mean if I use them? I'll credit you, of course.

Sure, go ahead.

Usually the reason I make these maps is because I get a good idea and want to make it work before I forget it :)
And of course so that other people may make ownage maps with my systems.

Wonderful! I didn't get my original question answered, but I suppose I can worry about that later, as you suggested.

Just think of it as if it was a Physics exam paper, for high school finals.

Question 1. You have no idea what's going on, so you leave a few lines and go on to Question 2, which you can do. Then once you're done with all of that, back to all the stuff you left out. Everything in life can relate somehow to mapmaking ^^

I do hope you can find an answer to your question though, sorry if I wasn't enough help for that.