So, many voices have raised to request to have some minor gods from some of the OG gods switched for some of the new minor gods from the god packs for the sake of accuracy in flavor and logical associations. Chiefly amongst them is Persephone for Hades, but many also request Vidar for Odin, Ullr for Thor and even Aegir for Loki.
Furthermore, and while I don’t think every minor god should absolutely be available to the exact same amount of major ones, it feels really weird to have a whole “column” of minors that are only available to a single major god. Some reshuffling would allow for more diversified gameplay and encounters, with players not being restricted to a single path to play a given minor god and the related units and god powers being seen more often online (or even against the AI for that matter).
The most often given counterpoint is that such an update would give DLC content to non DLC owners, which is understandably not common in gaming for commercial reasons. A lot of people also say that this would make too big a change to civilizations that have been that way since the very beginnings of the OG game, which, for the record, I think is a bad mindset for continually maintained game that regularly receives new content, as such new content and patches are doomed to disturb the balance and habits of players anyway. But that does not matter here.
For actually, the solution appears quite simple to me: the devs could simply add reshuffled version of each concerned major god to the game, which could be accessible from a toggle button in the major god selection screen, only available to DLC owners. In the same way you select alternative god portraits. That way, said content would stay unavailable to non DLC owners while the rest could enjoy the new distribution, and it would even allow nostalgic players to use the former roster of the god!
Well… No. The Greeks have the problem that all three gods have access to Hephaestus, which isn’t the case with other pantheons. Besides, Persephone historically complements Hades himself, and the divine power of Ragnarok, for the Greeks, suits Hades just as well as Hera suits Zeus. It’s not like adding Vidar to Odin (that would look like a complete mess and a schoolboy’s mod).
Fixing mistakes is good, but reworking everything is bad. I’d be happy to see god reworks in AoM 2, but not in the remaster.
The difference here i think lies from which pov you look the game through. If you look at it from a a more casual perspective of playing vs AI its way more flavourful to have all this different lets call it “profiles” to a god, where you can have hades with x-y-z and another loadout with a hades for a-b-c
As soon as you account for any type of game balancing it becomes a harder task, to account for previous not available interactions, how the god bonus would be together. How a casual player might not care if he can tell which hades profile his opponent has but how that will shift the burden of what you can be against unless theres a inovation to the UI that allows you to see which hades it is, for this example.
Theres would also be the dynamic of a night are to balance. Since hades baseline might be doing poorly but hades premium might be unstopable. Sure if its the perfect scenario the 3 New minor gods it got are all always picked and are all having overtuned issues ofc its easy to justa adjust all 3. But what if its a mixed outcome? What if lets say athena + hestia + Heph is the issue and not ares + apollo + persephone (Just examples)
You get scenarios where a god is only viable in ranked play if you pay for its premium choices
Any idea ever made is always doable and theres always a perfect way it could be implemented, what becomes an issue is labor of implementaron, design, and balance approach.
At the end of the Day theres preferences, for some people X being a better choice lore wise is more important than silly balance. For other people, they couldnt care less of the lore interaction and Just care about how it shifts gameplay.
I only skimmed over the discussion here, having said my opinion on the topic elsewhere already.
But my impression so far is that the general consensus here is “What’s already released should not change, because the game as it is is what players know, and that should stay. Lore accuracy or continuity should be fixed in a sequel, not in a remaster.”
I can see the reasoning behind that argument, and I can get behind it, most of the time. However, there are a few select examples where I do believe fixing the lore would fix more than it would break.
But I assume, I’m in a small minority thinking that.
I only agree with the change of Hades, because all Greeks have Hephaestus.
And this was clearly a plot flaw that needed to be fixed. Everything else about the minor gods suits me just fine.
I don’t see how that would be harder to balance than adding whole new pantheons, or other types of new content. I mean, even the new major gods from the god packs already do receive three OG minor gods, which they already need to take into account for balance.
If you think about it, those alternative versions of Hades & others functionally are simply another new major god to add to the pantheon, just one that has a lot in common with its namesake.
And that is why my solution allows for the OG distribution of minors to still be there and playable by everyone. Unless you want the game to not change at all beside the remasterisation and not receive any new content (which clearly it is already too late for), those reshuffled versions of the concerned major gods wouldn’t be any different from other types of new content.
Wdym the divine power of Ragnarök for the Greeks? I’m not sure I understand your post, but I’ll say that from a mythological point of view, Vidar probably suits Odin the best out of all the Norse mythic age gods, because not only is he his son, but also is the one to avenge him by finally killing Fenrir during Ragnarök.
Also the OG Norse were in the exact same situation as the Greeks, with all three major gods having access to Týr. In that regard, giving Persephone to Hades is not different at all from giving Vidar to Odin.
Personally, I’m on team “Fix the lore, then make sure the solution is balanced” rather than “Keep the game balanced exactly the way it is, and if the lore is broken, let it be broken”
Hades not having acces to Persephone makes no sense, lore wise. Set having acces to Horus makes no sense, either. If any Norse God should have elves, it would be Freyr.
Poseidon having no access to Athena is perfect.
But it’s not just God-Selections either.
Atlanteans are controversial for a reason, but not because they didn’t exist as a real culture, but because they weren’t designed as their own coherent culture, but rather as a jigsaw puzzle of a bunch of obvious references to other cultures and their gameplay features were basically “let’s test the waters for our ideas for AoE3”
Retold fixed some of the biggest gameplay and balancing problems of the Atlanteans, but they didn’t fix the continuity and consistency issues.
They neither undid the Titans-Retcon, nor did they implement it retroactively. (No campaign-exclusive Poseidon-worshipping Atlanteans, that aren’t Greeks. Not even as reskinned Greeks)
I’ve seen different interpretations on how people solve this in their personal headcannons.
Some of them directly contradicting stated lore. Jumping several generations between Fall of the Trident and New Atlantis, rather than the stated ten years.
You would have 2 profiles of the same god. Currently you can adress the specifics of a god that overperforms. Now you cant do the same approaches since you have multiple versions of one/some/more of them.
Perfect that you bring that into play. Take freyr for example, with his cost reducing tech you can adjust the cost of his unique 3 minor gods to whatever you want accounting for that. Lets say you give vidar to Odin, now you cant just play with the cost because freyr has a reduction on them. A tech costing 600 for odin and 300 for freyr would be quite the diffeence in access opportunity and strengh of the nerf
No, they do not, you create a paywall when you create scenarios were OG hades looses to premium hades for example. You discourage people to play an OG god because theres a dlc that boosts its power. The reverse can also be the case ofc where the dlc profile becomes. Btw i like how most things of “it works cause i think it does” begin with “think about it”.
To me at least the whole “for the sake of accuracy in flavor and logical associations” is just head canon on what people would want. Like i said before, its just a preference to care more about lore reasons to balance than the opposite but its not a superior reason in any way,specially when taking into account that its a game first and a lore accurate reimagination later.
Its also the whole dynamic of “balance is surely doable” yea ofc its not impossible, but resources arent infinite and things takes time, people and restrictions, on a game that already has shortcomings in bugs due to clearly not having a great amount of people to deal with everything, splitting even more doesnt seem like a wise choice, every idea isnt worth implementing just because you could do it in theory.
Im sure theres a couple of people that wont play the game because set has horus and that makes no sense lorewise, but aside from that theres clearly, to me at least better places to invest resources in than to make the workload bigger. If the game becomes bigger or when they stop giving new civs or gods they can for sure mismatch things to try to keep it fresh, but not at the same time as all the other projects they implement.
Dude, maybe if instead of acting hostile for some reason you took a bit more care in picking the right words for your sentences, you’d be more understandable.
As for Odin not having specific upgrades for berserkers, it’s simply not true. Launch the game or go on the wiki and check “hamask” .
I don’t agree with this. When we choose to worship to a major god, it’s not that major god that opens up a path for other gods. We still choose to worship which minor god we want. There is no lore of minor god choices being connected to major ones. Our civilization choose who to worship every age. There being two choices is only for gameplay reasons.
Yes they do, mechanics-wise, that is a simple fact. And like any other additional major gods, balancing them would be the task of the devs (although those ones should represent a bit less work than Freyr or Demeter, because it would be less content to balance).
And frankly, presenting “accuracy in flavor and logical associations” as just my personal headcannon is just a bad faith argument. I’m far, far from the only person wanting this, and the associations between those gods in actual myths (minus maybe Aegir for Loki, and even then there do be some links) are fairly obvious.
My goal with this thread is to present a way I thought of to implement such a reshuffling with as minimal as possible a disturbance to the current game, and I simply listed the changes I saw requested most often. I happen to personally really want Persephone for Hades and Vidar for Odin, but the other two do not come from me, they are just the other changes I most often saw requested.
Its also the whole dynamic of “balance is surely doable” yea ofc its not impossible, but resources arent infinite and things takes time, people and restrictions, on a game that already has shortcomings in bugs due to clearly not having a great amount of people to deal with everything, splitting even more doesnt seem like a wise choice, every idea isnt worth implementing just because you could do it in theory.
This on the other hand I respect. Obviously any suggestion of content and addition represents at least some additional work load; you don’t think it would be a good allocation of dev time and that is fine. But I happen to think it really would be, as do many other people.
Heh! That is one perfectly way to see the game, but I think many people see it differently.
So although it presents less of a incentive, I’ll just say even if that case, this section of my original post still applies :
Furthermore, and while I don’t think every minor god should absolutely be available to the exact same amount of major ones, it feels really weird to have a whole “column” of minors that are only available to a single major god. Some reshuffling would allow for more diversified gameplay and encounters, with players not being restricted to a single path to play a given minor god and the related units and god powers being seen more often online (or even against the AI for that matter).
Yea everything is doable when you just shift work to something else and go well its on them to do it
No its not, and its quite bold to be so secure about a concept you seem to not engae with. Why do you think all pantheons dont have all 3 minor god choices implemented? Its not a quick and easy “just do it then balance it” as you seem to imagine. Some interactions are custom made with a god in mind and are left out of another to avoid certain combinations. Why do you think Loki didnt have access to ragnarok on the original game with how his god bonus worked or even now still? Why do you think Ra doesnt have access to thot and valley of the kings with how his empowering and bonus works? Theres gameplay reasons behind desgin, lore and flavor at least in AoM dont seem to be the priority from a game design standpoint, and such is the case in most games that interact with mythology.
Its an exact quote of what you typed thou, here ill link it this time:
Like how is it in bad faith to quote your exact sentence?
I know, i never said you were. I am also far from the only person not in favor of this. In fact there was a poll done and you can see how although limited in voters (this forum is not the full playerbase) its def more leaning towards not doing it last time i checked.
The magic argument of “as so do the majority/many people/most people” always works since you can just say it without accounting for it actually being true. And just to clarify again, all opinions are just that, opinions, are always valid and people have preferences, which is what i have been saying in most of my replies. None is more valid than the other, but that doesnt make you be able to ignore the hurdles it brings and just shifting it to “well its the dev´s team job not mine” is in bad taste imo.
Heres the poll for the specific one you are asking for btw:
i assume they don’t care - as the first guy voted when i asked for what community expects for cosmetic dlc.
i am fine with that for the most part.
i also agree with OG that if stuff should get changed everything needs to follow and get changed accordingly and they know this i am certain and thats why they won’t do it.
Also as @Moonshadow7475 explained Hephaestus is unfortunately important for greeks since their favour gathering is the most immersive good for for newcomers but also with the most downsitdes and Hepha compensates that - especially in team games. so yeah…
still salty about Demeter DLC atm personally.
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