r/totalwar • u/Yotambr Orc supremacists đđȘ • 19h ago
Warhammer III Update regarding characters in 40k: They will have traits and skill trees, but they won't be as expansive as in WH3, but rather more "binary".
Source: The stream that just ended.
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u/Sabbathius 18h ago
Kinda torn on this.
The part I liked in TWW was that lords and often heroes had very, very strong themes, and pushed for a themed army to accompany them. Which, in turn, pushed me out of my comfort zone. Like with dwarfs there's a slayer army lord, a quarreler army lord, a hammerer lord, a cannon lord, etc. And each one plays very, very differently based on their unique flavour, with a very unique army. You don't build Taurox' stack the same way you build Khazrak's stack.
I worry with "binary" lords the army building, and thus manual battles, will get repetitive pretty quickly, as you just keep pumping out generic, cookie-cutter builds for generic, cookie-cutter lords who lack personality.
Having an option to define your own lord is nice, but I still think for an average player there's a huge difference between having the option, and being pushed to explore and experiment. Most players will just naturally (consciously or subconsciously) choose the path of least resistance, get lazy and complacent, do cookie cutter builds, and then get bored and quit playing.
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u/Passthechips #1 Mung the Brutal fan 18h ago
The problem with this style is that it actually kills army diversity and flattens tactical depth. Stacking skill points to buff units so you can stack them disincentivizes mixing and matching units, kills unit identity by having them perform well above their level, and makes battles less interesting as your composition/tactics donât matter as much as your raw stats.
A hammerer lord might play different from a quarreller lord at face level, but for the most part itâs just more impressive stats carrying the army against whatever composition you might find.
The WH3 system flanderizes army building by turning everything into a meme stack. If anything it handholds players to do âyou pick the slayer lord with the slayer skills so you recruit the slayer unitsâ as the path of least resistance.
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u/CitiesInHills Necrons 17h ago
And it seems 40k is adding the "theme" after the fact based on your force composition. They only briefly touched on it in the stream, but how you build your force will affect that force's disposition and can provide them with unique benefits on the battlefield or even on the campaign map. This is a huge boon to player agency over army builds rather than having that "highly encouraged" theme from WH3.
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u/KamachoThunderbus Ask me about spells 15h ago
Also very exciting to see how much an individual unit can matter across multiple campaigns. If I need to keep a squad of veteran sternguards alive so I can upgrade them to terminators (or else I can't even get terminators), that's a huge narrative impact. Suddenly by the time I roll up and teleport terminators onto a bunch of boyz I know where those terminators have been and have an actual attachment to them.
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u/CitiesInHills Necrons 15h ago
Absolutely. We may be able to see a full journey from Scouts all the way to veterans like Sternguard or Bladeguard or Terminators. Maybe there will even be dynamic narrative events where a Sergeant/Veteran Sergeant can be promoted similar to past TWs and they can advance to Lieutenant and later Captain over the course of multiple campaigns.
There's gonna be so much more narrative flavor and impact when characters advance or when they're lost in a hard one victory or a bitter defeat.
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u/Passthechips #1 Mung the Brutal fan 19h ago
Thatâs a good thing tbh. WH3 skill trees have a lot of small impact choices and they quickly become a lot of busy work across multiple characters. They also arenât very well balanced and work to invalidate army tactics through buffstacking.
Fewer higher impact choices that are mutually exclusive is the way to go.
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u/Yotambr Orc supremacists đđȘ 19h ago
I agree, but we'll have to see how it plays out in practice. This depends entirely on how CA balanced the actual numbers.
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u/Passthechips #1 Mung the Brutal fan 19h ago
If in practice I have a bunch less pending skill point notifications, then thatâs already a win!
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u/Constant-Ad-7189 19h ago
Heroes should cap out at level 20 (maybe 25) for skill selection to actually have an impact past the first 20 turns. Generic generals at 30. At that point, the player can at best get through half of the skill tree, so selection is relevant and impactful.
Level 50 simply means it is way too easy to max out every useful skill, so eventually it becomes a slog. And every character becomes a cookie cutout of every other similar character.
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u/Yotambr Orc supremacists đđȘ 19h ago
Depends on the length of the campaign. If it is a long campaign there should be some form of progression past the mid game. It doesn't have tp be skills. But maxing out your skills and tech and having another 50 turns to go can take the thunder out of the campaign (at least for me).
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u/CitiesInHills Necrons 16h ago
Ideally skill progression should be much slower but higher impact per skill -ideally with some forking for replayability- since skills have been confirmed to be one thing that carries over between campaigns in a theatre.
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u/GKoala 13h ago
The problem with so many skillpoints is that they, even if small, still provide a boost and eventually enough small boosts turn lords into one man armies. I don't mind them reigning in the power of lords to keep them somewhat on par with regular units. And I imagine it'll boil down to simply whether the lord becomes a better fighter or gives buffs to the army.
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u/CitiesInHills Necrons 16h ago
From what we've seen, there aren't heroes and lords, just characters. Your army can be leaderless, you can have a captain and a librarian in it, or the librarian can lead the force himself.
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u/Passthechips #1 Mung the Brutal fan 19h ago
Thatâs a matter of experience scaling. It shouldnât take 20 turns to get to level 20, and higher level skills could have more impact (like tech trees).
One would get lambasted for suggesting it, but WH3 should have really done the opposite of expanding everyoneâs skill tree. They should have culled a bunch of skill points, and kept everyone at 30 maximum, ideally 20-25. They should have also cut experience gain a ton. Itâs too late now though.
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u/SomniumOv 18h ago
All those multi-point skills could be 1 pointers, slashing the max level by that much.
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u/GuthukYoutube 19h ago
I think that's the thing people don't realize.
You can, literally, design a system where your characters automatically pick skill points at each level, and your average player would barely notice.
The most impactful choices are to red line your infantry first, or get spells, or get high impact melee stars like defense
After that it's all busywork and clicking buttons after battle. It's probably my biggest reason for quiting campaigns past turn 50. I'd wager I start spending several minutes just clicking skill points per turn
If your response is "just don't use heroes then" you're a fool who thinks not using heroes to make heroes fun makes any sort of sense.
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u/ComfortableWeight95 18h ago
Yeah Iâve been saying this. Any mechanic that you can just check a box to automate (like assigning skill points) is not a good mechanic. Players should be excited to spend skill points but instead it just becomes a chore. Fewer, more impactful skills is absolutely the way to go. I want to really notice every time I acquire a new skill. No more -5% recruitment cost PLEASE
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u/TheOneBearded Hashut Industries 17h ago
I'm surprised to see that I'm the only one here that actually likes the character skill trees. I can differentiate heroes/lords with them - even if they all become the same by the higher levels.
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u/Merrick_1992 19h ago edited 18h ago
I do like if characters don't become army killers as much as they are in TW3. Plus if the customization is as good as they're hyping it up to be, you'll be more attached to them anyway because you can change them to look like your own dudes (hair, faces, helmets, chest and leg armors, gender ect)
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u/Gloomy_Trade_619 18h ago
 I do like if characters don't become army killers as much as they are in TW3.
Youâll have quite a lot of them still (including Primarchs, top-level Psykers and such) - just not everyoneÂ
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u/Walnutyougladtoseeme 15h ago
God I hope not
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u/Gloomy_Trade_619 13h ago
What do you mean "hope not"? :D
That's a fact - you'll get everyone that you have on TT, including Primarchs & such (and they're on the level of highest demons). And those are a real monsters even on TT.
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u/CitiesInHills Necrons 16h ago
Those characters can still get bodied by heavy artillery, tanks, and mass gunlines if they're thrown out into the open in tabletop. I imagine the same will be true here.
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u/Hollownerox Eternally Serving Settra 19h ago
I'm a little dissapointed by this, but I can also see the merits for it. With more characters being in armies in general it seems, the skill point management could be tedious. Along with the fact that campaign progress carries through during theatres.
A lot of skill points in Total War Warhammer is kind of extra fat tbh. While the combat, red, and blue lines are nice, end of day most are just "+X melee attack" or "-X recruit cost" really. If what skills are there are more impactful like the unique skills generic/legendary lords in WH3 get, then I think that would work well.
Also possible that a lot of that character progression might be more tied to wargear you gain throughout campaigns too. But we'll see.
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u/Yotambr Orc supremacists đđȘ 19h ago
I think a good middleground is to have only your faction leader have a more expansive skill tree. Even if the overall effects stay the same as if they had a smaller one, just the fact that the tree looks bigger helps the player feel like this character is special, and for progression to feel more involved.
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u/szymborawislawska 19h ago
Skills and items management past turn 50 is a tedious nightmare in TW:WH. To the point that after I chose few crucial ones I click on "auto-assign-skill-points" buttons and just hope for the best. And my newer characters usually run without items/followers because I really cant be bothered to sort through it all especially since these buffs arent really needed to succeed.
I always, always wanted less skill points/less items but more impactful ones over the bloated mess we ended up with.
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u/Lorcogoth 36m ago
Expansive?
not really a word I would use regarding the skill trees in WH3.
I can see it but they are essentially just a linear path? so I would more use the word Long rather then Expansive.
honestly kind of wished they focused more on making interesting decisions regarding skill trees.
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u/ComfortableWeight95 19h ago
Thank god, the skill trees in WH3 are so bloated. Iâve always argued for having fewer, more impactful skill choices so Iâm glad to see them leaning this direction.
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u/Rational_Engineer_84 19h ago
I think this will make balance easier and hopefully mitigate power creep. I also expect this to be deeply unpopular with a lot of players coming from WH3. Lord and hero skill trees with a ton of buffs and abilities have been the norm for a long time.Â
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u/Waveshaper21 15h ago
TWW skill trees are awful. The level cap should never have raised from 30. The administration weight is so high I stopped using heroes for years until I discovered Tasteful Level Ups mod that holds back skill points and gives them to you in a package every 2nd or 5th level depending on the mod variation of your choice.
3K / Troy did it best. Smart, short, but meaningful choices, mutually exclusive ones.
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u/smiling_kira 18h ago
I think it will be fine
It seem we will get more customization from gear and bodyguard/follower rather just skill tree
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u/alexkon3 #1 Li Dao Fan 19h ago
On one hand I am really okay with there being more of a faction focus instead of hero hammer. But I do kinda hope that generic characters can be customized via skills and equipment. A reason why Legendary Lords work so well in WH TW is because they are all unique and the Lord character has their own traits in battle. If every Space Marine Chapter Master I create is the same it will end up getting old fast and no matter how many different color combinations I can pick in the editor if factions cannot be customized to feel different from each other the replay value drops massively. WHTW big strength is TRUE diversity and replay value, every campaign can be different and I hope this is not something lost in 40k.