Magnate - Ability Tree: Regular

The last couple of weeks have been pretty crazy but I finally finished the first draft of the ability trees! There are still some changes to the art I'd like to see happen but I thought I'd go ahead and give you all a taste of what the abilities might look like if my first draft survives tweaks and edits.

So, here is the breakdown of abilities in the Regular's ability tree.

A. Leaders Wanted

Passive Ability

Increase officer's Might by 2%. Units under the officer's leadership has their hit points increased by 1.

B. Run Down

Active Ability

Requires 1 point spent in the Regular Tree

50 Energy Cost

Charge the enemy's front line dealing legion damage and stunning them for 2 seconds.

C. The Shield

Passive Ability

Requires 1 point spent in the Regular Tree

Units under the officer's leadership are able to equip a shield.

D. Quick Strike

Active Ability

Requires 1 point spent in the Regular Tree

25 Energy Cost

30 second cooldown

Strike the front enemy for legion damage +25 twice.

E. Focus

Passive Ability

Requires 2 points spent in the Regular Tree

Increase avoidance rate by 2%.

F. Shield Stance

Active Ability

Requires 1 point into The Shield

25 Energy Cost
30 second cooldown

Decrease damage taken by 20% for 5 seconds.

G. Smack Down

Passive Ability

Requires 1 point in Run Down

Requires 3 points spent in the Regular Tree

Run Down deals an additional 20% damage when activated.

H. Killer's Focus

Active Ability

Requires 1 point in Focus

Requires 4 points spent in the Regular Tree

25 Energy Cost

30 second cooldown

The next offensive ability used gains 10% to the critical chance.

I. Roguish Charm

Class Unlock

Requires 5 points spent in the Regular Tree

The Officer is promoted to a Rogue.

Gain Might: 2 - Dexterity: 10 - Intellect: 6.

Units under the officer's leadership have their hit points increased by 1.

J. Warrior's Way

Class Unlock

Requires 5 points spent in the Regular Tree

The Officer is promoted to a Warrior.

Gain Might: 8 - Dexterity: 8 - Intellect: 2.

Units under the officer's leadership have their hit points increased by 1.

And there you have it! The Regular ability tree. I'm still not sure what the next post will contain but if you have anything you'd like me to touch on, please feel free to send me an email and I'll see what I can put together! :D

Thank you for reading and I hope we see you again!

Magnate: Ability Tree Introduction

When given the choice, I usually prefer hearing the bad news before the good. I like ending things off on a high note. So, with that said, it is with regret that I must inform you of Greig's departure from the team due to personal matters. We send all our best wishes to him and his family and keep a candle burning in the hopes that he may return to us at a later date.

Now onto happier news!

First off, we'd like to introduce the man who will be assisting Lisa after Greig's departure, a mister Reuben Hinman. He comes to us with a background as a writer for a number of pen and paper adventures. He's already shaking things up with the story and will be two manning the main storyline with Lisa going forward.

Jynx has officially begun her tour with Magnate. Her first task has been to tackle the Ability Tree art and she's done an amazing job. With her efforts, I've been able to put this post together to highlight our Ability Tree and give you a glimpse of our current work-in-progress. In the coming weeks, she'll be creating all the icons required for the Ability Trees, 8 skills per class as well as the 21 class icons means she'll be drawing an incredible 189 icons in total! So talented!

Before I get into the details of the visuals, let us give some basic information regarding the Ability Tree and how it works.

Officers gain 1 ability point at level 3 and every third level thereafter. They also gain an additional ability point at levels 15, 30, 45 and 60. These are considered Key Levels as they represent levels which have the player determine the next class tier of that officer or the final ability. Once 5 points have been spent in a tier, all abilities are grayed out except for the last row which will either contain class choices or final ability choices.

And that's the basic rundown. I now present to you a work-in-progress of what an Ability Tree may look like in-game. I'll explain certain elements in further detail below the art. Of course, hovering over abilities will have a pop-up which will display the name and description of the ability in question.

 

 

A. This represents the classes and tier currently selected and available to the officer in question. As the officer reaches higher class tiers, they will replace the red hexagons and the player will be able to see points allocated to each class.

B. The class name is displayed here.

C. This represents the amount of points allocated to the currently selected class.

D. This represents the amount of Branch XP that has been accumulated by the officer. Branch XP is gained by purchasing abilities in the Ability Trees. Branch XP gained depends on the tier of the class.

E. With Branch XP, players will be able to purchase major abilities. These are abilities which are class type based. There are 3 types: melee, ranged and caster. When an officer reaches the level cap, they will have accrued enough Branch XP to purchase a total of 3 major abilities.

And there you have it! The Ability Trees! We've actually already talked and there are plans to tweak certain aspects. Once these changes have been finalized, I'll be sure to revisit the Ability Trees and talk about the what and whys.

Magnate: The Officers, Part II

I know I said we'd take a peek at Ability Trees this week, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted finalized art to go with this post and we're not there yet. So, I've decided to explore officers in further detail!

Last week we touched on the reason we have 2 distinctive officer ranks (Generals and Town Wardens) and I mentioned that they serve as leaders of legions as well as keepers of the town. So, we'll be talking about the statistics that officers have and what they are used for! Here's an example of an officer, his portrait was done by Zelie Berube (she will be drawing all town warden portraits for us!):

In this sample, the level indicated in the top right hand corner represents the minimum level the highest level officer in the kingdom must be and Kadrin's starting level. If this level happens to be lower than the lowest level officer in the kingdom, Kadrin is automatically leveled to match it.

First off, combat stats! Magnate runs on 3 main combat stats: Might, Dexterity and Intellect. Along with being the main stat used to determine damage in combat, each stat also plays a secondary role. These stats have no hard cap.

Might is used to calculate damage for soldier type classes, critical chance for scout type classes and finally, used to calculate additional damage reduction for all classes.

Dexterity is used to calculate damage for scout type classes, critical chance for soldier type classes and finally, used to calculate additional damage avoidance for all classes.

Intellect is used to calculate damage for caster type classes, critical chance for Valkyrie and Virago and finally, used to calculate status effect duration and magic resistance for all classes.

As you can see, we try to make each stat beneficial to every class in the game. No stat is useless for any class. Hopefully, this makes each item and gear decision have a greater personal connection to the players. Of course, these are just the main statistics for combat. There are a lot more like damage reduction with armour or avoidance and magic resistance but these are all primarily derived from item and gear.

The other set of statistics is officer stats. This consists of Leadership, Politics, Charisma and Composure. These stats have a hard cap of 100 and have limited trainability based on personality traits. These officer stats determine the outcome of legion training and town improvements.

Leadership is used to calculate the outcome of Courage training for Legions and Town Patrols which increases Security in towns. This stat is also used to determine the amount of units recruited to the barracks for melee types.

Politics is used to calculate the outcome of Awareness training for Legions and Town Inspections which increases Maintenance in towns. This stat is also used to determine the amount of units recruited to the barracks for casters.

Charisma is used to calculate the outcome of Will training for Legions and Festivals which increases Happiness in towns.

Composure is used to calculate the outcome of Readiness training for Legions and Attend Court which increases Civil Order in towns. This stat is also used to determine the amount of units recruited to the barracks for ranged.

A legion is the soldiers directly under the officer's command and they also have 4 stats, each tied to the officer stats mentioned above. Legion statistics are Courage, Awareness, Will and Readiness. Each stat degrades over time and must be maintained through training. Each statistic plays a role in improving the legion's ability in combat.

A town also has 4 stats that are tied to the officer stats mentioned above. These are Security, Maintenance, Happiness and Civil Order. Much like the legion stats, town stats degrade over time and must be kept up through officer actions. Here, each stat helps to determine the profitability and stability of the town.

And there you have it! A basic rundown of the statistics officers have in Magnate. There are a lot of formulas under the hood and I didn't really want to turn this into a math lesson so I left them out.

Our UI artist should be joining the team shortly and once we have a finalized art for the Ability Tree, I'll dive right into it!