Thoughts about the upcoming "expansion".

[wolfing]

Originally Posted by Brynjolfr

A person that doesn't like expansions?! How?! Why?!

I prefer sequels to expansions. Once I finish a game, I prefer it to be game over, end of story. My character is almost a God at the end of the game, already defeated like 100 dragons in one battle, what else can there be? go to a map where there are stacks of 200 dragons grazing on the road?
Give me a fresh new story, new classes, new units, new and modified spells and abilities, etc. But starting from scratch, I find the first levels a lot of fun because you have to try and manage with the little you have. At high level you pretty much use the same strategy and units for everything.

[HitmanN]

I can understand the point of view, but I kinda think it's a bit short-sighted to look at it in that way. When you're done with the sequel, and there won't be more, if you want to play the game again, you are forced to either play with the old content, or the new. Wouldn't you rather play a new game with everything thus far, rather than have to go and play each half of the content individually again? I rarely play games through twice, for similar reasons, but I'm always hoping that the developers would try to make games with as high replayability value as possible. Replayability equals longer life, which equals better or at least prolonged sales, which in turn increases chances of even more additional games/content.

And technically, it would be possible to make a sequel that goes together with the original, effectively being an expansion. For example, you could allow the player to choose whether to play on the new continents, or the original... or jump between them. Those that only want a new story and new maps can choose to only play through the new continents. Developers could balance the experience income and everything to allow full leveling with the new continents alone... while still allowing those that want to experience 'the best of both worlds' to choose to play with the old content simultaneously as well.

This all is just my point of view, of course. No offense meant to anyone.

[Zhuangzi]

I know what you mean Hitman, but if the player was able to take their level 30 leader into the expansion, either the stacks would have to be ridiculously large or the hitpoints ridiculously high. Plus the player has already upgraded his rune trees/spellbook/ragebox.

I personally love the low levels in a game. IMO Darion is actually the most fun area in KB - so I am happy for what is basically a whole new game with the same engine.

[Fate]

The expansion sounds great. I wonder if the items selection will be increased much though. Anyway, looking forward to it. I will definitely get the english version when it comes up.

[HitmanN]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

I know what you mean Hitman, but if the player was able to take their level 30 leader into the expansion, either the stacks would have to be ridiculously large or the hitpoints ridiculously high. Plus the player has already upgraded his rune trees/spellbook/ragebox.

Matter of balancing the old content to fit with the new. Converting a few numbers wouldn't be uncalled for either, as the game is going to have updates/changes in those anyways.

Oh well, even if the player couldn't continue with the old character, my point is that it would altogether make a much bigger and more lasting experience to stack everything together.

[Metroplex]

They should have done it like 'Titan Quest' Did, you could import your character from the Original into 'TQ: Immortal Throne' and the monsters would still kick your ass even if you were invincible on the later stages of the previous game, it was very interesting too.
KB and TQ are neck and neck as both are great games to me.
In TQ you may not have had the spirits of rage to hep you in a tight situation but you could summon the 'Liche King'! and he kicked ass!

[Ryder]

Originally Posted by KKJ

I'd be surprised if they don't put in the option to play a boy also before the game comes out. Keep in mind it's still a work in progress.

The title of the game tells me that aint gonna happen.

[Gatts]

Originally Posted by Ryder

The title of the game tells me that aint gonna happen.

They still may ad-hoc rename it to "Armored Whatever"

But back to topic:

I would prefer that the difficulty would be changeable directly during gameplay -> like old Centurion, Dungeon Lords...
Reasons are to be found in this forum, and there are plenty (basically, the game experience/knowledge may dramatically change during playing it - and either you get bored for too easy battles, or you start cheating for too hard battles, or you restart after 6 hours of gameplay, just for the reason you don't have a place where you could accumulate XP/ artefacts... even if you always can change your units - strategy, if you wrongly up-leveled, you would always be few steps behind...)
This could be even options... for instance Warlords Battlecry allow you to start in HARDCORE mode - if you die, you lost your character... so even this expansion could have something like "stuck difficulty" -> which is only useful if you want compare you results on forums... or there are competitions... but still quite useless if there are cheats everywhere

Players who do not like to grab for cheats, but also are not the masters of all games strategies, could possibly welcome to have a movable difficulty bar...
And this bar could be advanced - have more sub-bars:
Neutral units 1: x0.25.... x10.0 /strength in Leadership
Neutral units 2: No hero.... equal Hero.... double level Hero /attached to each normal-random neutral unit
Neutral units 3: If hero set to YES -> No artefacts... normal artefacts... legend artefacts... legend artefacts in all slots / equipment of enemy hero
Neutral units 4: If hero set to YES -> No spell book... random spells of low level... random spells of higher level... all spells and maxed... have all magic skills and spells /no comment
Neutral units 5: no henchman... normal henchman... maxed and equipped henchman... have also random spirit
Pre-defined battles: x0.25...x20.0 /strength in Leadership set by developers
Battlefield: No random armies... Neutral random armies... hostile random armies... hostile devices (will attack only player - not random target)... 2x strong and hostile random armies and devices /game may place on each battle field armies that were not seen before + devices that may attack only human player - curse statue, or help only PC units - healing statue... there will be hidden mines - triggerable only by human player units)