Over the holiday weekend, Heroic Games dropped a fresh video for Ship of Heroes hopefuls, this one covering fundamental mechanics: leveling, buffing, and character progression. For example, SoH will adopt some classic MMO tricks and tropes: color-coded names by difficulty, leveling up and acquiring skills at an NPC, and buff management.
“In this fight [in the video] you can also see that our hero, the Sorceress, has a new reaction animation upon being hit with ranged fire by the Prometheans. This is a hard fight for the Sorceress, and she uses a defense infusion to help her out. Notice that after her defense is improved, some enemy attacks do get a ‘miss’ message. Still, it is a hard fight for an unaugmented, level one character. Fortunately, the Sorceress levels up during the fight, which immediately heals her to full health, allowing her to win. Normally, she’d need some other advantage – augments, infusions, and teammates can all help.”
There’s also a peek at upgrades to the Fiery Blast powers and impact animations. “We think leveling up should be more dramatic, with more of a flash of light and an audio cue,” Heroic writes. “One of the key things to realize is that we have the powers and combat system working pretty much as we need them to. A viewer can see that character level, buffs, augments and infusions all stack, and have the desired effect.”
As noted earlier this month, a “major” character customizer beta is still planned for this summer “as soon as [Heroic] can carry it out.”
