Personal Taste Question about RPG maps

[Effane]

When it comes to heroes levels and skills/abilities. Do you perfer to train them in RPGs like most normal maps with hero units. Or do you perfer to receive a book of spells that you dont train, it just exist ALA FF Tactics or Defiance ORPG?

My thoughts on both. Help me out with your opinion and other pros/cons.

Some advantages are for the first, Players can progress uniquely, able to make it so they have to specialize or split focus even.
Down falls, not newbie friendly, you can sometimes gimp your char pretty bad if you dont understand skills before you start. Harder to balance for play. (I was thinking with this I would make some way to untrain skills at a cost).

About the second idea. Players are forced into a mold. Easy to understand the flow of skills, they are just given to you. Easy to balance, no creating gimped chars or worrying about if someoen is going to create the perfect high level combo.


I really want to hear your ideas on this. I am at a point where I am taking a day or so break, skills/abilities is my next section of this map after I finish entering all the basic hero types. But I thought about this and wanted to see what the community was interested in before I became entrenched.

 

[LedZepplin]

I personally find the first option more fun than the second. I feel with the second option everything is just passive you dont have a choice on how to play your character other than when you cast things. I think if the tooltips are well done and explain what the abilities do and the people who are the heroes, the players, at least read what the skills do everything goes good. Games which are more customizable but at the same time limited are what i find fun. When its to customizable it can get confusing and when everything is just given to you its kinda boring.

 

[Eilhal]

I am making in my map that your hero starts off with 1 skill (that you get to pick yourself) and that is your ultimate. you have 3 choices for this skill based upon what race and class you are. then for your other skills they will be purchased (triggers that do Add ability to hero) and these will have DETAILED tooltips but cannot be untrained. this way you get the best of both worlds... customizable abilities AND being able to level them up normally just like if you were just given a set of abilities

Also I am going to add a suggestion like "Firebolt goes will with a spell that will augment your mana regeneration because it has a high mana cost" or "You should only pick this skill if you are a supporting spellcaster"

 

[Effane]

Yeah, that is a nice idea, but it doesnt fit the flavor of the map I am working on. All things being considered for this map, I need to focus on the two main types to maintain something of a story in this case.