Hero Line Wars - Thoughts on progression?

[X-maul]

I am starting a small sideproject; Hero Line Wars, which will be a recreation (not completely but same idea) of the popular map from Wc3, where you send units to the enemy team to gain income, while controlling a hero, defending a location, from the units send by the enemy team.

My problem here is, I want to have heroes have a feeling of progression, I was thinking of giving the heroes the basic setup, with 3 normal abilities, and an ultimate ability, allowing the hero to upgrade/learn their abilities once every level.

On the other hand, I was thinking of making the heroes have learned all the abilities from the start, and giving the players some Ability Points every level, allowing the players to choose if they want to upgrade from 3 options for each ability (for instance this could be Damage, Range and AoE),

I dont know which option to use, the first is something people know, and can relate to, but option two is more unique, but might also give a dull feeling of progression?

Any thoughts are appriciated

 

[Phubar]

Experience new ways!
Old stuff may be good but new one is a NEW one
My vote is for the second option!

 

[X-maul]

I think I'll make all abilities levelable, and upgradeable. Levelable doing what you would expect, increasing damage, range, energy cost and that kind of stuff.

Upgradeable meaning that every 10 level, you will be able to upgrade one of your abilities, (kinda like runes in Diablo 3) which will change the ability in some way (make the AoE larger, energy cost smaller, or completely change it).

 

[Phubar]

I like that! For one ability the choice is predetermnated? (ie 1st upgrade more AoE, 2nd less energy, 3rd more damage) Or the player can choose if increase one of them instead of another?

 

[X-maul]

I'm not sure if it should be like a ~3 step upgrade, (like you said, 1; Aoe, 2; Range, 3; Damage) or it should be 3 different upgrades for each ability, upgrade either range, damage or AoE every time you get an ability point (every ~10th level)

 

[Kyuft]

I personally like your second idea of being able to upgrade 3 stats of different spells, such that, if someone wanted to upgrade a whole spell, they could upgrade all 3 stats (damage, range, cooldown/AoE) or they could pick and choose different stats from different spells (damage of spell1, range of spell2, and damage of spell3), making the game more interesting while also giving it more replayability by making each experience different. The only concern is that you make the 3 different stat upgrades equal, and not make one more powerful or useful than the others (for example of what NOT to do: upgrade 10 dmg OR 2 range OR 1 sec cooldown).

 

[X-maul]

I personally like your second idea of being able to upgrade 3 stats of different spells, such that, if someone wanted to upgrade a whole spell, they could upgrade all 3 stats (damage, range, cooldown/AoE) or they could pick and choose different stats from different spells (damage of spell1, range of spell2, and damage of spell3), making the game more interesting while also giving it more replayability by making each experience different. The only concern is that you make the 3 different stat upgrades equal, and not make one more powerful or useful than the others (for example of what NOT to do: upgrade 10 dmg OR 2 range OR 1 sec cooldown).

The tough part will be the balancing of it, but I'll most likely use percentage increasing instead of flat numbers

But thank you for the input, I appriciate it a lot