Dragonshard Peek #2

[GameBanshee News]

RPG Vault has published their second Dragonshard "peek" feature, this time with Liquid Entertainment's Ed Del Castillo discussing character abilities and leveling. Check it out:

In a D&D game, everyone expects to level their characters. Problem was that in an RTS game, leveling has been done poorly up until now. Individual units would accumulate enough experience to hit the next level. The problem was that the life expectancy of a unit in an RTS game is so short that a player very quickly gets tired of trying to keep his better units alive, and leveling up ceases to matter.

We think our system works better. As characters in the game gain experience, it is put in a global pool. That pool can be spent to level up any character class. This means that when you level up a barbarian, not only do you level up all current barbarians, but all future ones as well. Now, whenever you build a barbarian, they will come out of the Blacksmith as level two.