I'd ultimately like to see it go along the lines of: Pick Race (in this case CSM) Pick Chapter/Warband (each with its own buffs and nerfs - some better melee, some better shooting etc) Pick Class And then inside the class you can specialise and pick talents and then on top of that you can pick talents from Chaos God trees. I'd personally prefer 5 trees, but being locked to one from the outset, possibly with a quest chain to be able to renounce the god you locked into and pick another :3
Commenting on your idea: If you at some point in your progression have to pick one god permanently, why not pick a god from the get go? What is the point with being able to choose traits from the other god trees If you have to choose a god permanently at some point anyway? Then(following by what you said) all other choices you made before in the other god trees will be rendered meaningless, and thus your choices as a CSM player will be meaningless concering the god trees, because eventually you will be guided toward the same path and end up at the same point as all other players that choosed the same god as you. I could be wrong, because it depends on if there will be muliple pathes in a specifik god tree after you have reached the point where you have to choose a god permanently. A simple example could be "you have chosen Khorne as your God now choose do you want to main, kill or burn?" what did you have in mind DjemoSRB? A side question(s) to DjemoSRBs idea What about those players that want to be undevided only? Will they have the fifith "god" tree with aspects of all the runious powers in it? Or should they just accept it and choose a god to follow?
That is why I suggested 5 seperate trees, but you pick which Mark you want at the start and follow that from the get go.
It is important to bear this in mind: The god trees make it so that CSM get their abilities and power ups from 3 sourcers: their class, their warband(sub-faction) and their chosen god(possibly extremly devoted undivided). Where the Space Marines get their get their abilities and power ups from 2 sources their class choice and their chapter choice. That means that the 3 benefints the CSM players get have to be slighty less powerfull in order to be balanced to the Space Marine tree system, meaing with this system, if the god tree was taken out the Space Marines would be out right right stronger to the CSM. Another important question that has not been discussed yet is should there even be a god trees? Why do I ask this? Because some of the classes amog the CSM can't be allied with certain Gods for example, chaos sorcerer and chaos raptors. The chaos sorcerer is tricky thou, because it's a hero class and we don't know if they will have talent system unique to hero classes, and if they are not affected or even more affected by warband choice. This is all assuming that they will use the talent system, for all we know it could be a weapon based progression or an entirely other progression system but this is just where the discussion has ended up for now. Edit: Forget what I said I just found out that they will be useing skill trees but it is not specficed how each faction and sub-faction will handle the skill trees and how they are affected by faction special conditions (like the Chaos Gods for the CSM) if there even will be special conditions like that.
God trees make the most sense to me, but you can't rule out other alternatives. With a game of this depth it would be a sin to not include following of the Chaos Gods, if they had decided to use the 4 god aligned chapters, then they could have just made the various boons part of the chapter/warband perks, on par with how Space Marines will no doubt do it. That would've solved the minor problem of units not being available to certain gods' followers etc, just don't allow sorcs to the khorne sub faction etc. As it is if they do seperate trees for each god using this undivided system, then potentially you could just turn off certain gods' trees for neccessary classes, so sorcs' just get 4 trees instead of my suggested 5 etc. I think trees are best because of the progression, which is important in an RPG, as well as giving the option of which progression route to take within a tree. Other options could just be picking a Mark of Chaos, and that just comes with a set of buffs/nerfs etc, to show progression in that you could then just add something, again similar to, like the SW:TOR light dark system, but instead of choices progressing you along the path, your combat could. For example, Khorne would mostly just come from killing enemies, collecting skulls for Khorne. Where as Nurgle might be more based on the fear/dispair factor, making you progress by breaking your enemies morale or something. And as you progress by hitting certain break points you get bigger buffs, more aesthetic changes and possibly more god specific gear choices available..
I think players should start as undivided and automatically have some sort of "all rounder" undivided buff and/or bonus, and you can chose to switch to a specific god, which also unlocks a more specialised buff/bonus, as well as extra option/class when it comes to combat. E.g.: Nurgle4lyf starts with the undivided buff which gives a smaller boost to all stats, but then chooses to carry the mark of nurgle, thus switching the allrounder boost for a large toughness/armour boost, as well as unlocking the option to later on become a plague marine.
Pretty simple actually, the ones that want to stay undivided indeed shall just stay as such. Since they have access to each gods tree up to half way they make for quite a functional jack of all trades, picking from a wide array of traits and abilities each respective god tree brings. They are in no way forced to pledge allegiance to any god. Khorne tree would focus on sheer damage and prowess, Nurgle takes the path of endurance and DoTs, Slaanesh tree governs over attack and speed boosts, while im not sure yet what Big T might entail for someone not a psyker (these are just basic ideas which would be finely tuned and expanded upon by the devs). As for the question why not from the start, quite a simple answer, the players are not versed in the game when they first start it and making them choose something without even knowing what it entails is just bad design. With an ability to experience all the gods trees they will draw unto their own conclusion if they enjoy the varied gameplay the undivided brings or perhaps the Khorne tree has peaked their interest cause they are diehard melee fans and get allergic reactions to bolters. They shouldnt in my eyes have a 5th tree for the gods cause each respective tree of the gods will bring about its own merits which undivided players can mix and match (to the halfway point) and make their desired builds. The notion of their choices beforehand somehow being obsolete is not really logical to me cause each CSM chooses to become dedicated to 1 god. The Bringers of Decay chose to follow Nurgle unlike the rest of their Black Legion brothers. Who is to say that before that point when they were still undivided warriors they havent pondered other options? EDIT: Sorcerors can indeed be allied to a certain god, Blight Mages for example are dedicated sorcs of Nurgle.
Redone My point with this discussion was originally on how sub-faction bonuses to the classes of factions would affect combat in the sense of some sub-faction class combos could be suprior to other combos in factions, and therefore limit player choices, because their favorite sub-faction and class combo might be inferior to others in the same faction. But it got derailed and switched focus to manily about CSM which should be disscussed in the appropriate thread, sorry about that. I would like to know how the devs will handle this because they stated that one of their top priorities is for players to be attatched to their character(s) by giving us the freedom of choice in terms of what we wanna be BUT a part of a sub-factions identity is their strengthes too. So will the devs aim for some sub-faction class combos being stronger than others? It all depends on the devs approach to the perks of a sub-faction if there are going be perks. tl:dr All of my rambling boiled down to this: How will sub-faction choice affect classes in terms of combat?
They probably dont even have all of this stuff mapped out yet man. So it'd be hard to give detailed answers about the intricacies of the balance between various things that don't exist
