Powers

Unlike in previous SHL games, you can create fully custom powers. This means custom audio, visuals, handles, animations, color patterns, particle FX, beams, etc. This also means custom performance, something I go deeper into below. While I do have a good deal of assets set aside for just this kind of customization, I don't yet have a comprehensive list as to what will and wont be available at time of paid-access testing.

While we will allow for players to create powers from scratch, there will be a ton of preset ones to help people who just want to play. You can of course start with one of these presets and make adjustments.

When you first create a power, you will be able to assign it certain qualities. You can spend more skill tokens on a single ability, or spread it out among a few, or become a master of none with a generalized skillset. You can give yourself situational advantages at the cost of being disadvantaged elsewhere. That decision is up to you, and it's all done in service of one goal - to create compelling experiences when using your powers.

Instead of giving you all your skill tokens at the beginning, you only get a handful. This means that as you play the game as the character you level up and can improve upon your existing abilities, giving yourself new moves, new status effects, great strength in certain areas, etc. With each improvement though, you are forced to specialize your character a bit more, leaving you vulnerable to people who took different paths, while also making you more dangerous to others.

This is the basic idea behind SHL4's combat balancing. One way to describe it would be "Rock Paper Scissors, except whenever you tie you need to arm wrestle that person." This means in SHL4 that you make the decision to specialize before you see your opponent, and that decision is somewhat locked in. If you were to go head to head with that individual your first test is seeing if you have an advantage due to your specialization, and if you don't it all comes down to who is a higher level. This means that a level 5 sniper inspired player could take out a level 10 melee user most of the time, however a level 6 sniper will likely beat a level 5 sniper, and a level 3 spy could kill the level 6 sniper, and the level 10 melee user would decimate the level 3 spy. Now, unlike games like Team Fortress or Overwatch, there won't be explicit classes. Rather you will create your own custom powerset of no specific name, and you'll just happen to have advantages and disadvantages which you'll have to learn and strategize using during combat.

If you want to try to specialize differently, you can just make a new character and go a different route. The hope is that no single player will ever fully experience the combat simply because there are so many compelling and useful combinations, making the game infinitely replayable while at the same time hopefully compelling at each step of the way.