This is not meant to bring anyone down. I just hope some people will be able to point out some things that will alleviate some of my concerns that Elemental is not going to be "Master of Magicky" enough for me.
To me the thing that made MoM so great, was it had that "just one more turn!" magic that could have you awake at 3:00 in the morning, you to go to work if 4 hours AND YOU DIDN'T CARE.
Don't get me wrong - the two Stardock games I have played, GalCiV2 and SOASE are great games. And I don't even know how to quantify it, I don't know exactly what it is that gives a game "the magic". I really like a lot of what I am seeing. but a lot of what I am hearing such as no other races but Men and Fallen, and no disrespect to Total War, but it really seems like they are aiming for Total War with fireballs and dragons. And if that is the case, that will be a cool game that I enjoy. And I realize the game isn't even in really alpha yet, so I could be jumping the gun on getting my fears up. But here are some of the things that I am afraid will be missing from the game I hoped for:
1. The abililty to play as lots of different races and for it to be truly completely different. In MoM, playing as High Men, halflings, orcs, etc etc truly made each game a new experience. They didn't just say "every race has to have a light infantry, an archer, a heavy infantry, a catapult" and then give them different graphics. They really made each race it's own thing with unique strengths and weaknesses. It seems like just Men and Fallen is going to leave me wishing for more variety. Again I haven't seen anything so here is hoping when beta comes out I am wrong.
2. Another thing that made MoM almost infinitely replayable were the 30 or so options you could choose from at game start up. things like alchemy that would allow you to convert mana and gold into each other with no loss. Or starting on Myrror. O being a Warlord (combat bonus) and some of them had prerequisites, such as to be an Arch Mage (I think) you had to have at least one book of every school of magic. Then there was selecting the books of magic and preselecting your guaranteed spells. All of this combined with number 1 above really meant you had a universe of infinite possibilites.
3. MoM had a huge spellbook of over 100 spells. and again they were not just lame "ice bolt does 10 ICE damage and fire bolt does 10 FIRE damage" stupid essentially duplicate spells. Thre were some really well thought out and different spells that just seemed to fit the school that they came from. So far, it seems like the spell selection is going to be much less deep in Elemental.
I hope these are all unfounded concerns. I was a huge Master of Orion 3 fanboi until the actually released the game. So maybe it is just once bitten, twice shy. And I am really looking forward to getting a look at this, it is just that so much that I have heard so far has given me some concerns it is not going to be the game I had hoped.
This calms some of our - hopefully completely unfounded - fears before the beta.
That Angels and dragons should be rare is also ok, even preferable. Now, lizardmen and skeletons could come in numbers though ...
I must however just comment on the argument that different races would in effect not be more different from each other than different human factions (since both are just based on slightly different programming). This completely forgets how the player experiences the game and therefore how he/she enjoys it.
Two human factions could indeed be programmed with the same statistics as a human faction and an orc race. But the game would feel completely different playing the orcs, because fantasy is about your imagination, living in another world for a few hours - and games are about enjoyment (not mathematics, for the players at least!). Being a real "Sauron" leading an empire of drooling, screaming orcs is a very different thing from being just a nasty human commander leading a corrupt human faction ...
And as pointed out above there are also abilities linked to races, like ghosts being immaterial or bird men flying etc.
Following such a reasoning as above we could skip the graphics differentiating the factions/races altogether and just enjoy the number crunching of a great strategy game - I doubt it would be a bestseller though!
My humble point of view: If it is supposed to be modded in by the players, why not include some of it from the start? Let the races keep coming!
Don't mock balance just because you don't understand it's importance. Even if your not playing "competitive", for the fun of all that play, it's important for each single faction to have mutiple ways to play and win.
I disagree.
Fantasy games often focus so much on fantasy elements that they completely ignore all other aspects of, say, military. Many fantasy games are strategy games of some sort. In Heroes of Might and Magic III (note the name !) magic is represented by 2 primary stats (Knowledge, Spell Power) and over ten magic skills. Then there are a couple dozen different spells, which need to be learned at guild which means resource investment. Or found in shrines, on scrolls, in pyramids etc. By comparison, Might "half" looks very bland. You essentially have two modifiers, attack and defense which increase damage dealt and reduce damage taken. All associated skills like Archery, Armorer, Offense work that way, too. Entire 'might' portion is passive damage modifiers.
My point: fantasy games tend to focus so much on spells and supernatural things they usually neglect everything else. Spells and flashy effects often become the only distinguishing factor between races. If you abandon that premise, you'll discover that there's a whole world of possible differences between two human nations. In fact, races in most fantasy games differ less than enemies in real world. Conventional army versus native americans - both had very different technology, culture, and ways of warfare. Mongols against typical feudal armies of medieval Europe - to mongols, knightly honour and ways of fighting were ridiculous.
An excellent point. Part of this is undoubtably to make games more approachable and easier to learn. Another thing to consider is that most fantasy worlds, at least on paper, are dominated by a massive human population, with only dwindling and reclusive populations of elves, dwarves, etc. Admittedly, orcs and other generic evil cannon fodder are often quite numerous as well, but the 'civilized' world is typically overwhelmingly human. Most video games based on said fantasy worlds do not reflect this at all. This is partly because of player choice, but also stems from the very way the races are presented. (more on this later, I'm at work) Further, most fantasy video games present a single more or less homogenous human society as a playable race, even though humans, being by far the most numerous, would likely include numerous differet cultures and political entities. I'm greatly hoping that Stardock will manage to present the fallen and human subraces as distinct cultures unified against a common enemy rather than slightly different variations on a basic structure.
On the flip-side, this may be hard to implement considering where Stardock seem to be going with tech trees and unit design. It seems like the 'flavor' of your people may be up to you to create. Since technology, culture, and geography are all closely tied it will be interesting to see how the different races and subraces/factions/nations differ initially and how much those differences continue to have effects into the late game. I imagine differences like those b0rsuk mentioned in the quote above will be entirely up to the player to create, since both unit design and tactical style are left up to the player.
yes you may be right that some games are cheap and focus too much on flashy effects, I totally agree, but the point I made was not related to that. I just pointed out that the game feeling and enjoyment is linked also to e.g. the graphics (not only the hard facts). I don't think there is a problem creating human factions which are totally different - but they will per definition always be human. That is a pretty important fact in a fantasy game where you could otherwise have the option to play so much more. It's mostly a matter of taste, not of history or logic or anything
.....So the arguement is "it's not as fun since all the races look human regardless of other differentiating factors"?
Seriously??
No I don't think it is the "look" that matters. It is the fact that it is an orc, a beastman, a lizardman. It's what that difference causes to happen inside your head that matters - not the graphic that represents your guy. You may call it splitting hairs and if it makes no difference to you, then it makes sense that it makes no difference to you.
Is there going to be that same difference in your mind when running one faction of men as opposed to another faction of men? Only time will tell. But again it is not the graphic representation, it is the change of perspective in the players mind that I think is the issue being raised.
In MoM, when I played the dragon-men, I played the mage that also looked like a dragon and I tried to play the way I envisioned a "dragonish" leader would lead. If the factions are so well differentiated and enough backstory to really give each a unique flavor so that you adopt a different mindset, then I think that defines success on this aspect of the game. However, if it feels so similar that you don't get that feeling of adopting a different persona...that's a failure for at least that aspect of the game. <IMHO>
In HoMM3, you sorta forgot the armies. Yeah, the magic skills were more involved than the might skills, but the might skills were modifiers of the troops, the might half of the game. The troops themselves were quite interesting.
I'd like more variety in a game where the command unit is an actual unit and not just a figurehead, but HoMM3 didn't lack for might, you're simply looking at just one aspect.
When I played Stratego as a kid, the color (red or blue) or the French (?) uniforms didn't matter. I might be playing Orcs against . . who-the-hell-knows what my father was playing as . . it was about the game.
I'm open to having more races for more players. It will maybe make more sales and I love it when SD makes more money. The fact is though that I'm in it for the gameplay. I can fake whatever I need to float my boat if I have to if playing is worth it.
On the other hand . . I might just be full of Scotch.
Well you might be able to fake orcs if your knowledge of them is limited, but some races cannot be faked when ALL recruitable units are human. Say you're in the mood for playing the leader of a race of insects. Now if your town has only military units with weapons such as swords, bows and hammers... well where are the insects special weapons like a paralyzing stinger, trapping web, poisonous bite, etc., etc., . And why cannot any of your insects fly without some type of spells?? The list goes on and on.
The reality of having ONLY human units removes the option from ever being able to fantasize about growing an insect empire and civilization to crush your opponents. And the same would be true if you wanted to play a race of undead... as it wouldn't make any sense why all your undead need farms and food to survive, why can't your ghosts walk thru walls... and so on and so on.
Each race has specific strengths and weakness... you just can't say close your eyes and pretend(fake) your civilization is something else. Based on the examples provided specific abilities, weaknesses, resistances(even 100% immunities), and attacks/defensives need to exist.
The channeller has some of the greatest powers in this game and able to imbue essence into the world... so why should he and his main civilization be limited to being only human?
Besides a obvious 'lore' reasoning, one stumbling block we've found is in the equipable armor. When you're out there, exploring the world and collecting treasure, much of your loot comes in the form of Helmets, Armor, Gauntlets, Shields, and Weaponry to equip your character with. This equipment needs to show up on your character for gameplay reasons...we want players to visually identify strengths and weaknesses with a simple glance at an opposing army.
So at this point in production, we easilly have around 300 peices of equipment made, and it's looking like we'll hit 1000 by gold. For every 'non-human' race we'd add, guess what we'd have to do? That's right, make 1000 other peices of armor to fit THAT body type (probably 900 once we find peices that 'mostly' fit).
Now, there are ways around this. A lot of RPG's will only show weapons and shields on a character (perhaps we could just show the base model with non-human body types). Other games will limit the equipability of something to a given class (in our case, we'd limit by race), but in the end, the 12 major factions in the world at the new-dawn of post cataclysm Cartagia are these scattered remnants of the human and fallen civilizations.
But that's why we're including such a robust race editor right off the bat. With it, your worst case scenerio has you guys whipping up your own civs to play as. Even if you don't see the armor update on the model, at least you can still adventure forth as 'the Great Lizard Wizard of the North' (not sarcasm, just wanted to rhyme).
I figured this was the reason to stick with two (or twelve) flavors of humans. I think it was a good choice! I just think it is critical that these twelve factions of humans REALLY have some unique back story and also some major gameplay differentiation so that we get all the enjoyment of trying different races and it really makes it a new game. The uniques tech trees and stuff are really going to provide this, I hope.
I'm still enjoying GC2 TA, which introduced unique tech trees for the playable civs. But I'm hoping Elemental will shine with "and stuff" that helps deepen the unique identity of each faction. And I'm not really including any eye candy in that "stuff." I want to see things like grand magical abilities that only one channeler at a time can possess, Alpha Centauri-like depth for the diplomacy UI, and hopefully some general functional differences that are not simply variations in a set of ability bonuses shared by all factions.
I understand this would cause hesistation, but I have a suggestion which might provide a workaround or at the very least provide more options for the upcoming game. The Orcs, Elves, and Humans are about the same height so the weapons and armors can use the same body types. The Lizardmen have a tail yet no specific armor should be needed for a tail since many lizards can regrow the tail so the graphic can overlap sticking out from the graphic armor. Regarding a race of insects, the majority should not use physically forged weapons/armor since they have a natural body armor and natural weapons.
I do see a great concern for a race of dwarves, halflings, and giants... but wouldn't it be possible to use the same graphic armor and weapons already created and include the programming to adjust the sizes of these graphics by a percentage? Halflings wearing and using the same image with the only change being that it's been shrunk and the race of Giants wearing and using the same image with the only change being that it's size has tripled. Each different size range has a specific size setting... size_1=50% of original image, size_2=original image, size_3=150% of original image, size_4=200% of original image, etc., etc., . I've used tools which shrink or grow the sizes of images.
When exploring the dungeons I would completely understand possibly finding the Ice Sword from a dead giant. The item would be given a size rating and although my champion could not use the sword I would be more than happy to take it back where it could be sold, traded to another player or possibly given to a Cyclops who has joined my army from a previous quest and is the same size as the dead giant.
I hope this suggestion helps introduce finding small, medium, large and very large armor/weapons. Some players would be happy to keep a very large giant club merely as a trophy or possibly with the hope of one day giving the item to something under his control. This would really help those of us interested in creating our own races and allow for more types of items without generating new images.
Only if you don't assign your meanings to my words.
Cartagia? Thats a new name on me. Was that mentioned elsewhere? Is that the official title of the campaign world?
Yup, that's the name of the campaign world. Check the developers journal "the world of elemental". The first sentence reads like this:
"The continent of Cartagia was broken into two at the climax of the titanic war between “the powers” in what became known as the cataclysm. From this we now have what the inhabitants simply refer to as “the west” and “the east”.
I completely agree. The eye candy is important but only one aspect. What made Galciv 2 TA so fun was the variety of races and their unique abilities. Now that could be done with human factions too, but only to some extent. But in a fantasy world it would be possible to include so much more flexibility and strategic options, if you could play an undead empire, an insectoid empire (by the way I love both ideas!) etc.
The problem with the player adapting or modding his own races is that most often it feels like a B-solution where you have to make believe that you are actually not playing the empire you see in front of you on the screen and that you know since earlier games... Now Stardock is the company known for being THE BEST when it comes to game flexibility, both for strategy and for player choice, so limiting Elemental to only human games seems questionable at least ...
When it comes to the problem of adapting equipment to various races: an understandable problem, but I think we need to get our prioroties right. It is more important for me to be able to play a variety of civilisations than to see each type of weapon I find flap against the armour I just found - that's a detail, that's eye candy. But the basic choice of what you can play is ELEMENTAL!
But in any case: even limiting the game to humanoid-only civilisations with only human-compatible equipment could still include a wide range of fantastic choices, like undead, lizardmen, orcs, elves, rakshasas, mind flayers etc ... There is alaways a solution if you want to find one!
Well this comment is hardly serious since this is not what has been said in the earlier posts and replies. Reread with attention please ... The graphics is one point (not to be scoffed at by the way), the "hard facts" like abilities (ghosts floating through the walls...) is of course also important.
As long as they leave the design of the equipment adaptation open to be modded, a user can create their own race and modify their own armor and weapons for it themselves. That way, Stardock doesn't need to make a zillion items to cover a bunch of different races, just allow the base to add them in.
Other trivialties like ghosts walking through walls and undead not needing food are also easily surmounted. The Infernals in FFH2, a badass Civ4 mod, don't use food. All they have to do is leave the mechanics open for modification, and you can do whatever the hell you want to. Walking through walls is a simple matter of removing the block that prevents the rest of the units walking through them.
If it's open to be modded, we can do anything we can come up with even to a game that only has humans.
I am guessing that this is the actual name now of last years 'not-MoM' game that saw much speculation...it's been awhile since I've looked into this game as you can tell. Taken with all due respect to the OP that this game, while similar, is NOT MoM 2 or a remake of the original, I feel that some of your worries are likely unfounded.
1. I have played many many 4x and RTS games, and while having lots of factions is indeed nice, I have fond that I far and away prefer fully fleshed out factions over quantity anytime. And that seems to be the direction that is being taken here. Also, as has been mentioned, faction development can lead to many different end results giving us even more variation and flexibility than from more constrained faction selections. Add to that the undoubted modding that will go on, as well as the clear, at least to me, intention of adding more faction material with add-on releases, and I think this issue won't be as critical as it may seem to some.
2. I have to completely agree with your 2nd point. The most important decisions you make in any game of this kind is before you even begin playing. Thus, the more options available at set up, the greater the variety of game play options and strategy, and ultimately the greater the longevity appeal of the game. It does seem though that some of these types of set-up decisions will come into play early on in each game too as you create and use your hero characters and I think that will lead to the same kind of variety that you were referring to from the old MoM set up selections. Still, the more variables that we can manipulate during set-up, the better for me...and the more of a headache for the testers...
3. The spell quantities I am less sure about, but considering what they've done with the tech tree stuff in GalCiv, I can't believe that they would be lacking in choices in this department, especially if you can craft your own unique spells. This ability to create your own spells alone can lead to a great deal of fun and experimentation.
All in all though, I think as the OP also realized that we are just speculating on alot of things at this point. I too, long ago, was burned by the travesty of MOO3, but I don't think there is cause for worry here. Considering that again, this is not a remake of MoM, and also the great deal of enjoyment and long hours I've spent with the GalCiv series with its many variations and nuances from these same folks, I'm not concerned at all that they will drop the ball horribly here, as was the case with MOO3.
I don't have any concerns and neither should anyone else. Beta 0 is not even out yet.
Boogiebac. Can I make a suggestion? If this game is good, I would happily pay the same again $30-40 for an expansion pack with extra art content and spells.
If you make an 'orc' model, you can just scale the body and equipment for them down to get goblins too
Elves just need to be human bodies with pointy ears. Maybe scaled a little down again.
Need an 'amazon' body type of course please ...
More seriously I do have a few more serious thoughts for the mill ...
(i) Although essence should be limited, does it have to be finite? If it regenerates really slowly, or can be obtained very slowly from some resource or structure (I mean very slowly) it would extend games. Essence based creatures would be rate but not finite. This would help support the vaster 'epic' maps. I don't want there to be too much of a limit on city size.
Also, there might be a pre-game option for amount / rate of essence similar to the options for number of planets / technology research speed in Galciv II?
(ii) Want Paladins. Specifically, I want to be able by some means to build troops with good swords and armour, magic resistance, the power to heal and a leadership bonus.
(iii) Unlimited magic creatures in some circumstances. For example, magic mounts as a resource ... ? Like horses were a tile resource in some versions of the Civilisation and were required to build cavalry. E.g. unicorns, lizards etc?
Hey Vordrak,
(i): You gain more essence as you go up in levels, but once you spend some essence, that bit is gone forever. The real trade-off is, in later game, the guy that freely spent his essence building an army and spreading his control will be a shirivled weakling compared to the guy that horded it and only spent is as necessary.
(ii): You can cutstomize and name any type of unit you'd like, but we'll probably save army-wide leadership bonuses for heroes (the guys that lead the armies).
(iii): We'll see about this one...at the very least it should be something that's mod-able.
~
Yay! That's exactly how I had hoped/assumed the essence system was going to work I'm delighted to have that confirmed as I really think that's the best way to do it to give the player some really meaningful choices about how thin they spread themselves.
One question I would ask is if you've got any idea at this stage as to how (or if at all) this is going to scale with map size. I mean if by the time you've levelled up sufficiently to get a lot of the world beating spells and be nearing the end game phase you have, over the course of your life, accumulated and spent enough essence to put together a 10 city empire and still be pretty strong.. well that might be ideal on a medium map (where that could cover a reasonable portion of it) but on one of the uber huge maps might leave all the empires looking kinda anaemic in comparison to the world as a whole. Now that in itself might conceivably be fun (I guess you'd need to play test it to find out) but it would certainly be a very different game to playing on the lower sizes where you can control a sizeable proportion of all available territory.
Also, now that I think about it, I guess if you are going to change the amount of essence with map size... then the effect that essence has on different aspects of your chaneller would probably have to be tinkered with too. My point being that regardless of map size you probably want the potential essence hording badass end of game channeller to be at the same kinda level ... while you might want cities to be cheaper to produce on bigger maps. Although again I could be making some fatuous uninformed assumption there, I'm just thinking out loud here (so to speak).
Oh, and related to the above points, do you foresee there being any ideal limit you'd be aiming for where a player couldn't have more than a certain amount of cities regardless of map size?.. For instance you might feel that due to UI concerns etc that the micromanagement entailed in trying to run a 100 city empire would mean that it could really never be fun regardless of whether that only covers a tiny portion of one of the mooted giant 64bit maps?
Cool.
(1) How will that scale with map size?
(2) Will levels be capped or uncapped?
(3) Will essence levels be adjustable in the pre-game setup screen?
(4) Will essence levels be moddable?
(5) Will there be any other way, however rare, of gaining essence?
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