Ok, in the recent journal entry, It was stated that all Empires use death magic, and all Kingdoms use life magic. Well that's all well and good, except in an earlier journal it was stated that all Fallen factions are "Empires" and all Human factions are "Kingdoms"...Does this mean that every human faction will use life magic, and every Fallen faction will use death magic?
--It's not really a big deal, but it's kind of hard to believe that not one fallen faction has "seen the light", and not one human faction has "gone down the dark path" (From my experience with humans, I find this highly unlikely )
--or does this simply mean a re-defining of the term Empires/Kingdoms to now refer to their respective type of magic used?
...DISCUSS!!!
A good many people were attracted to EQOM because it was sonbwhat billed as a "spiritual successor" to MoM.
While it should be entirely clear that it is not all that much like MoM, I still think it is completely right and expected that people express ideas on these boards and why they like or dislike them. Of course if someone is expressing an idea they like there is an unspoken "therefore it should be in EWOM." there is a logical point that I am getting to.
Not many people actually come out and say "x was in MoM so it should be in EWOM". But even if they did, I submit to you that what they are saying is. "I like x. I know that I like x because it was in MoM. Therefore, I would like to see it in EWOM."
In short, all opinions should be welcome, and the WHY of those opinions is really irrelevant. Some people want bear cavalry, and it really doesn't matter if they want it because they watched The Golden Compass too many times, they had a secret unrequited crush on their Teddy Bear, or they just think it is a cool idea. they are just expressing what they want, and again really the reason is irrelevant. They want what they want. So I think saying "This isn't MoM2." well first off it is a little condescending because really, that should be pretty obvious to anyone with an IQ over 60. Second, it really doesn't provide a good reason that X shouldn't be in the game. If there is an idea that someone likes, please come up with a better reason than "This isn't MoM2!" why it shouldn't be considered.
And, reciprocally, if there is an idea that someone likes, they should come up with a better reason than "It was in MoM" for why it should be considered. MoM was a great game, but there are other ways to make a great game than the MoM mixture, and I feel it would be better to experiment with them: we already have MoM and are going to have a "repaired" mod of it for EWOM, so you really won't be losing anything...
You're missing Denryu's main point. The "It was in MoM so it ought to be in Elemental" stuff is a red herring. I've mentioned MoM regularly and am one of those GC2 folks who waited a long while for the project formerly known as NotMoM to get its street name. But I never praised an idea or function simply because it was in MoM, and I don't see any reason to scoff something someone posts simply because they also mention MoM.
ChongLi's descriptions of how the MoM spell book system worked are a very good example. I don't expect (or even really want) Elemental to simply ape MoM's spell books, but I do want the magic system to provide an analgous level of flexibility (replayability). The info we've had so far about Elemental magic gives me an impression that we will have faction-specific spell trees that do not enable the sort of mix-and-match combinations that MoM spell books provide. Rather than repeat a good, longish explanation of a spell book system like ChongLi's every time the subject comes up, it is perfectly reasonable to make a short reference to MoM.
I was not referring to you, or to ChongLi, or to Denryu. I was refering more to the general idea of "EWOM is a spiritual sucessor to MOM, thereofre it must be like MOM". I for one like games to be as unique as possible: that way, players get to experiance many different vaireties of play, as opposed to just playing different variations of the same thing. Yes, we should build on what we know works, but we must also be willing to step out of the comfort zone and put up with a few growing pains in order to create other ideas.
I would much rather have a spell system completely designed by Brad that is crappy at first, then steadily improves than one taken from MOM that is good but has limited potential for change, and exists in place of something innovative. Why? Becuase that way we get the best of both worlds: anyone with reasonable technical skill can imitate a game like MOM, and they will, and players will enjoy it. But if we atre willing to take the risk, we will also have a completely new game with lots of completely new mechanics that we can test, refine, enjoy, and advance; that we wouldn't have if we had just decided to duplicate what existed. In short, it's pretty much assured that we will have MoM for EWOM, as MOM for Whatever is pretty much assured to appear. However, what may not be assured is that there will be EWOM for EWOM, as truly new ideas are much rarer.
One caveat before I close: This all depends on how much the devs listen to the forum, and more importantly what value they place on our ideas as opposed to theirs. It's very likely that this little speech will be ignored, and that Brad, Boogie, and the crew will go ahead and do whatever they were planning to do in the first place. However, if the people in "charge" are willing to listen to people who are unwilling to take the next step, I can only assume that they will also be willing to listen to those of us who want to innovate.
[...]
But then, just because something is unique doesn't mean it isn't useful.... If people didn't come up with and implement new ideas in the game community, we'd still be playing Pong.
I'd preferably play a good game rather than one that is unique for the sake of being unique. That's how we got modern art, people!
Good is generally good. But how do we know if something new is good unless we try it? If it turns out to be crap, by all means drop it, but at least let the players judge: that's one of the things betas are for.
I challenge you to find any post any where on this forum where anyone has promoted this idea. AFAIK no one has.
I think GW Swicord understands what I am saying - your argument for "something new" has some merit, but I don't think anyone (OK there are a few sickos out there that would) wants to eat a crap sandwich just for the sake of something different. I would have been just fine with a MoM with updated graphics. I have been fine with almost everything that has come out about how EWOM is going to be - even the things that I have qualms on I am happy to wait until beta and see how the ideas actually work before I become to emotionally committed to any ideas.
Again referring to GW's reponse #53 above:
ChongLi's descriptions of how the MoM spell book system worked are a very good example. I don't expect (or even really want) Elemental to simply ape MoM's spell books, but I do want the magic system to provide an analgous level of flexibility (replayability). The info we've had so far about Elemental magic gives me an impression that we will have faction-specific spell trees that do not enable the sort of mix-and-match combinations that MoM spell books provide. This was a particularly good example. MoM had several things that kept bringing me back time and again - The huge variation available due to large spell variety, the different races and unique units only available to those races meant hundreds of games that you could try different things. And then add the aspect of the different abilities you could buy at game setup - now a strategy that might have sucked might be surprisingly powerful with a few new options. Saying "it can be modded in" cannot be a catchall response to this kind of concern. There are certain things that need to be covered in the canonized release. and right now I am in the camp of I have concerns that this will not happen, but I am certainly willing to wait and see until we at least have beta and see how things develop towards release. I think the game could reach a point of being overly moddable. For instance in the canon game there will not be faction specific units - mostly because units are designed in the game, and there is nothing to indicate that any faction could design any unit that any other faction could. So whatever other differences factions may have (and I am sure there will be many and significant ones) units unique to a faction will not be one of those differences (at least AFAIK). So, let's look at the "it can be modded" argument. Someone makes a mod that does have units that are faction specific - woot! Although they are not REALLY faction specific, because theoretically that same unit could be MODDED in for any other faction.... Anyway, I think I have beaten that idea into the ground, and I suspect you will either understand the concern (I suspect GW will see the point) or you are not going to see the concern.
ChongLi's descriptions of how the MoM spell book system worked are a very good example. I don't expect (or even really want) Elemental to simply ape MoM's spell books, but I do want the magic system to provide an analgous level of flexibility (replayability). The info we've had so far about Elemental magic gives me an impression that we will have faction-specific spell trees that do not enable the sort of mix-and-match combinations that MoM spell books provide.
This was a particularly good example. MoM had several things that kept bringing me back time and again - The huge variation available due to large spell variety, the different races and unique units only available to those races meant hundreds of games that you could try different things. And then add the aspect of the different abilities you could buy at game setup - now a strategy that might have sucked might be surprisingly powerful with a few new options.
Saying "it can be modded in" cannot be a catchall response to this kind of concern. There are certain things that need to be covered in the canonized release. and right now I am in the camp of I have concerns that this will not happen, but I am certainly willing to wait and see until we at least have beta and see how things develop towards release. I think the game could reach a point of being overly moddable. For instance in the canon game there will not be faction specific units - mostly because units are designed in the game, and there is nothing to indicate that any faction could design any unit that any other faction could. So whatever other differences factions may have (and I am sure there will be many and significant ones) units unique to a faction will not be one of those differences (at least AFAIK).
So, let's look at the "it can be modded" argument. Someone makes a mod that does have units that are faction specific - woot! Although they are not REALLY faction specific, because theoretically that same unit could be MODDED in for any other faction....
Anyway, I think I have beaten that idea into the ground, and I suspect you will either understand the concern (I suspect GW will see the point) or you are not going to see the concern.
It's not really explicit, but I for one feel that the continual and repeated references to MoM at the expense of other games certainly implies it.
And while I agree that the spell system we have now lacks replayability, I am also willing to wait and see for the alpha/beta before I actually judge it. Besides, there are other ways to do things like this besides the MoM way, as have pointed out before. In this case, the spellbook system they had sounds like it would be ok, and I simply used this thread as something of a soapbox to voice my concerns about "imitateitis" in the forum in general.
I doubt anyone has come out and said it that brazenly, though I recall a post along the lines of "We need Myrror like MoM!"
It's a general attitude where MoM is up on a pedastil and anything that makes Elemental more like it is inherently good.
That's more than a few posts from landisaurus and more than a few sympathetic replies from other MoM lovers. And it's another good example of how "Elemental must be like MoM" talk is a red herring. landi is very involved in discussions about *lots* of ideas that MoM didn't (and couldn't have) included.
It is not MoM's fault that it is the only good example of a fantasy TBS game with a strong sandbox mode. If it had managed to spawn a true 'spiritual successor' before now, I'm sure the game would be mentioned as often or more on these boards. I don't believe I'm putting the game on any pedestal here. I'd be very happy to learn of a game other than MoM that could meet that basic need for highly replayble TBS in a fantasy setting. (Age of Wonders doesn't count for me because it cannot generate its own maps.)
Yeah MoM defintely was not the perfect game by a long shot. It seems like I remember a ton of late game crashes, sound problems, etc. I guess like some here agree, the gameplay made it worth putting up with all of it's crap.
EWOM could capture that same magic in a completely different way. There are many things that have been revealed that at this point, an updated, stable MoM would be a little bit of a disappointment. I am all for innovation and trying new things. Like Scoutdog said a few posts ago, "good is good." And SD has a record of delivering "good" even "great" which is why I will swallow my concerns until I have something tangible to give feedback on.
In particular, the reveal on how essence is going to work and the ability to give other units essence which will also grow - awesome plan and I really hope we can balance divide and grow strat against essence hoarders and everything in between.
Not to disparage Landi or his contributions (after all, he's one of the biggest contributor to these forums), but I agree with Scoutdog and Tridus here. He has on many occasions said things like "It doesn't look like we're going to have multiple plains. I can't imagine why, considering they were one of the fundamental features of MoM."
And those arguments aren't productive. Yeah, I understand that it's implied that he really liked multiple plains (if he didn't like it, he wouldn't be asking for their return). But in general, I think everyone is better off if people say what they like about a feature and why they want it. The reason I say this is that giving your reasoning can go a long way towards starting a great discussion on advantages, disadvantages and tweaks that might improve it. Yelling "I want multiple plains!" won't really accomplish that, at least not to the same extent.
But even better would be to say why they liked it in MoM. For one, features from one game don't always translate well to others - by writing out your reasons for liking it in MoM you force yourself to think about how it might work in Elemental.
What's really a problem IMO are comments along the line of "That's not at all like MoM, oh no!" That is the best way to stifle creativity that I can think of.
I wasn't praising his Myrror obssession even though I'd kind of hoped for some other-plane, underworld(water), element-moons stuff for the maps. My point was that even when you note an extreme like landi's Myrror thing, you are painting with too broad a brush if you try to reject MoM-related discussion in general because a given poster might be very fixated on a particular MoM-like feature without at all being some slavish MoM-worshipper. The devs are the ones who call Elemental a 'spiritual successor' to MoM, so what is the freakin' problem with discussing MoM features, especially here in the last days before the public beta?
Put somewhat more differently, if you (and that's a whoever "you," not pigeon, Scoutdog, or Tridus in particular) want to crit a post from someone, I prefer to see you dig into functional specifics and not just whine about MoM being used as an example.
For sure. But I think it should go both ways. Rather than saying, "This should be in the game, because it was a good feature in MoM" I'd much rather see people say, "This should be in the game, I liked it in MoM because of ______." I'd prefer it even more if they'd go a whole step farther and add, "It'd be cool if they changed this aspect of it" either simply to improve it or to make it work better with what we already know about Elemental. Sometimes extra discussion like this isn't really applicable, but it almost always is with just a little bit of thought.
Saying, "X should be in the game!" with no clarification or other information is not particularly conducive to constructive discussion.
We don't care if MoM is being used as an example. It's just when people yuse MoM as the only example that I become concerned. Whatever happened to Dwarf Fortress, AoW, and the HoMMs? Sure, other games get mentioned some, but not nearly as much as MoM, and as a political scientist, you should know that very few trends are absolute. This one is no exception.
I should be (a character) in the game!
AoW:SM can. I found stuff made in the map editor to be better for the most part then the random maps, though.
Man, I really miss the days when Games Domain was really By Gamers, For Gamers. Even the current wikipedia page doesn't make it clear that Age of Wonders eventually attempted to do sandbox maps. And even though I have no real idea what you really like in a TBS game, your preference for the map editor over the random map generator leaves me still thinking that no game since MoM has done that particular job well.
The random map generator was reasonably good at making fair maps. It wasn't as good at making "interesting" maps compared to what the map editor could do. AoW had very pretty maps if you spent a lot of time with the doodads and such. I've never seen a map generator get that type of accessory right, in any game.
HoMM III had a pretty good random map generator, I think. I still play that game today, only because of its random map generator. Yeah some aspects of it are pretty predictable and the maps it makes aren't the prettiest I've seen, but it works, and you never know quite what to expect. But it really says a lot that I continue to play HoMM III long after I've gotten bored of both of its successors (although that has to do with III being a better game all around than IV and V, too).
AoW:SM's RMG worked pretty well, too. I never played MoM, but I suspect that AoW:SM's was probably as good as MoM's. I've never met a random map generator that comes up with maps as interesting and good-looking as a hand-crafted one.
Woah. This discussion really took off. For those of you that may be skeptical about all the comparisons I make to MoM and the claims I make that things should be "like MoM", I hope this explanation satisfies you:
It has been stated many times that this game is intended to be a spiritual successor to MoM though not exactly like MoM. Knowing this, I approached the discussion with my extensive experience in MoM and its many pluses and minuses. In my opinion, if you are making a successor to a game (especially a really good one) you must examine these pluses and minuses carefully and find a way to turn the minuses into pluses.
From what I see going on here, I worry that some of the minuses of MoM are being overlooked and many of the pluses are being changed simply for the sake of being different. To me, that carries a big risk of turning pluses into minuses and totally messing up the game in the process.
Whenever I argue that something should be more like MoM, it is because I believe that such a feature is extremely beneficial to the game and that the game would suffer without it. A proper successor uses the original as a starting point and seeks to improve upon it. A great deal of what was in MoM was extremely well thought out and it would be a shame to see those things discarded for the sake of being different.
I'm not taking anything for granted. If EWoM is too different from MoM, it may not be possible to do everything I want in a mod. The closer the game is to MoM, the easier it will be to do the mod.
I'm a big fan of Dwarf Fortress as well. However, I do not believe that EWoM should draw much inspiration from that game, as it is on a totally different scale - a few dozen to a hundred dwarves in a small fortress vs. a vast empire of millions of people.
It's sort of like comparing SimCity to The Sims. You aren't going to be buying new wallpaper and redecorating the houses of millions.
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