There's been a lot of discussion around topics relating to the sovereign - whether dying should end the game, whether the sovereign should be customizable, and how powerful the sovereign should be, among others. Having a sovereign as a playable unit adds an RPG element to the game, and many of the discussion points on all sides of these discussions seem to be where along the RPG/strategy spectrum the game should be. There are no right or wrong answers to this question, just what the development team envisions for the game. However, I feel like we should step back and re-analyze what all of these detailed game design decisions are meant to do - make the game as fun as possible.
But what makes a game fun? That is a difficult question to answer. Without attempting to answer that question, though, neither the dev team nor the community will be able to make logical game design recommendation or decisions. At the end of the process, we won't have a cohesive set of gameplay elements supporting of an overall vision for the game. I've seen this happen in many software applications (not just games). When it comes time to make detailed design decisions, it is easy to lose sight of the big picture, which in this case is maximizing the entertainment value. Unfortunately, what makes an RPG game fun is not the same as what makes a strategy game fun. To make this point a little more concrete, let me provide some specifics.
Here are a few of the top items in my list of what I enjoy in strategy games:
Here is what I like about role playing games:
Note that Strategy item 2 is directly at odds with RPG item 1. In strategy games, I don't enjoy playing the game when it is clear there is an optimum strategy, and there aren't many interesting decisions to make, just execution. In RPG's though, much of the fun is maximizing the damage potential and finding the optimum build. This is partly because the RPG's use the same character for many, many hours of gameplay, whereas strategy games are meant to be replayed over and over, where each game would be much shorter. Also, and perhaps more importantly, the effectiveness of the RPG characters are much more closely correlated to the characters' stats in the game, whereas the effectiveness of units in strategy games is much more related to the player's ability. Trying to mix those two models can be dangerous.
Given that, I worry about adding too many RPG elements into Elemental because the game becomes much less strategic, and much more about optimizing the sovereign. With a typical RPG game, the player characters are much more powerful than all of the other units in the game except for a few bosses, which have the ability to really threaten the player. If Elemental has that dynamic, most of the units in the game will be practically useless against the sovereign, and the game would only be interesting when the sovereign was challenged. However, if those challenges resulted in a game over, the game would hold little appeal for me in the long run, because recovering from a failure (aka starting over) would take a long time with little entertainment value. This would encourage me to be very conservative over the course of a game, or very risky early on, so that the game would be decided very early, both of which may not take advantage of many features of the game.
Furthermore, a super-powerful sovereign really makes a lot of the other strategic decisions much less relevant. If the sovereign can't reasonably be killed, the only decisions that really count are the ones about the sovereign. If that happens, the game will be poorly equipped to be an RPG, since most of the base gameplay features are the strategic aspects of the game, which would be uninteresting with a super-powerful sovereign.
To conclude, RPG aspects are fine as long as they don't impact the fun of making the strategic decisions. But too much focus on the sovereign could put a lot of the strategic fun of the game in jeopardy.
What is all this talk about "Fun" ? we don't need that!
(joking)
but seriously, I wouldn't worry about it. Ever played D&D 4th edition? while I'd likely argue thats more of a strategy game than an RPG, it is what many people think of when they hear of table-top RPGs. You say in the "typical RPG" the player characters are much more powerful than all other units except for a few bosses? Well thats certainly true in this, but that doesn't mean they are not balanced on the strategy side. You can sacrifice power of your sovereign to provide bonus to your economy or armies, to the point that you should easily be able to build an army able to rival even the most optimized sovereigns, and the sovereign himself should be able to rival the most massive armadas.
The balance isn't something you should see in any other "typical RPGs" which is why this game is not those games. The sucker in charge of finding that balance is going to have a lot of factors to play with because he's balancing even more meta-games than the common strategy game or RPG. So, its a big plate, but its the main point. So I wouldn't worry about it much if I were you. The RPG elements should impact the strategy choices a lot. Its going to make a GOOD impact, because the RPG elements are going to be the strategy elements in some places.
I feel the opposite about this. I think the RPG elements are more fun and more engaging than the "strategic" elements.What's more fun? Building a Grain Silo to improve food production by +2 per turn or equipping your level 14 Paladin with that shining Sword of Destrucity you found in the dragon's hoard?Obviously, I want strategy or I would be playing a pure RPG right now. But when it comes to heroes and sovereigns, I feel they SHOULD be as powerful as you fear they are. These should be the dudes that decide the battle. I don't have an answer for Sovereign immortality or any other balance questions but I have faith in Stardock that they'll test, test, test and test until they find something that works the way they want. If not, we can always mod it in ourselves
To conclude, strategic aspects are fine as long as they don't impact the fun of making the fun RPG decisions. But too much focus on the building of grain silo's could put a lot of the strategic fun of the game in jeopardy. (hope you don't mind me shamelessly ripping off your argument hehe)
To me one of the most interesting things in RPGs is quite the opposite of your point 1. Making a character with fun skill sets, like low intelligence characters in Fallout or Arcanum, and role playing, which leads to sub optimal decisions but which are on par with the character's role, like not killing everyone in order to loot them (self-assigned constraints like "Izchak the merchant must survive, even if all the rest of gnometown is dead" or "thou shalt not kill").
RPG elements include trhowing in other characters (party based RPGs are fun as you have to choose what your team is made of, who do you pick or leave, and there needn't be an optimal build for that), and sending in random quests or events which will have an effect on the "story" of the game. For instance if you go and rescue a princess, you probably buffed your characters to that end, but will you gie her back to her father, marry her, or sell her to someone else, with the policital/strategic consequences involved?
Interesting... I hadn't even considered the idea of putting together a party of heroes and go adventuring. I'm not sure how much roleplaying you can actually do, considering the scale of the game, but your idea of having quests with alternate endings is very interesting. It would be another one of those things which differentiates Elemental from its competitors. I can definitely see that working.
I think quests with different endings/options are quite likely, given that Galciv already proposed random events with good/neutral/evil choices which had both short and long term consequences.
If you have not played the Civ4 mod Fall from Heaven 2 I would highly recommend it. I think it does a great job of showing what can be done when some RPG elements are added into a strategy game.
Having a unit that is more powerful than other units, that gains in power during the game, that has skill choices to make as it gains power, and is unique (you can never build a second one if it dies) is all done in FFH. At the same time you still have the same core Civ4 gameplay of settling cities, researching technology, building armies, etc.
Just like having multiple options in a city for what to build or multiple choices in a tech tree is fun having multiple ways to advance a special unit is fun. Heck you can even think of it as having your heroes/sovereign as being just a special kind of mobile city. You use the unit to support your high level strategy and from time to time you risk them in support of key battles.
The addition of a complex quest system allows for a new style of gameplay that lets you have an active component to work on while you build your empire. In the mid game when all the territory has been taken this allows you to focus either on going to war to win or on playing more defensively and using your heroes/sovereign to explore dungeons and finish quests.
As we have not seen the dungeon/quest system yet it is hard to really comment on it. I just wanted to say that this type of mix has already been done before (I did not even mention MoM which did this first and it probably the model here) and done very well. So it definitely can be done, it can be fun, and all we need to do is help make sure it is
My feelings are pretty simple in this regard: the more MoM-like, the better!
I agree with Rho. Strategic fun is what will keep me coming back. This game is a blend of strategy and RPG but it is structured mainly as a strategy game. One thing we can take to heart is somewhere along the way, XCOM was mentioned as an inspiration. That was a well designed blend of strategy with RPG elements. Primarily, it did what Rho discussed. The troops you hired could be trained and advanced, but they never dominated the game and were always one good shot from dying. Injured troops needed to be rested too... That would be an interesting mechanic... 'overused' powerful heroes needing to be rotated out and rested .
One way RPG elements can support strategy elements is in the concept of trade offs. RPGs involve customization and 'growing' but that doesn't mean that trade offs can't be implimented for both customization and growing. In concept, this would mean doing away with a system where 'skilling up' means more health and customization means going from sword +1 to sword +2,+3,+4... instead, it means gaining some ability or skill also means giving up something or gaining a way of being countered. Examples would be: Aligning a unit more with fire magic makes it more vulnerable to water magic, gaining bow skill means losing defense/durability, such trade offs could be made to apply to the entire realm.
For me, my pure concept 'dream' strategy game isn't about how well I manage my resources so I'm more powerful than everyone but about my picking a strategy or series of trade offs that make me powerful in certain ways but also makes me vulnerable in certain ways... ways that can be exploited if my opponent is wily enough. But if he's not wily enough, then he plays right into my strength .
This. MoM's hero system -for example- was decent. [Including the leveling..] I think that Elemental's system will be even better, because of the "additional" quest system. I always liked that in the Warlords games.
The fantasy strategy genre very often has RPG elements blended in. I have played many of these games single player, but only Warcraft III multiplayer. In Warcraft III, hero development is not too deep -- you generally only have one or two viable paths to develop your hero, and in multi-player games, I would always know the path I was planning to take before the game started. Also, there was basically no choice to leave your hero at home, as it was too essential for winning fights.
I am hopeful that elemental will have more strategic depth in these areas. For example, I think it would be quite desirable for the role of your sovereign to be dependent on factors that evolve during gameplay. For example, if you get a certain resource early, your sovereign might be more effective if she went out and did battle personally. Or you might complete a quest that reduces the essence cost to create a different class of units.
I admit I have not played FFH. I enjoyed Civ IV, but it is not one of the games I would go back and play when I got bored of another game. As you say, I may be overly worried about too much of an RPG slant on this. But the RTS games that have a heavy RPG element, such as Warcraft 3, or even Dragonshard, weren't that interesting strategically, so in my mind, that was my main comparison point. I did really enjoy MOM, though, and I'm not against the RPG aspects - I just don't want them to take away from the strategy.
I would like to hear what people find fun about all of these games that keeps us coming back to them though. Trying to quantify "fun" is difficult, so I don't expect everyone to have the same definition as me. I'm curious how other people define it, and what about certain games makes everyone like one game rather than another.
Having played AoW 2 shadow magic (among others) i too like the rpg aspekt, in an RPG/4X-Stratgame blend, a lot more.
I wonder however how heroes will be implemented, will they be just better combat units (like AoW) or more like in Heroes 3 (besides from spells do not go in combat directly but boosting army stats)? The worst version was done in heroes 4 i really don´t like to see this system come back.
How about this: heroes are combat units and their stats are mainly raised through items, their abilities however are done via skills. If you are in the endgame for example a new heroe will be a good fighter due to good items you already have, but will not be combat changing because he has no abilites. this would solve the main problem with games like this: a very advanced heroe dies in the late game and new heroes simply can not level because the units/armies are too advanced and would simply roll over them (like in heroes 4). Also there should be many ways (i.e. abilities, skills, spells ect.) to advance your hero (the system in warcraft 3 is way to simple for a 4X game).
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