Too many people trying to make of this game a Fantasia Universalis?

Well, no one can say that we weren't warned of this "no more open journals" happening. Why do I have some flashback feelings of the Demigod's forum? Twisted to the reality of this forum, obviously.

Chill up?

I don't think it's a matter of handling "harsh criticism" but your phrase "vast majority" does put into perspective what we're dealing with.

A few people commenting is not a meaningful measurement for the support for something.

Moreover, as was demonstrated in the sovereign discussion, wording, without coding change, is really the issue.

Specifically:

If I say: 

(X) 10% boost to morale ability

users will argue that this is a bad feature.

But if I say:

(X) Great Leader: Inspires troops in battle

users will support that even though, programatically they're the same.

Similarly, in these battle discussions if I say:

We aren't going to have weapons and armor that track specific types of damage.

People will say we're dumbing down the game.

But if I say:

You will be able to equip your troops with weapons like "Mace of eternal smiting" that does 5 to 8 damage PLUS 5 points of lightning damage.

People are suddenly okay even though programmatically it's the same.

A damage TYPE means (code-wise) means that there is a corresponding counter to it.  No strategy game that I'm aware of does this.  Early on, we were tempted to do this because we thought it would make unit design more strategically interesting.  The result, however was it just made it more complicated.

Players can have their cake and eat it too. I can make a dagger that does 3 to 5 damage PLUS 2 points of poison.  That's not the discussion we're having.

The discussion we're having is whether poison damage would be its own type of damage in which a player could equip their units with say antidote equipment that makes them immune.  Conceptually, that's very interesting -- in an RPG.  But in a world spanning strategy game, having to worry whether Soldier 1138 of the third battalion serving in the Henge has an antidote to poison it's not fun.  

Heck, why stop with generic poisons? We could have several different types of poisons, each requiring their own special antidote. I'm sure there'd be "vast majorities" somewhere who would like that.  But in the end, such complexity, once implemented, is difficult to take out.

It doesn't mean at all that there is no building the ultimate fire resistant army.  How many types of damage does D&D have?  Primarily 1 (HP), although you can take stat damage or level drain in some instances.  If your HP goes down, it's damage, you don't need to remember after the fact how much was normal damage, fire damage or pun damage.  There are RPG systems which have have hp and wounds or regular damage and aggravated damage.  Those are examples of different types of damage.  You can go nuts and use Rolemaster, which has rules for frostbite and burns and requires separate healing spells for them apart from regular "regain hp" type of spells.  Can you have fire resistance in D&D?  Absolutely.  The elemental property is really just a part of the spell instead of attached to the damage.  If you don't have to remember what the source of the damage was after it's all resolved, then you don't need multiple types of damage.

Frogboy: I think you can discuss game mechanics with us just fine.  It's coding mechanics that you probably don't want to be running past us.  It's cool to inform us when something has been changed though, especially when it impacts potential modding.  It's a fine line between the two sometimes and this seems like a game mechanic, although for the most part it isn't.

EDIT: ninja'd by the Frog himself.  Apparently we just won't have to worry about it.  As long as it doesn't introduce logic defying situations like fireballing a fire elemental to death I'm fine with it.

I agree but come to a different conclusion. Again I'll ask why you assume the damage mechanics are the problem and not the resistance mechanic?

Having to perfectly match resistance types on every unit does not sound fun, but neither does generic damage in a strategy game.

Why does a resistance against one Element provide 0 defense against other elements? (Your Fire resistant clothing does nothing against Acid, Frost or Lightning really?)

Why is the resistance built as a "kit" on the army unit? (i.e. warding units that give protection to nearby units against selectable elements)

It has been said that MoM doesn't have damage types, but it isn't exactly true. There are defenses and attacks that only work against specified magic types in MoM. There are for instance Holy attacks which are only effective against Chaos and Death units. There are defenses which only defend against those magics. Fighting at a node location would cancel everything but the node's element of magic. I would expect Elemental to have that level of sophistiification at a bare minimum.

I hope you'll weigh other possible solutions to your problem of needing the perfect counter to every damage type.

Hum ... Giving immunities against an element is a bad thing (or only pure elemental creatures should be immune). And there's aother way to deal with frost-mace people, even without frost resistance : you can stop them before they hit, you can make them miss really often, you can flank them and make them flee. You don't HAVE TO put frost resistance.

And instead of just "magical" damage, why diffenret kind of magical damae like "instant magical damage" (a pure damage spell), "temporary magical damage" (a stun spell that will reduce hp as long as you're stuned), "persistant damage" like poison, magical bees hitting you under the armor.

Then when you get magical resistance you get only ONE option to get your resistance better : you can choose better resistance against instant, temporary or persistant magical damage. So you still can protect yourself with one attribute AND get better results in some situations.

For instance a warrior with 3 points of magical defense will get +5 instead of +3 versus instant magical damage.

You could even get that better stat with a drawback : you must choose aweakest defense in an other area.

For instance : Armor +1/+3/+5 (instant, persistant, temporary)

That is easy to track, you don't need to absolutly update your army each time your opponents get an edge in an area, that allow for better tactical options.

@vieaxchat

if you were attacked by a different attack type then your defence (i.e. missles against point defence) you still would absorb damage one third of the point defence strength.

@vieuxchat

The concept in GalCiv II worked quite well. It is all a question of fine tuning of the different settings against each other.

Forget TV, forget Reality...

We are talking about a fantasy game and we want it to be fun...

Reality is most of the time just one thing: the biggest gun wins...

That is no fun.

My point was more you need a choice...

the concept in galciv worked but it was also boring since there was no real difference between the weapon/defence types they could have named guns/laser/missle -> squirrels/pigeons/turtels and it would have been the same gameplay wise.

What the spells need is not 10 different types of damage, but a lot different effects (knockdown, burning, petrifing, freezing, confusing, weakening, frithening, ... just look at the dnd spells and you get a good idea of what is possible especialy wizard duels in dnd 3.5)

Fair enough. It's your game, your money and ultimately it's your choice what features you want in the game and what you don't.

On the other hand, if you're taking Master of Magic as an example of a game where things are simpler, you're only partially right. You're right in that it didn't have a morale mechanic, but it did certainly have damage types - fire elementals, for example, were immune to fire and so on. What saved the game from tedium (to my recollection, anyway - it's been a long time since I played) is that resistances to a specific damage type were fairly rare and saved for only special units or magics. You are absolutely correct, of course, that having to constantly fine-tune resistances for large numbers of troops would be incredibly boring.

It's funny you used Master of Magic and Age of Wonders as an example of simpler games, though, since with the exception of a morale mechanic and flanking mechanics, both have every (tactical combat) feature I've seen anyone here ask for. Certainly I cannot recall having seen anyone ask for a hardcore micromanagementfest. (Fortunately - I loath micromanagement!)

I'm sorry you feel that the beta team is unable to discuss the game. I realise how facing criticism of an unfinished game (or any other work of labour/art) can be disheartening. The reason, I think, that people have been so vocal at expressing their desires and hopes for the game is precisely because the reason given for the long beta for Elemental was so players could give maximum input on not only bugs and quality control but also the very mechanics of the game. In that light, what people on this forum have been writing seems to me to have been the exact sort of input you were looking for. I suppose it's possible, though, that there has been miscommunication and you were more looking for player input for fine-tuning the design rather than regarding fundamental design aspects. If so, that would well explain your adverse reaction to the divergent opinions expressed by a large number of people here.

In short, there seems to have been talking past each other both from the readers to the developers and vice versa. The developers seem to be reading the calls for some degree of extra depth to provide fodder for greater strategic depth to mean a desire by a hardcore gamer segment for Elemental to be some kind of Matrix Games style extremely detailed and heavy strategy game. To my mind, I haven't witnessed this sort of trend, though admittedly I'm not a super-active reader of the forums, mainly checking the dev journal threads and a few other threads I find interesting. On the other hand, it now seems that the request for fan input into the game has been misinterpreted to mean a call for fan input into the fundamental mechanics of the game rather than, it seems, a more fine-tuning of the mechanics as well as possibly other things like UI input and the like. Is this about right?

+2654165456

"magical" damage isn't really a issue as long as throwing a fireball isn't the same as throwing an iceball.

But what about a fire elemental with high magical resistance ? Will he be able to stop "Iceball" because he have a high magical defense ? That is the sort of things that hardcore gamers fear. Moreover if there isn't different effect between an iceball and a fireball what is the point choosing between them ? You can specialize in fire or ice, it will be the same gameplay-wise, you'll be able to do the same things. Same things ? So it isn't really a choice.

A fireball that ignate target and reduce defence, an iceball that slows down the traget and reduce his attack and defence abilities. That, is a choice. But if the target has hig "magical" defense and he isn't affected by the effects .. then .. it is no longer a real choice.

I don't understand it at all. Let's say the player equips 1000 soldiers with longswords of fire. Those swords do physical dmg + additional fire dmg. If the other player is forced to use "kits" and stuff like that to equip his army with fire res. gear....well, it's a pain in the ass indeed. However, what about [mass] enchancement spells? That could work perfectly. Player A casts "Flaming Weapons" on his army, while Player B casts "Protection from Fire" on his army, if they have these spells of course. It wouldn't be hard to micromanage it at all, if it would work like this.

Thats exactly the point, i think.

I wasn´t too thrilled about this whole magic damage and resistence type mechanic, as i didn´t really like the similar laser/rocket/mass driver system in GalCiv2. So i´m not disappointed at all, that it has gone away. But the point is: for what do i need different attack spells, like iceballs and fireballs, if the difference is purley cosmetic?

Frogboy, it think the problem was - like Raven X already stated - that you implied that there won´t be additional effects for fire or ice attacks (and to be honest: from your posts in this thread, i´m still not sure if this is the case or not). If thats the case, then this looks to me more like some kind of communications problem than anything else.

I - and i think most of the other people here as well - don´t want to play a micromanage fest, but i want to have interesting strategic choices. I was about to write a post about this, too, but vieuxchat took the words right out of my mouth when he posted this: