One of Sid Meier’s rules of game design boils down to “Prototype, prototype, prototype”.
Forgive me for any unintentional hubris but as far as I’m aware, Elemental is the first commercial PC game that opened that phase of development to the public.
Just this week all kinds of changes have been made to the engine. So let’s talk about that.
First, for those of you not in the game industry, the thing to remember is that 80% of a game’s development time is spent on engine and assets. The remaining 20% is the actual “game”. That’s why we have the luxury to monkey around with different game mechanic ideas.
Star Emperor
15 years ago IBM came to me (I was in college) and wanted a “Galactic Civilizations” game but different for something called the IBM Family Funpak. I said “Oh…oh yea, I have a game called…Star Imp..er…I mean Star..Lor- er Star Empir…er Star Emperor. Yea, Star Emperor.”
IBM agreed to pay a pile of money for this game and over a weekend I took my GalCiv for OS/2 code, changed the game mechanics to Star Emperor and voila. A million licneses sold to IBM.
GalCiv was basically Civilization in Space. Star Emperor was basically Warlords in space. IBM was happy. Gamers liked it. And I decided I’d do this Stardock thing full time. It totally beat out doing “Truth in Lending” programs for Ford Credit.
Cool stuff in Elemental
Quickie concept of updated Diplomacy interaction
For Elemental, of course, we have more than a weekend to whip up our game mechanics. But that’s half the fun. We get to play around with all kinds of different idea. Best of all, thanks to this Internet thing, we can get input from others.
So here’s stuff from this week:
Now, for those of you NOT in the beta, fear not. You’re not missing out on anything fun. These prototype betas are explicitly designed to be awful so that we can try out lots of different ideas cheaply. This is going to continue on through the entire prototype phase of the beta (which is beta 1 AND beta 2).
For those of you in the beta, you’re hopefully starting to notice what makes our games a bit different in how they’re developed. We use our software tech like DesktopX and other goodies that allow us to make massive, easy changes to our game mechanics. This way, we can radically change things based on player feedback.
We can re-do an entire screen in less than 15 minutes (for instance). If there’s anyone in the industry reading this, please feel free to run through the normal way a screen gets changed so that readers can see the contrast.
Would you mind pointing out where Brad said that because I just re-read all of his posts in this thread and didn’t see where he said a system similar or with the same end result of what I described wouldn’t be / isn’t wanted. My understanding of the current situation is Brad didn’t like having all the different kits that went along with all the different elemental damage types. I mean all the spells and spell effects are going to be divided into schools anyway is my understanding. It seems redundant to have all the old elemental types when you can accomplish the same thing using a simpler system that only has one type of magical damage.
I could be wrong but I think it is rather naive to think Brad wants a game where there is absolutely no meaningful difference between fire, water, earth, air, life, and death spells.
Oh I think there will be different effects, such as what you were saying before - an ice spell might slow movement, a fire spell might do additional damage for the next couple of turns. But in the example you gave in the "if you want to get fancy" paragraph, you are talking about a fire elemental essentially having its resistance to arcane raised "on the fly" when it was being attacked by a fire spell (so it would take little or no damage). This is what I am referring to as having damage types and achieving it through reverse-Polish notation. If you are going to do that it is much more straight forward to say "fireballs do 5 points of fire damage" and "fire elementals have a high resistance to fire damage" - we all realize that at the end of the day hit points is hit points and those 5 points of damage (if they hit) are 5 points subtracted from hit points.
What I thought had pretty clearly been stated is the fire elemental is going to be just as suceptible to a fire bolt as an ice spear. They didnt want different damage types because equipping your army to fight lava men, and then having to re-equip them with different gear to fight ice trolls was no fun. The point being is that type of gear swaps in a RPG IS FUN, but doing it x10,000 troops is NOT FUN and I AGREE! So I don;t think it should be based on equipment, I think it should be based on combat spells and also possible long term spells that require maintenance. So you fight your lava men, and at the beginning of the fight you cast "fire resist 1" on all your armies in that battle (or at least on your front lines). Oh and you have a fire immunity spell that can only be cast on one unit at a time so you cast that on your hero in this fight. Great! They are all doing well against the lava men!
Then you get attacked by the ice trolls, and &^*( it, you don't have any ice resistance spells learned yet! So you have to muck it out as best you can with no resistance to ice. But without specific damage types and resistances, this type of thing is not going to be in the game. See in my opinion they looked at the problem as needing to re-equip the army, determined that was not fun, and threw the baby out with the bath water - (in this case damage types and resistances) rather than saying Wow! this opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities and straegic choices as far as what spells they choose to research (also provides a big variety of spells, and in my book, a huge spell book is a fun spell book).
Now if I am completely wrong and that is NOT all gone bye bye, then by all means Brad, Boogie, or somebody, set me back on the straight and narrow path of understanding. And i will still say, if somehow they are only having the two damage types but then ARE going to "adjust resistance" based on what school of magic the spell is coming from - well i will be glad it's in, but it sure is a counterintuitive and overly complex way to get there.
Having read the OP again it is not explicitly stated that what you propose is not in there. I am taking the post that says there is no longer fire or frost damage but combined into arcane damage and arcane resistance to say that. If you are saying that arcance resistance might be 5 when being attacked by fire but for the same unit the arcane resistance might be 2 for frost, then i am saying for all intents and purposes you have fire and frost damage and fire and frost resistance, you have just found the most uninutitive and complicated way of implimenting it imaginable. From a coding perspective why in the HELL would you do that when you could just have a fire resistance of 5 and a frost resistance of 2, and you apply the frost spell against the frost resistance to determine how many HP your army lost? again as someone with some programming experience I can tell you no one codes that way. And I welcome comments from the dev's correcting me.
Honestly? Well, not to be harsh on the team, but for every single decision they've come to I've constantly seen them make the easier more basic choice. Consistently...
No where in his post did he talk about Effects or Categories of any kind. A few posts later he did say "No where did I say or imply that battles wouldn't end up with people being fried via acid or fireballs blasting away or fear spells or what have you." which is the only hope I've seen so far of us having spell effects in spells that do damage. In most cases if they don't specify something then that means it either doesn't exist or they have no plans for it. If spells had effects you'd think he would have said so when he talked about going to one damage type.
In a abstract view it can be looked at as mutual that getting rid of damage types goes hand in hand with getting rid of effects as well to further simplify the system, but as I said that's an abstract view.
As it's been lately when I try to "think like the team is thinking" I automatically pick the most boiled down system I can think of. That way when the team does something more complicated then what I had in mind I can be pleasantly surprised.
I have a little advantage I think having worked on a successful game in the past. Players don't want a overly complicated system. Players also don't want a system so complicated you need a physics degree just to balance your economics. It's a fine line to tread and do correctly. I know what they're trying to do and what they are going through. They have internal debates over all this stuff before anyone even mentions it on here.
(Getting a little off topic here)
The only thing I'm disappointed in is the view that seems to be taken against what is considered "Hardcore". There is a huge difference between what I call hardcore and what someone who plays board games more then computer games would call hardcore. There's huge differences between any two people honestly. What SD needs to understand is it's the Hardcore game players and fans of this genre that are going to keep Elemental alive in the years after it's release. It's the Mod community and fans of the game that will stick things out through the long haul, that will buy all the expansions, and that will be here waiting patiently for Elemental 2 in 5 years time.
The casual players will buy Elemental, play it for a week or two, then shelf it and un-install it. If they liked it they may buy the expansion or sequel, but if there was anything at all they didn't like about it they'd move on to something different. They won't be active on the forums for years after the game launches, half of them will buy the game and Never visit the forums.
The "Hardcore" players and fans...we'll be here....no matter what.
So maybe, just maybe, on some small part of the game that's important, it might Pay Off to listen to the "Hardcore" crowd. It makes sense to keep the people happy who will be here for the long haul.
Yes and it could just be that how I envisioned different damage types and resistances is much less complex than what The Team had tried to implement and did not like for complexity reasons.
But the fairly simple system I have talked about in my last two posts - when I hear they are being dumped for complexity reasons and because of feears expressed by casaul players.... it makes me think OK that proves it, the Dumbing Down of America has been signed, sealed and delivered. I mean, unfun, OK that's valid, but that because having damage types and resistance for each element is TOO TAXING FOR THEIR POOR LITTLE BWAINS TO PWOCESS!
I swear to God it reminds me of being on the Vanguard beta team and they were going to make a more hardcore, "difficult to master" MMORPG and the handwringers came in and by God if there is not a mini map, learning to triangulate with a compass and coordinates is too hard, I won;t play such a game! And the Dev team caved time and again even though early on they had explicitly stated they were going to do it one way, in EVERY instance they caved to the whiners and you essentially got EverQuest 2 with better looking graphics...
And it is not like I am even really wanting terribly hardcore stuff. I think "easy to learn, difficult to master" is the key. And nobody wants to be beaten solely by the Random Number Generator HOWEVER, I do think that the RNG should have enough effect to make some games go quite a bit easier if you are lucky, and sometimes "shit happens" and you might have a rough go of it based solely on a streak of bad luck. Othewise you have no variety, the game becomes repetitive and formulaic, I want to be playing my hundredth game of elemental and get blindsided by something cool and something that makes me say Crap! What am I going to do about THAT?!?
Anyway, guess we will see what happens.
@Denryu: To put some perspective on your post above:
You are complaining about "the dumbing down of america", a pretty large subjecty and pretty large trend.
You are doing so because one type of game mechanic (different types of magic damage) out of many potential ones (range, movement speed, attack, defense, etc. plus anything they add, plus all the different potential effects of magic) for one ppart (combat) of the entire game (diplomacy, a family tree system that I've never heard of in a game before, though it may have been in something I have not seen, economics, quests, magic, etc.). It seems a bit of an overreaction to me, but than again, I'm just one guy...
And actually, if there's a mechanic to remove, magic damage types would be it. To me it's a much more boring type of combat mechanics, because there aren't any soft counters. If you ended up with, say, lots of slow moving close combat units vs. an enemy's archers, you can reduce the disadvantage by, say, fighting on terrain that prevents the archers from shooting far, building some high defense units ot absorb some of the attacks as others close. If you focus on magic and mostly ended up with fire spells, and an enemy grabbed fire elementals, than whoops, you're just pretty much screwed, better luck picking magic next time. (This is theoretical and may or may not resemble how elemental actually plays, but should give some ideas as to the poiint I'm making. And yes, I'nm continuing the fire elemental example. ) to first situation is more interesting and provides more choices/options than the second does.
As for people who were surprised at the idea that different sorts of magic will have different effects, I'm surprised that you were surprised. In no other game involving magic (RPG's, strategy, etc.) do different types of magic do the same sorts of stuff, just with different damage types. Certainly, they include things like buffs, debuffs, etc, and are not just various "(magic type) bolt" with AoE that get more powerful over time.
On the mana system (to try to get off damage types for a bit), what sorts of things supply mana, and how are elemental nodes planned at the moment to work (in more detail)?
I wasn't over reacting - I was saying IF the mechanic was removed because it was overly complex for the casual gamer (i.e. if people could not comprehend and deal with different damage types) then indeed, America has been dumbed down. There are certainly a lot more serious issues out there that demonstrate it, somebody with no accomplishments to speak of getting elected as president on a three word motto ranking high on the list.
Yes, point taken though - pointing to a minor subsystem in a game being taken out as an indication of a widespread phenomenon is pretty silly.
when the choice on the other side of ticket was a decrepit old man and a bimbo, I would say the "unaccomplished" man was the better option.
Americans are smarter than ever as is everyone in the world. to suggest that a stupid game play mechanic is evidence of some political negative view you have of the country makes me cringe. although you agree with that.
That said I never thought the idea added enough fun for the hassle it brings.
All we need is some words from Frogboy saying "Don't worry, there will be effects (aka stats (HP/attacks/defence/spedd/etc.) changing spells) in the final game. And a fire elemental will be hitted hard by an iceblast even if he has a high magical resistance versus fire."
And a lot of people here have programing knowledge, even game programing knowledge. But we're not discussing implementation, we're discussing "what will be able to do in the game ?"
So, will a fireball be the same as an iceblast gameplay-wise ? That is the only concern. Please tell us there will be a way to "flag" magical damage to know where it comes from.
Don't understimate that: I don't have a clue of the objectives they have set for Elemental, but probably selling is one of them. I don't think hardcore gamers can produce enough sales for a game like this.
I think in this case they haven't said anything because spells with effects is a given. If you are going to have a "slow" spell, having a damage spell that also slows comes for free.
Yep, in fact, if you read what boogiebac says in the "data-driven" topic, you can create a weapon with whatever attribute you need.
We don't even need mundane/arcane damage ! you can just create a weapon and add tags like "blunt damage" and "fire damage". And have armors with "Fire resistance" and all of that. Now, I hope the battle logic will be easily available to mod.
They didn't say anywhere that magic Would have any different Effects. If they say combat spells will have Different Effects then I'll be ecstatic. They haven't said that though and for me, I assume the worst. They got rid of damage types so they probably got rid of the Effects those types would produce as well, like burning or freezing or poisoning which could all do damage over time plus have varying effects.
As it is right now the only difference I'm expecting in spells that do damage is the animation and maybe amount of damage that's dealt. I'm hoping and praying to the computer gods that they use spell effects, but seeing as how that's just another system that will need balancing and defended against, I'm expecting them to not use any effects for damage type spells. Sure some spells will have obvious effects, like "Sleep" or "Slow", but neither of those do damage. When it comes to damage I'm expecting a 3 Arcane Damage fire spell to be exactly the same as a 3 Arcane Damage ice spell only colored different with a different animation....
Hope for the best.....expect the worst.
*crosses fingers*
Note: I started another thread in the Genral Elemental section where I Directly Ask Them if we'll have spell effects of any kind for damage type spells. If you think the damage spells should have various effects, please show your support in that thread Here.
I think that it [vanilla game - elemental dmg types, resistances etc.] was dumbed down because of the casuals. Just read Frogboy's post:
https://forums.elementalgame.com/371295/get;2473173
"I've ready on other forums that people are worried that the super hard core are going to turn Elemental into something "unplayable"."
Cont.:
"I don't think many people here realize how unpleasant it would be to have to go around and re-equip or upgrade units to have frost-resistant armor."
I agree, which is why I said, that mass enchancement spells should be in the game, instead of "kits". It would be simple to micromanage those spells, and the number of strategical/tactical choices&decisions would be huge still. = Simple, yet complex system.
Indeed, this is what I was talking about as well. Either way, it's not a big problem anymore, because we will be able to mod in new dmg types and resistances.
Awesome....I'll get my game, open it eagerly, put it into the disk drive on my machine....and then Immediately Start Working on my Mod so I can attempt to enjoy my purchase....
That doesn't sound fun to me....at all.
Granted I'm very happy the game will be highly moddable. So happy, in-fact, that I'm already planning a Mod. That doesn't mean I want to start modding in things they left out on the very same day I get the damn thing though. It's much easier to try to talk them into doing things right the first time around to save a whole lot of modders a lot of work. I think it's pretty safe to say at this point that "Damage Types" and "Effects" will be the first things people start modding into the game after more Races.
What saddens me though is that's something that shouldn't have to be "modded in" to try to enjoy the game.
Know what I mean?
Another thing that saddens me is that there are Already a ton of Fantasy War Games out there that cater to the "Carebear" crowd. Heroes of M&M, Warlord, Warcraft, hell even Spore, just to name a few (yes I know Spore isn't a War Game but it has wars in it and it's Incredibly dumbed down). Do they really need to ruin Elemental for those of us who wanted a "Serious" Fantasy War game? Now the "Don't Complicate Me" carebears have struck again in a preemptive strike to destroy the fun of Elemental before the company is even done making it.
If I marched a army across a continent only to find out my enemy has armor that protects him from my weapons, I'd blame my-self for not doing the propper reconnaissance on my enemy before going to war, I wouldn't blame the people who made the game I'm playing. To them I'd just be thankful that kind of Depth was included in the game.
Hearts of Iron 3 is probably The Most Complicated Game on the Market currently. Go check out reviews for it. Even Gamespot, which is notoriously biased against "Hard Core" strategy games gives HOI3 High Marks and a Great review. Anyone who knows the HOI series knows that it doesn't have fancy battle graphics, they know you don't need a supercomputer to run it, they don't get to point and shoot at stuff either, and yet the game has out-sold all the HOI series before it and it was Advertised as being More Complex then it's predecessors but also having the "Options" to turn the complexity off or have the AI handle the more refined systems for the player. This is how Elemental should have worked. Make it complex, then let the AI help or auto-manage certain aspects for those of the population who are too stupid to figure it out on their own.
So, HoI3 sold more than its predecesors because it was more complex? Because you could turn the complexity off? Because it improved the mistakes of the other HoI? Because it was prettier? Because it was better known? Because Paradox spent more money on marketing?
This is how you would like Elemental to work.
Is not that some part of the population is "stupid" to understand really complex systems, is more that they don't enjoy over-complexity. For you, simplicity kills the game, for other people, complexity produces the same result.
Well, what else can we do? Once a mod like that will be released, we won't have "problems" like this at least.
He isn't the only one who would like it to work like that.
If Elemental is as simple as a board game, I'd just assume play a board game with my friends. I love Arkham Horror, Runebound, look forward to Runewars, etc (and some of those aren't super simple like Arkham).
I want the computer to make playing a complex game fun!
In Arkham Horror you manage 1 investigator with some equipment and some spells, not a empire full of cities, armies, with scientific research, magic research, trade routes, custom units, etc. This game is already more complex than any top 20 game in BGG.
*twitches*
Make your own game.
I agree the alternative was not much better. I guess what I find pathetic is that the general public allowed themselvs to be herded (primarily by the media) to the point that we ended up with two such terrible choices. Sadly, most Americans give no more thought for who they elect as president than they did for student body president in high school, and usually based on the same stimuli. I.E. We ended up with the head cheerleader (Obama) running against the wounded quarterback.
Back on the topic of the game, I'm not sure what hassles you are talking about. The hassle of casting a fire resistance spell (if you have one) when you are fighting fire elementals?
First, one thing: I don't care about modding, never modded anything, never applied a mod, don't want to fiddle into a game's files. The most I do is patching, and downloading a scenario from someone. I'm a computer nut, Ok, and I buy games to play them, no to redesign them. I don't care about modding, I don't care about multiplayer and I play on computer because it can take something complex and let me play without it be complicated.
The casual players. What do they think?
The casual players will know this game will be some 4X fantasy game so "the casual players" are "the casual 4X players", which is much less than the casual players of WoW, RTS, RPGs, ...
Then, if they want to buy Elemental, they probably knew/played the other games of fantasy.
Now, WHAT will they think, those casual 4X fantasy players?
- "YEAH, I want to play Dark Elves, they are so cool! I want to crush those Dwarfs in their fortresses, and the Hobbits!" Then they get told: sorry, no fantasy races to play with; you have to mod them or wait until someone do.
- "YEAH, I like going into those strange alternate underground/underwater/astral planes as in MoM or AoW. I want to create a mighty Kingdom of Moria or Kazad-Dum or Menzoberanzan, and then go conquer the surface world!" Then they get told: sorry, no alternate plans.
- "YEAH, tactical combat with magic, I love it: heroes with protective armors and artifacts, troops with special abilities and resistances against fire/cold/lightning/poison/physical damages like in AoW and Dominions, that makes for strategic and epic battles." then they get told: sorry, all magic spells/weapons do the same kind of damage.
After that, what will be the reaction of your casual player? "Gneuh, that's lame, they told us it would be like MoM2 and we end with Medieval Civ and a few good-looking spells." So I wouldn't read too much into what they say on other forums. If they wanted to be heard, they would come here to tell it.
I was thinking about something. Is it so hard to implement a way to change the armor of a whole army ? You could create "tempaltes" when you design a unit. Before battle you choose the template you want. If your army have bows ans swords, you can choose between them before combat. But so much supplies would reduce that army speed.
I'm sure Stardock' crew can find an easy way to switch the armor of a whole army.
Well I understand why they are not going that route - they are making it so even equiping a decent sized army with decent mundane weapons and armor is a huge accomplishment. If they make it so that your army is hauling around multiple sets of gear, with different strengths and weaknesses, that definitely doesn't fit in with that vision.
I'd say your overreacting as well. Elemental has a combination of gamplay elements (A complex economy, family trees, quests, etc.), moreso than most of the games you've mentioned, plus it's attempting (hopefully successfully) to provide a good range of balanced strategies.
Effects have nothing to do with damage types, I don't get at all why anyone would assume this. (There has never been a system, even including ones where all magic damage was one type, like warcraft, where the only types of spell effects were different forms of damage dealin.)
And, just to ask the question directly, why the heck is it damage types, out of all possible mechanics, that are setting people's blood up? The family tree post did not attract any "I'm thinking of quitting the game", research posts did not either, the lack of elves, dwarves, etc. certainly didn't, but for some reason, damage types brings out emotions and "I fear for the game" posts, for something that isn't even that interesting of a combat mechanic (combpared ot some other effects.)
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