This week we’ve put up a couple of journals that are soliciting input from players on what they’d like to see in terms of faction customization.
My journals were clearly too wordy as I failed to convey the fundamental questions at hand.
So I’ll put it in bullet point form.
There are pros and cons in either direction.
Some people might find it confusing that factions and races are different. Kraxis is a faction that is made up of men that is part of the Empire. Umber is a faction that is made up of Urxen, a Fallen Race that is also part of the Empire.
On the other hand, having factions and races that are different provides us the ability to provide customization in terms of culture and genetics.
In Civilization, the differences between civilizations were ones of culture. They’re all humans.
In Master of Orion, the differences between civilizations were purely genetics. The factions were the races.
In Elemental, the difference between civilizations is based on their culture (Altar vs. Pariden) AND based on their race (Men vs. Trog).
So the question is, where would people like to see the focus? More emphasis on making the game lore with the 10 factions. Or more emphasis on making it easy for players (in game) to customize their own factions/races?
Even if i mainly play my own customized factions in these kind of games i think that SD should focus on the cannon factions and the lore for the release of Elemental , its In my humble opinion a very important feature to have stong and interresting ( lore wise , art wise and gameplay wise ) factions and a very stong lore and story.
If i'm not mistaked Elemental main objective is single player ( i'm looking forward to play in MP too ), so work on these factions wich already looks interresting when you check their concept arts . I also hope to have plenty of graphical customization options ( armor pieces , weapons etc ) for the unit builder , the GALciv ship builder was really awesome , i bet you already planned it btw !
This latest pseudo-poll kerfuffle has me wondering if there is a 'silent majority' of folks who are just playing the beta, reading around here, and might have been posting debugs and crash dumps to fogbuz before the spambastards ruined that for us. There are certainly more people in the beta than have replied in any of these related threads, so I don't think it makes much sense for any of us to be claiming to have identified a 'majority opinion,' at least not for the beta folks and interested lurkers as a whole.
Oh, and go pigeon^2 go. You save me a lot of typing on a regular basis.
Customization for me plz,
Ahh yes, I understand what you mean. Honestly (and I know I'm about to get flamed for pointing this out), it was Frogboy's fault for stating the OP the way he did and for people boiling it down to "black and white/one way or the other".
Note: Not yelling at you here Gorgon, just posting this big so everyone see's it..
THEY WILL NOT DROP THE LORE!!!! THE FACTIONS WILL STILL HAVE LORE WITH OR WITHOUT CUSTOMIZATION!!!!!
Sorry, like I said not yelling at you, I just really want to drive that into people's heads.
The other thing we have going on in this thread is there are a lot of new testers posting. Now, I want to be careful how I say this because I'm Not trying to berate anyone or make anyone look bad, just pointing out some facts. Some of these people posting are saying "Hey it would be cool if you can change how our Sovereign looks" or "Hey, it would be cool if we could change how buildings look". By saying this they show they haven't done any real digging into the game yet at all as they don't know they can Already do these things. In the same respect though they are seeing this post and the first thing they think is "Oh No, they are going to ship a game with No Lore!!!" so they say "Add Lore" without realizing they are shooting themselves and everyone else who wants customization in the foot. the Dev's read the reply, and not realizing these people don't know anything about the game yet, count up another tally for "More Lore/Less Customization".
Again, I can't stress enough how I don't mean that to sound bad or wrong, I'm not saying these people are dumb or anything, just that they haven't seen the full picture yet and are making a decision based on something that scares them I.E. Not Having Any Lore.
The Lore will Still Be There No Matter What. That won't change.
It's not like the Devs would see a bunch of posts asking for more customization and say "Oh Shit!!! Call Random House and cancel the book deals!!!! People don't want Lore!!!!" ...LoL
Well, see, in my opinion (and I know I'm going to sound like an a-hole here) but to me those people who Aren't Here On The Forums don't really give a rat's ass about the game. To them it's just another game they'll buy, play, and move on to the next one. They are spending money just like we are, sure, but if they don't care enough to at least look at the forums and Maybe give some input then the Dev's Shouldn't Care what these people may or may not think about the game-play mechanics or game content. In my eye's if they cared about it at all and this wasn't just another game they spend money on, they'd be here. To me that's the way a Successful Game Developer should think. That's the way it worked internally when I worked on UO. We listened to the players on our forums, the ones paying to play the game every month, and we gave them the features they wanted (within reason of course). Granted this isn't a MMO, but to the Devs our opinion should matter more to them then the "casual" player who's just buying the game to get something new. Those casual players most likely won't be buying expansions or playing the game a year or two from now, We Will.
Edit: I'm not saying they should cater Only to the Hardcore either though. Of course the casual player should be taken into account, but not at the loss of dumbing a game down or making it easier for "Joe blow I'm too stupid to play anything more in depth then checkers". People like that who complain about something being too complicated need to stick to the games they know and like and not ruin something as potentially awesome as Elemental or any other grand strategy game for the rest of the people who know what they are getting into.
You don't sound like an ass except for mentioning it, but neither do you sound like a practical business owner, and I suspect that business goals are almost as important to this Stardock project as is the dev team's love of the fantasy TBS genre and their ambition to break new ground by mixing in 'just the right' computer RPG elements.
OK, maybe I wouldn't have thought "asshat" without your wording, but after a couple of reads your take on current and potential Elemental buyers who aren't into tons of public typing does seem a bit rude. You are blithely dismissing hopefully large numbers of your fellow PC game players simply because they don't also share your enthusiasm for this, quite small, online 'community.' Reasons for that sort of choice surely vary widely. Time pressure, paranoia about online anything, severe dyslexia, or simple shyness, are a few that come to mind easily.
Yeah, I can see that, it's pretty much true too. I understand we do only represent a small faction of people. Over-all though I'd say "Strategy Gaming" in its-self is a "niche". If you take all the FPS gamers and count them then count all the Strategy Gamers there would be Tons more FPS Gamers. I think if Stardock wanted to cater solely to the masses to maximize profit margins they would be making shooters. They made thier mark in gaming with strategy games and they exploited a niche for their profit (and they did it really well too). Of course now they're expanding into Digital Delivery and all that other non-game related stuff as well.
Anyway, I wasn't trying to look down on people who don't post for whatever reason. I understand some people have their reasons. Then again some people buy a game simply because they think the box looks cool or because they blindly follow the big review sites like Gamespot. Believe me Gamespot has it's share of fanboy's who buy games based solely on whether or not Gamespot said it was any good. The later group of those examples would be the ones I'd honestly look down on. I don't look down on someone for being shy.
Customization. - 'Nuff said!!
Thevanilla game must be a good-seller in order to create expansions. You don't have time to : create assets and expand cutomization. So what of those two things would help the game sell well ?
As a gamer I want to live some story, to be involved in the world you create.
So I vote for more lore. What I don't like about GalCiv2 is that the story is too "bland" and that it doesn't fit very well in the game.
If the game sells well you'll be able to do an expansion that would enhance the customization.
I am a little divided on this question. In GalCiv2 I don't think I've played a single one of the pre-created races past turn 10. I always tended to make up my own space aliens. This would make it look it like expanded customization would be a sure winner for me.
On the other hand, I've also been an avid player of Warcraft 3. That game had no customization at all (except for missions made with the scenario editor). Every race was very different and played in very different ways.
With that in mind, I am going to actually cast my vote for distinct factions. Once Elemental becomes a top-rated bestseller ( ), an expansion could be made to expand on customization. Some people have already suggested this (forgive me if this option has already been counted out; I haven't read the entire thread). I think if GalCiv2 had originally come with the same race distinctions as it did with Twilight of the Arnor, I might have played them more... as it is, it's so wired into my brain now that GalCiv = custom races that I do it without thinking .
I vote for investing in interesting customization options and plenty of art-related content to go with it. Having said that, having too many 'features' to choose from when customizing is also problematic (especially if there's WAY more options than your 'buy pool', forcing you to feel like you're only slightly different from everyone else).
You can keep room for lore by making the customizations still map back to the lore somehow - e.g. you can make whatever race you want but it's still "troll-like" or "orc-like" or whatever based on either the art options you choose, or a family of perks, or some combination of both.
I am more into the idea of deeply developed 10 factions, with distinctive art and great stories, rather than too much customization. I feel that there has to be some thread to hold the entire project together, and having a well developed universe would do this.
More customization options.
Lore, no matter how well done, is basically “limits” per se. While it is very nice to have some substantional lore-base in the game, so it does not become “hollow” (like Spore, I hate Spore, that game is devoid of any substance, especially gameplay), it is way better for end-users (players) to have a great instrument for fleshing their fantasies.
I'm for more races and the ability to create our own races. More customization across the board should be one of the most important elements to keep in mind. A game without or very little customization grows stale quickly
Totally agree here. Lore is nice and all but I want to be able to create my own races and units to add to the game. And the more tools I have to do that from the start the better. In GalCiv 2 I played the races that came with the game once. Then I created over 50 different races and never plyed the in game races except for them being an enemy of the one I'm playing.
Yes, Stardock is catering to the strategy gamer crowd, not the console FPS crowd. So what? If you think anything more than a small fraction of strategy gamers actually post or even read online game forums you'd be sorely mistaken. I have friends and family who still play Civ IV, HoMM III/IV/V, GC II, etc who I doubt have ever even been to a game's website until it's been released. None of these people would even be aware to expect a game called Elemental that they will probably enjoy if I hadn't told them, and while they'll probably buy it once it comes out, they aren't going to go online months before the game will be released to talk about it. Some because they don't care - they enjoy playing strategy games not developing them; some because they don't have time; others because reading and participating in online forums is just not their cup of tea.
Obviously, the people I know are not a statistical sample either, but I would be absolutely shocked if the percentage of strategy gamers who participate in online discussions about games while still deep in development process is much higher at all than in the rest of gaming. Sure, those of us who are active around here are probably going to continue playing Elemental long after the average buyer will; but if all goes well then there will be many more 'average' buyers, and if even a small percentage of them continue playing Elemental for years to come that is a huge infusion of long-term players.
Genre-dependent. Dragon Age is an RPG. The game is the story, the two are inseparable. Even in an RPG like Dragon Age that gives you a lot of choices, so that the story can actually play out somewhat differently each time, you can only play it so many times before you lose interest. For me, that number was two and a half times (until the expansion). The reason was because I was just seeing the same story elements over and over. In particular, the first time I played through it wasn't the game's features or combat system that made me stay up all night way too many times, it was the story. It was like reading a book! I wanted to know what happens next. If the Dragon Age expansion just gave me some new abilities and new items to equip, I never would have bought it because that's not the main reason why I enjoyed Dragon Age to begin with.
Elemental is a strategy game, despite a few RPG-like components. Even if the campaign is well-done, I will play through it once and not come back to it. The longevity of strategy games comes from sandbox mode. It allows us to create our own story, play the same game but in totally different ways for a very long time. If Stardock were to release an expansion that only extended the campaign or story I would not be excited. I look for completely different things from strategy games and RPGs (and in their expansions in particular).
An expansion to an RPG should be a sequel to the story, because the story is the heart of the game. An expansion to a strategy game should add content and features that will allow us to play the game in sandbox mode in that many more new ways. The richness of the story and lore behind the core game factions and all will draw me into the game to begin with, it'll make the world feel that much more alive even in Sandbox mode. When I'm stuck between a conflict between two factions that hate each other it'll feel that much more visceral if I'm aware of some backstory behind it and all. But what will keep me playing Elemental (or any strategy game) for years to come are customization options and the ability to play the game in so many different ways.
You only have one chance to draw a player into the game. Once you've accomplished that, you have time to work in the customization and other features that will keep the player around for even longer.
This is all nice and good, but the people -who will buy this game- are different. Some players don't even care about the lore or story. Some players do. Some players will buy Elemental only because of its powerful modding features. They want to create their own little magical gameworld. Some players will complete the original campaign more times. Some players won't even try out the original campaign. Some players won't care about modding at all...and the list goes on.
Well yeah. But it all comes down to my last paragraph:
"You only have one chance to draw a player into the game. Once you've accomplished that, you have time to work in the customization and other features that will keep the player around for even longer."
Just like pretty much every other strategy video game that's ever been made and sold, it's probably a safe bet that most of the people who buy Elemental will just be your regular, average gamer who happens to enjoy strategy games.
Yes, a small number of people will be more drawn to the campaign. A small number will never even play the campaign. A smaller number of people will only buy Elemental for modding, and so on. Sure this is speculation on my part but based on everything I've ever heard, read and experienced I'd put money on these assumptions. I think the first impression is what matters the most, to most people: if someone's first impression of a game is that it's kind of dull and boring, they will just set it aside and not look back. And most people's first impressions will be dictated by the stock content of the game.
So the more love and toil that goes into perfecting the stock content and core of the game, the better people's first impressions of it will be, and the more people will be drawn in, and the fewer people will discard it. Some (relatively) basic customization options (faction editor, sovereign editor, map editor, random map generator, full-fledged modding capabilities....) should be able to carry the crowd to the first expansion, whose focus should be on maintaining the longevity of the game by providing more game features and customization.
Sure, people who want all the customization at the world right at their fingertips right from the start (nothing wrong with that) might be a little bit disappointed, but if that is remedied in an expansion this is probably the type of person who will buy the game later, once that's all added in, or come back to the game if they bought it and got bored.
Whereas the average person who picks up the game and thinks "wow, this is kind of dull... There are all these customization options but I'm just not feeling this game, it feels kind of empty" will in all likelihood put the game away and never give it another chance.
That is why I think the retail game should be somewhat more focused towards the crowd who will give the game one and only one chance (obviously still only talking within the demographic of gamers who enjoy TBS/fantasy games - I am not advocating turning Elemental into a game to attract people who only ever play FPS games or something). Give the modders and customization-happy people something to sink their teeth in, too, but they are more likely to wait for future expansions to get the rest of what they're looking for than your average player.
Don't care about the lore in ANY way. Want to make my own story, not play someone else's. I don't play campaigns, only sandbox, and I think a good part of your target base feels the same way. Honestly, drop the lore and make a GAME, not a book.
+1 for customization.
Yes, and you do that by making a fun game. Strategy gamers don't care about story, they want to make their own. Compare the success of the civ series (the only "story" being a vague tie-in to history) to... um... I can't really think of "lore" heavy grand strategy games. I guess the scope of a GRAND strategy game is beyond a "story". Look at MoM, the game this is the spiritual successor to. There was NO story, and you could customize fairly extensively (it wasn't spore, but for its time it was pretty open).
As for modding, a modding scene keeps the game alive, and draws in the more creative types. Civ 4 forums are still hives of activity to this day, despite the game being fairly old. That creates a major and devoted base that will rabidly buy up expansions and sequels. Civ 5 will sell like mad due to this base, in spite of reviews or anything else, so appealing to stardock's finances for a "lore heavy" game is a failed argument.
Story? Yes, story goes with campaign, which I think is secondary. I'm talking about fleshing out the factions themselves. You know, the ones people will be playing against all the time even if not as in sandbox mode?
And Civ IV kind of proves my point. The devs didn't need to work very hard to make the factions feel real, believable and vivid because they are Mongolia, the Aztecs, Portugal, Russia, Germany and so on. The very same civilizations that everyone knows either from history, current affairs or both, and we all already have impressions of them in our heads. Not only that, but unless you select random AI personalities they behave roughly like you might expect them to (or at least, how you might expect their leaders to behave). Gandhi is polite and hard to anger, Genghis Khan isn't happy unless he's at war, etc. There is something appealing about playing out an alternate version of history.
IMO this adds quite a bit. Sure, once you've played through often enough it's nice to mix things up, turn on random AI personalities for a surprise, and so on. But I think it makes it much easier to get drawn into a game and really feel like the world you're playing in isn't just some empty shell if you can relate to its inhabitants. This is extraordinarily easy for games like Civ IV for reasons stated above, but actually requires some work in games like Elemental.
Even more importantly, though, is that the factions all feel finished and diverse; so that playing as any one of them results in a very different game. If they aren't different in interesting and significant ways, the game just feels bland. There is little point of selecting one of them as your faction if they're all pretty much the same, but what's even worse is that it means all your opponents in-game will all be more or less the same. The original GC II solved this by giving each race a very different personality, and in expansions gave them different tech trees which made all the difference in the world. Civ IV actually suffers because of this: even where races do differ, they differ in relatively bland ways. Yay 15% more industry... Meh
Civ IV gets away with it I think partly because it does so many other aspects of the genre so well, and there isn't really anything else to compare it to! What other modern 4X strategy games can you think of besides Civ IV and GC II? Not to mention that my generation of strategy gamers grew up on Civ titles, and therefore like me most will buy any sequel regardless of what anyone tells them. Just like I bought HoMM V, even though people I trust told me it wasn't worth it (and they were right); but I've been playing HoMM since II, and wasn't going to let anything like two bad sequels in a row get in my way. Elemental does not have that going for it.
Modding and customization keeps a game alive in the long-term, but if the core content isn't good enough to keep people interested then there won't be many people sticking around to keep it going. Not to mention it isn't like Elemental will come with no modding possibilities. Hell there's a whole beta phase devoted to modding! We're just talking about whether Stardock focuses its assets on the stock factions, or sacrifices some of those assets to give us more in-game faction/race customization. Something which they can do later in an expansion, anyway...
I agree that customization is more important than story for this game. I am looking for a game to replace Age of Wonders Shadow Magic. Played that game for years and customized many maps, units, Etc. But was not able to create new races which I would have love to do like I can with Galactic Civ 2. I am hoping that this game will make customization easy and fun without having to go to a bunch of sites to look up how to mod the game.
Personally I could care less about the lore, since I rarly find a Campaign in a Stratagy game fun I perfer to play my own game. So I vote as I've said before for as much customozation as possable as long as the AI will be able to use it. One thing I found lacking in Age of Wonders (all versions) was how the AI did not know how to use navel units.
WoW this is the very reason why I like Star Dock games. The more options the better.
I think the same. Customization is less important in the first release, more of it can be added in expansions.
I always loved the very different races of MoM and AoW2 [+SM]. You had to play differently with the various races. All of those games were diverse enough for a casual gamer. Story/Lore wasn't so important in them, and all of those games were extremely successful. This is why I say, that we must go with option 2. [Expand the race distinctions and provide more assets and code to support players creating their own custom factions made up by their own custom races.]
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