Kind of a long post, so I bolded the titles for each sub section to make reading the bits you're personally interested in a little easier; also here is a table of contents listing the headings for the truly TL;DR diehards amongst you.
---Power of Monsters / Getting Hemmed In (Already Set to be Fixed)Pacing of the Game - Turn SPAM AHOY!That's a City? Looks Like a Blob to Me. (aka, So. Many. Gardens/Houses.)Quests. (So a Nobleman, a Knight and a Wolf walk into a bar..)Level Up! I AM MOAR POWERFU- Oh Wait. False Alarm. Not Really. :/Closing..---
Power of Monsters / Getting Hemmed In (Already Set to be Fixed)
In my first game, I didn't completely agree with cmarcel about the high level mobs all over the place causing the game to be unfun; I had a lucky enough start location where I did in fact have a few things I was capable of fighting around, and I had fairly free movement of the map, only a few bottlenecks created by mobs too dangerous to go anywhere near. Then.. In subsequent games, I never had this luck again. In my third game for instance, I was hemmed in completely, north by mountain range, south by enemy AI, east by some swamp creatures (one of which was OK, but the leader was insane) and to the west by mountain range, and, through the only valley passageway I did have, by trolls.
Needless to say, I wasn't really going anywhere that game. Now, Brad has already mentioned this is nonintentional and that Beta2 was almost delayed so that they could fix this. So I'm not too worried about this in the long term. I would suggest perhaps having a low chance (5-10% range) of something somewhere spawning outside existing power levels that you just have to avoid though!
Pacing of the Game - Turn SPAM AHOY!
This was particularly bad in the game I mentioned where I wasn't able to move my units a lot. Turns consisted of setting a build queue for my city (I didn't even have room to set down a second feasable city!) and then turn spamming. There was nothing else to do.
Yes, with the mobs balanced out, you can move around more and have more to do, right? Well... Sort of. Even in my first game where I was really very lucky with positioning and got to explore a goodly portion of the map, there was STILL a great deal of turn spamming.. Set my Sov to go somewhere, set any exploring heroes I had to go somewhere, make sure build queue had something in it, then... ready.. set... CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK.
Is anyone else experiencing this? Am I, "Doin' it Wrong"? Very curious to hear others thoughts on this.
That's a City? Looks Like a Blob to Me. (aka, So. Many. Gardens/Houses.)
As excited as I was by the city build process as presented on paper -- and heck, even by video -- I've become less of a fan after getting to try it out for myself in practice.
Mostly that's due to the pita that is house/garden juggling at the moment. Particularly if you luck out of having a fertile ground near you. I think that Gardens and Houses should either have their base capacity increased, or the requirements put upon them reduced.
Although to be further specific, the first level or so of city building is actually not that cumbersome. Everything after is though; unless you're willing to build a slum (no thanks ). Now, I get that there should be some trade off here. There IS an easy option of the slum presented, I get that. But while the hut to house upgrade almost doubles capacity, the upgrades beyond that are quite minimal, I believe there is on the order of about a 12ish difference between house and villa? (Not in game presently to double check it, but it was 1x difference I'm sure).
The other issue I have with cities is aesthetic.. And I'm not totally convinced there could be anything done about it at this point. They do seem to be to just be a blob, a sprawl of really quite random tiles all hunked up against each other with no roads or anything. This is is probably outside the scope of fixing now, but it also isn't really a deal breaker by any stretch.
Quests. (So a Nobleman, a Knight and a Wolf walk into a bar..)
Can has more variety? It's been mentioned to death already, but escort quests seem to be flavour of the day.. All day every day all over the place. I've also seen the Knight quest a few times each game, and the Wolf one at least once (which is freakin fantastic when can actually get to it, but again I must sadly question if it isn't a little TOO powerful).
I'm sure more quest variety is forthcoming however, so will leave it at that.
Level Up! I AM MOAR POWERFU- Oh Wait. False Alarm. Not Really. :/
Levelling up at the moment is really really underwhelming. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating some power curve so steep that a level 4 will always wipe the floor with a level 1 regardless of anything else. But currently the curve is so shallow as to almost not bother. Sure, I guess by level 20 or so you would see really quite a significant difference over where you started.. But anyone want to put a wager on a Lev 20 sov vs a Lev 1-3 Sov that has done the wolf quest?
As it stands, you gain SIGNIFICANTLY more power from books/potions/items that you find about the place than you do levelling up. Level means essentially nothing. It's not useful for guiding your decision on relative power at all.
Suggestion? (Although it's just one of several possible solutions)
Make it so that where items are concerned, they cannot increase your stats by more than 50% of base. For instance, if you have 10 hp and find a ring of fortitude, it'll buff you to 15 hp, but will scale with your level and that base value increases. (Up to a maximum of 20hp or whatever the item has).
Exception to this rule being if your base value is <2. If base value is under two, it can bring you up to 2. But it won't go beyond that point until your base value warrants it. i.e., if your base value becomes 2, the item can then buff you by 50% of that, for a total of 3. For example, you have 0 attack power, and find a sword with a max of +5 attack, it can bring you up to 2 attack. If through potions or levelling, you raise your attack power to 2, this same sword would now grant you +1 over this (50% of 2) for a new total of 3 attack.
Where potions/books/other permanent stat raising items are concerned.. Just make them far, far rarer in my opinion. In the first game I played where my hero could move about quite a bit and I got several cities up, I'd encountered quite a large number of these stat increasing objects. I think 2-3 maximum over that gamespan would have been a better figure.
Then, for levelling up itself, to make it more exciting and rewarding feeling? In addition to the points allocated to the player to spend, apply a retroactive +5-20% bonus to current stats. I would suggest about 10% bonus. Apply it to the base stats, the derived stats can look after themselves as a result.
Also perhaps reduce the granularity over the stat control (at least on the level up interface, you can keep that level of detail in the background) and perhaps if necessary reduce the number of points allocated to spend. i.e., Instead of having 10 pts at level up that increase a stat by .1, maybe give 3-5 points but have them actually increase a stat by a whole 1.0 or at least a 0.5.
These sorts of changes would all, I think, make levelling up feel more like an achievement.
Closing..
That's all I have for the moment. I was going to talk to resources a bit as well (such as the plentitude of 'Materials' while everything else was a struggle (relatively))... But then I played a game where I focused more on creating units, and was like, 'Ah..' so I don't feel quite so confident talking to that point yet. May bring it up later!
I have to be honest and say the issues I raised so far have detracted from the enjoyment of the game. The pacing and mob problems in particular.
They have. No two ways about it. Not ready to throw in the towel by any means though, I still have high hopes for the project. And heck, even if I detest the base game.. With the mod tools available..!
If you read this far, thanks! Feel free to leave some thoughts.
Well my thoughts one the points you brought up:
Power of Monsters / Getting Hemmed In
Some of this might just be because we don't have any magic. A lot of our Sov's power are from the fact that he/she makes with the magic. A fireball, "stoneskin" or what not would probably make a difference.
Haven't had that experience really. Some times I might click through a couple of turns, while my Sov get from one place to another. But with 3+ cities I need to build something most turns.
Quests.
Escort quests need to die or at least speed up some. As for more interesting quest. I've under the impression that that's what the adventure tech tree are for.
Don't know. Haven't really paid close attation to my Sov's power before and after leveling. Which in it self is a bad sign I guess. Potions and books does seem to make to big a difference. I've gotten like 5 attack speed potions and a few defense in a row before. I kick serious ass after that
I pretty much agree with the OP on most points, but knowing it's only beta with many features disabled/only partially implemented/unpolished I'm not really basing my opinion of the final product on this.
But I think the leveling system of champions/sovereign certainly needs some revision or at least improvements. The books I found so far increase your power as much as one level, gear even more (found a ring on turn 1 that increased my hp from 14 to 34 >.>). I suggest making leveling more significant and maybe slower. Maybe let us pick special abilities, which books/items can't provide. Overall I think the level should tell people how powerful the champion/sovereign is, because currently a level 1 sovereign who read several of books and bought and found some good items can surely beat level 10+ sovereign who didn't read books and only has basic equipment. To some extent this might be connected to the super strong creatures in current build - it's very hard to kill them and thus level up while it's incredibly easy to just go around and pick up items and books from goody huts which are rarely guarded.
Also with expanding cities and growing armies the champions and sovereign start to feel less significant. It would feel good if the sovereign stayed important and powerful even when you have a large army. But maybe that's because (my guess) we don't have access to magic and adventuring tech trees and we are forced to go the military way. Also the champions get much less significant later in the game. When you start the game and build your first city and hire a champion who produces 2 research points/gildars per turn its a huge boost to your economics. Sure it might be quite expensive for you, but as you research new techs you get buildings which produce much more than these champions. Sure you can hire more of them with more funds, but it would be nice if these abilities also improved over time somehow. Not sure if leveling up increases this, because I haven't noticed.
Thanks for your thoughts, Resand!
In regards to the Pacing; yeah it was worst of all in that game where all I could get was one city due to literally being blocked off in all directions from further expansion.
In my first game where I was able to move actually quite freely, and did end up with 3 cities (two I built myself, one I conquered.. using my sov+wolfpack) and that game was farrrr better, but still had patches of click turn spam. They were broken up at much more frequently though.
Perhaps could take a page out of the MoO2 book, which had a check box for 'auto-turn until something interesting happens' type thing.. Although now that I think about it, I vaguely recall something about auto-turn on the options screen... I could either be completely wrong about that and misrembering (I was playing until 2am after 10.5hrs of work, so obviously I didn't detest the game that much ).
With the Level Up stuff, think in the end we pretty much agree. The potions/books etc make the Sov fairly rediculous if you get a goodly number of them (and, you can). Perhaps the current bug whereby you lose the benefits of books/potions when you die should be renamed a 'feature' instead if they don't want to reduce their rarity?
Anywho, thanks again! Still curious to hear from others as well.
I agree on most counts, with some qualifications. I've played only one game so far, and in this game I'm not really hemmed in -- I can wander about. I just can't find anyone to play with -- after hundreds of turns, I still haven't seen an enemy AI. Just roaming, tough level-1 mobs. I've managed to fight and defeat just one so far, plus the wolf quest. Consequently, I haven't leveled up at all!
On city-blobs: I mostly agree with you. I saw a screenshot from an earlier build that featured a "build road" option; has the been taken out? Roads would add some definition. (And they might make wandering the map one square a time less tedious. Gah, why do we have to have *any* units with just 1 movement?)
Also, I keep wondering whether there are any interesting decisions to be made when it comes to choosing where to place things. Obviously mines have to go on ore tiles, but does it matter where houses go? Do residents care if they're next to the Archery place or the Workshop or whatever? (My guess is they don't.) I kinda wish they did. I do like the idea that my city can acquire a funky shape -- long and skinny, or wrapped around a hill. That's kinda cool. But it'd be nice to have a gameplay reason to engage in "zoning."
And yes, the escort quests are dull. Especially at 1-tile-per-turn.
My current pet peeve: I wish we had a numpad way of moving, as in Civ. The arrow keys are OK, but they handle only 4 directions, no? Unless I'm missing something? Also, I thought I read that a keyboard shortcut would let me hop between units, but the shortcut in question (PgDn?) didn't seem to work. The only one I can get to work is TAB, but that makes me tab among cities AND units, which is annoying. In general, I'm finding it surprisingly tedious to move more than one unit per turn, especially if they're far across the map from one another. Perhaps I'm missing something?
Sorry Juggzor, missed your post, likely while was typing up my first reply there to Resand.
Definitely hear you there. I'm not throwing up my hands in disgust and walking away; I KNOW many of the issues I have can and will be resolved before the game is called 'Done' so it doesn't phase me too much at the moment, but nonetheless just wanted to give impressions as they stand right now. Consider it a gameplay bug report specific to the 0.802 version.
Thanks as well for the reply, Lord Grotius. The 'zoning' stuff you mention may well end up making an appearance according to the latest Dev Journal (Player Input #1, at time of this writing). Along with possibilities of 2x2 grids of certain things merging into a new bigger tile with the same benefits, just a different (and hopefully better appearance.. i.e., neighbourhood of houses, more farmlike garden setup, etc).
I've been thinking more about the Levelling stuff as well, I think I might have to spin that off into an Ideas/Suggestion thread. Thinkin' along the lines of Age of Wonders though for instance, where you could buy additional talents or spellbooks through levelling as well as plain stats, although sometimes at the cost of hoarding points for a few levels for the bigger purchases.
I think the books/ scrolls are fine; I just think we need to increase the power of the level ups. 1 addional attack for defeating two monsters? Really?
The towns/cities both do not look right, and are tedious. Not sure what else we need, but we need something big, and more interesting.
Agree that quests are boring and need more variety. I also hate it when the unit I escort moves one square, and the destination is 20 squares away.
Agree with the OP.
The game at the moment overall is spammy. Click to move to goodie huts and to recruit champs for the first 100 turns and spam buildings in the meantime that I really have no idea of what they do. Yea I see they increase, food, prestige, spell, gold, etc. But I don't feel like I am making a choice to go down a certain path through the buildings I chose. Which pertains to the spam again.
Everything has to be bought and built eventually so I just do it without thinking. Then I start to think if everything has to be built over and over why not make some things evolve naturally? Build one farm, or one house, or whatever and have it upgrade or level up. Which would eliminate the urban sprawl town. At this point I know I have to build houses, farms, etc but I have no real connection to building them. I know I have to build them but how many? What is my goal here? How many houses do I need? How many farms? I really don't know. Because I don't really know what I want to do in game and how buildings help my attain my goal. So I just end up building as much as I can.
I know the city building methods must have already been decided in prior betas but I feel towns should just grow dynamically based on the adventures of your soveriegn. At this point I have my sovereign out fighting and exploring. And because of champions and goodie huts and quests...it seems that is what your supposed to be doing and concentrating on. Right now the game seems to be divided on city building and sovereign control (leveling, exploring, conquering, etc) but the city building seems to be more of a time sink.
I'd like to see towns grow dynamically according to what your sovereign does in game. But this would change the dynamic of the game so I am sure we are stuck with it. As your sovereign levels maybe your town could too? Or if your sovereign wins battles it attracts people to your town and they automatically build homes? This I am sure has been discussed and there must be a reason why its not in the game.
I also don't quite agree with the overall statement that beta2 shouldn't be about exploring new ideas - because it was stated that all mechanics are basically in place. But now is the time that we need to make the game fun! We weren't allowed to think about fun in the prior betas but now I find myself wanting to have fun and discover what is and isn't currently fun in beta2 - but we can't change anything that is already in place so we are stuck now aren't we?. Doesn't make sense to me.
So let's recap. In prior betas we weren't allowed to think about fun, we were just testers relegated to the forums to ponder about fun things. Now in beta2 we are told that all things in place are pretty much there for good - now just test for connectivity, and stability. Not once were we asked to concentrate on 'fun factor' - to find out what is and isn't fun in beta and what mechanics can be implemented that are fun. Honestly most people don't know what they find fun until they experience the gameplay.
This makes me think a lot of mechanics were put in place through forum discussions rather than a response from physical game play. With short buggy betas that were not supposed to be fun - the tester's job was to just see if it client is stable - which is typical. But this is the first beta that is actually stable enough for me to play with fun in mind. This is the first time to actually try the mechanics that have been decided and discussed on the forums. And I honestly feel some were successful and some were not. Beta2 should be a beta about finding the fun in the game, eliminate all that which is not fun and change it, and make what is fun, funner.
If this isn't the case we need to find out how to make what we are stuck with funner, streamlined, and deeper. If city building becomes a tiresome click spam fest blob we need to figure out how to make city building mean something strategically. All the while doable for the devs. We also need to fundamentally ask ourselves "what is this game primarily about?" Is it about city building? Is it about the adventuring sovereign and its rpg elements, is it about the tactical battles, or the deep tech tree and its strategies? I fear elemental could do a few things marginally well rather than knocking one aspect out of the park. I think elemental is still in its first trimester soon to decide what it is truely about. So let's streamline the mechanics we have in the game currently, and figure out reasonable ways to make them funner.
Yea, the hemmed in by monsters stuff was something that came "this close" to keeping us from releasing the beta. It's a trivial thing but it was a big thorn that so many high end creatures had been pasted in as "spawnlevel1".
A sovereign should be able to take out any spawn level 1 creature. They exist to get you XP.
As for how powerful the books and such are, that's balancing we need to do and will do as we go forward.
Thanks for the response, Brad. The monster issue is probably one I would've agreed on holding it back for (in retrospect, of course. Honestly you couldn't have won either way ).
Glad that books and things will be looked at. I think they're ok as they stand though, just need to be found with less frequency.
I think that levels simply need to be made to mean more (and perhaps be slowed down as a result). i.e., decrease granularity of the increases. So instead of raising by 0.1 of a point, we raise by 0.5 or even a whole 1.0, but have less points to spend.
I'll be creating a Levelling suggestion thread shortly in any case, along with a Cities one, and will be sure to link them back in here once I have, because I do agree with Iswallie that we should be able to make some changes beyond that of balance in the name of fun even now, hopefully though can keep it within reasonable bounds and changes to existing systems rather than anything too dramatic.
I think if we had waited any longer to release the beta there'd been riots.
Bear in mind, NONE of these betas are representative of the final gameplay. If they were, we'd call it a day and make it generally available.
Indeed. to you. I can't say with any honesty at all that I wouldn't have felt like rioting if it had been held back any further. Hehe.
Posted up the separate suggestion threads for Cities and Leveling respectively now.
Cities post is kind of short, because honestly, I don't think it needs a lot. It's small changes (well, when expressed in english. ) that'd make significant change for the better, in my opinion.
Levelling is a bit longer, it's a bigger issue, I think. Of course, some of it is a direct quote from the suggestion made in the OP as well though.
The "Build Road" option was taking out in lieu of building roads via caravans. To build a road you have to train a caravan in a city and send it to another. After you send it to another city it will automatically go in round trips between the city you built it in and the city you sent it to. After a few of these trips a road will form. After a few more trips the road will upgrade to a stone and gravel road.
Same experience here. You just start off so small and weak in the early game that other then finding monsters, there really isn't anything to do. Civ 4 had the same problem (which is why I always play with Advanced Start).
Also agree, except I didn't really find slums worth it over houses. My slums were what, 200 people for 4 blocks and 15 food? 4 houses is also 4 blocks, 16 food, and 256 people (not in game now but I was a half hour ago, so numbers could be off). Why would you build a slum with those numbers?
IMO, the solution is to take housing off the city tile limit. I kept having to destroy other buildings to make room for more houses, and it quickly got ridiculous how little I could actually do in a city aside from houses. Schools and markets? Sure, but only if you first bulldoze your tutors and merchants, because you can't have both and houses. (If it's going to stay this way, maybe schools and markets should be upgraded tutors/merchants rather then independent buildings.)
It's one thing to say that you can't build a temple because the city isn't big enough, but quite another to say you can't build houses for the same reason. It's not like the area is full, there's tons of room for housing sprawl. Bulldozing a market to build a house just doesn't make logical sense when you can simply build a house down the street in empty space instead.
I like a patient level up power curve for Sovereigns. For them, getting power should most of all mean controlling nodes shards and discovering the knowledge or forgotten spells. That said, I feel they are too weak in the beginning and that the decimal stat upgrades are ridiculous. In fact I think the whole RPG approach to stats is unnecessary in a strategy game - the stats are just needlessly detailed and complicated. Instead of Dexterity and Defense you should just have Defense and perhaps a feat called "Dexterous" that would give a bonus. But Sovereigns should be already powerful in the beginning and then get patient level ups in addition to getting hold of shards and powerful spells through research and conquest.
Items and equipment should always be secondary to a Sovereigns skills and abilities in determining his power. I don't like the abundance of potions at all. Such things should be insanely rare in the game's setting and it should be the Sovereigns themselves or other mages brewing the potions. No consumable should give a permanent ability boost. Save for books maybe but I'd rather have books give new spells or spellcasting skills.
Yea the decimal upgrade is silly. And there are too many traits. I would like to see feats instead. -
Fleet of Foot
Hardiness/Toughness
I can easily see what a feat does and how it can help me and the direction I want to take. I would like to put points into a skill tree or a tech tree or a spell tree to learn abilities, unlock weapons, spells, etc.
I agree about the stat boost items found every other turn. If this is the case why not make them rarer and just increase our overall stats?
Yeah, I agree with this statement. Roads should separate the various buildings, because the look of the cities is quite chaotic right now.
While we are at it: I didn't had much time to play, but I've noticed something, which looks like a serious bug:
I cannot "highlight" the buildings in the city. Not only that, but when I hover the mouse over a specific building, nothing happens usually. I don't see the name of the buildings at all, only occasionally. Sometimes when I hover over a workshop, the message says Watchtower, and that watchtower is built next to the workshop. Weird stuff.
I agree with comments about the city building to be lackluster. Building improvements just doesn't feel meaningful at all. There's no sense of achievement or purpose when you build a academy or farm. You just spam away, building everything that you can each and every time. The tile placement system is a bit problematic too since it doesn't make you build good-looking cities graphics and layout-wise, rather abuse the system and build weird shaped cities with random improvements next to each other. Three gardens, then one academy and then one town hall, at the edge of the town, just to block the path to the other side of the city. It looks really quite stupid and kills some of the atmosphere.
I tend to agree that city building doesn't feel right. It doesn't matter where I put most things other than ones that have prerequisites. Mines need ore, lumber mill needs woods, etc.
I try to organize my cities by type. Gardens on one side, workshops and studies on another, temple and town hall on the third and military on the last side or perhaps with the civic buildings. That is just so I can see how much of each I have easily and it is organized.
In reality, it wouldn't matter if I randomly dropped them all over the place. There is no reward/penalty for placement.
i enjoy the sov stuff for the most part, except for the incremental stat building. While i've seen that even a 0.1 boost in a base stat does have an effect, is their any situation where you would want to put anything less than a full 10 points for a round number (such as essense or health)and right now the books are great, the only way i have a hope of taking some of those monsters currently in the game, but i worry that they might be OP when the real lvl 1 monsters come out to play.
I agree that the .1 increase in abilities during level up seems like pointless micromanagement. Limit the player to only add full points during levels. It's ok for items to add smaller increments, but adding .1 to Strength on level up just seems silly. Especially when the base value is something like 14 and even more once the game progresses.
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