Let me know when you create your own "races" within the UI of Civ 4 and Civ 5. KK thx.

Agree wholeheartedly, for three reasons. First if there's no editor somewhere in the game engine, if you have to go to XML, you're cutting 90% (at least) of players out of faction creation right there - the average user won't touch XML. Second even for people in that 10% who don't gag at the sight of XML (like me), it's still convenient to have a graphical UI - even if we later start mucking with the XML to get something we couldn't do with the UI, it's still a good starting point. Third if the UI can keep the point limitations, there's still the future possibility of working "legal" custom factions into multiplayer, and just blocking the "illegal" ones (i.e. modified through XML with options not available through the UI). And really, you've already made this, there's no reason to remove it - let us keep the existing faction creation UI, and if we want more options than it can provide, we'll go to the XML.

Do you remember what Frogboy said a while back about about Not getting rid of Content they already had? We did have a UI/Screen for Faction Creation. I'm sure when the full game launches that UI will be in the Editors. That's what I'm talking about. I don't see Frogboy and the Team throwing away that entire screen just because they're doing things in XML as well. They'll put it in somewhere and something tells me when we see it that it's going to be Much Improved from the last iteration of the "Faction Creator" that we saw a few betas ago.

Think about it my friends. They aren't going to take a step backwards in giving tools to the players. Frogboy doesn't waste money on stuff not to use it or improve upon it and they know a lot of people don't even want to have to deal with XML. They won't get rid of the Faction Creator we had entirely, they'll make it better.

I don't want to have to hack a text file in order to create a new faction; that should be handled by the UI.

I don't know how things will be in the final version, but what Frogboy said /did/ imply that the only way we'd be able to create our own races/factions was in xml...and while I can edit xml, I don't really want to have to go through trial and error, opening a file, editing, closing, starting up the game, creating a new game with a new map, playing a few turns, then quitting and going back to the file.

Keep in mind it may crash the first few times until I get everything I need in the file and don't forget anything...and I don't necessarily know all the parameters.

It doesn't sound like fun.

this is exactly why I decried the removal of the Faction Creation UI originally :/

But half of you were like "oh that's great more detail yay~~~~" not to mention the obvious issue with overpowered custom factions in multiplayer (like hacking in uber-swords in the first technology in a given tree, which was my original example). Now, a point-driven custom faction being used in MP is fine (as long as it is verified to not be hacked, mind you), like what we had before.

Bah. Give me back my point-based Faction creator.

The downside of only having an in-game editor is this...

A purpose-built editor within the game needs to be able access and use resources. It would be built based on what is currently there. That's fine if the resources don't change.

Also, the process of building a race would not simply be a matter of selecting a base-race from a drop-down and moving forward. It would consist of selecting from a group of race resources, then applying all sorts of modifiers to them such as base colours etc. To do justice to the options the editor would become very complicated very quickly - but would still be limited to the way the UI was set up.

The upside of encouraging us to use the XML directly is that many of the UI limitations are removed. Instead of the UI dictating the limits of our faction, it would only be our imaginations that would dictate out limits.

There will still most likely be a simple faction editor in-built I would guess. But I'm looking forward to seeing the community mods of Spider-women and Undead hordes etc that will most likely be available now that the full power of the engine is exposed via the XML.

I prefer a more of a "Space Empires V" view on things, in a multi-player game you can select how many points can be allotted to race and sovereign. Also used successfully in table top games.. Warhammer ect.

This would give tournaments and such something to play off of. Separate ranking of 50 point games, 100 point games 500 point games.. ect.

With the ability to fully customize your race/sovereign to fit a specific strategy something needs to be implemented to make sure there is a rock/paper/scissors or some form of balance so one race/play style doesn't rule multilayer and then take the fun out of it.

I would assume point-based would be the in-game UI (assuming there is one...), or there could be a checkbox that controls whether or not the faction is restricted to a certain amount of points or subsets of abilities (call it "multiplayer compatible"). There would have be a form of verification, of course. 

XML could always be written by hand and used in mods, assuming it was unchecked for single player. I'm not against the concept of deliberate overpowered factions being created for either single player comp stomps (or to play against the AI for the challenge) or when creating a completely new mod with a totally different aim at balance. 

My "only" outcry is that there needs to be a simple, in-game UI for creating point-based factions that could be used in multi-player OR for single-player (since that's much more fun and simple for the average user than using XML in notepad). Or we run into the "Final Destination" problem as noted above. 

I know that custom factions will be created by XML, and can be done by hand. That's great, but the engine is designed for that. It's been in there for awhile now. 

That would make sense. Perhaps the verification would be that when the game loads the faction, it checks the options and makes sure it's under - and if not, the user see that his faction is "in the red" and will have to adjust it.

As long as the XML remains available to us, I don't have a dog in the fight, so to speak. However, the tone of the thread seemed to be "down with XML, use UI only" which seems to imply to just remove the xml entirely.

I don't want Elemental to be one of those games where modders have to rely on someone to crack open the files so that we can actually do some modding - otherwise, everything is hidden away and confined to whatever options get presented in the in-game UI.

In other words, one of those "we don't MIND modders, but we're not going to make it easy either." games.

I would like to not have to learn a programming language in order to get at the custom factions/races that I was promised when I pre-ordered this.

Well as someone who truly enjoyed building the factions in the earlier betas. I'm a bit dismayed to a certain degree. I understand that intricate changes for the races to be something that may need a modding tool to do. 

But, I just don't see why you couldn't have the initial framework you provided in an earlier beta, to give the people a rough visual idea, within the games modding tools. Not having to use a notepad to create their own factions. That just feel's like it's missing the boat. Here's this great idea, and we presented it to you in a nice graphical presentation. But.. naw you prefer to not look at it in clean lines.

Not everyone who's going to be modding, is expecting to spend hours looking at the matrix code. It's like the old days when people chose to use a graphical display and a mouse. I just don't see why we need to step back so far. But my feelings ultimately are, that we should have something similar to what we had earlier. And that way we can crank out a bunch of basic faction designs, and then if we wanted to get more intricate we could then, go to the xml file and adjust it there, for that extra depth that is being presented.

I've missed the faction/kingdom/empire/whatever creator in the beta ever since it was removed. I'm also not happy with the sovereign editor as it is now because I can't my sovereign as powerful as the premade ones. At least I can't duplicate Lord Markinn, not enough points. But I guess that will fixed/balanced by release so I'm not really worried about it.

Designing my own sovereign and then having to choose from premade factions (whatever the source) just feels wrong to me. I want to be able to make a quick custom faction to go with my quick custom sovereign. Without having to mess with xml even though I'm quite capable of doing that.

If you don't want the race/faction creator to be available after the sovereign creator when starting a new game that's fine with me. But please have one in the workshop at least? Or are we missunderstanding something here? Is race and faction not the same thing? Well, I know they are not when playing but I'm talking when modding/creating new factions/races.

That being said I like the fact that I can mess with the xml if I want to. That's great and I want it to be able to do that when I really want to go to town and create something (hopefully) unique. But I also want be able to make a basic faction when starting the game that's maybe not so unique but no the same as the stock ones. Like we had earlier in the beta. MadMagnus said it real will in reply #20 on the first page imo.

I guess I just want it all.