It is great to be back to the land of high speed Internet connections.
The team got v1.07 out this week which addresses some of the issues reported by players. There’s a lot more to do of course. Here’s a few notes on what’s on our plate right now:
There’s a ton more to add here but these are a few of the things on our mind. It’s been, as you can imagine, a horrible horrible couple of weeks. We’re doing out best to make sure Elemental lives up to its potential which brings me to the final part.
Elemental’s original release schedule was to have the first release (War of Magic – Book 1: Relias) and 2 expansion packs (Book 2: Cerena and Book 3: Magesta).
What we’re going to do is that for users who own the game by a certain date will get (at least) the first expansion pack for free as a token of our appreciation for hanging in there with us. As some long-time Stardock gamers can tell you, our expansion packs aren’t minor things.
Have a good weekend!
This is exactly what I believe it should be too. Unable to build pioneers, unable to recruit Champions, and Sovereign stays inside national borders.
However, it should build units, buildings and attempt to agress nearby cities.
Just want to say, I really really appreciate the candor.
There are a lot of things that don't work on my machine still, and my gaming sessions frequently end with a crash-to-desktop (I can't replicate, so I don't post bug reports).However, I usually restart and pick up at the last auto-save.
That says a LOT about the game.
This is going to be a great one, as it is already a lot of fun. The changes you suggest sound like they will eliminate some of my frustration about various resource contention (which I don't always completely understand in-game). Nice.
Try not to have too terrible a time of it. It's becoming harder and harder to release something you actually care about in this business. The fact that you're willing to stand by a game just because you want it to be great may eventually speak louder than any number of release woes.
Magic System Changes. This is an area that’s going to get a lot of changes. For instance, Essence will become a boolean (true or false). Your mana will come from a global pool of mana that is from the shards. The elemental spell books (earth, air, fire, water) will get moved out of character creation and into the tech tree so that players can determine what spell books they want. Various spells will gain a mana “maint” rather than using “enchantment slots”
Thank you Baby Frogboy!
I'm gonna go do my little happy dance now.
I would like to see minor factions be ableto spread by taking oer cities instead of having pioneers.
Having Minor Factions act like the Majors (but perhaps not expanding city number, etc, and just build up their one city) sounds great.
The spellbook change is another thing. It's a very big change. There's a lot of very big changes. May I suggest not rushing in and making very big changes piecemeal, but instead take some time (fixing stability and the other things will keep you busy for a while) and consider all the potential very big changes as a group?
If you're doing that already then never mind, but if you're 'hot to trot' on fixing things, remember the US Navy Seals mantra "fast is slow, slow is fast".
“Fast is slow. Slow is fast. Watch your fields of fire, pick your targets, aim centre mass, squeeze the trigger. The faster you go, the more mistakes you make. The more mistakes you make, the deeper in the shit you will be. Go slow. Try not to make mistakes. Be one with the battle yet transcend it. Float above the action, survey the scene, target immediate threats, and dispatch them with ruthless efficiency."
Welcome back mister. While the game might still not be in top shape - although it really improved in a very short time - I've been mostly having a lot of fun with the XML resources as I'm trying to figure out what options are available to modders. Kudos for making the game so open and moddable. Despite the design shortcomings and engine bugs, I'm fairly sure you guys built a pretty solid platform. I hope the python API project didn't sink too deep in the priority list as I'm really looking forward to peer under the hood
EDIT: Regarding bugs, I've been playing the game on three different machines, one of which is a cheap*ss laptop, and even though the performance is not always top notch, I haven't experienced any CTD or game breaking bug since beta 4 (except on alt-tabbing but that's a common occurrence in games).
Perhaps minors should not have sovereigns, and it's that key difference that makes them minors. Since they don't have a militaristic magic wielding leader they're content to stay in their single city. But that city should be upgraded as normal and have something special about it (more than just a single crystal production). There also needs to be something that makes minors useful to keep around so they're not just conquer bait. Something that makes keeping them around valuable enough that conquering them is a serious trade off.
That would imply that Procipinee, unless Canon Sovereigns are exceptions, cannot start being the superduper Channeler she is supposed to be.
Cannot agree with moving the books into the tech trees. Totally moving away the magic from character creation isn't nice, even if we get the default Life/Death from Alliegance. I'd muchly prefer levels into the books, much like MoM, levels that can be developed through adventuring in the world and through research.
Mana pools based on shards? Er... You mean in some kind of inner value of the Channeler plus Shards, right? I say this becuase totally depending on finding a Shard, altough clearly not impossible (it is quite normal actually), seems a bit extreme. I suppose it could make sense in the canon sense though. Not that most of the players care about the canon stuff, you know.
Seems ... Interesting. I'm assuming that there might be further ways to increase max-mana other than shards? Or is it pooling Mana now?
I'm certainly interested to try it though, I hope I can get my good computer fixed soon
Also ... I think on Sov creation, maybe Sovs should be able to pick a basic weapon for free ... like maybe the Dagger and the Club are free or something.
It's pretty easy to make minor factions do more so I'll take your suggestions and do exactly that. Minor factions will focus on building one kick-arse metropolis but they won't expand.
I know that many people out there won't agree with me on this, but I actually like this game and I am not too bothered by both it's launch nor its state right now. For a few weeks I played the beta and like many others I played this on day one and noticed many of the issues that were around there. However unlike many other companies out there, they put in a lot of effort fixing issues immediately and for free. There are other big name games where well known common crashes are still occuring several months after launch (ex: Bad Company 2).
To me Stardock is approaching game development in an Agile like approach as opposed to the Waterfall approach other development companies follow. This results in a constantly evolving game that changes based on constant input from people playing it. With the Waterfall approach they assume that they know what people want and design the majority of the game before anyone even gets a look at it. By following the waterfall approach the game you get at the end of the day will be more what we really want and end up being quite amazing. Galactic Civ 2 is a prime example. Many companies rely on the Beta period to get that sore of feedback but usually in Beta period people are playing much less, are less thorough or detail-oriented, and overall people are more laid back and just will think the game will get
I've been managing and designing software programs for the last 15 years and in my experience, this type of approach almost always results in a far superior product.
Cheers
Let them expand if they can, but only by conqouring....god that would be cool...you wouldn't really expect it.
That sounds perfect.
Agreed I would rather have a MoM style book selection where there were significant advantages for spending more points in one line than another. The whole sliding scale of how many books you could choose really did allow for some interesting games.
- I would really like to see minor factions to grow and interact more, and perhaps trade on a more even level than primary factions.
- I don't like the shared mana pool idea. I'd rather have essence and intelligence put together, or be given more level up points to distribute.
- I don't really get the tile placement restrictions on city building, I feel like sometimes I can't build something and I don't really see a good reason not to.
The changes sound good.
So far for me 1.07 is good stuff.
Hope you got some good recoup in while you were away, oh wait, we were all talking to you while you were away, now what is wrong with THAT picture
The AI decision making stuff sounds cool, and scary, and fun.
I have started a game that really feels like a game this time. Sparse resources, where far reaching Influence is important. After about 100 turns I still haven't found the other Sovereign yet(I only play against one right now), normally he/she is hiding just on the other side of the FOW. I got the hang of the research tree. I was having a hard time figuring out what I was researching but now I know how to do it. I was getting confused when I switched to a different tree. There seems to be a delay for a few turns then you can choose again.(hope that makes sense) But now I choose exactly what I intended. I know my enemy is more powerful than me, so I am looking forward to the tacticals so I can squeeze out just enough damage to win. I hope.
Right now I don't have any tips or suggestions on the status of the game, but if there are logs or files I can produce that are helpful to the team I don't mind posting them. Does it have to be from a problem, or can it just be from a system that runs the game pretty well?
Thanks
Enjoy the long weekend!!
I think the spell books being researchable is a step in the right direction, but it still leaves the sovereigns feeling similiar. Maybe more flushed out spell books, with it being harder to choose more than one book per sovereign? Also to help with diversity are you thinking of implementing more unique character skills. Maybe levelable skills? As it stands the skills or traits seem pretty flat, and some are just underwhelming. I have played games before where I forgot what special traits my sovereign did because it seemed to have no impact on how I played. Was my leader charasimatic ugly insane... I didn't really remember, it never enter my thought pattern when I was summoning elementals and stomping across the board.
I am loving the updates so don't get me wrong, I think you are moving in the right direction but the rulers and heros seem to be lack-luster in many ways.
I for one would also like to see magic books similar to mom. Where player could choose more of them, and then get benefits from it. I would love, to pick higher levels of books, and then have acces to better spells and other stuff. For increased cost in character creation.
I do believe that Elemental is suffering because of "everyone can do everything" thing.. More specializations, trade offs etc.. Would greatly increased replayability, and implement more ways how one can play the game. Right now, everything feels too same. Heroes, Magic, Cities, Items... We need more choices, more specializations, and if we do, let us pick either this or that. But not everything. Please please please .
If you do this, could you kick up their Guardian Unit spawn level to 3 or 2?
I've been experimenting with 3 today. It's obviously overpowered (you usually get 2 good random spawns. I got a Pack Drake + Troll Shaman from my capital @ level 2. Probably too good for level 2... but okay for level 3 and certainly okay for level 4).
I think giving minors a Guardian Spawn rating of 3, and having them level up to 2 naturally would give them a nice army that could let them fight and take over other cities, since they would really only generate 1 Material per turn or so...
I personally also think that the players' Guardian Spawn rating should get knocked up to 2, but we'll see about how that is... It's uncommon because Guardian units are usually kick-ass single-model units instead of "Squads of Doom" the game likes right now.
Freaking awesome!!!!
Along those lines, a fun alternative game option could be playing as a "Minor Faction", especially if it came with the enhanced Guardian Unit spawns. It would be similar to the One City Challenge mod in Civ IV and would be a fun experience.
^ This
I know you want to get in there and fix things to make it right, but I'm concerned that it's being rushed into.
I'm concerned that already a decision has been made about overhauling the magic system. It's been less than two weeks since it's been released, part of which you were convinced it was the greatest thing ever. So in the course of about a week, how can you do a complete turnabout and then have the solution for the magic system planned out?
Fix the engine, tweak the AI, but please don't rush into changing game mechanics.
Someone, somewhere put it best:
Under the current syste, the spell of making is a 20 mana spell. That's like 3 chain lightning spells. There's nothing to "save up" for. It also drastically hinders any sort of real POWER in the spells as they stand now.
One of the funnest things in MOM is the anticipation of being able to save up to cast something particularly nasty.
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