I've kept a close eye on this thread here: Epic Battles and it's become Very Obvious that a whole lot of people were expecting to be able to have the types of large Grand Scale battles that are in the picture on the side of the box. The picture many of us drooled over when we first saw it. The same picture that was my desktop picture for 6 months. This picture (which I'm pretty sure Stardock is sick of seeing by now lol).
I would like to put forth a Official Request from the Player Base of Elemental to Make The Game Look Like This, with these kinds of Epic Numbers. It doesn't have to be in Real Time. It doesn't have to be in We-Go. What it does have to do is have Epic Numbers...Without Us Modding Them In.
You've got the tools and talent to make this happen. Us modders can't do it easily because it causes issues with units appearing in groups, but you guys at Stardock have the animation tools to fix that.
When people see Elemental in the store and pick it up and think about buying it, they no doubt took notice of this picture. In fact I'm Sure there are some people out there who had no clue what Elemental was until they saw it in the store and saw this picture and decided to buy it. After getting it home and playing it and realizing these numbers couldn't easily happen, more then a few people were let down. This post is to represent All those people and all of us who have been here from the start two years ago who wanted and expected a game of Epic Scale and Proportions.
I figure if enough people all get together and request/demand that Stardock live up to this picture then maybe they'll re-balance the numbers to make this possible. Food, Gildar, Housing, and a few other resources will need to be adjusted. The animations will need to be adjusted. But with a whole team of super smart programmers and animators it really shouldn't be a big deal to get done especially since these kinds of numbers were possible at least at one point with an internal build of the game.
If you bought Elemental and you'd like to see these kinds of numbers in battle. Please sign/reply to this thread and say so. If the community really wants this, which I'm sure most of them do, please say so now as now is the right time to do it while other mechanics get revamped. I'm sure all those people who bought Elemental based on this picture would greatly support this change, as would I.
Thank You and thank Stardock for making such an awesome and epic game that we can all enjoy for many years to come.
To those who weren't here through-out the beta process, there was a time when things were planned this way, which is where the above screen shot came from. This was from the continuous turn system that was set up but got cut. We don't NEED Continuous Turns to Achieve these kinds of Epic Numbers. It CAN be done within a Turn Based Environment with some creative animation techniques to make the units look like they're fighting between turns. I'd really, Really, like to see Stardock live up to this, and so I think those of us who want this should make this Official Request so that Stardock can truly see how many of us want this. The Beta Testers never even got to see this system in action. We were told it was changed from continuous turns to better fit the "feel" they wanted, but that doesn't explain why the unit counts had to be cut down so drastically. 12 guys in a unit does Not Feel Epic in my book.
If you Don't Want to sign the request, but would rather debate it, then please reply in the other thread going about Epic Battles here: Epic Battles
If you DO want to see them live up to these numbers. Please Say So here. No one will get mad at you for voicing your opinion or asking that they live up to this picture that so many people bought Elemental based on. Again, if you Don't want to see this, please keep your replies in the other thread. Thank you.
~ Raven X and the Elemental Community
This post is a reply from page 10, but I thought it should be added to the original, because here is the proof some people might want to see who weren't here for the whole beta process, who didn't hear the devs go on and on about the Inspiration for the Game. This is what was in the hearts and minds of All Of Us when we were all getting excited about Elemental:
Here is the proof, Frogboy had Total War and Lord of The Rings Epic Scale Battles IN MIND when dreaming up what Elemental would be:
Post By FROGBOY: Elemental: scale of power , https://forums.elementalgame.com/343449
Here's a Quote from Frogboy from that post:
"If you like the Total War series, you can imagine some of what we have in mind except here you can get that Lord of the Rings battle feeling where certain units just make mince meat out of whole squads of enemy units."
There are others back in old Dev Journals too. Now, NO ONE can deny that Frogboy had Total War Type, Epic Scaled Battles, IN MIND when PLANNING Elemental: War Of Magic. For all you new people who wanted to see quotes, there it is. I can dig up more old quotes too. So, if Frogboy is Now Saying that ONLY MoM was his inspiration, well, something is fishy in Denmark...
Here's another one where Frogboy Specifically says "huge army" and "vast armies" in the same paragraph!!!
Post By FROGBOY: Design elements of Elemental discussed , https://forums.elementalgame.com/329219
Here's a List of Quotes from Frogboy from that post, some of which are mechanics that either changed, or were simply left out completely from the game we have now, like where he talks about having Walls in cities be a Big Part of tactical battles:
Quote:I understand if some stuff is being kept internal, but here are the things I'm wondering about: 1. Are there non-military victory conditions? 2. Does the game include a campaign? If so do you think the story of the campaign will attract gamers? 3. How are you addressing the steamroller issue of TBS games (ie: spending the first half of the game building a massive army and the last half rolling it over all opponents as a repeatable strategy to every game)?1. Yes. Most of the victory conditions are non-military. Some of the previews may cover this so I won't say anything until after the previews hit. 2. Yes. I think the story is compelling but I'm highly biased. 3. The mechanics in Elemental are a bit different than the typical 4X game because even in terms of warfare, there are very different paths. For instance, Player A may have a huge army ready to steamroll but Player B may have an incredibly powerful sovereign who can wipe out vast armies and Player C may have built up an incredible well of mana that can be used to decimate vast swaths of the world and all three of these things could come together at once based on which path players take and of course all 3 could lose to Player D who wins through the quest victory condition if they're not careful.Quote:Can we build walls? Us turtelers need to know. Yes. One of the key game mechanics of Elemental is how cities are built. In Elemental, when a city grows, it gains a new tile which can be placed where the player wants it to go (as long as it's adjacent to an existing tile). So cities are a multi-tile affair in the game. Now, how you choose to build up your city heavily determines how defensible or productive, or rich it is. Cities are only conquered when the keep tile is taken which could be in the utter center of the city or could be at the end of a peninsula.Quote:What are the objectives for the creation part? how many aspects will be able to be manipulated? will it be part of the game or you have to work on that on a separated editor (one of the many things I loved from MoM was the ability to forge items that were mine, created by me as part of my campaign and war effort). There will be pre-made maps and randomly generated maps in which players can insert a large number of variables in deciding what kind of world they want. Quote:I guess it will have random maps, what is the target for sizes? From tiny to ridiculously large. We are also making a 64-bit native edition to support even larger worlds. Quote:What type of feedback are you looking for the beta process? Everything. The beta process starts about 9 months before release so that beta testers can seriously mold the game. On a personal note, for me the beta process is the whole point of making the game as that's what helped get me into game development in the first place. I was one of those Usenet guys on comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic hanging out talking about games and picked up Teach yourself C in 21 days to start writing (this is obviously a long time ago now). So hanging out with other gamers to tweak and add to the game is the best part. Quote:Any extra payment for the MMO part? what is the general idea of this? No. It's not really an MMO part as much as Impulse hosting the game on the cloud to make it much easier for people to interact with their "world" with their friends. Quote:Brad - will there be any way to quick-resolve combat? Playing out tactical combat is fun when the sides are at all matched, but it's just a drag on my patience when you're going to steamroll the other side or whatever. And sometimes you just want to get combat over with because you're focusing on the bigger picture or a "technology win" or something.
Totally. There's instant-resolve (i.e. two armies meet, one dies), there's auto-resolve where the game zooms in and shows a tactical battle but it's all handled by the AI (ala GalCiv II fleet battles) and then there's full tactical battles where both sides play. One thing I should mention about the tactical battles that isn't clear in the screenshots is that they're continuous turns. They're not like HOMM. The player tells where they want their units and uses the space bar to pause the action to give new directions. That way, we can get much more interesting battles.Quote:What's your combat system going to be built around? Master of Magic-style tactical combat, or Civilization-style randomized abstraction? Or will both be options?It's tactical but it can be made to play like Civ if you have instant-resolve enabled. I will likely play with auto-resolve as I'm not a huge fan of playing out tactical battles but I enjoy seeing the carnage. If anyone has ever seen Fellowship of the Ring where Sauron is whacking out tons of elves and men around, that's the look we're going for. Though, in Elemental, the creatures are much more powerful than a lone Maiar up against a bunch of punks. Dragons in Elemental are incredibly powerful and each of the channelers are equivalent (by late game) to Valar. Enough Tolkien geedkom. Quote:The few available screenshots look great. Hopefully we'll get a look at the spells soon. The spells are going to be intentionally de-balancing in late game. I.e. by late game, you'll be able to do Populous level damage to the world. A lot of the reason we had to create a new engine was because we needed one where the world could be truly wrecked.Quote:By doing that, you can then open the way to have extremely large maps in which players are viable for a long period of time with different paths to victory.
If anyone wants to play catch-up and read the rest of the Dev Journals that talk about the inspiration behind the game, behind the Original Vision, you can find them here:
https://forums.elementalgame.com/forum/513/page/7
Notice how many times Frogboy uses LotR as a direct example of both scale and feeling for the envisioned world of Elemental. He uses it in reference to the Scale Of Battles. He uses it in reference to the Power of Sovereigns. He uses for a lot of things because it is what is commonly known to a lot of fantasy lovers.
That's the very last page in the Dev Journal History. Hopefully some of this information, quoted Straight From The Source, will clear things up for those who may be questioning what the original vision was and what the vision is now. How many things here simply aren't even a part of the game now? A lot that I can see, but, this thread isn't about any of those. This Thread is about the game living up to it's EPIC INTENTIONS. This is about Follow Through. This is about a Vast Part of the Elemental Community wanting the vision to be maintained and lived up to because we want Elemental to be Successful. We want Elemental to be the VERY BEST Fantasy Strategy War Game on the market and some of us will not rest until either that happens, or we're cold, dead, and buried.
In closing, here's a mock-up screen shot I did just now. This took about 5 minutes in PhotoshopCS4. Please don't get crazy over the details. This picture isn't meant to be super detailed, it's just meant to show how the game should feel. The feeling of truly epic armies clashing for control of a ruined world. I only did one army, not two, but I could do a mock-up of two massive armies fighting if I wanted to, but I think the point is served none the less. I didn't spend a lot of time cleaning it up or smoothing over where I patched in clear land that was covered by rocks or cactuses that I just copy and paster terrain over. It's just meant to show the feeling of what it would be like to command a Real Army that's the size of what a Powerful Sovereign of a mighty civilization truly deserves.
From now on I'll only be replying to civil posts in a civil manner. I'm not going to defend my wording of the post any longer as I've stated what I meant more than enough times. I'm sorry if anyone took offense to my wording, but if you're one of the people who did, then this thread wasn't for you anyway, as it was only meant to Count The Numbers of those of us who want the game to live up to it's original vision and potential as much as possible.
I urge those who still want to see this to Please Keep Posting and let your voices be heard. Keep the memory of what the game was supposed to be alive in your mind and hearts and keep the ideas alive in the minds and hearts of Frogboy and the Team who have poured their blood, sweat, and tears into this game right along side of us who have been here with them. We've all invested a lot of time and energy and expectations into this game, and this game is a work of art. Lets strive to make it live up to it's potential and keep your voices being heard. Thank you one and all.
Another vote for a more epic feel to battles and the game in general. These aren't mighty empires or great kingdoms...it's clan warfare in the Highlands.
I want more Lord of the Rings, A Game of Thrones, Midkemia...and less Hatfield vs. McCoy. Seriously, an "army" of 12 people... I keep picturing Arthur assaulting the Grail Castle in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as opposed to the opening battle scene of The Fellowship of the Ring.
Unfortunately, as we scale maneuver elements up to represent dozens, hundreds, or thousands of warriors, it becomes that much harder for a single hero to have any relevance on the battlefield (except for powerful spellcasters.) Perhaps letting heroes embed in a unit to become its captain could overcome this issue (similar to how the Warhammer Fantasy Battles miniatures game handles heroes and captains.) This could open up a ton of tactical options for warrior heroes providing special abilities to their unit such as instilling morale bonuses, increased attack / defense, causing fear, challenging enemy heroes to duels, etc. The possibilities are really endless if heroes eventually get a well-implemented talent / trait / perk system. Granted, this would require a pretty massive change to the current tactical battle system that I really don't see happening.
Anyway, the challenge the designers and/or mod-makers face is how to make the battles look epic while limiting maneuver elements (to keep battles from taking hours to fight) and (the hardest part) keeping heroes relevant. Of course, that is assuming the designers have any intention of making big battles possible. Mod-makers will try, but the engine will need modifications to make it work well.
So...thank you Raven X for voicing your opinion! By the way (seeing as how you're a kindred fan of Dragonlance), my dad went to high school with Gary Gygax (R.I.P.) and I once met and talked for awhile with Margaret Weis at my dad's office about the Dragonlance world when I was a kid (this was back when the first trilogy was being written.) Try as I might, I couldn't get her to give me any spoilers about what they planned for Raistlin! She and Tracy Hickman did sign my copy of Dragons of Winter Night, though. Good luck with the mod...I fondly remember playing War of the Lance (SSI) and think that this engine is perhaps the best I've yet seen to bring that world to life.
Good gaming all (on every side of the discussion)...in the end, it's just about playing a fun game and escaping reality for awhile.
Can we sign against the petition now? Multiplying everything by 10 does not create an "epic" feel. Time would be better spent on enhancing tactical battles, improving combat mechanics and adding more special abilities and varied spells.
I want this! This would make the game much much cooler!
i agree with op epic battles would be great
Oh, but this is just the original request. The rest of the thread are people bitching about a total war battle system (wich was never asked for, I recall TW being named to give you an option about unit sizes) or NO MOAR UNITS on screen (again, never asked for, we're talking about figures in a squad and ongoing animations to show them fighting even after their turn is over).
I do admit that Raven "official" request can be a little rude, a much better option would have been "Official discussion" thread...
Still 75% of people, apparently, cannot read. I have nothing wrong against those that do not like the idea and are able to give an explanation about "why" they do not like it, but many other are just answering the wrong questions.
Firstly, You are right, all I did was create 50 1 man units. It was merely a test. Using the normal groupings, you could use it to make a single party of 50 12 man units. Secondly, If you think 50 1 man units is micromanagement hell than you have obvious never played a good 4x game before as traditionally you could manage far more than that. If I remember correctly, the average fleet size in the late game of MOO2 was around 50-100 ships, and could get so massive that you would fill up nearly the entire tactical map. Now that was in fact epic. Third, You seem to clearly miss the point I was making. If the "members of the community" used even one half the energy that has gone into this thread alone, you could easily have your super huge epic armies. Consider the below image, Not 50 1 man units but what is in fact a 1 50 man unit ( I know the graphic renderer is only showing about 18 guys, and this squad lost a few guys in a previous test battle). Combine both of these changes (which were both ultimately a line each) and you get the ability to have 50 50 man units or for those counting 2500 men battles or your desired thousands of troops. Remember these numbers are ultimately arbitrary and you can easily do whatever you want with them
Let me restate my point. If you or anyone you know want this kind of epic feel, it is within your grasp to make it happen. These threads of 10 pages of drama bombs do nothing to help you, stardock, your friends, or really any person who actually believes Elemental has great potential.
That screenshot is going in the right direction (for once), did you already test it out? I would like to know if there are glitches wich such a large unit...
Yes I actually have this working, and it works under the same principles as the rest of the game mechanics. Now, this units is horrifically unbalanced, as you can see it has 550 hp and 180 attack. The only "glitch" is that the rendering engine has no idea how to put that many guys into one square since the scale of tactical battles is not exactly that big in general. This little encounter was after this unit fought a young ogre for my initial test.
Yeah I remember....but the concept/scale of the game has been changed later on. They've changed other things as well, like the tactical battle system has been changed to turn/tile based from continous turn based. This is what we call "game development" I guess. You can't blame the devs for changing these things.
I agree that the current scale is 'company' sized rather than army sized, and that in no way you could call a few hundred people a kingdom. Although it needs a lot of tweaking, the scale is fine for early game. However, I'd like to see the scale change during middle and late game, so you could have cities with thousands of people and armies with hundreds of soldiers. You don't, and that's fine, we can disagree about that.
I see what you're saying Kenata. The reason I reacted the way I did is to me it seemed like you were coming off like you were attacking me and trivializing the whole thing. Perhaps I'm on edge and took your meaning the wrong way, and if I did and came off harshly in reply I apologize. I like what you did there, that is very cool, but being something we've had planed for the Dragonlance Mod, making Sure it would be possible by asking Frogboy directly when he let everyone know that unit counts were being diminished, I already knew it was moddable. As I said though I do like what you did the second time here.
In your reply though you still come off a bit like you're attacking me again, saying "If you think 50 1 man units is micromanagement hell than you have obvious never played a good 4x game before as traditionally you could manage far more than that", then again maybe you didn't mean that harshly either and it just sounded that way to me. You are correct. There are many games where you can control 50 units made up of one soldier each. I didn't say that in my reply because I knew it was common knowledge and to me having a bunch of small numbered units isn't what the thread, or wanting them to live up to the massive unit counts, is about. Again though you are correct, there are many games, including older ones such as MoO2 where you can control large fleets of small ships or large ships. I've Worked on 4x games. I've been playing games for over 20 years and have almost 10 years experience in the industry. So I don't take it lightly when someone says I've never played a 4x game, though I think now you didn't mean it to sound the way I took it.
I would like very much if you and I could start over in our replies to each other, as I don't have any problems against you as a person and I like your ideas for modding.
I don't know how long you've been here and been part of elemental, or if you took part in the beta, but if you've been here long enough and we're reading the forums when we were discussing design, I'm sure you'd remember all the times the devs and Frogboy especially talked about wanting hundreds of units on screen at once. He talked about the reasons why it would take so many mundane units to kill a Dragon and why it wouldn't take as many highly trained and well equipped units to do the same thing.
The thing is though those who want this to be implemented want it to be that way in the vanilla game. Some people don't like Mods as they think it goes against the way the game was intended to be played. I used to be one of those people many years ago. It's what I would now a "purist". Someone who doesn't like cheats or hacks or mods and wants every aspect of their game to be "Official" the way the company that made it intended. Other people don't like applying mods because of the often technical ways they need to be installed. People who are used to modding like you and I and many others here don't mind mods or going through the minor process of dropping files in folders, but there is a large base of users out there who honestly don't have a lot of computer knowledge and only use it to play games. I'm sure all of us know at least 1 person in our lives who's like that. The type that just hits "Next, Next, Next" when installing something and doesn't care what's being installed, they just want to play. I've had more than a few ex girlfriends back in the day who were like that, then they'd wonder why their computer started getting bogged down and where that new tool bar on their browser came from (because they didn't see the option to install it when they installed their last program). People like that find even the simplest mods confusing, and there were a lot of those here who complained about having to edit the XML in even simple ways to make a custom faction.
Those of us who were here long enough know that the game was envisioned to have large scale battles. A lot of things were changed, and some things were changed simply for the need to make the deadline, while other things were changed just because they needed to be changed. Us "old timers" remember all the pre-beta discussions where Frogboy talked about Sauron and how Sovereigns and Champions would, or could be, magical bad asses that could lay waste to vast numbers of men by themselves with powerful magics or artifacts. Then some people started complaining and were worried that having Sovereigns that powerful would unbalance the game, etc etc, but most of us understood it's a fantasy game and that's the way it was envisioned and if you didn't like then maybe Elemental wasn't the game for you. Frogboy said that lots of times too. However, this isn't about holding him to concepts that were pre-design. We all understand things get changed drastically during the development process. We've all seen first hand just how drastic some of those changes could be.
The bottom line of it though, for me, and for many other people down through the last two years, is we all feel we were part of the process of seeing Elemental grow. We all knew what the inspirations for the game were even though many things were changed to make Elemental unique from other fantasy games, which is why Elemental doesn't have the standard fantasy cannon races and has mostly different races of "men". One thing that was constant though, through the whole process up until the last few stages of beta, was the epic battles from LotR, which Frogboy would reference often and with great enthusiasm. The game was envisioned with a epic grand scale in mind. Frogboy also specifically brought up Total War when mentioning the original plan for the battles in Elemental though he did state he Did Not want them to be in Real Time and wanted to stick with Turn Based because to him Turn Based battles offer more of a chance for strategy to be used and I'm happy with that decision, as are many others. Many of the replies here have shown ways that greater unit counts can be incorporated into the game while still maintaining a turn based environment, and as game designers the Stardock devs know full well that it's possible too.
I can see why you would view it that way, but the ONLY PURPOSE for wanting only those who wanted it to post was only To Be Able To Keep Count Easily. It definitely WAS NOT to get a whole list full of "Yes Men Answers". It was to keep it simple, as that's what the devs like when trying to count things. I know the frustration they go through when trying to weed through a 10 page thread looking for good replies and trying to skip past the rants and raves that lean too far one way or the other. They like posts that are easy to understand what it is exactly that the posters want. I promise you that's the only reason why I asked for the thread to be formatted that way. Also, I've Stated MANY TIMES in this thread that I was Only Representing Those Who Wanted the Change back to the way it was envisioned. I'm sorry you took it the way you did, and maybe I could have worded it differently, but the post was very clear to me and to many others. I don't mean any offense with this reply so please don't take it as such, I'm just stating the way it was intended to be.
If your choosing not to want the change based solely on the way I worded my post, which I hope that isn't the case, you'd only be doing more harm to the game than good, but that's just my opinion. If you don't want the change honestly because you just don't think it would be good that way, then I understand and respect your opinion. You should be aware though that that particular opinion does go against the original envisioning of the game and what many people who bought the game had in mind when they made their purchase. That should also be evident by the number of replies in favor of getting them to make the game more like the picture on the box.
HERE IS PROOF, FROGBOY HAD TOTAL WAR IN MIND WHEN ENVISIONING THE BATTLES FOR ELEMENTAL!!!
I really really dont wont that. Sry!
I am not afraid to say that I'd rather call it "a dumbing down and minimalistic set-up which got the game thrashed by reviewers and the customer base"!
Sorry to call a cat a cat but it's not Schrödinger's Cat anymore: the cat is out of the bag and the devs acknowledged it. Now that they ask us what we want, you can't blame those of us who demand that they come back to the vision they showed us long ago.
I'm happy with the unit sizes as they are in the game now. I don't see how displaying 20 figures instead of 4 figures would make the game better in any way.
And correct me if i am wrong, but you can currently have 144 figures per side(12 units of 12 figures), that's 288 figures in combat, which i believe is more than the figure count in the screenshot with the dragon. More if the defender is in a city an not limited to 12 units at once. That seems epic enough to me.
100% agree with you.
You're right, this is definitely not an insignificant batte.
Frankly, I find games where 1 single hero has the strength of entire armies to be extremely cheezy. One guy with a mace having a strength of 250, dexteriy of 100, and 300 hit points cleaving 12 groups of 12 macemen by himself simply does not appeal to me (in fact, I thnk it sux), exceptions being for magic users with powerful spells (in these cases its the spells that do the damage, as long as the tech for getting these spells is equally hard, or proportioned correctly). I quite like the way this game models champions & experience. You can increse the strength of champions dramatically if they spend a lot of time fighting monster, but still they don't get too over-the-top, this is perfect for me.
The basic problem with "epic" battles is exactly what you commented in paragraph 2 above, the battles would take hours to resolve. Sorry, but it would sux having to move 50 single guys around the battlefield, then seeing miss after miss after miss. I typically resolve battles manually because I don't want the AI to sacrifice my champions & use up mana which it tends to do. I can actually do better tactically (and strategically for that matter) than the AI, and win while outnumbered without using up mana and getting my champions killed. The problem with it is that it gets tedious, and frankly boring after a while after the 50th group of spiders attacks. I love the concept of being able to do "auto" tactical combat, I just wish the AI did a better job of it and I'd use it more often.
Another problem with the idea of epic battles. The first guy that reaches 50-man squad size units (assuming this gets added as a tech warfare ability) wins the game. All the stats will scale up accordingly, like they do from single men -> 4man squads -> 8man squads. All you have to have several magic uses with teleport, which you should easily have at this point in the game, & teleport your new "invincible" 50man squads near all the opponent cities (by the time you get this tech, you should have pretty much covered the map). Then attack each city with a 50-man "superman" squad and walla you've won. Sorry, but this is a very cheezy way to win IMO, and I would not much like the game if it ultimately was decided this way.
So, basically the game just becomes a tech race as to who'll get this "superman squad" technology first will be the winner & upgrading the AI enough so that it actually manufactures and attacks with the new "superman" squads (and strives to develop it). If OTOH they don't scale up the 50 man squads proportionally then they wouldn't be worth getting. I won't go into the cost of the new 50 man squads which would probably be in the 10000 range, as I think it can be done with correct economic foresight & proaction (which the human player would be capable of but not the AI).
What I'd really like to see which goes along with what the first guy opined above, is some quality improvements. It would be kool if players could bundle all those single-guys into squads once those techs get unlocked because they're basically useless at 8-man squads. Also it would be great if we could actually upgrade older units that don't have newer techs. Why can't we pay to upgrade a group of outdated "observers" to knights if we're able to financially. Frankly, I'd 100% more like to see this happen then adding a bunch of "superman" squads that are auto-game-winners.
Here's the ORIGINAL, Un-Obstructed Picture WITHOUT the Fog blocking the rest of it. Count again and tell me how many you see!!!
Who cares? This seems more a drama thread then anything else...you were shown how to get what you want by modding, stop crying and make it work if it matters that much to you. But, do not presume to speak for me again, ok?
If you would have told that to Frogboy back when he envisioned the game he would have told you what he told a lot of other people. He's told more then a few people that "Elemental might not be the game for you". This is a Fantasy Strategy game where 1 man can cast a spell called Volcano and flatten an Entire City. Again, here's the original pic of what the game was Supposed to Look Like:
There's Well Over 400 soldiers here, and THIS looks Epic. This was what they planned. If you don't like this, then you might as well tell them you don't like the game. Because what we have now is a lame shadow of what it should have been and what was planned from the start. If anyone wants to start a thread that says "We like itsy bitsy armies" be my guest, because just like people did here, I'll go derail that one so no one gets an Accurate Count of ALL the People Who Want Them To Stick To This. I'm sorry, but tiny little counts of men, that are supposed to represent a massive force for a powerful nation, simply doesn't fly in my book.
It's becoming blatantly obvious to me now why things were cut down like they were. Simply to make it easy on the engine and to keep small numbers because it's "Easy" to balance, and that saddens me greatly and makes me loose a lot of faith in the vision that was once behind this game.
We didn't even get to see this in action. Why? We were fed a Lame Excuse that "There was too much difficulty scaling/balancing a scenario where a single unit can range from 1 person to 1000 people. It just wasn't fun."... Who said it wasn't fun? Oh that's right, the people who had to do the Hard Work to balance it...not the players who wanted large numbers. The grand vision that was to be got thrown out the window because it was too difficult to balance? Really? Yeah, really...
Proof? Right Here:
https://forums.elementalgame.com/385885/page/9/ Reply Number #213.
I'm sorry but the excuse of "it's too hard" is Lazy, and that's how I really feel. I never got to take the easy way out of a job because the job was too hard. How can it be too hard when so many other games pull it off so well? That's why game devs make the Big Bucks...you know, in the Millions...Because they are Supposed to Make The Magic Happen when it comes to coding and balancing. Seeing everything get cut down to insignificant peon numbers simply because it was "too hard to balance" the big numbers makes me loose a Lot of Fatih.....a LOT of Faith....
Frogboy, I've been a loyal fan and customer for a long time. I have faith in you and the devs. PLEASE, stick to this and don't cop out because it's "too hard" to make it work. Stardock isn't supposed to take the Easy Way Out. What happened to that drive and passion that was there before? What happened to the steadfast resolve to make a Epic War Game? Don't tell me all that went flying out the door because it was "too hard" to pull off. If that's the case does it mean things in the future will be cut out if it's too hard to do or too challenging to make happen? Don't break our hearts by doing this. After all the bumps at launch, all the bad press, all the pain and suffering and people getting let go....Stick To This damnit!!!
If you weren't one of the people wanting it then I Wasn't Speaking For You. I was speaking for THEM. Nuf said,.
Who cares? I CARE. As does EVERYONE ELSE Who Signed that they want it. There's a lot of people who put forth hard earned money because THEY CARE about the GAME and they CARE about Stardock and they CARE that now that they are asking what we want, we're telling them what we want.
Keep up the posting everyone. even with all the drama and whining going on over stupid BS, every reply that wants them to stick to the larger scale counts as another reply wanting it. They keep adding up. Even if a whole page is nothing but people going against it just to be difficult, if there's one reply on that page that wants it, it's worth it, because that's one more person that was let down. One more person that wants the vision that was HARD to Balance. Because that's what their job is about. Crunching the Hard Numbers. Making the Big Numbers work. I'm off to sleep for the day. Have fun everyone .
Well said my friend. Tormy is with us though, no worries. He likes the epic too
It's just a picture.
It is a kool picture I'm not going to debate that, yeah I like it at some level, but I've never been one for images. Other things are much more important. There's not enough other detail, I can't even tell whos on what sides? Are they all fighting the dragon? I would guess that this battle probably took 2 hours to finsish if it was turn-based and all those units were singles, sorry but that's way too long, and that trumps picture-quality in my book.
I'm actually the last person you want to be asking about graphics, because I think it's the least important element of a game. I think Stars! is one of the all time great 4x space games, others hated its lack of graphics, I can appreciete its deeper content.
My ranking of game elements is:
1) AI ability, without a challenging game a (any) game is no good. Period.
2) Gametype. What kind of game? Is is 4x, FPS. I'm a strategy game player, so I can filter out all FPS or other types I'm not into.
3) Gameplay. This decides enjoyment level outside of AI considerations. This includes concepts like tech trees, fog of war, tactical combat details, etc...
4) Game control/interface. Determines ease-of-use.
5) Manual & instructions: which are important to me, as I actually read the books. But, it's not as important a value if there is a good all- ecompassing encyclopedia (unfortunately, this game fails both accounts here).
6) Tutorial: Some times I use tutorials, but I usually read the manuals, so I don't use this feature as much.
7) Graphics: just images, smoke and mirrors. That's it. This is the least important game factor. I've been playing EWOW from day one one the cloth map screen, I prefer it 100% over the graphic screen. In fact, I couldn't even tell you what the mountains look like on the Graphic map, never seen em. I'd bet that 99% of the other users use the Graphics screen, nothing wrong with that; it just underscores the weight people place on image. But, that's just the kind of person I am. I could live with champion images that were modeled after disney characters, having snoopy for yeshod (whoever that guy is that appears at start on turn 1), and Charlie Brown for my Soverign would be great, in fact I'd probably load a mod if someone created cartoon animals for monsters, that would be great IMO. A cartoon puppy dog image for wolves would be great, and "Lucy the spider" for spiders would be even better. And I'm not kidding either. This is one of the first thoughts that came to my mind when I read abou the games mod capability.
I can agree with all that, my friend. Those weren't all single units though like we have now. The mechanics behind that picture were actually a "simultaneous turns system" that was thrown out because it got too hard to balance when things scaled up. I wouldn't want to move that many men one at a time either brother...lol, I don't think anyone their right mind would.
In a turn based system like we have now, if you have 400 men on the field, and each of those 400 are split up into groups of 50 men each, that's only 8 "units" to give commands to, which the current cap on amount of units is 12. The number of men in each "unit" doesn't matter when you're giving orders to each unit as a whole, see how that works now?
When Frogboy explained that picture, what seems like a million years ago now, he said it was easy to tell what side was what by looking at the direction each side was marching in. Honestly, I can tell just by looking at it.
It's not about the graphics, really, and I also agree game-play trumps graphics any day of the week. The soldiers in elemental could all look like stick figures and I'd still want more of them on screen so we can have those epic battles like the ones in Lord Of The Rings or Dragonlance or even Narnia. The battles of fantasy literature, movies, and even other games was the inspiration here, so said the dev team and Frogboy himself.
You do make some very good points though and I agree there are a lot of other things that need work as well, there's no denying that. There's also no denying how many people still want to see this.
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