One of the things people like about our office is the hallway-long whiteboard wall that the games team uses for a variety of purposes. Right now there are several to-do lists for 1.1 and beyond, a rundown of sales for our various titles, and a HUGE ‘wish list’ of Elemental features/tweaks players and press have requested. In fact, we’ve switched from writing the suggestions down and now simply print out feedback lists and tape them to the wall.
My request today is in a similar vein, but with focus turned on the parts of Elemental that you LIKE. With Derek and Toby joining the team to be our ‘eyes in the sky’, various areas of the design are going to be heavily scrutinized, and I want to make sure we focus on the real problem areas and simply polish any features that you guys are already enjoying. I foresee several spots where the baby could easily be thrown out with the bathwater, and to combat this I’d like to print a healthy list of ‘what you like’.
So, if you could make a note of any feature/gameplay situation/etc that you truly enjoy, along with one suggestion on how to polish that up, we’d be most grateful!
And here’s a sassy, preemtive ‘zerbert’ emoticon for anyone that wants to post “I like nothing about the game redo it ALLLLL!1!!1!!”
Thanks! The floor is yours!
I love how environment spreads out and reinvigorates the land. It can create cool-looking borders between nations as well.
I would love to see more variations of these used in-game. Right now there's only Kingdom and Empire, but you could easily extend it to have some nations spread an arctic environment, or a desert.
Another improvement to this would be that environment doesn't spread quite so fast within your influence. Right now, it spreads within a turn or so. If it would "fade over" within a couple of turns, that would be pretty cool-looking, I think. Theoretically, this could affect the bonus/debuff that you get from walking on the environment as well - the more "completely turned" the environment is, the stronger the effect is.
This space has been leased. I am going to put some thought into it and post it up.
Be back in a couple of hours with more info.
(several days later)
Okay.
1) The dynasty feature. It needs to be fleshed out and givne some love, but I love it even as it is now.
2) The way the town looks and funcstions. I love how it grows and takes up physical space. I love the animated people in the towns, it makes the place look alive. It does need ot have randoms peeps just walking around and looking busy as well as some that are just hanging out.
3) I love the world itself. The story, the ability to play in a true sandbox fashion.
4) I love the customization of every aspect of the game. That is incredibly important to me.
That's it for now. More to follow later!
I like how cities are spread out over multiple tiles. Even though it's a shame that the actual layout of your city doesn't influence it's performance in any way.
I like how you can design your own units (though the UI could do with some improvement).
But there isn't a single aspect (as far as i can remember) that i would consider perfect.
I agree about environment spreading out, and also that having more than just life or death environments would be cool. Like a frosten race that spreads cold, for example.
I like the unit customisation but it needs more content, variety and choice.
I like mounts but want flying mounts.
I like the way cities grow, taking up many squares. But want more variety of buildings. (Crystal, organic, rounded).
More may follow ...
The graphics style is a big plus for me, don't change that (though I don't imagine you would at this stage) I like the unit editor certainly keep custom units, this could be enhanced obviously bu balancing weapons /armour, etc and allowing players an option to turn of predesigned units if they like designing their own (it can be a pain deleting pre designed units).
I would also say the unit editor could be enhanced by allowing the player to choose facial features and hair as they can in the soverign editor. But generally custom designed units are one of the best features of the game, so don't even consider getting rid of those.
I also like the city growing across the map concept so don't drop that cities that take up more map tiles as they grow where an inspired idea and help set elemental apart.
1.1 - I'd also like to add how much I like the Global Mana pool idea in 1.1 that will be a major improvement and I hope no one will decide to revert to something like the current system of individual mana as that is one part of the game that really doesn't currently work but it sounds like 1.1 will fix that in spades.
As much as you guys talked about 'teething problems' with your new game engine, I would say that its a darn good engine. I think the engine and the art style were always very good. (could use some more color though) There's nothing engine-wise that would prevent a true classic fantasy game being made. The only problem was that you took the game design portion of the project for granted, when really it's the hard part. Brad even said game production is '90% technical and %10 percent game design'. Now that you guys have Kael coming along, it really shows a commitment to getting that right.
I think that the way the map looks is an excellent start. Large maps have good performance. It's very cool that you give the map makers access to the height map. There is a huge amount of potential here, moreso than Civ5 even. I would like to see more kinds of terrain art, and I would like to see map squares actually serve a purpose in the game far beyond simply as the 'space' between points of interest. Land is valueable! find a use for it! Right now its too much like Galciv, as if resources and stuff were floating in space.
I really love the setting, story and the look of the game.
I love creating my soverreign. But at the moment i dont feel great differences between the talents and the professions. Playing always feels the same. The stats should be more important and more useful/logical.
I enjoy city building. Its really cool at early/midgame, but in the end its boring. (waitung, researche new building, build in every town, waiting).
I love to have tactical battles. But at the moment they are boring for many reasons.
I have to say about almost all parts of elemetal: wow "I love it, but....." . I dont want to see, that any part is taking out. But i love to see that any part will be improved or useful changed.
1) I like the art style. It is fairly unique for a 4X, and gives Elemental an independent, original look.
2) I like having tactical combat. This was a big step forward from Gal Civ II, and I really, really want you guys to sustain and improve it in Elemental and future Gal Civ games. I love Civ, and I think Civ V has some good ideas, but I think they made a mistake making tactical combat occur on the strategic level. They should have just taken the plunge and made a separate tactical combat engine for army vs. army. Elemental already has that, and thus has several points over Civ V in my view.
3) I like that there are multiple ways to approach the game. You can focus on peaceful development, warfare, magic, adventure, whatever. This gives the game wonderful breadth. Now we just need the various aspects of that breadth to have some depth.
4) I like that resources are important and something to fight for. This helps drive conflict, and I would like to see this gain even more depth by giving players more reasons to seek out special resources, quests, etc. Anything that helps build conflict, story, etc. will be great.
I may have misread the opening post, so forgive me if I take it in the wrong way.
Now...my biggest personal issue, barring magic (which I found to be weak, but will wait and see what the global mana pool does to this), is the world itself. I hate how the world is such a boring, static thing. In GalCiv, for example, there would be raids by Peacekeeper forces, the Dread Lords might return, a prison planet might rebel, stupid adventurers might uncover various things...that sort of thing. Not to mention the numerous events that guided our morality and planetary benefits.
The jist of it...in GalCiv, things happened. Minor factions were important, for one, and actually could (and, at least for me, did) influence play by a great margin. In Elemental, however, the world never changes. Adventurers who don't actually exist in the game world trigger things that are obviously done by a script that has been fulfilled, which is a smack in the face of immersion. I'm not saying that you should include more random events, but instead that it should be possible for game-altering events to occur in the game without relying on a script that triggers. Let there be real adventuring parties players can interact with - and let THEM go off and do things. Perhaps you do have a bandit problem, so you put a bounty on the bandits, a team of adventurers wander by and take him out...but then the bandit lord unleashes a powerful spell that brings long-lost beings back the world. It isn't done because a script said it, but because it naturally was fulfilled.
For example, perhaps the bandit problem arose because trade between two cities was bringing in a great deal of money. Maybe an adventuring party comes across a Titan graveyard of some sort, and unleash an ancient Titan lich who begins to raise the dead to his service, a sort of necromancer mini-faction that you can ally with (he'll naturally prefer Empires over Kingdoms) or strive to destroy, in return for getting access to the graveyard (a special resource) and perhaps knowledge of necromantic spells. Perhaps you come across the lair of an imprisoned demon-lord, and are given the option to free him to wreak havoc across the world...or struggle to keep him chained.
On that same vein, cities are bland resource-manipulating locations. There are no noble houses to give me problems or advice, no powerful guilds who demand I do things in their way or face the consequences, no threat of rebellion or civil war...each city is ultimately the same as every other city. There's nothing to make me like one over another.
-N
I like the idea of dynasties, but I don't like that they practically play not role at all. I'd like to see them play a strong diplomatic purpose, as they used to do in real medieval past. Have a marriage be a necessity for alliances.
I enjoy the city building and the way the sprawl over the landscape
I like spells that modify the world. I don't like that at the moment they're so few and not really that useful.
I like that you can build your own units and customize their looks and abilities. I don't like that there are very few differences in both looks and abilities at the moment.
I love the custom unit creation/equipping aspect. It's really remarkable that you build that into the game. I just wish the supporting gameplay provided a bit more meaning and variety to the choices made there beyond "higher attack and defense is better".
Second what Bingjack just said. Dressing up my little dudes and making them run around and kill stuff is awesome.
The growing size of cities on the main map is great.
I love the idea of monster lairs and quests scattered throughout the kingdom. (implementation on where they are and why I cant do X could use some help tho)
the visible caravans are nice too.
Sticking with the environment theme from some of the posts above; I like how the map looks completely desolate at the start of the game, and you slowly restore it to life. My suggestion would bethe opposite of Heavenfall's; have the restored land spread more quickly, and beyond borders. The 'restore land' spell is a powerful one-shot spell that restores life to an area, and life wants to spread. It seems a bit silly that it would wait for your political sphere of influence to expand before it does. And from a less hippieand more gameplay point of view; having restored land spread beyond your borders could (should) influence which direction you expand to, as viable towns can only be build on restored land. I wouldn't want the whole map to be quickly restored by a single casting, so perhaps distance to the 'epicentre' of the spell should have some influence on the speed of expansion. It would also be great if terrain features had some influence on its expansion; restored land should spread fast along rivers, normal speed over grasslands and plains, slower over hills and through forests, and glacially slow over mountains, desserts and seas. This would drive the expansion of your faction, and if you want to expand somewhere that hasn't been restored yet you might have to wait a long while, or maybe cast restore land again in that area.
This would geography matter more, which is a nice tie-in to cephalo's point; although the resource producing plots prevent civ4-like city spamming that makes use of every tile, Elemental has gone to much in the other direction by having only a handful of valuable tiles, and the other tiles completely useless. I don't have an idea how to fix this without promoting city spam, but it is worth looking into.
I am pretty new to the game but here are the things i like the most (in no particular order)
1:- The graphic style overall.. It is unique to this genre (AFAIK), and it makes Elemental instantly recognizable. It some how seems to fit better with a fantasy style game than photo realistic terrain.
2:- The renewing of the map within the Sphere of influence. I think this is universally seen as a good thing. It makes expanding seem all the more worth while.
3:- Unit Design. Yes it may actually be more style than substance, but it is still much more fun having your own army, rather than a generic one designed for you.
4:- The open nature of the game. I love the fact that you can play each game in a completely different way, one game go all out conquest,. another game go all out adventure etc.
5:- The way the world feels alive. Yes it is barren, and i do sometimes wonder what the un-recruited heroes are doing when they are wandering around, but i like the variety of monsters to be found. I like the way the brigands and thieves insult you as they charge in to your undefended city (yes i really need to learn this isn't Civ 5, and actually start worrying about unguarded cities)
There are many more things i like. In fact i love just about every idea in the game, just some of it needs better implementing. Dynasties for example would be even better if they meant more (i.e sovereign dying is replaced by the next in line, no next in line? then it is game over). Cities sprawling is great, but would again be better if it influenced more. In all honesty i feel this has the potential to go down as one of the benchmark games when it is finally adjusted.
I like the basic feature list, although the implementation needs work. To be more specific, I like:
Sovereign design
Dynasties
Differentiated spellbooks allowing for different approaches to the game
Incentives for fewer, larger cities
Quests
Alternative approaches to victory - magic, tech, diplomacy (diplomatic capital was a stroke of genius), etc.
Tactical combat
City design / growth
Goodie huts
Again, I have quibbles with the implementation on each of these features, but I would be disappointed if the features themselves vanished.
I like the look of the land and the fact that it can turn into a full screen cloth map in a split second (but certain forests are hard to recognize when playing in the 3D map)I like the sovreign customizationI like the fact that there are random monsters, which forces the player to keep units inside his cities (Actually this is the best feature in term of gameplay and something that makes this game truly unique, since having more or less random monsters would really change the game experience I would suggest a to add a initial setting to determine how many mosters are there none, few, several, many)I like the idea of children (although they are a bit too powerful)I like the fact of being able to create the look and equipment of our armiesI like the idea of different tech trees which would in different ways personalize a faction. It needs tweaking for balance but ideally that offers different style of playing each one with its own distinct advantages and equal chances to be the winning strategy. I like the concept of an evil side and a good side (empire-kingdom) each one with its own techs and spells (personally I would stress that with a different looking UI based on color and alignement)I like the combination between RPG, wargame and city development: truly three games in one! (which IMO partially justifies the many bugs)I like the passion of the developers and the fact that they participate to the forum and listen to suggestions.
I like the cloth map. It provides a good view from high up and lets you see a lot, quickly. (In some ways it's actually easier to find stuff on it then on the 3d map.)
I like zooming in on a city and seeing the little people walking around.
I like taking champions to the item shop and walking out with a bunch of new gear.
ok...this blew my mind. its genius really. the idea that certain factions would create specific terrains. like one faction being a northern wintry type like some sort of barbarian tribe, and have them get movement bonuses based on that terrain is exactly what this game needs to reinvigorate it. the problem alot of people are having is how long it takes to get somewhere without killing game balance. this would solve it. you could create nodes or something that spread out your influence across the lands. this would give you great movement speed. AND if you happen to have a road running through it, that would make it even better. i love it!
One of my favorite parts is the cloth map mode (since I have to play the game in that mode for my computer to run it). I think that needs a lot of love, to be honest. Part of it is that it is hard to tell around mountains and shoreline where the terrain is passable or not. Also it is pretty colorless.
One thing I thought would be helpful would be to see a grid of available squares for movement. It is in a lot of strategy games, but something like in fire emblem, for example. You select a unit on the map and up pops their range of movement. You could even add a turn counter on moving units somehow so you can easily see how many turns it would take for a unit to get from one place to another.
The Cloth map is beautiful.
I like it that character creation is not simply a list of +/- numerical values.
Custom unit creation is nice and could benefit from more choices, like different special abilities for items. A tower shield could give a large bonus against missiles but a penalty to attack. A medium shield would have a slightly smaller defense value, small bonus against missiles, but no penalties.
Different tech trees for Kingdom and Empire is nice. Even more differentiation would be better.
Quests are excellent in idea. Need some expanding.
Dynasties are an excellent idea. Expanding on the idea of kids as heirs could be interesting. Quests involving children might be interesting. Quest to increase family prestige, quest to obtain a teacher for your kids, etc. Differentiate them a bit from normal champions. Crusader Kings is a nice source for ideas.
City construction on the main map rocks.
All in all very insightful...keep em coming
This is a hard question because Elemental is a better-that-the-sum-of-its-parts kind of game, but...
*I like the artistic style, both the character models and landscape look and feel.
*I like the idea of city building and linking them together into a network to create a "Sim" fantasy kingdom. While I spend most of the game zoomed out in the cloth map, once in awhile I like to zoom in, tilt the camera angle to nearly horizontal, and fondly regard my creation. Which reminds me: is it possible for mountain-tops to be spikey instead of round?
*I like the idea of restoring the land with influence and wish that had a bigger role.
*I like that it is not just another elves/orcs/dwarves/zombies game. I've played enough games that the only thing that excites me anymore is innovation, so I like all elements of Elemental which are new and haven't been seen before.
*In that I can put up with the music for an hour or two, I guess I have to list that as a positive. But for a game that lasts hours and hours per match, if we had something softer that fades better into the background, I might never have to turn it off. Just give it some thought.
*I like how the RPG elements fit into the strategy game. Adventuring can really benefit your economy. I like the little slot-machine style reward system you get from goodie huts. It's always fun to get random stuff. More magic gear would make it even better.
*I like how wandering monsters present a separate threat you have to deal with. I'd like more of that. I'd like to see this possibly used as a weapon, where adventuring techs can increase monster spawn throughout the world that your enemies have to deal with, rather than just you.
*Though I haven't used it as much as I probably should, I like the ability of using magic to change the landscape, to open passageways and create things like defensive bottlenecks.
*I like getting married and spawning my own heroes. That's a nice touch, and some have become pretty potent heroes in the late game. I like being diplomatic with the AI too, to influence them toward my interests and goals, rather than just fighting them. Even with a conquest victory which is 4 games out of 5, diplomacy still has its uses.
*I really like using diplomacy to recruit "intelligent" monsters. Niiiice.
*I like the mods, and Elemental's welcoming attitude toward mods. Any mod-manager tool would be great, and more modding tools.
Expanding upon this; I would like to see Life/Death variants of Deserts, Swamps and Tundras so that the world doesn't just turn green - erasing any deserts etc. Death swamps could be darker, while the life variant could have more flora and such.
I like the idea of Champions, or especially Children, but I wish there were ways to customize them more. Rather than just stat increases, I want to choose awesome Feats and Abilities every so often. Leap Attack, Double Strike, First Strike, Poisoned Weapons, Teleport, Stone Form, Parry, there's all kinds of ideas. Right now I don't think Champs are differentiated enough between each other, and I think this would go a long way to giving them more personality.
I like tactical battles, but wish there were more tactical considerations. I'd love city walls with catapults on them, fortifications you had to bash down before you could get to missile troops. I'm not talking anything ridiculous like Total War, but even something like Age of Wonders Lite would go a long way to making them more fun/interesting.
This is maybe going to be more of me pleading than listing something I like and want to see polished, but I really really really really really want to play this game multiplayer with my friends, but it's just not really feasible right now. No tactical combat, only tiny/small maps, etc... that's not what we want. We've been waiting for a couple months now to really get into this game, but the main thing holding us back is the inability to play the full game in Multiplayer. Also, PLEASE allow multiplayer on local LAN, with custom servers. It's important, the Host really needs to be able to set the game rules (Tactical Battles on/off, what threshold, whether it's a full "Epic" game like you have in MP or a smaller, more streamlined MP mode, etc).
The last issue is the biggest one for me. There are a lot of people I could really convince to take the plunge on Elemental, but they all backed off when they heard about the lack of MP features.
I think the RPG part of Elemental is great and should be improved in version 1.1:
STR and DEX are very good balanced
CON should increase the base HP and a character should get CON / 5 HP per level after the first
INT should change the damage of spells (base damage x INT x 0.1)
WIS should change the spell resistance (base spell resistance x WIS x 0.1)
CHA should change the damage of standard units that fight with the character (base damage x CHA x 0.1)
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