The Design a Spell contest was launched today. I'm excited to see your ideas. I know a lot of people will want baselines to create within, after all its hard to design an implementable spell if you don't know exactly what can be done. But I encourage you to forget the technical limitations for the moment and just design spells that you would love to play with. Sure it means that some great ideas might not make it to the final 5 because they aren't practical, but I would rather see those dream spells and spend some time to see if we can make them, then limit everyone's creativity.
Remember we need spells for outside of combat as well as in combat and that we will have global mana by the time these spells are implemented (one mana pool that all that player's casters share). We are looking for a mix of a good strategic function and cool flavor.\
Good luck!
http://elementalgame.com/contest
How many entries is one limited to?
One.
Dear derek
I am sure that you will find here (see link: an official thread!) everything you are looking for. No need for contests when you've got at your disposal such a mine of ideas/suggestions/lists/mechanisms as this forum.
It's becoming tiring to see Stardock wanting to look cool by asking time and again the same things. STOP ASKING! You've got all the cards in your hands; now create the game or throw the towel, the customers won't do your job!
Official Elemental Spellbook Wishlist: https://forums.elementalgame.com/386025
I do not expect us to do anything more miraculous with elemental themes (fire, earth, water, wind) than you have. Now if it were chaos/fire/destruction, sorcery/wind/water/mental, nature/might/tactical/resource... well you get the idea. I do not blame ya'll to begin with for making a list of spell that if stripped of their discription would be impossible to guess with realm they belong in. "okay is that 20-50 damage spell red, yellow, green, or blue? Oh it is blue? Then it is water, duh!". I can tell you what I want a sorcery spell to feel like. I have no idea what I really want a water spell to feel like.
Boy aren't you a prime example of evolution failing.
*points at some post above this*
I kind of agree with this although I admit it's cool that they're giving away money. There have been countless threads already with spell suggestions. I doubt there is much that hasn't been suggested yet.
Best quote from that thread:
"Depending on how fast my AI coding skills are, I can add a lot of spells in before release."
the price i pay for not reading
I am just fed up.
Not against Derek, he just arrived.
Against the whole thing: official threads for nothing, marketing ideas to drink the Kool Aid, asking for things that could be found by the hundreds just reading Dom3's or AoW2's paper manual, the sensation that 'they' just don't know what 'they' do, that 'they' just never knew what'they' were doing...
Yeah, I could choose one cool spell and do the contest. I won't. I already have a graphics card and the only game I want to play is the one I have already bought: EWoM.
I am just fed up of all those so-called 'updates' without any substance except for modders or coders. Ask us about meta-mechanisms, tell us about big features coming!
(Yeah, I'm ranting! Feel free to open fire! )
Can we see our own submission in the 'Spell Submission' list? I did one, but can't see it anyplace - sorry if this is an inane question
Nevermind - I was just impatient - there it is.
This is a plea to Derek and the other members of the dev. team. It's been said above that there's been a lot of spell ideas on the forums already, but whatever, we'll assume this will be the OFFICIAL way of getting new spells in the game. My hope is this: if you see a lot of spells in this contest, do NOT dismiss them if they do not win. Please do what you can to make the spells in the game more fun to use, because (as I've said my times before) a game called "War of Magic" should have fun spells to use, not the bland ones we have right now. If you get 100 good ideas in the contest, then use them. If you get 1000 good ideas, then please use all of them in some fashion, regardless of which ones you consider the best and winners of this contest. If they're crazy and over the top, then change them up a bit so they're not (I know my submitted spell is crazy ). I know Derek has just arrived at the company, so this is mainly for the other devs: please use all of the spell ideas we are providing this time, please!
It's marketing and PR. No one is losing in this situation. Those who think it will be fun to participate can do so. Nobody will be upset at winning a prize, and the person who gets their idea implemented will be overjoyed I'm sure.
At the same time, this will increase involvement and enthusiasm about the game, which in turn will help support for the game and company, and ultimately sales of this game, as well as other Stardock projects.
It's really a win-win. I don't see why you'd choose this particular event to respond to with displeasure.
Mandelik has right there is a wishlist for spells and not 1 spell has been put it
and it would be nice to see some minor info about 1.1
This cracks me up ... maybe Derek didn't know we had already started this thread a long time ago. Wouldn't it be easier to just comb that thread for the coolest spell idea and then give that guy a new video card? Contest over.
Ok, I saw the rules and regulation, but do we need to add EVERY detail like: how much mana, upkeep, how many turn it should last, the AOE , wich book or something else or we just need to tell what kind of spell we want to have?
Yeah it's just a contest for fun. Don't read anything more into it than that. That doesn't mean the ideas expressed in threads aren't valid or that we are limiting ourselves just to spell ideas from the contest (or the many many spells that have been used in other games over the years). We welcome ideas from the community, and a contest is a fun way to celebrate that.
My response to this latest marketing gimgaw isn't entirely harsh, but I do sympathize solidly with Mandelik's general sense of being tired of efforts to whip up excitement with little prizes.
What I really find frustrating about this announcement from Derek the new guy is that his OP shows a clear understanding of how many of us are still frustrated by the lack of any sort of metaphysical framework for Elemental magic. Yet he asks us to keep doing more of the same stab-in-the-dark thinking that some of us have been trying since long before the first beta was available.
It won't surprise me to learn that Derek is reading backwards in the forums as ferociously as he's try to keep up with new chatter. But it does disappoint me a tad to see that he's leading the charge on such a terribly vague challenge to the community. The spells are hard to read in that contest UI (narrow column instead of following page or smart-sizing popup). And the input is just one 1,000 character text field when I'd hoped to see at least basic form parameters like the stuff Istari manually typed into the Dark Storm entry. (We can't even copy a URL to reference an entry for discussion here on the forums.)
I'll keep an eye on things and possibly make an entry, but the prize I'd really like to see from this context is a serious committment to have magic in Elemental gain a basic framework that both added some decorative meaning and provided global parameters to give the game a distinctive identity in the fantasy TBS genre. So far, elements are colors and essence is barely necessary. We should have elements that are like the cardinal directions on a map and essence that is essential to how a sovereign rules or leads a kingdom or empire.
Edit: I've not read the Rules thingy, but it surely isn't the place to put parameters that ought to be built into an input form.
*feeling like Luke in front of the Emperor*
*Don't letting hate fill himself!*
*cooling off*
Ok, I'll reply somewhat more constructively. After all, if I am still on these boards, it's proof that I'm still hoping for the game.
Why, you ask? Because the majority of those spells should have already been included in the game before August 24, THAT is why!
They could launch some interesting contest: they could ask people ideas about the magic system as a whole, or who have the best ideas about the use of shards, their properties, or how books of magic schools should be dispatched, what each should encompass, the ways to use magic power far away(sphere of influence? Magic tower? Distance?...), how magic artifacts should be created and with which resources (crystals, mana, use of shards...). Something ORIGINAL! Tapping the imagination of our best forumers to innovate in this game (if they can't do it themselves).
But all they could come with is "Give me a spell!".
Give me a break, yeah! Everybody having played MoM, the AoWs, the Doms and many other games could come with tens of cool spells in ten seconds.
Just a marketing stunt... That's why.
atleast 1 spell will be ingame and the coolest
i just want to add i never played fall from heaven
tried it yesterday its really a awsome mod (after hearing wbc 3 music and iwd 2 portraits mmmmmmmmm)
Its hard to find ideas for a game i havent played for five weeks. I need that. Maybe i´m not very creativ. I have to say I´m a little bit frustrated. No beta, no news about status 1.1, but a contest... Sry.
I´ll go to bed and tomorow i´ll start waiting paintly. And its all because i really love this game .
I have to say I agree with you on this. It does seem rather haphazard. And as the format is not standardized, comparison should be quite difficult and annoying. I imagine (though I could be wrong), that some entries may be dismissed based purely on readability. In fact, I believe there was a clause in the rules and regulations stating that could actually be the case.
You have a valid general point. I just don't think that this side-contest has anything to do with anything else in the potential pipes. Just sort of a fun thing to keep people interested while they're waiting for 1.1.
Yes, it is a marketing stunt, and yes it is not the most useful request for ideas. However, setting a simplistic contest about spells does not preclude that suggestions made in the forums are not being considered. There is already a medium for the more complex ideas and suggestions that won't bear comparison as well as something like 'best spell'.
I think it was just a bit poor timing. Right now people are waiting for that "golden" beta to see the development of the game (even if it's buggy!). Obviously this doesn't deal with that at all, so we're left bewildered as to what's going on. Really, Frogboy said that 1.1 would more or less be the point where the responsibility and opportunity was handed over to Pax (heavily paraphrased), but now it seems that Pax is having a significant say in its development. I'm not saying the result will be better or worse, I'm just saying it's not what we expected right now.
Times like these, I like to remind myself that just because one thing happens, does not mean other things aren't happening. This is a part of something, not the whole piece.
Request: Another dev journal, talking about the new magic system in 1.1
Here it is:
9. CONTENT SUBMITTED:. By using this site, you agree to the following:
All Content uploaded onto this site must be original material created by you. By uploading any Content to this site, contributors are automatically assumed to be the creator and owner of the Content. You may not upload Content created by another person or taken from another source such as another website, etc, without express written permission from copyright owner. Copyright violation could result in account cancellation and in possible criminal prosecution.
By uploading Content, you give permission to the Sponsor to use the Content via online means or retail as seen fit by the Sponsor. Contestant shall have no rights to the content once submitted.
By uploading to the site you also acknowledge that the site administrators reserve the right to reject any of your upload at any time if they feel that they are inappropriate for the site in any way.
The Sponsor reserves the right to reject submissions for quality, completeness or other reasons deemed by the moderators.
I'm not sure how we are to gauge completeness if there has been no details given on what to include in our submissions. I imagine that this won't be enforced in any strict sense, and the best sounding ideas will most likely be selected.
I'm surprised this didn't occur to me before, but here's what I think. Why are they throwing a contest now when people have posted before about spells and such? I'm sure there's many reasons, but one is because of this :
This gives them the right to do whatever they want with the spell ideas because they gain control over them. The forums don't work that way; with this, you're technically signing over your idea to them for a chance to win the contest. I don't care either way, and I see why, lawfully they have to do this, but then I'm curious why they even bothered to ask for spell ideas in the forums in the first place ...? Were they never planning on using those?
Anyway, that's why I think they're doing this now, because some of these ideas will make it into the game, regardless of winning or not; and that can only be a good thing.
When is the beta starting?
Best regards,Steven.
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