This was actually mentioned in a dev. journal earlier. No need to be rude.
I don't like how the Constitution is only useful in multiples of 5. That means that you need to gain 5 levels increasing only constitution just to have any impact on the HP of your character. I would move that down to 2 at the most (still forcing two levels dedicated to constitution to have any effect, which isn't great either), and remove the arbitrary 2x multipler to the level. This will put HP at around the same level, but make constitution a meaningful stat.
Also, I would like if you could increase more than one stat, since now you pretty much have to specialize on specific stats, and end up being very weak in all other stats. Or just have all stats increase by 1 every 2 or 3 levels, so you aren't completely anemic in all things but the specialization.
some quick feedback:
you should never see more than one popup from an idle city, we were concerned about spamming the player with popups so you only get one when the city goes idle, if you dismiss the popup you won't get another one until you build something in there and it goes to idle again. We are also looking to do some other visual indicators with the empire tree on the left of the screen to help you identify idle cities (and know if something is idle making units, idle making buildings or both), but this will most likely not be in for 1.1 (I know there are bars there but we would like something that grabs your eye a bit more).
Yes. Essence as a stat is gone, as a concept it still the conduit for which mana flows from a channeler into a champion so they can cast spells. The way this is represented in game balance is that imbued champions (those with essence) have a mana maint cost you must pay for them every turn. Int is the new all purpose casting stat, it WILL scale some (but not all) spells, along with being a pre-req for non-Sovereign units to cast a spell and is the basis for your magic resist.
Spell hit is the same as melee hit calculation wise as your hit scales with your level, not any one stat. However, we can still modify the hit % of particular spells by putting accuracy mods on the spells themselves.
Trained units do have an int and dex stat, it is currently the default for all units (of 10). So that can be used for their dodge and resist, if we find we want more granularity than that for trained units we will address it later, for now it is basically a bonus you will get of better dodging and resisting with your champions and Sov.
I personally really like the idle popup as it helps keep players (particularly those fairly fresh with the game) informed that things are happening in the game without having to hunt for information. Obviously we don't want it to be too spammy, if it gets too bad we will probably put in an option to turn it off, is just nice to be able to have some semblance of control over the flow of the game.
we are a team I helped write a lot of the write ups for new features, Derek just had more time to post something. there's no usurping going on
This is something we are aware of and will look to address in future. There needs to be a way to level up outside of combat, however, it needs to be balanced with in combat leveling since combat always will be riskier (thus probably faster to level).
This was probably my highest concern when I first started in this position from extensive playing of our previous versions and I can assure you its being addressed. If you want to know the nitty gritty of it, we have a hard cap on your roll (for damage and damage mitigation only) of 50% of the value. PLUS we square the stat value, then roll and take the square root, which will give you an average roll closer to the right end of the spectrum (I forget the exact number that will be the average, but it will be closer to 75%). We could do this because we pulled accuracy out of the damage roll, thus we still have the concept of missing or dodging or critical failure modeled, its just not part of damage mitigation. End result: damage when attacking with the same guys over and over should be more consistent but still varied.
pop ups like that are great, but stuff like that needs the ability to be turned off in the options if we don't want it...
So, I have a few questions:
-Aren't you afraid that Dexterity, as previously mentioned, will become the dump stat? Maybe it'd be nice to tie accuracy to Dexterity, or to make dodge scale better with higher levels of dexterity. As it is now, a Str 40 hero looks clearly better than a Dex 40 hero; although it is true that I can't know without trying first.
-Are there plans to make the tactical battles somewhat more... wll, tactical in the future? As in, making positioning count more, either via Civ-II like zone of controls, or something softer and more tactical (attack of opportunities, flanking bonus, shield wall formation bonus, etc.)?
-Are there plans to give talents to units, and to make heroes chose talents/perks when they level up?
-If a bunch of people decided to make a FfH mod for Elemental, what would be your reaction, Derek?
we are concerned of course with all stats being important... I have also had concerns about dex specifically needing more of a boost but the only way to really get a feel for it is to play around in game with it once the other numbers are balanced. Keep in mind a dodge is 100% damage mitigation, so a character with a super high dodge will be very useful.
Someone mentioned earlier in a post I forgot to grab some tactical combat changes that had been asked about. All of that stuff is still coming, particularly an initiative based style of tactical combat, its just not a 1.1 thing. We are always looking for ways to make tactical combat more tactical, however, we also have to balance so that it doesn't feel like you HAVE to manually fight every battle to get halfway decent results.
Its on the list
To be clear, I am not entirely set upon keeping essense as a non-boolean stat (actually it has four effective states, regardless of how it is stored internally [non-caster, imbued caster, natural caster, and sovereign]), but would like to keep a reason to want one hero to cast a spell as opposed to another and for it to be one that does not lose its usefulness quickly (meaning between INT and said other stat you will will have reason to put points in them throught level 20 to 30-ish). A stat that determines spell points is just the first thing that comes to mind, but a stat that determines casting time would work as well.
Ah. Sounds good!
Sounds even better! That will really fix the issues.
Everyone playing Elemental and participating in this forum want more quests except you and a couple of your troll buddies.
Concerning the Mana Pool, is there a way to increase it over time and will there be a character creation option that would allow for a larger pool?
I hope battles in Elemental do not become a contest of 1 hit wonders. It was that once already and it was terrible.
I think the damage done should be a % on the unites Total undamaged health, this would have the effect of preventing 1 hit wonders on healthy troops.
Plate Armor should provide significant defense from physical attacks. Historically speaking - swords did little damage to a fully plated mail knight it was the war hammers, Maces and Flails/ball and chain weapons that disabled enemy plated knights.
Just want to say: I love your communication policy!
This is how it is supposed to be done.
Most of what you have written seems to indicate excellent improvements. I also liked the way that you two have replied to many of the comments here.
If I may ask three small questions?
1. Will tactical combat be optimized so as to allow more than 1 friendly unit per tile?
2. I would have liked to have seen Charisma also have some sort of "leadership" bonus (e.g. boni to morale, perhaps to accuracy if high enough); are the current changes set more or less in stone?
3. What would be a reasonable ETA on 1.1 -- end of January 2011?
thank you
some great stuff here. especially the stat reforms; people have been crying out for that since the beta. it's just a shame it's taken so long. it achieves nothing to say "told you so," so i won't. great worki recall the idea that essense would be become a boolean (either you have it or not), and that's the only thing about this that concerns me. the shift to global mana is great and will reduce the effectiveness of spamming lots of channelers to boost mana production, making the benefits largely logistical (being in more places at once). however, if there is no stat reduction for imbuing a character, then we will still have lots of channelers floating round, just for a diferent reason: that there is no reason i can see NOT to imbue characters whenever you have essense.so it looks like the lots of channelers strategy will be much more balanced, but there will be no real incentive to go after the hoarding-power strategy, which is a shame. please tell me there will at least be SOME advantage to not imbuing?personally, it made more sense to use wisdom as the spell-power stat, and then sacrifice is to imbue (so you had to choose between lots of channelers or fewer more powerful ones)i also see no reference to combat speed as a stat? does this mean (as i may dare to dream) that combat speed (or iniative if it is being reinvented) is no longer a stat that can be increased on level up? i had always hoped this would happen because it made no sense being there, and it was confusing to decide between boosting CS or strength as the "offensive" combat stat.
edit: i see the comment about mana maint for imbued channelers. that could work i suppose. but what about children? once you start getting grandkids and get wives from other factions you can still get a huge number of channelers without imbuing. on one hand this can make imbuing unecessarry if you're patient, giving the same old problem. on the other hand it seems cruel to charge mana maint for kids.
----i also see no reference to combat speed as a stat? does this mean (as i may dare to dream) that combat speed (or iniative if it is being reinvented) is no longer a stat that can be increased on level up? i had always hoped this would happen because it made no sense being there, and it was confusing to decide between boosting CS or strength as the "offensive" combat stat.
More channelers (other than sovreign and offspring) = less mana to go around (it will be an enchantment with an upkeep).
I am fairly sure combat speed is still it, just not listed (other than how many action points you have). Initiative is coming to replace it, just not yet.
I would like to say that you should focus on tactical combat and ask players to manually do most combats. It is not smart to be too much in the middle. This game is already far away from Civilization and more into the world of Disciples, HoMM and similar games. You should focus on stuff with makes you on par with those games - tactical combat. All the other stuff is already better and more complicated then those games (but again not nearly as complicated as Civilization). At the moment you are in a middle and not even nearly equal in quality or complexity to any of the sides.
They could make kids not start as casters, which would fix it easily. Though IMO the dynasty system is so disconnected from the rest of the game that it might make more sense to just ditch it entirely and solve the problem that way.
He also has a bit of a point - this particular thread is not about that.
Thanks for keeping us on the straight and narrow Crux! For the record, I never said "you and everyone who disagrees with me is a troll". I simply called out 1 troll and a few of his troll buddies.
By the way, this particular thread has had numerous inquiries about other content in 1.1. Given the title of the post, I welcome all forum inquires asking about what's coming in 1.1. You should too.
I would prefer it if kids had to be imbued as well.
and i would also like inheritance to give the dynasty system more meaningful (though this would probably require more customization of kids, including making their unit cards) for people still to enjoy the game.
This should be good.
Are you also correcting the fact that wrong names appear over cities quite often?
As an example, I'm playing with names City1, City2, etc. and all of a sudden I see Banana as my city name which I later discover to be a Gilden City name.
This is weird.
Thanks
Those popups on the right side- one UI suggestion:
Allow an option to make them bigger? Oftentimes on my laptop they are a little too small for me to really notice them.
Idea #2: another possible use of the charisma stat.
Cha of husband+ Cha of wife should effect childbirth rates/caps of non-sovereign marriages. 0 should be possible, as well as more then 4.
As for Dex, doesn't Dex give a bonus to combat speed also? Maybe Dex could be a dodge against single-target spells like lightning bolts, firestreams, and disintegration beams, but not vs area spells such as fireballs. Some spells harder to dodge then others.
All this stuff sounds like an enormous improvement. I do still have concerns about the I go You go combat. Especially in range combat, you have a situation where the team that can attack first can greatly hamper their opponents ability to retaliate, simply because they went first. I would very much like to see an initiative system, so that every battle doesn't play out like an ambush.
its coming but not in 1.1
Does this mean real time combat is coming?
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