This is by no means a complete list of things that are on our mind for Elemental for 2011. For those of you just joining our community I should first start out with an explanation of what Stardock is about and what makes our games a bit...different that is the norm in 2011. It might be more accurate to say that Stardock is how game companies in the PC industry used to pretty much operate prior to the flood of IPOs in the late 90s that changed our industry so dramatically.
At GDC 2011 I will be doing a talk about game designs that fail and will be using Elemental's development and subsequent launch as my case study example as this may help up and coming game developers learn some of the pitfalls of when you transition from having a small game team to a much larger one.
Anyway, Elemental: War of Magic was released in August 2011. Contrary to what some would have you believe, it was a finished game when it shipped. It just sucked and was horrendously buggy. We didn't think it sucked or was buggy but given we had been working 90 hours plus for months on end, I think, with the benefit of hindsight, that our judgment was a bit impaired across the board. But what is past is past.
However (and this is important), Stardock is both the developer AND the publisher. Next time you load up a game, pay attention to that first intro screen that lists TWO names: The guys who make the game and the guys who publish. Since we're both on Elemental, we could go back and revisit all the things in the game that went wrong and do something meaningful about them.
So here's a partial list of things that we think are big deals that we want to address this year in the Elemental universe in order to make it the classic PC fantasy strategy game of its time.
1. Core Engine Stuff. This means smarter memory management so that we can have larger maps, faster late game performance, etc.
2. Core Strategic AI stuff. This means an AI that plays the game strategically in an intelligent way.
3. Core Tactical AI stuff. This means that when you have a battle tactically, the AI units play as if they were being controlled by another human.
4. Core Diplomacy AI stuff. More interesting and intelligent diplomatic options available to players.
5. More overt AI differentiation. That is, each faction plays different to the point that players can see a difference. They're not predictable but rather they have different ways of achieving their objectives.
6. More faction differentiation. That is, each player is blatantly different across the board. Techs, improvements, weapons, racial attributes, etc.
7. More interesting tactical battles. Specifically, tactical battles that blend the best of strategy and RPG together. A complete rewrite of what we have today.
8. More interesting and important city differentation. That means, more explicit ways to specialize cities, more interesting ways to make different cities unique and strategic on their own.
9. Vastly more interesting world. We have this great world with great lore behind it but you don't see it in the game. This is going to change this year as the lore of Elemental comes into play both in terms of actual game mechanics and game play but in the general feel of the world.
10. Much more modding support than what we have today.
Start Monday, 3 new people join Stardock and are being added to the Elemental team. And two of them are pretty well known and the other is an amazing game developer that we've bee fortunate enough to find.
Stardock is looking to hire more people for the Elemental team (in particular, Kael and I are trying to recruit a seasoned lead game developer). Please contact myself of Derek if you know anyone who would fit that description. Stardock has some other game projects that start up this year as well and the publishing group is working on some new things as well. So it's going to be a pretty exciting year for Stardock gamers.
The list I have above is not even remotely a complete one but it summarizes some of the big things on our mind. I approved the necessary budget in December to fund Elemental for both 2011 and 2012 (most of Stardock's revenue comes from other parts of the company -- we don't live or die on our game sales but we care deeply about our games).
I didn't mean specifically that the magic "system" had problems; there are deficiencies, yes, but the system is fine, I guess. As Frogboy mentioned and I agree with, it's more about the details about how it's used. So yes, "magic system" might have been the wrong thing to say; instead I should just say "magic" in general is not strong in any category, IMO. The system I guess is fine, I just have an issue with how the spells, shards, tactical combat, etc. are being implemented.
...and giving them access to the sovereign's mana pool took away the individuality and specialisation of champions...
For me the problem has always been that they had access to the same spells as the Sovereign. That they could have different mana pools before 1.1 didn't matter so much because in the end all of them were using the same spells as they do in 1.1. And limiting them because of Int while the Sovereign isn't, is nothing but annoying (because the Sov isn't limited).
Available spells that are not linked to the sovereign's spell selection wouldn't be a bad idea, and would help by adding strategic choices if spells for champions were specialised. The thing about the mana pools and differing stats though is in the choices that have to be made when hiring champions. If all spell-casters have access to the powerbase that is the sovereign's mana pool, then there is not really much to think about when deciding over spellcasting champions, as all champions have the same ability to level up in the same ways (i.e. focusing on the same stats to achieve identical results). Which is not necessarily a bad thing if implemented well (i.e. ala D&D).
There really needs to be more differentiation for champions; in appearance, racial modifiers, spell selection, spell school specialisation, naming and titles (you can rename them yourself, but I still think they should have a memorable default name). But step one should be to draw a clear line between the sovereign's mana and the mana of other spell-casters by re-introducing individual mana pools for heroes, and allowing only the sovereign to access the global mana pool. However, I think the individual mana pools should be fully replenished each turn, or after every battle (depending on how the numbers are balanced).
However you look at it, champions need some love. I think they might get looked at more thoroughly in an expansion.
This is an excellent list, Brad. I can't wait to see where you take this game. It looks as though the important issues the community have been talking about are being addressed in a meaningful way. If this list is adhered to then I have no doubt Elemental will be THE fantasy strategy game and define the genre. Isn't quite there yet - but well on the way.
This is a good idea, and it can help keep Champions unique. It's pulling a page from the MoM book, where you would find that one hero who had flamestrike, or the one person who could cast healing as well. They should have access to the Sovereign's spells, but their own as well. And if they were unique spells, as in, you couldn't get them only the Champion could ... wow. I would really like to see this in Elemental.
My honest opinion:
The general system is ok. What needs improvement:
a) There needs to be more neat stuff to research- I'd suggest making all spells elemental, life, or death. Have the advanced books of summoning/combat/etc, used to unlock the higher level spells, but needing the elemental books to do so as well. Summoning a bear should require the book of earth, Summoning a Hawk the book of air.
Spell Level, int, and shards needs to be a little more important. That said, min int levels to cast need to be lower for low lvl spells.
c) Arcane Research needs to add a bonus when researching magic, while Mundane Research should have a penalty.
Amen. That is my current biggest complaint with magic. Researching it in a tech tree fashion takes all the magic out of the, er, magic. Magic should be mysterious and uncontrollable in some aspects. When I make a magic breakthrough, the new spell should always be a surprise, i.e., some sort of delightful (or horrifying) discovery. I shouldn't even know when to expect the breakthrough to occur. Right now, it is dully predictable.
The other area I really want to see addressed is the dynastic system. Plenty has been said on this before, but I just wanted to mention it again.
On the first part, I agree entirely, that's how I would want to do it.
Second part, it should depend on the spell.
Third part- I just don't see being able to learn spells fast wouldn't help you learn new ones.
Well, Happy New Year to you too ;~) It looks to be a busy year for the Elemental Team. And three more new hires to get the ball rolling right off the bat! Who'd a thought that a game development team would see it's staff increased post-release. I'm looking forward to what 2011 will bring. Thanks SD for living up to your commitment to improve Elemental! And kudos for the passion which prompts you to make big post-release moves such as the hiring of Kael and others.
So Brad, is there an official Employment notice where I can direct potential Lead Devs to? I want to send a PM to one individual in particular, and then post a public notice on a certain community forum. It would be helpful to include a link to an official Stardock job posting.
Please please please please please please please please add memory management to the game, the game crashing with an Out Of Memory error is just plain old 1992 silly. If you can detect you my vid card surely you can tell my system has 2 GB and surely it can tell how much of that is reservered/used by other processes and surely it can then told not to use more/reuse its memory spaces/release unused memory. Heck if it means the game will run somewhat slower, meh, thats my choice, I could always opt for a smaller world. Thank heavens for the autosave btw, nearly lost a 500 turn game due to this (didnt save myself duh).
Also I have the feeling that gfx are being handled on cpu and memory instead of on the gpu?
ps. running on dual core with 2GB memory and nvidia 7950 gtx 512mb (just for reference).
Games by gamers for gamers for real! you guys!
Ow and a bit of feedback regarding the less than involved world feeling, I dont know if it's the big difference maker but I do feel the graphics of Age of Wonders and HOMM (which are very similar graphics wise) or even Kings Bounty do tend to draw you in way more whereas AOE seems to feel like a big desert most of the time (do love the clothmap btw).
Another thing is that unit movement feels clunky for lack of a better word (left click to select right click to move, I keep doing it wrong often resulting in single units getting left behind/waisting a turn (vaguely remember unit selection and movement was the same in galciv so i prolly need to adjust to it).
Also managing turns is wierd at times, certainly when managing multiple armies/heroes (pathing with dotted trail leading to the x would help a bit, being able to set the x in fogged areas would be nice as well, a similar mechanism as Civ Revolution (xbox 360) has would be nice (when you hit end turn it'll execute standing orders and cycle through units/cities awaiting orders and only then really end the turn, as well as jump the camera to hotspots (i.e. army/hero/scum moving into sight somewhere, other armies/heroes/scum fighting each other in sight, new event location popping up in sight, with the ability to stop the end turn event so you can react to something happening).
Ow and the savegame screen is bugged @1920x1200 with all sorts of text floating over/under it (its functional though).
I would also add an option to select multiple items and then click purchase.
I really hate to bring this up, but it is apropos, I remember playing MoM and there were a few heroes that when they became available for hire it was really exciting because of their unique powers/abilities/equipment.
I would really love to see that in Elemental.
Mr. Brad, your commitment on Elemental and more in general to customer satisfaction is commendable, but from what you show us in your list I think it would be easier to completely rewrite the game reusing only some portable parts, more than trying to fix or change that huge amount of features!
As many other players/customers I bought Elemental the day it was made available on Impulse, but after trying the single player campaign I became bored after only a few days of play, sorry. A started again the campaign after the 1.1 release: it was smoother but had on me the same effect.
Maybe I should try harder, maybe I'd change opinion just by playing further, but IMHO you should grab some teens and ask them what would be fun to see in a game like this. Guys have lots of imagination and really know what simple game fun should be.
Stardock games did prove that they can be cutting edge at AI, performance, reliability, and graphics-wise too. What Elemental needs is more glee, more pure joy at playing.
Maybe all you need is some "stupid", but very fun, ideas.
Best regards
I think heroes might be more interesting if we couldn't choose what stats increased on level-up. Then we couldn't just min-max them all to be what we wanted but would have to use them as they come. Also some heroes could have better or worse growth rates without breaking the game.
Make quests like in Warlords III where you can pick the level of difficulty as well as a new one as soon as the old one is finished. But don't let the low level quests turn into an exploit of medium to high level reinforcements like Warlords III did. I recall you could build customized gains in Warlords III and players would turn off everything else and make them zero's just to get Dragons as free mercs on some easy quest of deliver a message to point A on the map that were 99% always within 1 or 2 turns away and open at that.
You must think like an exploiter or cheater when you are making up quests or items and ways to get them. Exploiters and cheaters will use every mechanical means possible to get them the "easy" way.
Try the sandbox mode!!! You are missing out on half the game by playing in campaign mode!!!
Also another change that the magic system really needs IMO is allowing AOE to strike friendly and enemy units. Some could specifically avoid enemy units. But if I feel for the good of my empire that toasting 8 enemy soldiers is worth toasting one of my own that should be my decision as the sovereign to make.
Another change I think should be made to the system is to modify how AOE hits squads. Right now it treats them like a single big unit with tons of health. It would be better if it hit each individually. This would make magic viable in the late game. (Although maybe a little too powerful )
I agree with this. I can kind of buy the additive nature of the attack (and to a lesser extent the defense, which IMO should scale with unit size but not as rapidly) but the behavior of AOE spells with groups is totally inexplicable to me, as a firestorm should cook 8 guys with swords just as well as it cooks one. I could actually see a case for some of the more pure magic based spells working as they do but anything that works as a large scale blunt instrument attack should work more or less on each individual in a group (Blizzard and Firestorm are the spells I feel are slighted the most by this, most others I can rationalize; the same applies to most overland attack spells).
-Starcrunch
Totally agree. A hurricane in real life hurts 1k people just as much as 1. Or maybe this is the fantasy part of the game
Awesome! This Frogboy news illustrates how much Stardock puts Creativity before and beyond Business.
I had a dream before Christmas in which you announced the new look and it was awesome. Instead of the flat barren land that is now was a cool valley with river flowing through it and living jungle. It was awesome. The morale of this story is really make the land feel alive (or dead) and it will do wonders.
The list looks great and the magic system feels sound. If spell rebalancing is an issue why not allow players to build their own spells to use in game? There is already a Workshop option, how about expanding the Particle creator option to build personal spells that can be introduced into the game via "Spellmonger" goodie huts. The spells can be built by the player with an escalating cost in gold depending on what it did not need. For example, requiring a fire shard to enable the spell will require less gold than a spell that required nothing but mana. These same spells could probably also be researched after the correct book was found/researched as a single shot prize for the effort, as opposed to gaining a 10% bonus to arcane research.
As far as champions having personal spell lists with their own mana pool it seems unnecessary but as a solution, how about tacking on a unique tactical ability that only champions can use and instead of mana all their effects require gold to use. In essence they are being hired to use their own personal mana for the sovereign.
Just shooting out ideas, the game rocks though. Reminds me of a fantasy version of Alpha Centauri without the mindworms.
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