For those of you new to Stardock’s games, let me say, welcome! We’re glad you’re here!
For those of you who are veterans, thanks for hanging out with us.
I want to make sure users are fully aware, because it comes up sometimes, that we have intentions/plans for many things and on the other hand we have promises/requirements/obligations.
The former means, we intend to do something but it is not a guarantee. The latter means, yes, it’ll be in there.
Let’s start for the promises for FE:
Now, let’s talk about intentions for FE:
There is value in the good name of a company. Just ask Gamestop, who lacks it and paid the price for it some with the Impulse acquisition.
What I meant is that it shouldn't first and foremost be considered a business move. Sure it has a positive effect on the Stardock brand, who would argue that. I just take it more as a personal thing.
I would tend to agree.
Best regards,Steven.
It's many of these things at once. It is good for us, it is a good business move for Brad, it is kind, it is responsible. But it's not "free", any more than the spam offerings of "free" trials of (insert service of your choice) stuff is free. "Without additional monetary expenditures" would be more accurate in FE's case. That said, I am happy that Brad is making this business choice!
Back on topic, I really do not see anyone really wanting multiplayer. Isn't that interesting? Maybe Brad should just scrap it...
Business move or not. I think it doesn´t matter, as long as it is a win - win thing for everybody. But its definitely nothing normal and very kind.
Multiplayer is not important for me. A Hotseat mode would be cool, but thats not gonna happen.
The thing about MP is that for TBS games, very few people outside of game reviewers want it, and game reviewers dock on their reviews for it.
I think it's something that should be in there to have it in there, and to cover for any AI flaws, but it takes a lot of effort to get MP TBS going, which usually isn't worth it. On top of that, Stardock generally does awesome AI which reduces the need for MP a good bit.
The problem with your argument is that you are valuing E:WOM as being worthless.
Certainly it had a bumpy launch to put it mildly but as of now, it's a pretty decent game. I've had a lot of fun with it lately to be honest and in my opinion I've got my money's worth.
So, I too consider E:FE as free and it's shaping up to be an excellent free game.
Kudos to Stardock for doing the right thing.
I would certainly like to see hotseat for E:FE.
"Me too!"
Yeah, it would be really nice. But i remember statements for WoM, that there will be 100% no hotseat. I don´t think this changed with FE,
I wouldn't expect hotseat for E:FE either.
I would be nice to see it in a future add on if at all possible.
MP is a difficult issue because the last one had no tactical battles. I won't play it without them and I haven't tried. I am against spending anything on MP unless it can be as polished and tactical battley as SP. I would rather they just make a new game geared towards MP if that is something Stardock wants to focus on.
They could call it "Zero Rush." It would be a TBS, RTT, where you are prevented from any kind of rush strategy and everything is designed for fun and balance in about two hours of back and forth gameplay. If they want to do that with the Elemental series great. If MP is just the same game as FE with a human player that will rush me, lose, rage, ragequit, and then leave me to fight six computers online without the joy of tactical battles, I say drop completely and put in griffin cavalry in addition to bears and seahorses.
I simply don't have time for MP. That's probably the same argument most that don't care for MP have.
Imho multiplayer should be either fully developed, or not included. To go half the way and claim multiplayer functionality makes nobody happy - the multiplayers won't get a good experience and the singleplayers get less development time.
Fully functional multiplayer, to me, would mean:
- Custom hosting, so we don't have to play off SD servers- Tactical battles- Quests and Events (are they in FE?)- Mods- The ability to replace players with AI, or other players, as the game progresses- Consecutive turns- Shared unit control so units may be borrowed to allies- Diplomacy functioning between players, ie trade screens
As you can see, I don't believe anyone will fire up FE and go "Okay, let's do a quick game in 30 minutes". 4x TBS means people will want to take their time. If you want short games of 4x, go play rts.
I love it when games allow one to turn there own kingdom into ai to see how it fares once you've set it up, being able to take back the reigns at any given time.
I strongly support multiplayer/hotseat, but if we get "griffin cavalry in addition to bears and seahorses" first then that's fine with me.
I agree with Reply #64
^ This.
That's my question about MP - Is it the full game in MP or the "diet coke" version that WoM MP was? Because if it's the latter, don't bother. WoM would have been improved by having no MP whatsoever rather then the really weak MP implementation it got, and I say that as the person here who wants MP the most.
If an MP game is the same as an SP game except with another human thrown in somewhere, then it'll do well. That's all people ever wanted out of it - the ability to empire build with (or against) a friend.
(I'm also highly baffled by the people saying "don't do MP, but I'd like hotseat!" Hotseat is the single least used type of MP these days.)
Replacing a player with AI is (to me) more about not losing a vital part of a game once somebody decides the game isn't worth their time. Actually it is possible that E:wom had that, I'm not sure. The funny thing about E:wom multiplayer was, you had no way of telling if the people in the game were still there. Given the quality of the netcode and the servers, they often weren't.
Thanks for the informative update.
Looking forward to distinct fractions with fraction specific looks (i.e wraiths have white hair and teeth with vampire like fangs), conversational tones (i.e. "Will you allly with us to" vs. "Let us crush the"), specific weapons (Trogs can wield heavy weapons), spells and quests.
Also looking forward to lots of Spells that will be "interesting, important and exciting". In WOM I could easily reasearch all spells for the magic books I had and there were no choices that a D&D wizard character makes; i.e. which 2 of 40+ spells do I choose to learn at level 3.
Right, and its a totaly different kind of MP. And thats the reason why i like it and its the reason why i wrote, that MP isn´t important for me, but i would like hotseat. I don´t demand it. Like you said its the least used type of MP these days. But i´m "old" and have great memories of playing games in hotseat mode (especially HoMM 3). Sitting there with friends, talking, drinking, smoking and playing was just nice.
Hell, we played Gunship together. One guy was flying and one guy was aiming and firing of rockets.
Its about having together an experience. Stupid old school things.
"We intend there to be multiplayer of up to 16 people. However, it is not a requirement. If it would result in a lot of resources being siphoned off from the single player experience or would, on its own, result in delaying the release, it’ll get cut."
16 isn't the max number of factions allowed? just the max number of human players allowed right?
If it did, it was the only time WoM MP had the AI in it. You couldn't put AI players in a MP game normally.
That's just not true, you can put AI in custom multiplayer games in E:wom. And you can even set up teams.
Yeah. Like the sound of everything except:
a. Multiplayer. Please don't nerf the game to accommodate quick multiplayer turns. War of Magic felt like this was a driving factor that lead to the crappy tactical battles and simplistic gameplay. Make it great as a single player game first. Please.
b. Differentiation in factions: This should be a requirement - not just an item on the wish list. I'd be very happy to have differentiation within humanoids rather than just humans.
Looking forward to this game.
When did that change? You couldn't do it when I tried to do it. There was just no option to add AI.
Since tactical battles weren't in MP at all, I fail to see how the game was nerfed to accomodate it. It wouldn't make sense to change a feature to work in MP that doesn't exist in MP.
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