Iteration is both wonderful and terrifying. It is the place where you take delight in the designs that are working out, and weep for the designs that sounded good but aren’t. It would be nice if I could sketch out a perfect plan, implement that plan and have an amazing game. But it takes work.
One of our initial concerns when we started to playtest was that the game felt like War of Magic. Despite the changes, many of which wouldn’t be really apparent until 100-200 turns in, it still had a WoM vibe to it. My solution was to create custom quests for each sovereign to start with. You would have to earn some of your sovereigns starting bonuses and treasures. That way the player had a motivating objective for his first 100 turns that would get him in and playing.
It helped answer the questions of “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?”. It gave some flavor and personality to the starting sovereigns. And it made the starting game feel different. I pitched the idea to the rest of the team. We hashed out the pros and cons. We could make it work with custom sovereigns if we tied it to their history (so if you picked Adventurer as your history you would get Relias’s starting quest). And this solution had some limited replayability (in that you might want to play the different starting quests) but in the long term it could get redundant (off to fix the corrupted mana shards with Procipinee again…).
But the best feedback came from Brad. I don’t recall the exact quote but it was something to the effect of, “If it feels too much like WoM don’t make superficial changes, change the game.”
That was the impetus for the change to the production system. We didn’t like the old production system, but it was a lot of work to change. The code changes are only a small part, the UI and rebalance challenges are considerable. I requested an extension on the timeline and Brad approved the change.
This is the process of video game iteration, and I suspect it is the same for movies, books, and other creative endeavors. You leave your ego behind, it will only get in the way. You walk through fire and in the end you have a game that is so much better because of it. Be open to change, listen to other people’s opinions and evaluate them within the specific vision of the game. Focus on the things that matter.
I am very excited for Fallen Enchantress. I am, of course, biased. But it is a beautiful game and it does some things that I have never seen done in a TBS game. But the change to the production system, random worlds, increasing the population of cities and some new features (outposts) requires work.
It's not implementation time, Stardock has an amazing team. Implementation is only 25% of the way there. The real focus now is in balance. Not perfect balance, not if a short sword should do 8 or 9 damage. But how quickly you gain research, what things modify that, how is that balanced for small empires vs large empires? How much does a fire shard affect your fire spells? What is the difference between a city with good production capacity and weak production capacity (and how long should it take to train a medium army in each)?
Random worlds are another big part. I love crazy randomness, in general I'm probably too far on that extreme. I'm amused if I start a game right next to an Ogre lair and he wipes me out on turn 4. It's a little less funny when I'm 200 turns in and I walk into a wildland and every monster in there streams out in a civilization crushing tide of doom. Randomness must have some control.
Unwilling to give up our random worlds we implemented controls on how close to starting spots certain things are allowed to be. You will never start right next to a quest you can't accept (which is frustrating) or a monster that can wipe you out. The farther out you go the more interesting it gets. A treasure chest won't be within 8 tiles of your starting location, a Hoarder Spider won't be within 12, and if you get far enough out there you may find dragons.
But it all takes balance and we aren't ready for a public beta on it while we still know what the issues are. We need to get those in and smoothed out, we need the game to play as it should so that when you start to play your feedback can be useful. It doesn't mean much if you think you are too weak if we know we are going to push some monsters away from the starting area, or if you think tech comes too slowly if we are going to be raising population (which affects everything).
So I asked Brad to postpone the public beta (sorry) and he agreed. We need time with the features set to play and tweak, to go through our games so that when you have a chance to play we are ready for the feedback you offer.
I must be a dick, and we all know I am, because after I read that from Frogboy, I thought "It god damn better be, or expect another flop".
I have no doubt the balance is much better in FE already then in WoM. Firstly, the balance in WoM was basically none existent. You guys just never had the time to get to it. Secondly, I have seen that Derek has comprehensive spreadsheets on all unit and equipment stats, something I strongly suspect didn't exist in WoM.
Also, it is important for this game in particular to come out on the right foot. Betas are not supposed to be fun, but FE needs to prove to everyone that it is going to be. It would be smart to get as far as possible in the direction you want the game to go before we play it. That way we can tell other people about how the beta is better than WoM and any other TBS that has come out recently. The FE beta is more than just testing for bugs.
It's funny, I just can't get through a CivV game without an equal amount of time dealing with year old bugs and mod incompatibility, but I played After the War this morning for six hours without a single crash, lost track of time and forgot to make lunch. I would say Civ needs to come out with a a flimsy excuse for an expansion that is really just a fix for all the bugs they can't afford to correct. The only thing it does better than WoM is boats.
I can't play 20 min without WoM crashing on me after turn 200. I've been trying to play 1.4 this week, but it's still frustrating. And it's not even the crashes that bug me.
Are you playing After the War or Vanilla?
Vanilla.
I am surprised you are getting crashes, but I would guess your video card is just an unlucky one. The game really shines alot brighter with HF's mods. Maybe try em out.
Didn't mean to imply anything with it. I doubt that too, since it's been said that LOS would not be in. However, I wonder how direct damage spells such as fireballs will work as their animation would go through the rock if they had a similar animation to WoM.
Through the rock is a pretty sure bet.
What makes you say that it is a pretty sure bet? Sure, you can guess, but I wouldn't have any reason to say that it's a sure thing.
Because I saw magic animations in WoM go through any tile object, including other units, like a ghost. There has been no indication that magic animations have been altered in any way. The animation goes on an A to B directory. It simply doesn't know that the tile art is there. It would take alot of coding to make projectiles curve around objects. Since LOS is not even being considered, why would they spend time on a LOS based projectile animation? I don't think it would add much to the game and everyone seems pretty happy with what we have now. The magic animations look great.
One thing I will also say publicly is that it is our intent to someday go back and do a War of Magic 2.0 to give out to people who bought WOM.
I don't know how many people reading this from the earliest of days can remember this but the original design for WOM was pretty sublime. In many respects, it's like Society except with Society we realized we'd have to step back and wait until we had the capability to make that game. With WOM, we thought we could and then we scaled it back...and scaled it back...and scaled it back until you got what you see in v1.4.
FE has a much smaller scope than the original WOM design but it is so much...tighter and well executed. I think this is one of the areas Derek really shines.
Actually, if I were to articulate two areas that Derek has really made a difference it's:
#1 Design discipline. Derek comes from enterprise software development. He is very good at controlling scope and killing his darlings.
#2 Lore love. Here's the big irony, Elemental's lore is something I've been working on since before Stardock. But it took Derek to actually get that lore into the game. I considered random name generation adequate.
yes, balancing is the most important here. Do the best you can! But, don't forget when balancing the weapons and armors, balance it so we (players) can apply strategy and tactical theory like Sun Tzu art of war or Clauzewitch "on war" here. You don't have to make "formation feature", but you can make that "battle formation" is important in both of tactical and strategy section. Well, it is not that hard programming, because you just need to tweak the "attack, defend, movement" value to the equipments. But, it need a lot of trial and error, and gaming experience plus feedback to make it fun to play. So play it more, guys in Stardock. The more you play FE, the more you know how to make it better.
IT WAS YOU!!! WoM had the worst random name generator of all time, you should get some kind of plaque or award for that.
I too applaud the discipline to say 'I need more time to deliver quality'.
As I think about the best games I've ever played:
1) the 'sphincter factor' was always present. It seems to be a combination of unknowns, risk to your main city/sovereign/production, and things which cause you to significantly change your strategy (world enchantments, random events, etc.)
2) the micromanagement was somehow balanced to an acceptable degree
3) the variety of cool combinations were large. Like, I could cast flying on my slingers. Or I could buff my fighter with a lot of different spells and tools. I could put a Loxodon warhammer on my Vault Skirge...
If you get these things right I don't really care if it takes another couple years. I do wish the flanking/higher ground advantage/reach advantage/tunnelling/flying/deathtouch/infect options were in the FE tactical combat, but that may be wishful thinking.
I also wonder if the brainstorming of the many could provide you some valuable innovation directions. I've seen a lot of GREAT ideas on this site for improving the game. Is it too late to ask the community specifically on ideas for alternative approaches to the 'initial quests boredom' you've outlined in your OP? If you provided just a little more detail on requirements and constraints, this group might have some smashing ideas how to get you really innovative approaches...
How did Mom ever achieve that initial game mechanic that kept you coming back? Maybe it was psychological manipulation...that's it---we need some gambling in FE!!! Or buying packs to see what the rare is! Can I get change for 25,000,000 people? I create a wall of stone beside you for 4 points of damage!
{walks off rambling old game favorites to self....}
Have you considered throwing in maybe a random hidden stat or two for sovereigns every time played? Procipinee doesn't always have to be 100% predictably the same every time you start a game.
So is Fallen Enchantress going to be a full sequel, not just an expansion to War of Magic?
It will be a stand alone full game.
Yeah, you're probably right.
Brad / Derek,
is there something we can help you all to speed things up while waiting?
So well said, this inspire me to write a new post here .
I would be very interested to know what exactly you think is missing from WoM and FE. If you were able to add whatever you wanted freely what features would you be adding to them. What does your perfect concept of Elemental look like? I really do want to know.
If your creating a game or any other project with massive scale and depth then I think you are taking the right path with FE, by breaking the game down and concentrating on one area of the game and perfecting it before moving on to another. This is what I try to do in any project I work on. I produce a simple base first that can stand alone and then gradually add features one at a time. That way I don't get bogged down trying to do a hundred things at once and even if I don't meet my expectations I can still claim to have produced something functional.
I just hope that the 2nd expansion expands the Elemental world even more, and that the growth of the world doesn't stop even then. The reason that I keep coming back to Elemental is the practically unlimited potential inherent in the game. Many games take a few expansions in order to reach their full potential and I believe Stardock with their indie status and fanbase is in a position to do this.
Does that mean you'd drop the Pixel Shader 2 version and start over with Pixel Shader 3 like you did with FE? That would really be awesome.
Sounds like you've got enough games planned to keep everyone at Stardock busy for quite a few years.
-yawn-
S'alright. One of the biggest complaints was that WoM was incomplete, rushed, so on so forth. Take your time - really. I'm chomping at the bit as much as everyone, but if this will make it better in the end, I'm willing to trust you guys. Plus, I has Skyrim and finals to keep me occupied until it's time.
Now, back to napnap...
No because people will bitch and complain. I think they are doing the right thing to hold back public beta. Derek take your time 6 months or even a year is fine by me as long as you get it right and that the game does not feel like WOM. Besides we have Skyrim and the new Star Wars MMO to hold us over until the beta
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