First, let me say I love so much of what FE brings. The new map, with alot of places to explore, the new hero and quest systems, the new customization options and the nice loots.
Yes, I did just say i love most everything FE adds, so why am I bored you might ask? Because I feel like im playing a spreadsheet. Let me state for the record I love Civilization games, Galactic Civ and Sins of a Solar empire and all those Empire building games, I also love RPGs like Dragon Age, Baldurs Gate etc. Its paced so slowly right now all there is to do is hit End Turn until your eyes bleed. I like the new Research trees too, but im only on the 2nd tier and things take forever to research. You might also ask well, why not adventure? You said you loved the new map and heroes. Well the answer is I would, but that is slow too, I honestly feel like im grinding in an Asian Free to play MMO, its so bad. It kills any desire to go adventuring considering how fast powerful monsters start appearing. Which leans sitting at your town building an army only to get boxed in by powerful monsters and npcs that freely roam your lands that you cant do much about because your Sov and heroes cant get strong enough soon enough. Any forces you build up will only get crushed which wastes resources when some spiders or a bear pops by. This wouldnt be so bad having cannon fodder if your heroes at least got more powerful from defeating those raids, but guess what? They dont.
What this amounts to is a very boring and frustrating game trying to hold on until your research finally gets to the point you can make troops that can actually survive and protect your city so you can go and start trying to make new cities... on about turn 500+. Yawn. Did I mention I was playing on beginner? Now Im not against slow, boring and challenging but that should be reserved for higher levels, like high and up. As it is, FE is just so unfun, it becomes tedious at this point despite all the wonderful additions. Why bother making such great additions if only the most masochistic spreadsheet players will see it?
I don't agree with the pacing, I like things going slow at the beginning. If you don't like it you can change the pacing setting when you start a game...
I challenge you to find one post with people commenting on how "perfect" the game is!
i'm not sure i've said anything about liking slow and boring pace, i think i mentioned that the early game might get less boring and repetitive with differences in tactical maps etc. i do however believe that the biggest possible market for a game like this is in the hardcore audience, not the "i like to costumize different kinds of hats for my hero" audience.
i think it's a good thing though that there are other people who are aware of the pitfalls of, with lack of kinder word, sychopanthism in forums such as these. another example of this is the age of decadence forums, a very hotly anticipated RPG that's basically had hordes of people being part of the forums for years, interacting with the developers and telling them that the game will be so awesome (without having played anything) and aplauding every new feature that is announced like it's the coming of christ. when the developers made demos and sent them out to people to play, there turned out to be some glaring omissions in game design, they had made a huge city but no side-quests or reasons to go into other areas of the city than the main quest areas so it was basically just a lifeless set. luckily they've started to adress this now but it came late in the development cycle.
I don't know if you are familiar with the usual meaning of the term 'beta' (though it might be different in case of Stardock), but 'beta' refers to the phase of final testing when the product is feature-frozen, and the effort is concentrated on polishing/debugging/tweaking.
So while there may be some stat changes, or buttons may be added or removed, or minor GUI changes may occur, or AI maybe improved, I think tactical battles we experience now are basicly what it will be in the final game.
And if someone points to design problems, there is slim chance it will be changed radically in the final product.
i guess i assumed that the beta was like Kamamura_cz described it. but obviously coll to see the tactical maps when they come out!
I hate to admit that I share the feeling of the game feeling a bit boring.
I mostly enjoy the gameplay mechanics (except for the city tile building), but many aspects of the game lack epicness:
1) Improvements are boring. I hate building up the cities because I don't really understand what is good and what is not. I hate that I get no message when an improvement is complete and I get no satisfaction for completing a building. For contrast, even building a granary in Civilization games seemed cool as the game stops and points out "hey, you just built a granary here!", and you get the saw & hammer sound effect and everything. Somehow, building stuff doesn't seem like an achievement, it's seems like adding a line in a spreadsheet.
2) Finding rare items seems indistinguishable from finding common items. I love the idea of unique loot. The gameplay system is great. BUT! I hate that all the epic stuff I find just appears in my inventory and I equip it and carry on playing. I wish there was some sort of a fanfare or something else making me feel awesome when I find that magic sword.
3) Finishing quests are not rewarding enough. I want to feel great when I escort the noble into her estate. I need graphics that shows the girl reaching his dad or being taken by the thieves. Or some kind of sound effect, or something. I want this stuff to matter. Now it's just a decision to maximize my profit, and I don't give two shits about what the quest was actually about. Something is missing, and I'm sorry that I can't be more precise than this.
4) Tactical battles are great presentation-wise. This is one part that doesn't need improvements. The gameplay mechanics need some improvement to make tactical battles more interesting, but the presentation is excellent. EXCEPT! The battle ending screen could use some soul. It lacks something. The experience gained could be displayed somehow more interesting. Maybe a sword that fills up as you get closer to a level or something. You know, more soul.
I need to go eat so I don't have time to write more examples, but other places in the game need this kind of polish too. Now let me stress out: THE GAME IS REALLY GOOD FOR THE MOST PARTS! But it needs more soul. It has infinite times more soul than WoM, but it still needs to go that extra yard.
In short: Presentation, presentation, presentation.
People have a right to criticize the game, I agree. It's very important not to be sycophantic and to give constructive criticism.
However, that does not give you the right to be an a-hole. Some people *cough* *cough*need to know the difference apparently.
I find the game quite fun to be honest. Certain areas do need some sprucing up, though. City building for one.
It's a work in progress.
haha, same for me.
@ Sir_Linque I agree with your concerns (except for the city building notification, you actually already get one!). But remember that this is beta. The issues you are listing have to do with polishing, and while I agree they are matters that should be attended to, I don't think they should be the number 1 priority of the developers right now.
Just imagine if they had released it in alpha state! I shudder at the thought.
A hundred times? Must have been a few rather boring posts then, you've posted in three threads. All of em fullo f"Tactical battles should be better!"?
Your intentions are good, the way you come off, as a know-it-all who thinks his opinion is better than the rest, is not. Please do not say you speak for a large audience of strategy gamers... and please do not pretend you know everything better or assault folks intelligence. To be honest, what I have read from you was "Copy Warmachine..." doesnt come off as being a genius either. I've played Warmachine through various rulesets, started with Cryx when it arrived, eventually moved on to Mercenary contracts ( The Moot! Woo!)... and got very, very annoyed by the enormous set of differentiating rules for every single miniature. Its not a perfect game by far. And suggesting to copycat that... I am sure Privateer Press would be very happy. Not.
You come here and accuse folks of being fanboys, of not being critical... I assume you have not read any posts at all... must be... there's loads of criticism, and E:WOM failed, and Frogboy knows that very, very well, and I think he's out for vengance this time
The genre is already old, the general outlines are known. I'd prefer a solid, fun, challenging and entertaining 4X in fantasy land with random maps and the general Stardockian genius behind it above a game trying to be innovative and failing. As long as the AI is good, I'm cool with more of the same, if its well-done. Plus, we will get a solid amount of modding tools ( aka reshape the entire game) once its released... this means we can remod the game any way we like. Keep us happy for decades
I really can't agree with you. Possibly this happens if you miss some important point but my heroes always get very strong very fast and are able to protect my lands pretty good. Also monsters mostly stay out of your zone of control which is good.
Plus the monsters should be a real threat, you should aim to avoid strong monsters and build armies to defeat those big monsters before going further, building new cities and everything at the powerful places these monsters guard. I like the way it plays right now. Also I can't complain about research time but perhaps this is because I'm research focussed and try to pump everything in high research.
As for boring...
turn x: Oh, Relias is in the way... he's three times as powerfull as me, but its a narrow front between me and him .
*declares war*
turn x+5 ... ok, that's city number 1. MINE!
turn x+7... Aaand instead of two cities I now have one city again, and one less tack of troops, because an Ashwake Dragon stomped into my city, toasted my army and turned it into rubble.
turn x+10 Resoln attacks and starts burning my outposts, and I have no responce forces ( were eaten by the dragon).
Bored? Nope. Not at all. Set the AI to challenging, and you wont be bored.
And the trolling begins.
We must be playing two different games here, my lands are regularly getting occupied by bears of doom, spiders, and all sorts of other monsters.Not to mention my heroes have been regularly winning tons of battles and havent gotten past level 3. This game you speak of is certainly not the Fallen Enchantress I have.
Still if you think this is fun, thats cool but that wont sell. I can name half a dozan Empire Strategy building games that are more fun right now based solely on the virtue of proper pacing. You know, faster in the beginning but thanks to a proper curve get slower as it progresses.
Personally, I think its just stupid you need to field armies just to handle some wildlife like wolves, bears and bandits, (Real monsters like dragons and demons and such, sure, Im totally down with that). *cue sarcasm* How great would Skyrim be if your so called Hero needed any entire army at their back to do some simple adventuring! Sounds like every great RPG I've played.. no wait, I've never heard of any RPG where a hero or a group of heroes required a army to clear out a nest of wolves or bears, and for good reason, your no hero if you need a army to go Adventuring.
LordRikerQ: I dunno if we play different games, I played FE 0.75 for quite some time last week (difficulty: normal) and FE 0.76 on challenging yesterday evening and will continue to play it more today. I think I'm in turn 114 or something, my heroes are both level 9 and I already killed of 2 factions (and am in the process of killing of a third). As for heroes, fighting of strong creatures is really worth it although you have to heal as they give a huge amount of XP. At first when I was fighting normal wolves/bandits and bears I didn't make much progress - but hey there are those black bears, death demons etc. - they give some pretty good XP
And yes monsters attacked and destroyed outposts of mine... so what? Go back build a new one. I usually go all around my towns and destroy all the monster lairs around, so usually there aren't many monsters coming trying to kick my butt. I dunno if it will get much harder later on, I hope so but it will take time for me to see.
I dunno, maybe I was just lucky until now that no monster came into my territory and tried to rip my cities apart but usually my Zone of Control is pretty big and I got many outposts - and I make it a point of clearing all adjacent monster lairs and monsters as soon as I can so they won't bother me. Only then I'll go on to found/conquer new towns.
I think that it's the research trees that make things boring, at present. You can't really diversify and customize your society beyond "Civics, War or Magic". Each tree within those categories don't really let you branch off from the rest of the tech options, making it pretty linear. I would reccomend making a lot of diverse tech trees and paths. Make it so we can really feel like our civilization is customized to us. Maybe there could be a sub branch of Civics that gives technology devoted to solving unrest, maybe each element could have it's own sub branch granting bonuses and access to their respective spells, etc. What makes these games interesting is the customization options. More customization, the better.
We'll get right on that...
put me in coach!
Et tu, Toby?
I cant even imagine life without Derek... just don't let him know that
I agree that research is boring. I liked the semi-random research of the early versions of WOM a lot better. Right now research is the same in every game, click click next turn to get this, click click next turn to get that. Hide the research tree and add some randomness to it.
Adventure is also very limited, I said many times what WOM needed was something like dungons, I don't know why something like the battle maps couldn't be used as places to explore vs. just the main map. A place/building on the main map could lead to one or more battle type maps to explore.
Game still needs island map and boats.
The road to failure is posting something on the internet with the comment "just dont let him know that..."
Right. Enough talk, back to playing FE. Time to consolidate my empire and kick some more death-worshipping butt.
I've been an outspoken critic on these forums about WoM but this dude is a real tool.
Guess what idiot. With one click we can see EVERY POST YOU EVER MADE.
ALL 3 OF THEM! (Plus about 20 replies, hardly a hundred...)
You are full of so much crap. I'd call you the Cliff Claven of the elemental forums, but at least cliffy sometimes knew something.
I actually don't mind the difficulty as it is now, If you want a better shot then decrease the enemy kingdoms and play on a large map, if not all you have to do is blitzkrieg all the enemy factions until your Number 1,
I just hope this game isn't going to be bland because I have been reading a lot of posts and it seems like it is that way so far. WoM with better mechanics....
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
