Hi everyone. I have a big post today on Elemental, and I hope the developers will read it! To introduce myself: my name is Keith Burgun, and I'm the lead designer at Dinofarm Games. I recently wrote a book on game design (should be out in Sept), I write on the topic of game design for Gamasutra and a few other well-known sites. I also teach game design classes at a few nearby schools. That's not to say that I'm some authority on game design, but it is to say that I do take it very seriously, and so hopefully I can provide a little bit more insight than the average fan (maybe not, of course... we'll see).
So I've always been a huge 4X fan and Master of Magic is one of my favorite PC games of all time, so I really care deeply about FE reaching that level. Right now, it's definitely not at that level - yet - for a few reasons.
I want to quickly say that FE is closer to reaching that level than any other fantasy 4X game that has come since. It's leagues better than any HoMM, Age of Wonders or even that new fantasy 4X game that just came out on Steam (whose name is eluding me at the moment).
So, this post is mostly negative from here on in only because I want to help this project improve, not because I have a generally negative opinion on the game.
If you only read some parts of this, make sure to read Point One, and Point Four at the end.
Point one - Focus on the Core Gameplay Mechanism
I'm a bit concerned about the complexity level of Elemental. Obviously, it's not as though going over a certain "threshold" of complexity = bad game. You can have a game of any level of complexity, so long as every single element ties into the fundamental, core gameplay mechanism.
We have to ask the question, "what is the fundamental, core gameplay mechanism for Elemental?" Perhaps I'm wrong on this, but it seems to me that it is the tactical battles. That is where the majority of interesting decisions takes place, and you could say that everything in the game is all indirectly building up to those tactical battles. Exploring helps you find resources, which helps you build cities, which helps you build units or research spells, all of which are used in... tactical battles.
(Some of you may disagree that tactical battles are the core gameplay mechanism for the game. If so, I'd like to hear what you think the core gameplay mechanism is. For now though, I will continue on under the impression that it is indeed tactical battles at the heart of this game.)
I remember back in the late 90s, complaining about Master of Magic's really useless diplomacy system. "What the hell", I thought, "these screens are nearly pointless. No matter what it seems like I'm sucked into war." I used to think that that was a problem in that game.
It was only years later, when I learned about what a "core gameplay mechanism" was and how important staying tightly woven into that was, that I realized that this "crappy" diplomacy system was actually a really smart design move. Because in Master of Magic, the core gameplay mechanism is certainly the tactical battles, and so being able to permanently keep from fighting would be like keeping from jumping in Super Mario Brothers, or keeping from shooting in Doom.
How does this relate to Elemental? Well, generally the game seems to be pretty aware of its core gameplay concept, but there are some areas which make me not-so-sure. Like I said at the top of this section, I'm concerned about some specific areas of over-complexity, some of which undermine or are only tangentially related to the core gameplay mechanism.
Point Two - The Aforementioned Over-Complexity
There are simply too many "tiny" choices that players get to make in Elemental. Once a decision gets beyond a certain threshold of impact, a better game design would simply streamline (remove) it. Don't make me make 10,000 "tiny" decisions in a playthrough of Elemental. A design that makes me make 1000 more significant ones is better.
Some really clear examples of over-complexity that I would address:
1. Unit Design - Now, I know people are very attached to this idea of designing your own units in this game, and so while I might personally get rid of it, I think there is a compromise that can be made. Firstly, let me say why I would cut it out of the game.
If the game is indeed about tactical battles, then allowing players to design their own units only muddies up the battlefield. It means that things are not visually clear. "Okay," you might say, "that's a swordsman, so as long as I am this far away, I should be fine on this turn". Oops! That swordsman had throwing knives equipped and you got attacked this turn after all. Not to mention the fact that you have no idea how much those footsoldiers are going to do in damage to you. They might be awesome, or they might be complete crap. It's just a lot of noise.
My Proposed Compromise: But anyway, I know people are nutty for "customization", so whatever. At least, please cut out those "traits". That is an amazing example of giving people a tiny choice that isn't significant enough to be interesting. Do you want 0.01% more damage now, or 0.01% more money later? This should be a good illustration of the problem.
Another note on Unit Design: Piercing and Blunt weapons, really? Does this game really need that level of resolution?
2. City Building - I could probably boil down all of the cities in Elemental, and express all of them in 6-12 building types. How many buildings are there now - like, friggin 200 or something? It's ridiculous. In addition to the "tiny choice problem" I just explained, having too many buildings creates another problem. That problem being late game "annoying city management". All of you 4x players know exactly what I'm talking about. Going from city to city late game and basically just eventually filling out each city with all the buildings. It's tedious and it becomes a no-brainer. This is a problem common to almost all 4X games.
Instead of having like 3-5 buildings just for military units, do this: There are like two "tiers" of military units. You can always build the first tier, but to get the second tier, you need a barracks. A barracks takes like, half the game to create, though. Some of you might say "that's not enough resolution! There should be a more gradual evolution of units!" That's what the tech tree is for! It's OK if the tech tree is roughly as complex as it is now, because the tech tree is always interesting and is never tedious.
My Proposed Compromise: At the very least, give us the Civ IV "governor" thing, so that we can just have the AI make the required no-brainer decisions for us late-game.
Point Three - Too Much Junk
So, beyond the game being too complex (in terms of how many tiny little insignificant decisions you have to make), there's also just a bunch of noisy garbage that clogs up a player's game.
1. Items - I played one game that lasted maybe 4-5 hours long. In that game, my heroes eventually got like, 40-some items in their packs. Firstly, all kinds of stuff like "leather greaves" to food items to even useless items like "wolf skins".
How about we make items, in general, way rarer. Don't make me have to go dicking around in a single unit's (even if it's my Champion) inventory every 50 turns or so to have to "equip the +10 sword instead of the +9 sword". This is a no brainer decision and it has to be removed!
And there are completely useless items that I just have to take to town and sell? What the hell is that? What is this, Diablo?
Please do the following: Make items in general way more rare. Make it so that you can't find "leather greaves" and other normal items. Only magical items, and you'll only find between 1 and 5 of them in a single game. Make it special when I find an item, so that I'm EXCITED to go into the inventory screen, at least. Cut out useless items, and honestly cut out the whole system where I can
2. Spells - In that same game, I had something like 30 different spells that I could cast in a battle. Of course, I only used about 3 of them. Raise your hand if that's how it works for you, too - you use about 10% of the spells that you have. This is classic bad design!
Instead, it should be like the items. If you get ONE NEW SPELL, it should be like "oh man, awesome, I can't wait to use this new spell!" Instead I get like 3 or 4 spells at once from some new tech upgrade.
Further, many of the spells are redundant. Curse, and Mass Curse? Fire Bolt and Fire Ball and Fire Touch and Fire Wave? Again, this is not smart design.
Now, it'd be one thing, though, if in a single game you only got 2-5 spells, and maybe on this game, you only have access to Fire Ball and no Fire Bolt. But it seems like the spells you get are pretty much just a matter of teching to them.
Give me less spells, but make each spell have more identity. Also: beware a mana system + direct damage spells. I'm just going to cast direct damage spells and nothing else. I learned this the hard way designing the Wizard for 100 Rogues.
3. Monsters - I feel like there are like 5 or 6 different "popcorn" monsters: the super low level monsters that you're supposed to just 'harvest' more than fight early game. Why? Just make there be ONE KIND OF MONSTER PER FUNCTION. I would propose something like:
Bears = popcorn monsters, for you to harvest for XP and feel good about yourself over
Dire Bears= first monsters who can actually kill you with a nasty bite
Skeleton Bears = Monsters who threaten your civilization with evil bear powers
Dragon Bears = The ultimate monsters that have godlike stats and bear fire breath
Really, is there some reason why we need more than this? The interesting battles should be against the other AIs who, as you might recall, have uniquely designed units. So keep the monsters simple!
Point Four: Focus On Tactics!
Okay so so far this post has been "don't do this! remove this! no no no!" Here is where I suggest that you guys add some complexity that will be really meaningful and add to the interestingness of the game.
What if instead of all this "+0.01% damage" and "+0.01% fire resistance" type stat-stravaganza, the units had different tactical traits? I know, right now there is a tiny amount of this. Some units have more/less movement points, some have ranged attacks, some have spells, some have more/less HP.
But, what if there was more tactical stuff than that? Take a look at SSI's Fantasy General for example. In this game, there are many very interesting and rich wargame mechanisms. Here are some possible examples of TACTICAL additions I would like to see added in Elemental:
1. Zone of Control: In many tactical strategy games, units have something called "Zone of Control". How this works is, if an enemy unit walks to a tile that's adjacent to one of your units, he then has only 1 more movement point left. This means that he can't just "rush by" your front units, and you can set up screens.
2. Consider hexes?: I know this sounds zany, but... hexes are really much, much better for strategy games. There's plenty of writing on this subject, but in short, there is an equal amount of distance from the center of any tile to the center of any adjacent tile in hexes. This isn't the case for squares; moving diagonally actually gets you further than moving orthogonally.
3. Supporting fire: Maybe archers shoot enemies who attack melee units
4. More terrain stuff: High ground, cover, etc. There's just not a lot of this right now. Even Master of Magic has some random rocks and things scattered around.
5. Melee units both attack at the same time: If you and I both have melee units of equal strength, maybe I shouldn't get an advantage for attacking first. Maybe I have to get an advantage by using tactics, like archer supporting fire or terrain stuff or spells.
6. More "positional" spells: How about more spells that simply MOVE units around the battlefield? Like pushing them back, or creating barriers, or things like that. I'm telling you, direct damage spells are the least interesting thing ever, but if you give me them I'm going to use them because they're fucking effective.
Anyway, I think you guys are doing great work and I really hope someone at the team will see this post and take it to heart. Keep up the good work, Stardock!
Do you design flash games?A bit of trolling aside
I just read your text 100%, and I want to say THANK YOU for taking your time to make a huge post that seems like you put your time into it.That said a lot of your suggestions through point 2-3 would make the game small in mechanics, and boring (IMO) and I would not play a game with only 1 spell per spell level. (PS I have used almost all of the spells so far, though they need a lot of balancing, things could be said about the direction magic is taking but that is not for this thread to discuss).
While you might look down on people who like customization, Customization of your combat units is what made "Master of Orion 2" such a great game, if you were running premade units that game would have been a 1-2 playthroughs for my part.
PS. your notes on spells are all wrong, there is good point in having a single target spell AND a multitarget spell avaiable, sometimes its just the evil sovereign that needs killing, sometimes they are not placed for a fireball, and fireballs take more mana, and takes more turns to cast.
So I basically dislike most of your post ... except the "Point Four", where it gets rather interesting, you have 5 good ideas, and nr. 3 which is silly .
Oh well I am tired, so can't be typing too much and hope it all makes sense Bai, hope you will reconsider some of your points.
Sincerely~ Kongdej
Not sure if I should reply, but oh well...
Tactical battle isn't the core mechanic. Stardock has never been known for this, and if you've played their other games, you'll notice that they tend to skip it entirely (see GC2, it's just some battle animation). Tactical battle is an addon function (abeited a much requested one) to an empire building game. So unfortunately, all your assumptions to make the game great just went out the window. A lot of the things you think are useless is actually quite important when you consider it as part of an empire building game. I can't speak for the devs, but I don't think this was ever meant to be some great battle game (by the way, that diplo screen worship thing on MoM is a nice touch... you and I both know they couldn't get it working, hell the AI when it was released was abysmal in general). You come off as wanting a tactical wargame, this, unfortunately, is not that game... and to be fair, I don't think it ever tried to be. Battles are meant to help build the empire, you don't even have to fight any yourself, that's why they try to make a good auto-resolve. I'm not sure if you were around, but in EWOM, they actually disabled tactical battle when you played multiplayer. If that isn't proof enough, I don't know what is.
That isn't to say you can't want some improvements to the current system... but your list of items from point 4 makes me think you haven't really played the game recently:
1. ZoC is in game. There's just no special units with it, everyone has it. The problem with all that tactical rushing and screening isn't that you can't do it, it's because there's a very limited amount of units in battle, and the size of the battlefield is pretty small (remember, it's meant as a quick fun addon to the game), so your strategy is admittedly very limited.
2. You hex fans needs to get some real perspective. Even if hex are 1,000,000,000x better, they aren't going to change everything to implement hexes when squares works fine. This kind of decision happens in the beginning of the game concept, you can't just "consider" it halfway through.
3 & 5. Initiative system. Faster units moves earlier, and more often. Defenders now get a bonus to defense if they haven't moved (although there's a bug right now where they don't start off in defense mode).
4. I'd love to see terrain bonuses personally, but the game pretty much defines the terrain as an entire tile wide. So basically, every spot on battle is the same terrain. There would need to be some serious battle redesign for this, but I would support it if they try. I'd also understand if they don't... because as I've mentioned before, it's not the core of the game.
6. Again, the battle field is too small to make those positioning spells matter a lot. Besides, while direct damage spells might be great for mage heroes, buffing spells generally are way better for warriors.
As a fan of Master of Magic and a player of Elemental and FE in search of a MoM 2012 I thank you for your interest in this project and your hints.
As an amibious strategy game- player in search for competition I have to say: focus, yes, but do not streamline everything.
Civ V is a good example for this, everything is VERY streamlined, it is a good game, but I mainly play it because of missing alternatives.
So I have to say: I L O V E Unit-designers. When Alpha Centauri would not look even uglier on 2012-PCs I would love to play it and waste time in designing units. I invented an very interesting ship in Master of Orion 2, just carryng rockets and it could shoot only twice, but made a LOT of damage. You are right that this should not be +/- 0,001 % decisions, but I think intelligent gamers will know how to use it.
You even can play without designing, so it does not disturb players who do not want to "waste time".
In doubt I would always take to much then to little. I love reading and playing around with hundreds of traits and hundreds of spells.
So in short words after my opinion as gamer, a mix of point one and four is intersting.
But to Point 1: I would love to see that the "what should the Champions do next?" and the diplomatic and resource Management Components play a bigger role, too, I do not want to play a HoMM with Pioneers.
Point two: I like decisions based on interesting choices, maybe call it specialism. But as someone said about Civ V: "Even my 4 years old brother would have made the same decisions...". If you streamline to much and the choices are to clear, you do not have as a player the feeling of influence or doing sth. intelligent, daring, clever, trying sth. new... when you just do the only possible intelligent thing to do, the question then is why doing it at all, then a automated governor could do it. But then my next idea would be, that a automated governor could play (and buy) the game while I play sth. else or watch TV. So after my experiences to much is better then too little.
Point 3.1: The Roleplaying thing with Champion-Equiping I like, for the other stuff you find I think, too, that at the moment you do not really need them, but perhaps there are more intersting ways/ideas to use them besides eliminating them.
Point 3.2.: The Spells I see as the most developed part of the game. Yes, there are many, but first, they increase slowly and they are divided in several functions. And as I said: I prefer a great assortment to baby-decisions. Master of Magic did sth. that I never saw again and had great complexity: By the choice of the number and kind of books for your starting character, you decided kind and number of spells of the spcecial kinds of magic.
Point 3.3.: Bascially right, but I would tend to make all of the monsters more intersting, no strategy game -player need popcorn monsters,
all of the sovereigns have special abilities (can kill beasts easily, are strong fighters, can summon) and can not die at all, so what speaks against a little little bit more challenge for their brain? I will never understand what people think about who will buy and play those games.
Today Skyrim, tomorrow FE?? Will a big fan of HoMM say: Oh, great FE, looks a little bit strange but definetly the better game?
After my opinion the intersted people are fans of MoM, Master of Orion, Galactic Civilizations, Fantasy General, Alpha Centauri...
People who are waiting for 10 years for intersting food for their brains, waisting their time with Civ V or HoMM because of missing alternatives,
People who hate words like easy accessibility, 3D, self-explanatory, streamlined... because usally this means that you get a bad and boring strategy game.
Sid Meier killed Railroad Tycoon, now it is a electronic Model railroad game for babies and we have to hope that one day Stardock will make a Strategy Railroad game...
In Elemental you had special fields with defending bonus, that shows my that the developers are perhaps also trying to find a balance between streamlining and preventing interesting complexity in FE.
At the moment I would rate the combats with ok, your influence to achieve a different result compared to Auto-Combat is how many/which units survive, but you can not really turn a difficult battle by cleverness.
Therea re some ideas of point 4 can be interesting, as well as other posts in the forum mentioned, especially for inner city-Fights, concerning (difficulty of) defending and (easy) conquering.
Point #2 is weird from someone who professes to want FE to be as good as MOM. FE has far less spells (and variety for those that exist) than MOM.
i kinda agree with unit design. i never do it cos the diffs are minor. sure ship design worked for MOO , but MOO is quite different because you had to design ships and ship design makes a LOT of difference due to variety of technology and ship modules. With FE, unit design is just a matter of tweaking this unit a bit or that, hardly the same.
Good points about how unit design sometimes distracts. It's the same lesson Derek admitted to learning about fraction differentiation.
i agree about tactical combat being the most fun part, but MOM shone there because of the magic system. How spell skill limited amount of mana you could use per combat etc... Otherwise I would say MOM TC is roughly at the same level of detail (maybe a bit more)
You're right. Master of Magic has its own over-complexity problems, no doubt. I didn't mean to imply that MoM was some 4x perfection. It has plenty of its own problems.
Uhhh, ok, you win, i just have to write something...
1 The Core
I think you missed it. Well, in the case of FE. The cores of MoM, AoW and HoMM were indeed the battles. (And i personally think AoW did by far the best job in that matter.) Citymanagment, Diplomacy and Research were quite simple (if even existing), so one does not get distracted. In FE every single one of those aspects is more profound allready. So maybe it doesn't even try to go down the same path. Maybe the core is or will be indeed a combination of those things... to build an empire, like Kalin allready mentioned. More a Fall from Heaven II with tactical combat (suprise!) than a MoM or AoW. And even tho i dearly love the later two, i'm okay with that.
Also, even if the tacticle battles were just planned as some sort of gimmick in FE, with some more time and work, they actually still could be able to hold their own at least against those of MoM and HoMM. And maybe not despite gamemechanics like the posbility to create your owne troops, giving them weapons and armor fitting the needs, but rather because of that. Not yet, but the potential is there, i think
2+3 Over-Complexity and Junk
I don't think there are too much choices right now, but i do also think that they don't matter enough yet. Unitdesign, artefacts, spells, traits, buildings, level-ups of champions and citys... I hope you devs are getting more consequent... bolder in the next months, when it comes to such things. Cityspecialisation is said to come in the Beta 4 (yeah!), so my hopes are high, that things are on the right way.
Considering the fast and big changes to come, an AI-City-Govenor wouldn't make much sense right now, i'm guessing. But when the dust is settled, it sure would be a good feature to have.
4 Tactics
Yupp, i also think this categorie has still a lot room for improvments. Like i said above, i don't think it's the core of the game, but i sure as hell wouldn't mind if someone would go around an steal some ideas here and there, to make it more complex and challenging. At least when it's out, many people will compare it to those games mentioned by you, in about the same way you did. Even for that reason alone, it will play an important part in the overall succes of the game.
I think that Naaarf hit the nail on the head here.
Elemental's tactical battles are a sub-feature, not a core mechanic. If you are looking for a strategy game that focuses on tactical battles as a core mechanic, then AOW is the game to play.
It is difficult to pick a core mechanic for Elemental. Currently, there is a questing system that differentiates it from the pack (far more developed than AOW's quests).
I only partially agree with your third statement. I do believe that the current crop of decisions needs to be refined and polished to give more weight to the player's choice. Trimming more decisions will deplete the content that the game is currently promising, IMO.
Sorry, Keith, but it sounds like you want to build a smart phone or nintendo Ds style console game that runs on 8 bits. Not a fan of any of your suggestions.
There is definitely a balance between too much and too little in terms of game mechanics and content, but most games these days have WAY too little of both, probably because schools are preaching this as a desired feature of games so more games can be produced for more profit by larger gaming firms. Stardock, for this project, is not not necessarily abiding by those limits of profiteering so much (sure, they still want to be financially stable and make a profit on FE), and I for one am excited to see a potentially feature rich game evolve before my eyes which is still a fundamentally organic organism in terms of integrating all of its various design features.
On some of your specific points: as far as your spell comment is concerned, I believe the complete opposite is true: there a still some fundamental spell types missing from the available spell list. Perhaps Quicklists or hotkeys could alleviate some of the UI clutter that can happen with magically proficient characters later in the game. Also I believe the tactical battles are just about right (save some balancing) the way they are. They are quick when they need to be, they are epic when they need to be, or you can just skip em if you want.
While I appreciate your professional opinions such as they are, I feel you are asking the developers to remove or completely change game design choices that the community (including the developers since FE first started taking shape) have been asking for for over two years now (since WoM beta.)
mqpiffle, I just want the game to be well-designed. Throwing a ton of content and mechanisms into a system is not good design. This isn't my opinion, either - this is the essence of design itself.
In not just games, but in any medium, we should always strive for elegance: to accomplish what we set out to accomplish in as few strokes, words, bytes or whatever creative moves as we possibly can.
I think there is a missing piece of your puzzle that will probably make you understand where I'm coming from better. You clearly do not play European designer boardgames, which are often extremely well-designed. Once you see these, you'll see how 5-10 totally awesome and tight mechanisms are better than 1000 mediocre ones. Check out Through the Desert, The Resistance, Puerto Rico, or even 7 Wonders. www.boardgamegeek.com is a good place to start.
If you think Elemental is "missing stuff", you are clearly a pure video-gamer, as videogames have a completely horrible and awful pattern of cramming in way too much stuff, just because they can.
Keith. I am sorry but my interest conflicts with your ideas of a Well-Designed game, I am getting a bit tired of this days simpleton approach to games, I might be a rather hardcore player or a unique customer in my tastes, but I am TIRED of games going overly simple, and not offering any gameplay besides on one point.
It is rare you see a game like Master of Magic and Master of Orion 2 anymore, and what you suggest would degrade the game to flash-game status and I would be off the watch instantly.This game is NOT an European boardgames, it is not a boardgame at all, and I do not play European boardgames for the same reason. (I live in the central Europe), most European board games, oh hell any board games are so limited in imagination and flexibility that I tire of them very very quickly, and would be rather quickly bored.
I hope you understand, and I do not mean any offense to you, since your ideas are great, just not for my tastes at all, whatsoever.
@keith
It sounds like you want a very different game, not just from what the devs are doing, but what the players want.
If I'm reading you right, you want a 4x Fantasy game that has 1) no complexity and 2) no depth. With due respect to who or what you do, if you think that's what is good for FE, you're out of your mind.
Give me 1000 spells and 1000 monsters and 50 different ways to win the game. Then it'd be a game for the ages.
Edit: Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that the game have 4 different monsters in total?
Keith,
My opinions are in-line with what Naaarf stated.
In arguing in favor of your design theory; you have asked others to review board games and consider the design. This seems a bit pretentious to me and it appears your coming from a position that assumes that if others were more intelligent or knew more, that they would agree with your sensibilities.
I would ask you to consider just how well the following games adhered to your design sensibilities:
Master of Orion 2.
Dragon Age: Origins
Fallout 1,2
Compare the reviews for all of the above sequels as compared to the originals…
Also consider the following games which are popular and have insane complexity and defy a “good design”:
Europa Universalis (and derivatives)
Crawl: Stone Soup
- Due to the games I see on your site, I am sure you’re familiar with this one. Do you agree with the design decisions? You seem to be in the same niche, only your taking the more stream-lined angry birds approach and I am presuming the plethora of options in SS drives you nuts. It is one of the most popular RL's and gets rave reviews from fans of the genre.
Questions:
>>If I'm reading you right, you want a 4x Fantasy game that has 1) no complexity and 2) no depth. See, this is where you guys have me completely wrong. I want complexity and depth, but a special kind of complexity and depth called "emergent complexity". I don't want there to be 100 spells; I want there to be less than 20 extremely rich and deep spells.
Do you guys think the boardgame Go is like, softcore or something? It's got like, four rules total, yet it's extremely deep. Far, far deeper than Elemental, and because of its elegant design, it will be played for thousands of years (it's already been played for about 4000 years).A game like Elemental that is based on inherent - not emergent - complexity will be lucky to live even 5 or 10 before nobody gives a shit. The reason? Inherent complexity is cheap.
Yazari - I am aware that there are pitfalls of trying to go simple. Frankly, making a deep yet simple game (Go, Tetris, Slay, or Desktop Dungeons) is way, way harder than making a game like Elemental which seems deep because it has 8 billion things in it, but actually almost none of them matter and have only trivial relationships with each other.
Then it is more obvious than ever before: what you want, and what the players of this game want, are two fundamentally different things.
The funny thing about design, especially of games of a particular type, is that what works for one thing, doesn't necessarily work for another. That's why there is not a lot of design literature, simply because the process itself is so multifaceted - and again, what works for one thing or category, doesn't work for another. And iteration is a pretty big part of a good game design too. I think a big part of why FE is doing so well and improving so much, is because it is having an extensive beta and playthrough process, and it's getting one part basically right before continuing onto the next.
Even though I enjoy Wesnoth too, I think that would be more up your alley. Very simple rules and very tactical gameplay. And I like the Experimental Warcraft3-style pseudo-RNG too, where the more attacks you miss, the more chance of getting a hit. Just so there is a lower bounds on how successful a unit in general is.
I really really cannot reconcile this statement with pretty much everything else he said.
Huh, how can master of magic be your favourite PC games of all time, and then start talking about how FE has the wrong type of complexity you want? By your standard, there is no way MOM can be your favourite PC game. They have 200 spells, dozens of races etc.. MOM's strength is in the fact that each game played so differently precisely because it had so many starting possibilities partly due to the wizard retorts in particular the spell book selection combined by the race you picked.
I suppose you would have chopped it down to select 1 out of 5 elements, and play 1 of 3 races right?
I really think based on what you said Shouldn't HOMM series or even civilization be closer to your cup of tea? my suspicion is you like complexity in only one area, tactical combat that is why those 2 games aren't your favourites.
Seriously there is a place for board games like Go, Chess, Risk etc, but it's all a matter of taste.
I agree of course it is not just about numbers they could have 200 spells and it could suck if they were all variances on a theme, but in MOM they usually werent. but 20 spells in total? i grant you it is easy to make 20 distinct spells but they could hardly even cover the major possibilities I could think of for spells.
As for your point on focusing on tactics, is a matter of taste. Personally I find the things you propose there to be "inherent - not emergent - complexity".
I do enjoy how as soon as someone proposes trimming the fat people come out of the wood works to exclaim how touching anything would make the game for "simpletons". Good stuff!
Design is slightly or majorly different in all different areas of human endeavour. So no-one can be an expert on the subject.
^This.
Beat me to it multiple times. I would argue that part of the draw is customization. Units, Champions, Sovereigns, Factions. My champions can lead an army and be totally equipped differently every time - thanks to random magic loots. Which I am glad there are lots of different things, not less.
Where I may share a similar gripe right now is spells. They need some work or re-work. The curse /mass curse is single target vs. all enemies. Which is a big deal. Perhaps there needs to be a way to "hide" lower level spells much like you can hide your weak units in the train window. IMO there isn't enough raw zap! KaBOOM!! type spells and the ones that exist are meh. good for low levels. There also isn't enough summon type spells in my opinion. Having elementals are nice when you get them but there can and should be earlier and late game type summons as well. So far Magic seems like its an initiate level... where are the stuff that says "I am a master wizard" or "Fear me Fool! I am an archmage " ..
Well, luckily, my post was never about "what players want". It was about how to achieve a state of "better game design".
I do think that elegance is a universal trait of good design, and Elemental is anything but elegant.
Please, go design the perfect game.
Unlike MoM Elemental really isn't about tactical battles, they have said they want you to be able to play by auto-resolving them. I can't even think what the core game mechanics in FE are beyond something vague like world building, which admittedly might be a flaw. All the "unnecessary" spells and weapons are part of the world building experience and thus not really superficial. As for buildings they are adding a whole new system in Beta4.
That sums it up nicely. But I think your message is lost on this audience.
2+2 gives chicken!
The points you bring up are interesting Keith, but I don't think that streamlining always going to be appropriate. In the case of FE, and of 4x games in general, I think the main question is one of abstraction vs. simulation. Which parts of running your empire do you want the player to have a hand in and which parts are ignored, or glossed over with a roll of the dice?
After all, Risk essentially captures the same concept as Fallen Enchantress, right? I produce armies, take over territory, fight over resources (cards -- a bit of a stretch perhaps). By the measure of meeting the game's goals with fewer rules and systems, Risk wins hands down. But... I think it is obvious that Risk is not competing in the same space as FE. Risk is simpler, plays faster, and ultimately has the same end goal as FE -- you conquer the world, but Risk makes for a crappy 4x game because the level of abstraction is too high.
You mentioned Eurogames, which is interesting, because certainly the Euro aesthetic has won a lot of folks over to playing boardgames because of the simplicity, elegance and focus of their rules. However, I never really feel that the Euro games I play are actually attempting to simulate anything. The rules of Carcassonne have nothing to do with building a medieval county. The game could be themed to be about modern real estate development, colonies of insects, or nothing at all -- it could just be an abstract game with no underlying theme -- and it would play the same.
On the other hand, Twilight Imperium is the height of Ameritrash. It is a giant game, with lots of fiddly bits, a bunch of rules, takes 4 hours to play on a good day... and again, aside from sci-fi vs. historical, Risk hits all the same "high points" as TI, right? Of course not, TI is an attempt to simulate the struggles of competing empires. Risk is a boardgame with the theme of competing empires.
I see FE (and indeed, the 4x genre) as an attempt to simulate the struggles between competing empires. As a simulation, it has a duty to have a certain level of fiddliness... less does not equal more in this case. The challenge for FE's designers isn't to streamline the game as much as possible. The challenge is to pick and choose which parts of the game to detail and which parts to abstract. Which bits of empire building are going to be fun for the player to mull over and which parts need to go away?
On a bit of a tangent, something I was thinking about the other day was how you can see that FE is based on the same basic concepts as E:WOM, but where E:WOM is at best a mediocre game, FE is amazingly fun and by release, might just be a classic of the genre. I find it interesting that this large increase in fun comes from relatively small changes in mechanics and changes in what to detail vs. what to abstract. I think the evolution from E:WOM to FE would be interesting from a game design perspective, since we are always discussing the nature of what makes a game fun or not.
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