While the first impressions are still fresh, please go here:
https://www.elementalgame.com/journals
and vote on what you think of Beta 4.
Thanks!
I voted good! This was a HUGE improvement over beta 3. Well done!
Pros:
+ City specialization is a good direction. It gives the cities personality.
+ Fantastic job on the new interface elements. I especially like the new spell book.
+ Outpost upgrades were cool. I also liked the improvement upgrades being implemented with tile resources as well (like shards).
+ Essence is a good add. I think it has potential as a resource but it could be utilized more.
Balance:
- Small map with 3 other AI players: The game play seemed to slow down considerably late game, not the graphics, the actual pacing.
- Magic started out feeling way too weak, but eventually (mid game) got up to acceptable levels. This will be tough to balance.
- Overall it feels like the magic system is a little detached from the rest of the game. Sure it modifies different aspects, but it feels. . . external. It seems like it needs to be brought up to speed with the rest of the systems with more meaningful interactions.
Bugs:
- Still noticed that one of the AI characters was getting astronomical mana spikes throughout the game.
- Pillar of fire will not kill, just bring them down to 0 HP and they keep on kicking. . . is that intentional?
- On the ledger, I clicked the 'Details' button for one of my cities, and nothing happened, so I pressed it again, still nothing. Three times total I pressed it with no effect, so I closed the ledger, and the Details screen popped up. When I closed it, another one popped up. Three details screens opened up in series after I would close the previous one.
That's all I can think of right now. Again, the concepts that you implemented this time for cities, outposts, and interfaces, were all positive in my opinion. Keep up the good work, guys!
Maybe I'm rubbish at the game but I also got absolutely stomped on!
I built 2 cities, and was just starting my third having got both to level 2 and choosing town -> I'd maybe built 2 units at this point (c. turn 100??) when Kraxis turned up with 4 stacks.... how did he build 4 stacks - 25+ units?? Admittedly they weren't great but they streamrolled my stuff.
Playing the game in a not-warfare-focussed way at the moment seems hard
I voted Excellent. I still think there is room for improvement, BUT i LOVE what you have done to the cloth map! You all listened to what we bitched about in the early builds when everyone first complained about the cloth map. The colours make a real difference and it properly displays where the mountians are! "No more i'll just nip through this pass - oh it doesn't really exist" - JOY.
You should all be really pleased with your progress - keep up the good work guys i think this could be truely great game.
I voted good - major step up:
- really like the new look, map and interface
- like the specialisation although i seem to be able to build various during initial levels markets and the like before specialisation which seems wierd as I would have thought they would be more focused (i.e. no markets etc in research/war)
- like what you've done with research paths
- Like outposts and quests being open.
Main issue for me currently is tactical combat - which is a shame as it is key (i don't really want to keep hitting auto resolve because there isn't much fun in tacticals):
- I can use the same tactics every single time
- Enemies simply don't use the right spells or specials - i completely rolled Kraxis without him casting a single direct damage spell but found (demand surrender) he had a few nice ones that I would always use
- Magic damage spells are needed outside of fire.
A few bugs already mentioned plus a new one in tactical where i attack and it locks so i have to do autoresolve. Very good work though guys.
OMG. I didn't play the new version but if the AI is actually not-that-rubbish its a good news! Voting a game down because getting destroyed is so stupid.
There is absolute no problem to make the game winable at easiest level regardless what you do. Man I'm so tires about this stupidness... Whoever read this from the devs: Keep the harder levels as hard as possible!
Voted good. Excellent is for beta 5.
I like many of the changes:
- the citybuilding/specialisation (but the auto/manual placement is not so great. But i dont have a better idea)
- upgradeable outposts
- all quests from the beginning. Now i can plan, which quest i will do next and what troops i need for that.
- all the cosmetic (UI, spellbook, icons etc.) are fantastic
Some things i don´t like:
- on every ressource i build, all is in the building queue (in all previous versions it was only the ressource right beside your city or am i wrong?). That slows down citydevelopment and building up a army.
- Maybe it was because of bad luck, but i didn´t feel a threat from the world around me (normal AI and also everything else on normal) Monsters were very passiv. I liked the aggressiv monsters in beta 3 much more.
Some bugs:
- the healthbar in the tac. battles are most of the time completly wrong.
- still side-flying arrows and fireballs
What are you talking about?
He is complaining about getting beaten on an easy setting (I assume) which is exactly what (I think) you are saying. It's therefore not "stupidness".
Hard should be hard, easy should be easy - I think everyone agrees on that.
In my game I completely forgot about enchanting my cities - maybe because the game never recommended I did so?
Should the enchantments somehow be linked to the city building screen?
A new player would struggle to find out that they could enchant their own cities (or indeed cast any strategic spells) since the spellbook is not obvious.
The interface feels very slughish, and kind of broken.
Often a different tile than the one you click on is selected and edge-scroll is terrible.
The tile selection is probable something to do with perspective, it works great in the middle of the screen, but near the top of the screen it hits almost a half tile wrong.
The edge scroll is really really odd and broken. It should scroll the screen as much as you move the pointer outside the screen. It seems to instead scroll by a fixed speed, and only after a very long delay. Remove the delay completely and get good out-of-screen coordinates for the mouse to do real scroll. Also it often does not work at all in combat. Once you only move the screen as much as the user moves the mouse outside the screen, then the delay is redundant, it is only necessary now because the edge scroll is so jerky and bad.
Auto end-of-turn seems very bad, you often don't get a chance to move all your units or assign new projects to your city, it just advances the turn and only moves the current unit. In this state auto end-of-turn needs to be disabled because it will ruin your game, because you end up not moving more than one unit, and newer build new things in your city.
Gameplaywise though, the game is great now! Just improve the interface.
And? Its exactly what I saying: There is 0 problem to make the game easier on easy! Its a BETA. It far more complex to make it difficult!
People can vote whatever they want for whatever reasons. It is up to the devs to decide if those are legitimate reasons, not ours. This is a thread for first impressions, not a discussion.
I am loving the new production system, so much of an improvement over what we had in beta 3.
I voted fair, because of UI still needing a bit of work (treasure windows, building tooltips not showing effect of Essence, no path displayed before the unit is already moving) and the city tile placement problem. If the tile placement is fixed I'll be in the "good" camp.
If the UI problems are fixed on top of that I'll be closing in on Excellent (though I don't know much about balance yet.
I only had the time to start a game, so these are only the very first impressions and no vote yet:
Good:
- Cosmetic polish (much, much better)
- Music (much, much better)
- City specialization of course
Not so good:
- I could only build the first city. There's mountains behind it and desert everywhere else. Behind a chokepoint, the enemy. Maybe just bad luck
- Found 3 Hate Stones out of 4 "random" treasures
- As others said, the starting available choices for buildings are weird (too advanced?) for an entirely new settlement.
- Various interface quirks and bugs (I'll post some in the support section). More than I expected at this stage of the beta, frankly
- One of the techs mentions "unlocking" Serious Quests (or something) together with Level 5 Heroes (ugh, I'll never digest this). I thought Quests at least had been spared from being subjected to the "unlocking" mechanic?
Sorry - I thought you were calling him "so stupid" for suggesting exactly what you are saying?
Maybe English is not your first language because we are clearly not understanding each other.
I mainly tired of people voting games down because of it "difficult". Not sure you know the problematic but when a game is developed every feature seems more important than the AI. Most of the developers make a basic AI and if the try to make it real good it costs a) a lot of budget and publisher don't want it to "hard".
Instead they make a "strategy" game for non-strategy people. And the few hardcore players with some strategic-brain get outvoted.
The world is full of bad TBS games with bad AI, we don't need another. Civ5 is the best example.
First of all, I have to commend the team on producing a version of the game that makes me want to keep playing. The game has advanced by leaps and bounds with .95.. Outposts are an excellent way of not cluttering up the land with cities, I think this is probably the biggest step forward.
Still some problems - the quests are broken - they say I need to research a certain tech, but don't unlock when I have those techs.
Still the dreaded mixed-up cursors that were there on day one of WoM. Still cannot understand why these don't work properly - not good for emersion and polish.
Some slow-down/missing task bars in combat.
And the unkillable champions of course (although this is gameplay rather than error). If I've just killed a sovereign or an enemy hero, I don't want to see them coming back at me in 3 turns time - no way. Dynasties would allow for sons/daughters of sovereigns and heroes to replace fallen sovereigns and heroes, in a much more natural, realistic and compelling way. This is the main stumbling block for me with FE, but something that could easily be put right. No more immortality please!
Overall this is a big step towards making the game into one that I will keep on my hard drive for years.
Pro:
Con
Oh and btw, I am not finding the game too hard. I am currently second, and seeing off every enemy that comes my way (on Normal difficulty).
So far I like it no major gripes.
Though I still find Yithril overwhelmingly powerful as a faction thier military progression seems to outspeed and out equip anyone elses constantly making any fight with them beyond the earliest turns an act of futility.
Love the improvement to outposts definite improvement.
If I had to have an "issue" it would be the removal of the ability to place city upgrades where you want. I get the reason was to improve performance and cut down urban sprawl but it also totally nixxed the ability to tactically expand your cities. Before you used to be abel to use them to gate apporaches to your territories by building the city across passes or cutting off narrow approaches etc.. now the only way to do that is with masses of outposts to form walls... which is essentially urban sprawl lol
Had to downgrade to Fair because of the continued existence of the AI Burning Blade Stacking Bug from previous versions (which is a gamebreaker).
One more issue - turns ending automatically when one unit/hero has finished their move (not allowing other units/heroes to take their moves).
This new version is really good. Many of the balance issues have been solved regarding cities and the tech tree. The essence system is really nice, it also makes Enchanters must have pick for me. My main complaint is that its much more rare to get decent magic items and I never saw a really powerful one, even while killing the strongest monsters in the game. You really need to fix this since it ruins the adventuring part of the game for me, though I agree that the previous system was flawed.
The AI is not enchanting its cities or building enough production improvements...
Yeah, this is a problem...
Real quick one. on the army/monster stacking. Seen some complaints and even frog mentioned it in his video. You showed (or used to) an icon for stacked units. Just add a number to the icon. Haven't actually played b4 yet, but stacks had an icon in b3.
Voted 'Good', would have voted 'Very Good' if there was an option but not quite 'Excellent' yet. In my mind the balancing is still a bit off (aware that this is being worked on for the next patch) but it is already very playable and fun.
I like the essence mechanic. it's a nice addition and adds a lot to city placement decision making.
New city specialization mode is great as well - one request though: allow us to view the city before making the decision. Especially late game it's sometimes hard to remember what a city was meant to be specialised to ...
Building upgrades are awesome. Less clutter, cities look tidier but still easy to differentiate a village from a fully grown capital.
Auto-placement of buildings: meh ... I turned it off.
Spellbook: awesome! But make it so that it remembers the last page (or layout) selected. If I want to tesselate the map with Pariden outpost, I want to select the same spell over and over.
I would like to see further faction differentiation (unique buildings?) and also a restriction on spellbooks being used. IMHO too many champions have spellbooks, often multiple ones. Think this should be restricted to make spell casting abilities rarer, something like champions can only have one spellbook unless they have some kind of mage trait. In general would like to see bigger differentiation between spellcaster and combat champions.
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