Derek (Kael) has been super busy with the general expansion of Stardock Entertainment over the past 3 years. AS I type this, there are 7 concurrent game projects going on. Back in 2008, I dreamt of having a second team. Here we are, 6 years later with seven teams. I’m writing this from the airplane on my way to visit one of the new studios (one that hasn’t been announced yet).
So what does that mean for fans of the Elemental universe? The answer is, lots of good news. While Galactic Civilizations III heads towards its March alpha, the Elemental team is hard at work on a new DLC pack for this Winter tentatively called “Monarchs” which will bring more channelers to the world for players to play with. In addition, we expect to announce the third game in the Elemental fantasy universe this year. It will be dramatically different from War of Magic or Fallen Enchantress.
Without giving too much away about the new game, which we expect to formally announce this Spring, its planned feature set includes:
It’s been in development for awhile, prior to LH. LH was originally supposed to be a minor expansion on FE but as you’ve probably gathered, we really love making these games. The next update to LH is in the works, pathfinding improvements, performance and some other updates are scheduled.
Overall great news, though I'm disappointed that there's no talk of a Spells DLC for LH.
Now, the new game will apparently cover that and more, and that's really great... but the wait will be longer, alas.
I am very excited about having the sovereign omnipresent. But to me it has to "feel" that way, too. So quoting rahal:
If we do not have a sovereign unit anymore like someone else before said, then that makes one element of the game go away. In my opinion an omnipresent sovereign should still have a customizable model (gender/clothes/face/hair/etc) and appear quite often in the game since it is implied that you are basically playing from his/her/its perspective.
Even better: Have amazing cutscenes or ingame renders for every spell cast with the sovereign it (maybe standing at the forge of the overlord) would just be the icing on the cake.
An OP'ed player would be interesting to play with, though the AI should still be able to act (like it could do something about it , or try to at least). Maybe having alternate win conditions for the player and the AI could work (though I wouldn't know how). Or the enemies could be seperate for the AI and the player, the palyer could fight against Titans from the gates (to protect the entire world) while the AI would try to fight against each other / wildlings to get near the player as in recieving benefits for taking care of such a mere task.
But Frogboy, I love to see my handsome profile cutting down that full of himself Vergas! If you take that out then.. i don't know what to do.
(My sovereign kinda looks like the paladin from worldofwarcraft and you managed to get his haircut in the game.)
Looks like there's demand for an avatar spell
An Oped player would need Oped enemies in order to make it challenging, so it's similar to what we've been playing except you start with really strong spells. And the winner will be the player or AI that is able to find/research/build the "earth shattering" spell or device first.
I really like the concept of vastly more spells.
I wonder if one of the seven projects is a RPG - (Temple of Elemental Evil derivative). It seems to me that most of the graphics and maps could be ported to a tactical combat focused RPG game? Perhaps, the game could be based on the OGL 3.5 mechanics (that exclude the use of Product Identity) or SD's own mechanics?
An RPG would be the perfect engine for supporting a continuous stream of DLC with new adventures, quests, spells, skills, adventure maps, etc.
If SD would go this route I would like to see the character's actions affect the world around them and where characters can take the side of good or evil.
The one thing I want to see for spells are "cure" spells or opposite spells remove negative/positive effects. This is something that has been missing from E:WoM since it started.
I'm really hoping that some of the spells (within reason and balance of course) are ported back to FE:LH.
I feel the same about this! I liked building my Sovereign into a powerful combat sorcerer and use them to spearhead my attacks.Heroes usually become city governors for me apart from one or two who either lead a secondary force or join my sovereign in questing.
How about this as an option: Give the player the ability to have the sovereign leave his tower, but at the cost of losing the spells he can cast in any tactical combat. His tower is a 'focal' point of sorts.
However....why would anyone then want to remove him and lose that much flexibility?
Instant, easy yes.
A player action is not necessarily over-powered if it has a chance of catalyzing an unexpected, equal and opposite reaction.
Wouldn't be interesting if part of the gameplay challenge is balancing your progress to dominance against its unintended consequences? How could one possibly expect to wield the power of the Gods, as a mortal, yet only get exactly what was intended?
The Master Of Magic Chaos spell that slowly destroys the entire world comes to mind...
(I'm curious where they are going with this 'let the player be OP-ed' idea, and already have some guesses)
I would prefer this. Age of Wonders worked like that. If you're Wizard lord was in a tower it expanded their casting zone, if not they make a powerful combat unit but can only cast where they are.
I can get behind an approach like that.
If by this you mean I can only cast sovereign tactical spells in the combat he is in? Then sure! To cast spells into any combat, I should be in my tower right? Sounds good. However, only do this if ALL the best tactical spells are only available if the sovereign is present in the battle. There has to be a point to making the sovereign leave the tower, and it's not just to possible swing their cool sword or staff for null-effect.
Basically, this would differentiate from casters vs commander types vs melee types and so on. Lets use some elemental examples:
From Tower: Shadowbolt,no-range burning hands, flame dart with the usual 3 round cooldown etc
If Sovereign is present: Manablast, Kill (reduced mana cost), fireball, Horrific Wail
To be honest, keep the sovereign as it is. Tactical spells only if they are there, strategic spells all the time. This makes the most sense, adds an immense amount of flavour (your wizard has to be at least visible on the horizon to lightning bolt someone), and allows for more reply value (the commander type sits n tower, vs the adventurer type)
Fantastic! Keep it coming.
Exciting!
The 4X genre desperately needs a leapfrog over those incremental baby steps from other products currently in the market today.
For everybody who's confused just remember this unofficial rule in game design and balance.
"When every player is cheating the game becomes fair."
Let me get this straight...
You are gutting the one feature that made your game unique... (unit designer)
One of my pet peeves of the fantasy 4X games that exist today (including Fallen Enchantress) is that for magic to be fun, it should be a game debalancer.
Thus, if we change the rules so that your opponents each have their own goals for victory (that you're trying to stop) that are different from yours then you're free to "exploit" the magic system as much as you can. In other words, magic gets no holds barred.
I look at LH and think how nice it would have been if there had been more victory conditions, particularly ones that the human couldn't participate in and ones the AI couldn't participate in (mainly because some things are easier for humans to do and some things are easier for computers to do).
The system is going to be different than any discussed so far. Let me put it this way, EARLY in the game you won't have any tactical battles at all. So the first 20 or so minutes of the game, battles take place on the strategic map.
I am interested in what you guys come up with and I'm sure it will be good. However I am still on the fence about not being able to use the Sovereign directly as it was one of my favorite parts in the game to build my Sovereign into a powerful Warrior-Sorcerer
I disagree with this. Unbalanced magic can certainly be fun, but it's not required for magic to be fun. Subtle magic can also have a huge impact, especially on atmosphere. However, in order for subtle magic to work you need to have more granularity in game systems. I don't know if you've played D&D or not, but it's a good example (at least V3.5 and lower) of having a lot of detailed systems that interact with each other. It has a magic systems with spells that scale well from subtle effects to awe inspiring acts of apocalyptic destruction. But in order for the more subtle spells to work, you need to have systems in place to be able to deal with (and make relevant) item/person location, long/short distance communication, state of mind, etc. That list could to on for awhile, which is why any video game based on D&D struggles to capture that flexibility.
It sounds like this will address the upper end of the spell spectrum (unbalanced spells) quite well. I think it might be more difficult (and therefore, maybe not feasible) to fill out the lower end (subtle spells), since it would require more detailed systems on the 'micro' (relative) scale. Many of these spells are on an individual level, so you normally only see spells on that power level in tactical battles. Individual situations other than combat would have to be included and tapped somehow in order to include other more subtle types of spells to their fullest potential. Just look at Wormtongue from LoTR to see how much chaos subtle magic can cause!
It sounds like you guys are thinking out of the box to make something different which I REALLY appreciate. I hope that you are able to maintain the feeling of intimate connection with the world that was afforded by interacting through a customized sovereign. This aspect of the game is a huge factor in why I enjoy it over other 4X titles, since typically 4X games are represented solely through interactions with cities and armies/(and sometimes)heroes. Aside from that, my tiny ant brain doesn't really like managing a ton of armies and a ton of cities. These games have provided a believable and effective way to play, where I didn't have to do that in order to win. So whatever you guys do, I implore you to keep the player/sovereign connection in mind and try to maintain it!
Without any regrets.
Seems i'm the only one... but I kinda like the rotating camera.
I guess so long as you can still change view like with the hotkeys it would be ok.
What would be really really awesome would be a LH 2.0 64 bit version that can make use of extra RAM.
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