Based on a lot of the posts I read, I think some people have an overestimation of my involvement in FE.
On the one hand, I am definitely spending a lot more time on Fallen Enchantress than I ever got to with WOM. But on the other, I'm not that involved on the design part. I give lots of suggestions and ideas but it's Derek's call.
The biggest design problem with WOM is that it started out, in my mind, as MOM2 and then morphed into trying to be all things to all people and ended up not being very good at anything. As you read the suggestions in this forum, you can see how quickly the game would be destroyed if we tried to implement even a fraction of the suggestions. And yet, if I were the lead designer, I would probably have tried to have a bunch of the ideas implemented because I'm not a game designer, I'm a game player and I love most of the suggestions I read. But being a game designer means making choices and explicitly deciding not being all things to all people.
My focus on FE is on the code. I don't override Derek on design and he doesn't override me on development requirements.
So here's a quick update on the coding parts:
1. We've made great strides on improving the memory foot print. This won't mean anything for 80% of you but for people running Windows XP, it's a big deal.
2. The strategic AI is significantly better in our internal build now. It will surrender now if its situation is hopeless.
3. The tactical AI is starting to get some love. I'm awaiting an API that will let the AI look at upcoming spells (like fireballs) that are in the queue so it can counter spell it.
4. There's been a lot of gameplay changes that I won't go into but I think people will be pleased with.
5. The stability should be substantially better. Keep crash reports coming in. It's amazing how different systems will expose different flaws in the code.
6. Performance, especially late game, is massssiiiiivvveeelly better. Night and day. One badly written function that gets called a lot can do real harm.
7. The next beta, Beta 1B (so still beta 1 series) is expected to be out a week from tomorrow. But we may delay it if necessary depending on how the team is feeling about stability, visuals, and balance.
8. The FE specific art is now being integrated (the terrain was still from WOM in Beta 1, beta 1B will have a somewhat different look).
9. I am hoping that beta 1B will reach release level quality in terms of stability, performance, and memory usage. It'll be a big deal (and something that absolutely should be reported) if it crashes on anyone.
10. Game within a game is still a pain in the rear.
11. Sound system got a lot of coding love this week.
12. While multiplayer won't be in FE 1.0, we've been making the internals much more effective for handling it in a possible future update (i.e. more event driven stuff). MP support is high on our list of things we want after release.
13. Garbage collection has been moved into its own thread so that it doesn't interfere with the smoothness of the game.
14. Modding will likely be officially sanctions starting with beta 2.
15. Lots of music and sound stuff going in.
One week!? Oh noes! :'(This is ALL brads fault!
Thanks for the update - sounds good.
I'd rather see a new small update sooner (release early & release often, you know? - plus you guys not having to sort out the tons of duplicated crash reports) but well you guys must have your reasons and it's your call
You know, the more I play this game, the more I see the huge potential for entertainment. Its fun right now, but there's just so much balancing to do, and lots of options. LOTS... of possiblities.
Take your time Stardock, take your time.
What I hope is that Stardock really does give the game enough time to get a Metacritic 90 average. Even if it takes 6 months (or longer).
If a high metacritic score is important alls they have to do is up the graphics.. dumb down the system and release lots of DLC. Concentrate on making the first hour of the game great.. replay value doesn't matter since most critics will only spend an hour or 2 at most on the game before reviewing it. Not to mention they will inevitably hand it off to some reviewer who doesn't like or has never played strategy games so make it a FPS or simple enough that someone used to playing nothing but FPS games will feel like they are doing great things by clicking the end turn button. Oh and don't forget to spend a 3rd of the budget on an opening cinematic that everyone will get sick of looking at after the first time but supply no way to skip it
Or just accept that reviewers don't know wtf they are talking about and make a game thats going to appeal to fans of the genre. Whatever.
I think some people may have a distorted memory of WOM. The biggest problem with WOM's design was that I did try to implement features from the community. And not little ideas either. The big ones.
So what started out as MOM slowly ended up trying to be all things to all people in the community. That's how we ended up with quests, dynasties, and a lot of the weird economic mechanics. It's just that people cherry pick things that THEY wanted that didn't get in to argue that we didn't listen to the community.
By contrast, Derek is a game designer. And he has put together a great design. Nearly all the complaints I read from people are things that have to do with balance even when people don't realize it is balance they're actually complaining about.
The only reason GalCiv was so well received was by the time people were paying attention to it; it had already gone through years of being WOM-like and the game got chiseled to the point it was a great game.
Also, yelling at me about some feature you think should be changed in the game isn't real useful. I'll read it (I'll read all the posts) but it's not my area in the game, nor do i want it to be my area in the game.
To Fistalis: I'm not saying the Metacritic score is the only thing that is important, no. But if Metacritic is only by reviewers, then that reduces the usefulness of the measure by a certain amount, definitely.
So wait.. me throwing a fit about garbage collection getting its own thread isn't gonna make you change it?
You sure I can't persuade you if I get real pissy, complain about wom, and accuse you of sleeping with my dog and running over my wife?
The metacritic score that is used in adverts etc is always the reviewer score. When going for a high metacritic score your no longer designing a game for gamers.. your designing a game for reviewers.. who are not playing the game for recreation, will not take the time to finish the game, and most likely don't want to be playing the game because its their job. Not to mention they are assigned what games to review. So often times they might not even like the genre. So designing a game for reviewers is alot different from designing a game for players.
As to the user score.. those are crap as well because you inevitably have people who give it 0s because they didn't like the color of the master sword, and others who give it a 10 because they just happened to work for the company who published the game.
This are exactly my thoughts, when i read most of the complaints. Sometimes it "drives me crazy", because i can´t participate in the discussions, because my english is not good enough for such thing.
I can participate in them.. usually choose not to since if the thread grows it might then make the devs think their opinions are valid.
My opinion is the systems that are present need to be fleshed out more. Don't radicaly change the systems, don't remove them. Add more detail and player option to the existing systems. Probably something thats not going to be done but I can still repeat my opinon over and over like everyone else.
Fistalis - good points about the whole Metacritic thing! I would hope that Derek chooses to release the game when it's a really great game for the players, and it's ready, and not a moment before. I'm pretty sure that Derek is the one who has the final say on when to release.
The beauty of game design is that Impulsive can be locked so that only rogues can get that trait. I would think +10 Init is a recognized mistake in balance for mages. Especially below level 15. Increasing the time of AoE just makes them useless. The balance should be to the crazy Initiative values a low level mage can get.
lol, i am somewhat turned off by all the arguing and grandiloquent walls of text that this forum is producing. Thats why i am content with a Poll and letting the designers do their job.
As long as the stuff in my list of annoyances is fixed of course
Fair point.
Basically though, what I'm saying is this: from a few of your (or your team's) posts, it seems you all feel the game is "almost close to the finishing line". Which is understandable, after so much work. Yet, some of us (I don't know how many) feel that the game is not 77% (78% ?) ready. I'd be glad to get the full game earlier, but I don't think we're there: so many things are right this time, yet a few others might need more work that you might have anticipated. We may be wrong, but we may be onto something...
Is anyone under the impression that .77 means 77% done? That is hilarious.
Well it's been implied dev-side, as a "rough guess" at least.
Where has it been implied? As a rough guess or otherwise?
And even if they were 77% done, how on earth do we know what the last 23% accounts for? Maybe the first 50% was all engine based? Since then its been rough systems and base work? They're just starting to put in FE art assets, right?
Maybe they base their versioning and completion info on real project management metrics, which account for a lot of work that isn't directly visible in the final product (stability, for example). 23% of the effort for a multi-year project is significant, no?
Arguments based on percent complete and version numbers are nonsense.
You guys are taking things too literally.
It's not just about "missing content": some of the content is structured in a such a way that suggests the developers are happy with the basic underlying mechanism, while some of us think that a few of the game concepts might need to be re-thought. Hence I say, imho, the game is not as close to completion as initially estimated... unless they disregard all the feedback that suggests so.
I am going to wait till we get some more information before I agree or disagree with that assessment. The biggest problems right now can be solved with some reworking, balance, and more content. Any smaller problems I see are already on my mod list.
tactical maps frogboy, why are you not being clear about them?
I don't think any non-game developer has any idea of what % done a game is.
An engine test (no game, just an engine) is about 33% of the way for a game. An alpha is about 50% of the way.
When you're left with balancing and a few screens and AI you're really getting into the final steps.
Personally speaking, I'm not real interested in listening to people who think we should jetison the tech tree or not have mana in the game or whatever. I'm glad our community is welcoming enough that people feel comfortable posting these ideas. But it's not as if something like that is going to even be considered.
And they are ideas that can be considered for future design documents for other projects. Or depending of the modding capabilities of FE, for some nice mods. Which reminds me: too early to start dropping suggestions for some hypothetical future probable RPG in the lines of BG2?
Plus, I'm quite sure that you are the most interested ones in getting FE to be the best you can do. I'd not enjoy news in the lines of Stardock not making new games*...
* for PC. I care not for consoles/mobiles, sorry.
Does this mean that any suggestions we make that aren't about balancing just the current mechanisms we are just wasting our time?
I do not wish to see talk of internal builds doing this and that.WOM had lots of that talk about internal builds doing the same.Beta testers should have the latest build.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
