My #1 Request! Please no quest-fest/treasure hunting rinse and repeating exhaustion!

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Which is something I am really hoping for. If this really works it will be a really cool feature in my opinion.

There will be a variety of RPG elements available to enjoy or ignore as your gameplay style sees fit...

Want to get your hands dirty with some quests?  Go right ahead.

Want to grind your sovereign into an unstoppable Knight of awe inspiring might? Totally cool.

Want to sit back, set up your unit objectives (grind, gather loot, explore dungeons, uncover FOW) then focus on domestic and foreign issues?  A wise choice, sire!

Remember, you're the Emperor in a fantasy world....it'd be a sin to not include all the elements that make fantasy RPG's what they are.

We simeply have to include, additionally, all the necessary tools and commands that such an emperor would have at his/her disposal to carry out mundane tasks while focusing on the larger picture.

Sounds good to me!

Will we be able to create quests on our own? And perhaps even quests, which are based on each other?

Will  the sovereign be limited to only  human forms?  

Different forms can provide different types of attacks, resistances(even 100% immunities), abilities, weaknesses, types of armor and weapons which can be used, etc.,  which are not available for human forms.    

I completely agree!  

Just please don't overdo it. There's myriad of games where monsters aren't guarding the treasure but are the treasure. This has many unpleasant side effects, such as basically forcing player to play a janitor and mop up all the monsters on the map. In Warcraft3 in particular, you often see players kill groups of monsters and leave their treasure on the ground. It's pathological.

You're probably aware that grind means repetition of mundane, low-risk activities which carry some reward, but in the end encourage players to bore themselves. It's just bad design. A good example of grinding is selling monster equipment to shops in Baldur's Gate. It's terribly boring, as you have to make many trips back and forth between an area and shop to sell all the bastard swords, for example, but yields some gold. The time spent on playing the janitor could be used for more challenging adventures and exploration of new areas.

Some games, like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (a roguelike) disallow selling items to shops for this very reason. Because it's a grindy no-brainer that brings very little to the gameplay and encourages players to bore themselves. And the game is much better without the option to sell to shops.

I want to taunt my enemies by linking my existence to a magic ring and throwing it in a river somewhere.

While I agree that any game that FORCES you to grind lacks proper balancing, I would never argue at leveling-up as a CHOICE. Actually, some of my most memorable moments in gaming came from failing in a boss battle (ran from too many encounters, didn't have the proper strategy, etc), leveling-up my party, and returning to kick the crap out of said boss.

Remember, any time you have your Sovereigning out there leveling up is time he's not...

- Stationed in his keep, focusing on new spells...
- Off initiating foreign treaties...
- Visiting neighboring villages to raise international loyalties...
- Any other various tasks that require royal intervention to undertake.

So I say, if that's what you wish to spend ALL your time on, go for it!  Your domestic situation may be in shambles and your foreign relations plumeting, but at least you'll have enemies to test those new stats and loot on 

Seriously, though, all the above will be play tested 1000x to make sure we weed out cheese tactics and make every possible choice a valid and weighty one.

Sins of a Fantasy Empire??

And this reply, sir, has done more to re-ignite my excitement for this game than any other. Don't eliminate xp grinding as an option. some people love that stuff! But along with the benefit of the uberness your hero gained from doing it, there as to be an associated "opportunity cost" - the world doesn't just sit idly by waiting for you to get to level 80, while you are following THIS path to greatness, other channeler's are out there building, summoning, schmoozing.....

GREAT, GREAT info!

Once again, I'd like to oppose the usage of term 'grind' in positive context. Grind is something like entering an area, killing a weak but risk-free creature (and possibly get the treasure), exit area to make it respawn, rinse and repeat. I mean, ideally leveling up your channeler or whatever should be more like adventure rather than grinding . It should encourage taking progressively harder challenges. No challenge, no fun.  Essence of grind is repetition with lack of challenge. It's playing Diablo on skill level lower than Hardcore, clearing the same area over and over, etc.

I like what I'm reading about Elemental so far, even if I'm not too keen of some particulars. And 'opportunity cost' should deffinitely be there.

To each his own I guess.  I always associated grinding with doing any kind of fighting outside of the main quest, regardless of the difficulty.  In the more negative sense, I would associate it with any type of boring fighting, but once again, this is regardless of difficulty.

Yes please dont make us have to be Janitors with endless map cleaning!

How meaningless endless grinding can be a fun positive thing I will never understand but my main point is I want a game that makes me think and use strategy with the occassional fun quest and independent battle but more grand strategy tasks that effects the world around me and does not turn me into a grinding mindless repetitive robot doing the same boring silly useless battles/tasks that have no effect on the world whatsoever over and over and over just so I my heroe can be an overpowering unstoppable AI killer....

Ah, I do love my empire building!  Glad to hear it's in the game

Thank you! 

Many available OPTIONS, STRATEGIES, TOOLS, CHOICES, and NO FORCING is definitely the way to go!

b0rsuk: You're concern is based on the idea of 'player-activated respawning'. In Elemental, respawning creatures will be rare and outside the players control, so the typical 'grind' pattern isn't even possible.

You can focus on leveling-up to the extent of the available creatures encounters, but it's a balanced choice that takes time and effort from more other (possibly more important) activities.

a leveling story I want to relate:  

Back when I was young, and I didn't make some obvious connections while playing my RPGs, there was an RPG called "phantasy star 4" (an awesome game) and in this game there is a boss who has a special force field on his castle.  you have to get a special wand to remove the barrier the guy can erect.   So I got the wand, removed the barrier, and then proceded to fight him.  I used my best ultimate spell (blizzard I think) and it only did 1 point of damage.   No other attacks I had did any more damage, so I went back and leveled.  

I found a good place to level, where you often fought these worms.  If you killed all but 1 worm, there was a very good chance it would burrow into the ground and a huge sandworm would come up.  So I just leveled and leveled on sandworms.  (a sandworm is actually an optional boss from earlier in the game, so it gets what I call 'boss experiance' which in this game was a VERY good HP to exp ratio)   > I came back much stronger with a new power that you are supposed to get near the end of the game that is stronger the more evil the enemy is.   Still only 1 damage.   So I level more until I'm past the level my friend's older brother beat the game...  I use the strongest (I think) combo attack in the game that I can still use, 1 point of damage.   So I'm frustrated!   my friend says "use that wand you needed to get in here" and sure enough, the wand that took down the barrier to get in the castle/base is needed to let me damage the guy.... so I 1 shot him.   and the next boss... 3 shot the boss after that, and so on.  

My 2nd favorite leveling story is about the above friend, who thought the game w as over when you lost to lavos the 1st time in chrono trigger (he was a soft reset fiend, so he would reset the moment his last HP hit zero) and he leveled in that point until he could beat the lavos that you are not supposed to beat.   But that is more his story than mine.

To me 'grind' is a term that was invented to describe common MMO activities, and since has spread to other similar activities.  I don't think you can be that picky about a word's definition that was invented within our life times.

It does make me a little worried though.   I want to still be able to compete with the people who grind.   Using warcraft 3 as the example, if you don't run around and kill creeps, you WILL lose to those who do.  And my friends sit behind me as I'm having my lax time playing saying "why aren't you doing this?" and it makes the game less enjoyable.  And it seemed (at least while I kept up with it) every patch made the regular troops weaker so the heroes became more and more important.

I mean, Yes... the people who work harder should be rewarded more, but at the same time I don't want it the 1 thing that wins the game or not.    I see other people that feel the same way, so I have no doubt we'll find a good balance.

edit:   Looks like boogie bac addressed it a bit already.   I was still typing then

No, I gave an example of respawning just to illustrate various forms of grinding. And the Warcraft3 example I gave occurs with finite number of neutral creatures. For me, the definition of grinding is:

Any repetitive low risk activity that results in a (often small) reward. Especially in presence of more rewarding (and moderately challenging !) ways to achieve the same thing.

Grind is often boring. I could refer to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, but you likely don't know the game (it's a roguelike). In that game, there's basically no creature respawning (technically there is, but not enough to generate enough food so that player can stay on the same floor indefinitely. Instead of going to a lower level). Yet the developers still chose to disallow selling items to shops, because it results in player making trips between an area and shop. It's a no-brainer decision, and playing janitor generates little excitement.

Another example of grinding (by my definition) is identifying items in Diablo. Past the first few levels, identify is not a real choice, it just forces you to make trips to the town to replenish your supply of ID scrolls. It's basically 100 gp tax on magic items (free if you rescure Deckard, but that's not the point). Identifying items in Diablo is a form of grinding, and and interface flaw. There's no reason no to do it.

Another example would be repeatedly clicking on monsters in Warcraft2 until they explode. Some levels don't have enemy bases so this strategy can work if you're in a dungeon level and see something behind a wall. Instead, player could go around and face the enemy in battle.

Grind is also repeatedly saving/loading game upon finding a chest with random loot.

Summary: For players who like to maximize their channeler's stats, get best equipment etc, please make sure it's actually challenging, somewhat unpredictable and fun. It could be by introduction of random quests/events, (like Age of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic assigns some random quests - but they could use some more variety). Less mopping up, more hard battles.

Grinding

I think you started out on the right track at least.  Some of those aspects that you mention may be bad game mechanics, but it's no necessarily "grinding".