Poll: Do we NEED Magical Damage Types?

Results So Far: Here

Yes

Bad poll.  Elemental should have magical damage types.  It doesn't NEED them, though.  It's entirely possible for the devs to make a great fantasy TBS without magical damage types.  It's even possible, depending on how stressed the AI is dealing with the other combat variables, that diverse magical damage types would make the game worse.

I'd like to see them added, but the way you worded your "yes" answer made me choose "no" instead.  NEED implies a must have, not a should have.

Like Fire dmg, Ice dmg, wind dmg? I pretty those are planned.  What isn't in the playbook is Piercing damage, Blunt damage, etc. If it's mundane, then it just get's a boring 'ol Attack stat :)  Unless it's enchanted, in which case you get the specified magical bonus.

Is that what you're looking for?

Well, you are entitled to your opinion my friend, but I do think Diversified Magical Damage Types are a MUST for a game like this. Just one damage type is far too Dumbed Down for a game of Elemental's Complexity. The game is called "War of Magic" after all. What kind of a War would it be if getting chopped with a sword is the same kind of damage as getting hit with a lightning bolt of getting hit with a fireball?

I can see all Physical Damage being the same type. That makes sense. Getting hit in the face with a Axe is the same as getting hit in the face with a Mace. Getting hit with a Lightning Bolt however is far different from being hit with a Fireball. Fire would set the land a blaze around the target provided it was flammable. Lightning would do More Damage to a man wearing Metal Armor then it would to a man wearing Leather Armor. That's just common sense and basic logic to me. Brad (Frogboy) already stated he had "No Intention of making a dumbed down console like strategy game" but if they go with only One Damage Type then in my eyes thats EXACTLY what they'll be doing. It's almost enough for me to want a refund on my pre-order.

Just for the sake of Interesting game mechanics more then one damage type is a NEED, not a Want. If I wanted to play a fantasy type of Spore then I'd go Mod Spore and not have spent my money on Elemental.

Yes, that's Exactly what we're looking for.

Please say that's TRUE Scott. As of right now all we have to go on is Brads latest post that says he only wants One Damage Type. As you can see by the Poll results so far EVERYONE but one person says they want Varied Magical Damage Types.

I did not take this poll because neither answer applied to my opinion that damage types would be nice, but not necessary to have a good game.

So far the results are 24 for Yes and 2 for No.

Ding ding ding we HAVE a winner, that puts a lot of needless concern to rest.

Maybe. He didn't say For Sure they were planned. Just that he's Pretty Sure. That could be a big difference. If the CEO wants One Damage type, his word over-rides Boogies.

Magical damage types, plus different types of physical damage.  We need blunt objects for the undead and large shields to defend against arrows.

Magic is my main concern though.  I want magic damage, magic creatures, magic weapons, magic armor and magic markers @

I always felt Frogboys initial post about not having multiple damage types was limited to non-magical damage only, so I have a feeling this is already in.

I agree that it might be possible to make the game without it, it would be extremely unusual to not have it and probably lead to very illogical situations like a fireball killing a fire elemental (when it should be a viable option for healing a fire elemental).  I'm a big fan of weapon type damage (pierce,bludgeon,slash) myself, but I can understand leaving it out as long as it's easy to mod in.

Yes, (though I think you could have mundane fire and ice damage as well. Flaming Arrows are a historic reality)

I do not need or want the useless complexity of piercing, slashing, etc physical damages.

Magical VS Physical DMG type is a YES

But Ice, Fire, lit, wind, poison, holy, death, etc is a NO.

Still, I don't know if you have some sort of rock paper relationship in your magic. But if you want to support an RPS relation with no damage type, the way you can do it is for example make a spell that protect yourself or nullify another type of magic.

For example:

Spell A (Water): Ice Shell: add 2 magical defence point to unit.

Spell B (Fire): Fire Blast: Make 5 damage, ignore all water magic defense spells.

This way, you indirectly have a multiple damage which raise the same stat and which enforce a rock paper scisor relationship and the relation is the same for all the spells in the game. So you don't end up which diffirent kind of damage type within each element and end up with a complex RPS relation.

Ok, if you wanna play hard, I shall propose the hardocish system (not very much, but still).

Two main types of damage: Physical & Magical.

Physical:

• Blunt
  
• Pierce
• Slash

Magical:

• Wind
• Fire
• Earth
• Water
• By your powers combined - I am Captain Planet!
• Light (Life)
• Shadow (Death)

Simple and good!

P.S. Btw - I hope the magical damage is not only a damage bonus. I mean every damage type should have it's pros and cons. It shouldn't be like: ok, you have a sword (dmg 8), add a fire crystal and it will increase the damage by 5 - so in the end it will deal 8 + 5 = 13 pure damage; every damage type is changed (ratio 1:1) into pure damage. That would be poor.

Yes, exactly.

It doesn't. Go and get hit by a mace, slashed by a sword and pierced by a lance, it's pretty different too. Even getting shot by a pistol and getting shot by a bow is pretty different.

We don't need Fire Damage for that, you can make Fireball make "Magic Damage" and then add continuous damage to the unit for X turns. It works nearly the same and is far less complex (you only need one magic attack and magic defense attribute).

Also, saying that the game would be a dumbed down console strategy game because only having one damage type is totally false, you can make really complex combat systems with one single damage type: you could add fatigue, morale, chains of command, and another million ideas that make the system complex (and more realistic too, whether that's good or bad) with only a single damage type. It's pretty surprising to defend that the only possible source of strategy are damage types.

I'm not saying it's the only source of strategy, but, in a game about Magic, Magic damage types are a huge part of it. The rest is all subject to opinion. I also understand how getting slashed and getting crushed are quite different but I do consider them rather Mundane forms of damage when compared to something like a lightning bolt.

Votes so far.

45 for Yes at 92%

4 for No at 8%

I voted no, but this is partly because I believe the poll to be biased by the way it presents the possibility.

I'd much prefer a system, a little like in HoMM4/HoMM5, where damage type resistances only mattered in rare cases. Like fire elemental resisting fire, thunderbird resisting lightning or undead being immune to poison. What shouldn't be forgotten is that these can be defined either on the unit (ent : 2x damage from fire) or on the spell itself (fireball : 2x damage against plants). It is easy to see that the second case doesn't need to define damage types (only unit types).

I believe it would make for a much cleaner (and modable) system to have both units and spells have tags, and then add special properties (abilities) that modify the damage dealt depending on the tags. Then you can easily write down spells which do not hurt flyers (earthquake) without having flyers immune to rockfalls as a side effect of both having the "rock" damage type. And nothing would prevent you from adding an earth elemental, immune to both.

But that's just how I would implement the whole thing. In short : it's not in my hands anyway.

Honestly, I am biased in thinking that we Need Magical Damage types like Boogiebac talks about further up in the thread. The game will have a robust magic system and a very diverse range of magical monsters to fight. I've been playing games like this for 20 years now and I can honestly say I think it's something that is truly needed. To those who prefer depth in mêlée combat I'm sure they feel the same as I do only about slashing and crushing etc etc instead. I don't mean to belittle mêlée combat, it's just in a game called "War of Magic" I feel magical damage types would be a bigger thing then mêlée fighting. The more options the better IMO, but Brad did already state they wouldn't concentrate on that. That only leaves Magical Damage Types left. It's that, or one generic damage type, period. IMO without a Very Robust system to back it up only having one total damage modifier would be a bad idea and a waste of a huge potential.

I do respect your opinion though and if you felt the need to vote no as a few others did then more power to you my friend.

Besides, 45 to 4 is a pretty big number. I'm just guessing but I'm pretty sure more then 49 of us have pre-ordered Elemental. If they take that ratio and apply it by how many people it actually represents in the "customer base" then that's a far higher number. Stardock has already demonstrated they listen to their customers and it has proven to be very successful. Not only are we beta testers, but we're customers as well.

You don't really NEED magical damage types.  I think there are plenty of other ways to do it that would be more fun.  I worry that damage types for spells makes each element a clone of the other. Fire damage spell, ice damage spell etc..  If you want some units to be damaged more by some spells than others you can make that a part of the spell.  

What is better than damage types is making sure that each element is completely unique from the others.

For the most part if you see a poll with results like yours there is something wrong with it.  Yours for example doesn't offer other options that would be equally as effective and possibly more fun.

The numbers you are going to get from the poll are pretty much going to be meaningless anyway. The first reason is the bias (uppercase NEEDS), the second is that even in the negative answer, you still mention that there will only be a single damage type. A single damage type and no damage type may seems the same thing, but I'm convinced that many of those who answered the poll understood it as "no difference between a firebolt and a lightning bolt", which of course I'm (almost fully) against. I do not believe that you intentionally made the poll biased (even if it was created to further your opinion), but it is something to be careful about in polling (not that I'm an expert anyway).

Anyway, from Boogiebac answer it seems clear that magical damage types will be in the game. In that case, I hope that resistances/vulnerabilities to them will be reserved to rare cases. Giving a 10% lightning vulnerability for wearing chainmail, 20% cold resistance for wearing fur and 17% silly resistance for having pointy hairs is going to be annoying, and likely ignored quickly. Hopefully they will be reserved for cases where it wouldn't make sense otherwise (fire resistance for a dragon for example).

Master of Magic had elemental damage types but they weren't emphasized. There were a few different types of immunities but nothing like Dungeons and Dragons (+1 soak 5 bash damage, +5 soak 20 slashing damage, 5/- acid resistance, 10/- divine resistance etc).

Personally, I prefer a very limited set of elements/immunities as overuse of them tends to eliminate huge swaths of strategic options.

I suppose if you have differant weapon damage you'd also need to implement differant armour modifiers as well e.g:

Armour:

Leather: Def bonus to lightning attacks, blunt weapon damage. Def penalty to fire attack.

Mail Coat: Def bonus to slashing weapons, def penalty to lightning attack

Plate Armour: Def bonus to slashing and piercing weapons, def penalty to lightning attack and blunt weapons over strength 5.

etc etc.