mini games would be nice for those people that take to long and might stop people from rage quiting as long as theres something to do while you wait... only when your waiting so you can't do it at the start of your turn now that would be well worth it. there was that card game in FFH2 (civ 4 mod) that you could play while your buddy was taking his whole time to move his workers and armys.

This sounds like a good idea as well. Something like the sovereigns projecting their spirits out to do some sabotage, whereby their capabilities to do damage increase gradually over time. With some concept and mechanic tweaking, it could potentially work out quite well.

Please include minigames. Turns of fifteen minutes or greater are not unheard of. Two minutes is about average midgame, but that's just long enough to get me feeling bored between turns but not long enough for me to get out of my chair and find something else to do while waiting.

The minigames should also be something you can just set aside when your turn comes up again and come back to later. I don't think they should have an  meaningful impact on the game (though I'm fine with a card game where you can bet a fair amount of money when playing against PCs) but they should give some small token to make them feel like you aren't wasting your time.

"Congratulations! You defeated Arch Kibald in Wizard Chess! You gain +2 gold/+2 favour!" is good enough for me.

Lets just invent a time machine where the waiting player teleports to the time when the other player has finally completed his or her turn.  

Problem solved.  Call Chuck for the time machine.

I think if you play in windowed mode you will have time for all the solitare and match you can ever want. I don't think its part of the core gameplay to allow such frivolities and would rather spend my time managing my empire during other's turns. I am wondering though, what kinds of games would they want to make?

-Imperial solitare

-Dragon checkers

-Connect four... trade routes

What is the point?

The point is that they want the devs to spend time on things that don't actually enhance the game for some odd reason. Thats the only excuse i can think of.

Enhance the game for whom? If you are a person who sees these additions as being an enjoyable aspect, then to you at least these things will be considered an enhancement, as the purpose of the game is penultimately to entertain, then ultimately and as a result, to make sales.

The question then becomes - to how many potential customers will these additions be considered enjoyable, and does that figure justify the resources used to implement them?

That is something I'm not going to even try to answer, as there is too much in it that is not ascertainable by a third party.

The main message here is that these things are relative and differ from person to person, such that you cannot affirm that something either is or is not an enhancement (for the most part) in the general sense. You may say "to some" or possibly "to many", and if you are truly in a position to, you might even say "to most" though rarely is that the case.

No. Any game that advertises itself as having mini games inside it to you keep from getting bored is not likely to do well. And be 'enhance the game' i mean the core game. Like, citys and troops and magic and such. The things that we are actually playing the game for. Mini games are nice and all, as long as they don't effect MP, but i am not buying or playing the game, for the mini games.

And, to cover the possibility. If there is someone out there, who is going to buy elemental just for the mini games you can play in between turns and no other reason.....I pity you.

I'm fine with not including anything to do between waiting for turns if the game never crashes when you alt-tab and plays noise/jiggles an alert when it's your turn again.

I'll spend 40-90% of my time not playing Elemental during multiplay games. That's acceptable.

Just go in windowed mode, or were you just trolling?

I agree with you on a certain level. If the mini-games feel out of place or are implemented in such a way as to be merely a distraction or a time-killer, then they could very well end up detracting from the game. However if you recall, the condition was that these mini-games should not give that impression, to the degree that they become ingratiated into the game such that they become a part of it as much as the combat phase and the spellbook. In this way, you should no longer be able to accurately label them "mini-games". Going into your channeler's study room and working on spell research, or having the swordmaster educate you on the finer points of armed combat are two examples of what could possibly be an effective and immersive addition to the game, as well as being a solution to waiting-times (if done right).

Lastly, I really do stress that when discussing any thing, the purpose of that thing should always remain in focus. If the purpose of a game is to entertain, and a person purchases this game because they find a particular aspect of it entertaining, why should that earn your pity only because you are not entirely partial to that aspect? You are of course free to pity what and whom you will, but I think that if something fulfills its purpose, and a person interacting with that thing achieves their intended goal, then that is not a thing to warrant pity. The specifics of the objects, goals and intentions could justify pity, but in this particular case I don't think it holds weight.

Triple post.

Triple Post.

Who's trolling? I didn't really see any troll posts. It's possible that you might be refering to either me or Cerevox since we posted just before you. I'm pretty sure Cerevox holds the honest opinion that Elemental should have no minigames, although the "pity" remark was a bit off-colour.

--

Actually, come to think of it, I did purchase Warcraft III solely for the minigames - the RTS part of it was overbearing and the online community was just too good at the game for me to ever enjoy it. Now the towerdefenses and microgames that game out later were the reason I purchased *that* game... but that's a different story about why bing mod-friendly is a good thing. : )

Istari has some pretty key points about the game not being a distraction or a time-waster. Multiplayer "meta" games should never add to the length of the turn, nor should they distract a player from the focus of taking their turn. The goal is to provide a source of entertainment to those unhappy sods whose friends are gigantic slowpokes and take five minutes plus for every turn, yet somehow seem to think everyone else takes forever.

To these said friends, "things to do while waiting between turns," is a selling point, funnily enough, but as Cerevox says, not one that belongs on a box cover. When we're shopping for our next board game, we dissect the mechanics and look at how long it takes to play, and if the mechanic deals well with between-turn boredom. We don't want buy games that basically consist of four-man solitaire that require you to sit quietly until the person on your right is done.

Sure, everyone could bring a book, DS, newspaper, but then we're not really playing the board game together, and we spend most of our time "not" focused on the game and we disrupt the flow by being distracted and not interested in what is happening at the table. Those activities actually start making the turns get longer and longer, and the dis-interest in the game gets palpable.

Here's a list of what we can do between turns in a real life board game, along with some common problems we have that prevent doing them on computers.

• Chat about the game currently in play (disrupted by crude chat-windows and/or lack of voice chat)
• Study our foes strategy and pieces (Fog of War breaks this)
• Study our own pieces, refine our own actions (games that don't let you look at things after hitting end turn)
• Read the rules for the game for a better understanding (broken by the help files not being accessible in game)
• Fidget and build houses from the wheat tokens (you'd break your monitor if you picked the wheat up on a PC)
• Read the game lore, sourcebooks like D&D (What game lore? Reading on a computer? Madness)
• Play with the owner's cats (You'd break the monitor again if you tried putting his cat in it)

The thing is, Fall From Heaven  and Civilization actually do most of those things pretty well (crummy chat system not withstanding) and yet people are *still* bored between turns. Some changes (like removing Fog of War) change the game dramatically even though they'd give us things to do, and the way it changes the game is often not something we're willing to put up with.

The idea behind the minigame is it is a diversion that the developers control. Plonking off for a bit to play shoot'em or solitaire or start reading a book, means the players aren't focused on your game and aren't paying attention when their turns roll around. If Elemental however finds or gives players something to do within the real game (and this doesn't have to be a minigame, though that is one form of side-entertainment) it means they control the player's attention. When their turn rolls around, the minigame is automatically minimized, immediately bringing the player back to the action. Even during the minigame, the player can be fed continous information about the world in the minigame's interface.

Control the experience, push the player in the right direction, and keep the interest focused on the game. And yes, I agree that a popup button to play "space invaders" has no place in Elemental, I wouldn't feel right about that. But having a dialog option built in the diplomacy window to invite leaders of state to play a friendly (or competitive) game of Wizard's Chess while I wait for the next turn is something I definitely appreciate.

I realize this is a gigantic wall of text, but I hope people will actually read it rather than skimming over it to find what I'm really saying.

Perhaps it's just me, but I'd like any consideration of minigames to consider how they could be used in singleplayer. Picture solitare(cards of fate)/minesweeper (trap sweep, crystal scouring)/arcomage...in MP it's a diversion, perhaps gambling mana or gold.
How about use of these as an optional quest minigame in singleplayer. I'd quite like a long arcomage battle to determine if I get just the quest item or the quest item and a tiny xp/gold/mana bonus. I think if there were limits, diminishing returns or a hard cap on benefits of doing the minigames it would be a nice fun twist. (like the land battles in spacerangers 2 giving money and xp, perhaps a little too much late game for how easy they are. FFH2 had the tiny diplomacy boost you could gain, a nice token effect.)

So, token effects:

Tiny boost (xp/gold/mana/relationship/etc)
A visual only change (gain a prize you can wear - a hat, shiny shoes, a badge you can equip or a title for a unit)
Large boosts (for optional games of chance, like playing arcomage/roulette, but not for a chess/minesweeper minigame where you can be certain of a win or requiring too much thought (chess))

Game linked between turn actions?

Vision spells...spies in enemy territory etc. - Gives you the option of seeing opponents clicks for the previous turn, this turn or 'n' turns ago. So if you have say a single spy, maybe you can see actions in previously explored enemy areas after insertion. With a delay of a few turns, so insert them on turn 100 and on turn 110 you can see what they were doing on turn 100. By turn 121 you can see actions from turns 100-111. etc.

How about more Interactions with heroes? play minesweeper to see if heroes randomly make it out alive of a dungeon (you lose and they die, leaving equipment in an adventure location, they live and they do whatever they want with the loot and their lives). Play solitare to see if they lose all their money in an inn. (you win and gain gold/items from them, or they earn money from you and buy something fancy)

I think it'd be interesting if you were the mastermind playing xanatos speed chess with the NPCs in your lands. Playing little mini-games with them, trying to keep them alive, equip them with items and eventually hire them or use them. So you may want to lose a certain minigame or be encouraged to go out of your way to save an NPC... say spending mana in a minesweeper minigame to stop the mines/traps from killing the NPC.

Just my thoughts...

Mini games would mean at the end of your turn in multiplayer you would have something to do, some time to kill maybe even get online stats for the mini games or even an editor to make one for yourself or friends or other people. Would be nice be able to do something while you wait for the other people to finish there turns.

And with the minigames built into elemental, the game can just minimize the minigame when your turn rolls around again so you actually take it, unlike my Civ games where someone fires up a pinball game on their machine after getting bored and plays it for ten minutes... after the start of their next turn.

Everybody got pretty irked about that.