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Let’s try this again…

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Let’s try this again…

from JoeUser Forums

This week we’ve put up a couple of journals that are soliciting input from players on what they’d like to see in terms of faction customization.

My journals were clearly too wordy as I failed to convey the fundamental questions at hand.

So I’ll put it in bullet point form. :)

  • We are rapidly nearing Beta 3 where the “game” itself comes together.
  • At that point we will need to decide where to focus our asset creation (read: Artists and Random House writers).
  • Presently, Elemental supports Alignment (Kingdom vs. Empire), Faction (Altar, Pariden, etc.) and Race (Men, Urxen, Trog, etc.).
  • Presently, the assets (read: Art and Writing) has not been put in place which means we can still make pretty significant changes.
  • There are two general directions to take:
    • Eliminate the race distinctions and instead build out the Factions with more lore and artwork. Current customization of factions would remain.
    • Expand the race distinctions and provide more assets and code to support players creating their own custom factions made up by their own custom races.

There are pros and cons in either direction. 

Some people might find it confusing that factions and races are different. Kraxis is a faction that is made up of men that is part of the Empire. Umber is a faction that is made up of Urxen, a Fallen Race that is also part of the Empire.

On the other hand, having factions and races that are different provides us the ability to provide customization in terms of culture and genetics.

In Civilization, the differences between civilizations were ones of culture. They’re all humans.

In Master of Orion, the differences between civilizations were purely genetics. The factions were the races.

In Elemental, the difference between civilizations is based on their culture (Altar vs. Pariden) AND based on their race (Men vs. Trog).

So the question is, where would people like to see the focus? More emphasis on making the game lore with the 10 factions.  Or more emphasis on making it easy for players (in game) to customize their own factions/races?

509,277 views 207 replies
Reply #201 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting ikros, reply 51
I think customization is important, but not on the art side. It's stats and abilities that are important to customize. I don't care if my custom faction has blue armor or red, I care if they have +1 attack or +5.

In GC2 I've spent about 2 hours building cool little ships and 200 hours playing through races with different customized stats. Customizable art assets are cool but don't necessarily add longevity.

So for the art/lore, focus on the 10 factions for now and leave customization for the gameplay.

I agree Stats are always more important than art in any game. To me Art is just fluff but I do like fluff so art should still be customizable but the stats should rank higher.

 

Reply #202 from Elemental Forums Top

I vote for both distinct factions/cultures (lore) and distinct races. After all, a human from one culture might be different to a human from another, and they might approach combat differently, settlement development differently. I love customization but I also love good lore. I remember spending days just reading up on-line the lore for various games and then deciding based on only great story and lore to buy the game. Yet, I love(d) customizing my races, etc.

So I vote for both.

 

Regards,

 

JF

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Reply #203 from Elemental Forums Top

Please I hope this gets read.

I have been playing games for some time and while I know everyone has an opinion, I am hoping mine will have merit enough to be considered. That said, let me give a few suggestions and my reasons.

 

1. Lore as presented through gameplay is important.

Here's why; it's one thing to have a world that anyone can mold and make, however the appeal and depth of story telling, no matter how much you wish otherwise, will always have the power to take people to places far away. Sounds cheesy right? Well no, take for example Lord of the Rings. There have been so many successful titles(probably too many) that have spawned since the movies. Why is this? I find that, while some people are creative enough to make rich, flushed out, working, living worlds, most people lack either the creativity or inspiration. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just means that some people would rather read a good book than try to write one.

The second reason, if there needs to be one, is immersion. Here I think the best example is the Warcraft series of games. Love it or hate it, World of Warcraft has a great deal of depth to it's lore. This adds a tremendous amount of entertainment to the gameplay because, while anyone can go out and kill a skeleton for some reason or another, it has more significance if you know that skeleton has been spawned from from crazy undead-lich-prince-guy that you know the awesome backstory behind. I will contest that feeling like your actions are significant and take part in shaping a world is vastly more enjoyable than just flying through similar 4x gameplay.

Thirdly, I think that making a game that takes place in a world that is both randomly generated AND has features that are unique to the lore does a great deal to make a player feel like, while their experience might be totally different, they are still taking part in a world that has meaning. The best example for this is Fall from Heaven.

 

2. Alignment should not be chosen, but rather earned.

I too can remember a time not long ago where before the start of every game one had to select if they wanted to fight for good or evil. A silly notion. As games have evolved today you are seeing more and more genres merging with elements of RPGs. Namely, actions that shape alignment. So instead of simply selecting if you would like to be Kingdom or Empire perhaps it would be more enjoyable to have an alignment gauge that is changed by your decisions during quest and diplomacy. I personally thought GalCiv2 had the alignment thing down functionally, I still think it needed more depth. However the random events you had to make decisions on were an awesome way to shape alignment.

I am not, however, say you should do away with Kingdom and Empire factions! Keep them, but only as the selectable, premade factions that are derived directly out of the lore. Custom Sovereigns should start with a clean slate, or perhaps have alignment changeable during creation via points. I think this should also apply to any races, crazy though it may be, I would like to play a game of monstrous troll-people that are devoted to peace and democracy, or a game where the divine angle-people summon demons and hold regular sacrifices. Though I think this should be moderated to a degree, for example certain characteristics of races starting off with slightly changed alignments. Like taking the death magic book think makes you slightly more evil, while the heroic trait might make you slightly more "good."

This may seem to conflict somewhat with the importance of lore, and I agree. There is a difficult line to waltz here and it hasn't been done very well in the past with 4x games. It usually comes to a point where you end up picking your alignment during the game based on decisions, Fall from Heaven and GalCiv2 work in this way. I have played as good Yor, and evil Altarians so the lore does indeed end up conflicting with the player determining his alignment. However if you think about what Elemental has you doing(creating a brand new empire) that empire could have completely differing ideals than the parent empire it is based on. Example: The democratic United States splitting from a monarchistic Britain.

 

3. Races need to have meaningful impact on gameplay.

I can not stress this one enough. The biggest disappointment I had with GalCiv2 is that the different races were not meaningfully different enough as to feel like another race. Twilight of the Arnor helps this somewhat, splitting the tech trees was very ambitious and I loved it. Big points. However, I hate to seem like I'm bashing a game I love, but this is hopefully constructive. Playing as robotic people, should feel and look like robots. Playing as Draconian should look and feel like you are playing as awesome dragon people.

This will no doubt be the hardest thing to get right. It's very tricky to say the least but allow me a suggestion; much like how your sovereign can only select one profession, for races there should be a list of characteristics that are separate and exclusive allowing you to only pick one. This would be like a major racial archetype. I think there is some awesome possibility here when talking about races more so than sovereigns. I think I should give some examples of what this might include. It could range from a physical race archetype like wings, giant/halfling, or undead. To something like a social archetype of how your empire is organized like underground fortress cities, religious theocratic crusaders, tree hugging hippy naturalist, or something like evil fire and brimstone demon worshiping cities built over lava pits. You get the idea. 

I really really hope to see some changes made to the race creation process. I feel like above everything else on the table race uniqueness and difference is paramount. Which is why, if in the process of development, you have to pick because of time between making races as customizable as possible or as unique as possible I would have to go with unique. It's one thing to have ten different races all with the same buildings and same looking troops that all fight in about the same way but have vastly different minor racial things like "females can be in your military" or " all your troops get +2 hitpoints" or "you can build one building others can't" "you can make one sword others can't". And quite another to have ten races, all with different looking buildings, all with different looking people (and I mean more than just white humans and blue humans, think trolls vs dragon people) and just a few major differences. It is really really clear which is more work, which is why I am sure this isn't really a long debate with most other game developers.

But then, wouldn't that be why Stardock isn't most other game developers?

 

That ended up being quite a bit more lengthy than I thought it would be. Anyways, PLEASE CRITICIZE MY POST. Seriously, people shouldn't shy away from criticism, even the insulting kind can make you catch something you missed. If the goal is to come to the best decision then the only option is critically examine every suggestion and judge it based upon the merit of it's position.

-Adante-

Reply #204 from Elemental Forums Top

Yes, I'd vote for unique races and lore, too. Uniqueness is difficult to achieve, so I think 4-5 different species would be enough. One could alter the races with factions, so big differences (magic/no magic, flying/not flying, use metal/does not use metal) would be in the races and small differences (+1 in trade...) could be in factions. The MoM races could be a goog start and then make them better :grin: .

Reply #205 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Adante, reply 203

1. Lore as presented through gameplay is important.
Agreed.  Better to let us discover the lore than have it spoon fed  to us at the start.

2. Alignment should not be chosen, but rather earned.
Again, agreed.

One of life's general rules is 'actions speak louder than words'. There have been RPGs where one can choose to be 'good' but then go around and kill wantonly, loot innocent peasants' houses, etc. yet remain 'good'.  The idea of consequences/accountability is important.  It's one the the reasons Garriott's Ultima series was so groundbreaking.


3. Races need to have meaningful impact on gameplay.
My impression is that they won't be adding races just to pad the number.  How meaningful the race/faction differences are remains to be seen.  I'm not sure from your post how meaningfully different you want, and it's not something easily quantifiable.

PLEASE CRITICIZE MY POST. Seriously, people shouldn't shy away from criticism, even the insulting kind can make you catch something you missed.
Sorry, as I pretty much agree.

Reply #206 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting pigeonpigeon, reply 175

No reason to be sorry, Pigeon. I agree with you on everything but me being "in the minority". Go back and count all the replies to this thread alone and you'll see it's more like 50-50 at this point. Aside from that I agree mostly with what you say. I still want some customization though.


But see, you have to take into account the demographic. If Stardock were making a game meant solely to appeal to the people that are likely to frequent these forums or participate in the beta, then it would come out much, much differently. The people on these forums are typically going to be much more... let's say "aggressive" about the game. We will probably on average use many more mods and customize our games to a significantly higher extent than the average targeted audience. We'll on average delve deeper into the options and tools provided to us, and therefore our collective opinion as a board is heavily biased. 

We are not a good statistical sample of the people who will (hopefully) buy and play and fall in love with Elemental. If people like you and me and the average forumer here do turn out to be the main audience for Elemental, then it will have failed dismally.


Also, you're forgetting the custom races will draw on the same AI as the stock races. If you look at the way Frogboy defines the AI in his Dev Journal and how the other race faction modifiers come into play, from a coding aspect all the races whether custom made or not will still follow a programable AI model.


Yes, it is possible to create a custom race that synergizes just as well or even better with a certain AI than even the stock race it was intended for, but that is not the norm. If a custom faction has been built around peaceful bonuses and is not well suited for war, and then is given an aggressive or otherwise inappropriate AI personality, that faction will be failure. To go back to GC 2, imagine the Korx with the AI of the Drengin.

And just as importantly, there is the personality. Just as bad as the Korx, and their tech tree better suited to areas other than warfare, with a warlike AI is the Korx with some arbitrary personality. At least in GC II, each AI was coded for a specific race (to account for changes and mods and what-have-you, but the personality and behavior was specifically built in for that race). Sure, if you want to build a custom faction you can of course choose the most applicable AI.

So yes, lovingly hand-crafted customized factions will work just fine. If you put a lot of time into making interesting and unique customized factions/races, thinking up backstories and where they fit in with everything, then encountering that custom faction in game will be just as fun, if not more so, then interacting with a stock race. But most people, I bet, won't spend so much time just creating and brainstorming factions to play against. If the stock factions are bland, they will get bored and lose interest (I will get bored...) because their games will be largely against bland and uninteresting opponents (relatively speaking, of course).

Playing against a hastily made custom faction doesn't have nearly the charm of playing against stock factions that have had hours and hours of professional care put in to develop them. Random custom faction #27 has no soul, it's just there in the world, but it has no connection to it. It's a faceless enemy (or maybe ally); it's much more fun to interactive with factions that actually belong in the world, that have history, preconceptions and prejudices against other races or factions etc.

 

For the most part I will disagree with you.  In GC2 I usally play with both Stock and custome races many hastily created and there really is no difference. They can all be challanging and fun to play. Currently I have over 40 Custom Races and I mostly play on the largest map with max opponets which are chosen randomly.

I personally perfer to add custom races to a game and use them while still using the stock races as opponets (the more races the better no matter who creates them. I just want the in came custome tools to be user frendly and all me to customize most aspect of the game without having to learn a programming language or download some thired party modding tool.

Reply #207 from Elemental Forums Top

"I just want the in game customization Tools to be user frendly and allow me to customize most aspect of the game without having to learn a programming language or download some third party modding tool."
(edited for spelling)

I would be very surprised if this is not the actual mantra Frogboy has made apparent to the rest of the team who are responsible for the Modding build. (providing that almost all his time, currently, is consumed on writing the AI) :)