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Elemental: Beta 1 retrospective

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Elemental: Beta 1 retrospective

from JoeUser Forums

Elemental_Es_10-22-08 copyThis is going to be long. I beg for forgiveness up front. :)

So for those of you just tuning in, Elemental has just completed a marathon 8 month Beta 1 cycle. The purpose of which was to explore all kinds of new game mechanics and try different things out.  It went so well that in our next game, I’d like to bring the beta people in even earlier. 

For Beta 1, we stripped out the graphics engine forcing users to play on a “cloth map” interface. We went through considerable lengths to ensure that beta 1 was unpleasant to play.  The goal was to get people to think about what makes a good game rather than thinking about graphics or features per se.

From that marathon beta we got a incredible amount of feedback, online discussions, and lots of debates. We read them at length and they made us think about a lot of different things that we hadn’t thought of before.

So what was the impact? Below I’m going to walk you through the tangible differences to the game based on the betas and the beta tester debates.

The Camps

No one will ever agree on the single best way to make Elemental. No matter what we do, there will be dissatisified people. It’s inevitable because (and I consider this unfortunate) the gaming industry has reached a point where there is a severe lack of what we call “new IP”. That is, games that don’t include a roman numeral after the name. Worse, when we do get new games, they’re increasingly designed to work on both PC and consoles which means that their feature set has to work on the lowest common denominator.  As a result, Elemental has a lot of hopes behind it.

But we have to be careful. Anything designed to be all things to all people is doomed to failure. So with Elemental, we’ve had to really consider what the game is about and focus on that game.

Camp #1: The Settlers Camp

This is the camp I’m nominally from.  That’s where you mine resources which in turn get processed into one thing and then turned into another before being used as yet another. The economic system in Elemental was (early on) very much like this.  You mined metal. This metal was processed into metal bars which in turn were turned into weapons, armor, etc. Which in turn were shipped to where you wanted to build the unit.

This was one of the concepts that the beta program jetisoned. Not because it was a bad idea but because A) there is a “Settlers” game already and B) it would so overwhelm the rest of the game.

Camp #2: The Master of Magic Clone Camp

I am nominally part of this camp as well.  This camp’s input tended to be “Master of Magic had X” and that itself was enough to argue that Elemental should have it.  While Elemental is almost certainly the most similar game to MoM since MoM itself, it is, by no means, a clone of it.

Camp #3: The Fall from Heaven Camp

The popular Civ IV mod has lots of fans (myself included). There’s certainly plenty of items in Elemental that are similar to what is in Fall from Heaven since both ultimately are civilization style games.

Camp #4: The Panzer General /  Magic: Total War camp

This is the group that argued, quite correctly that with a subtitle “War of Magic” that it made sense to focus on the warfare elements of the game.

Camp #5: The SimFantasy camp

The term isn’t meant to be dismissive of those who would like a truly organic world.  At the one extreme, you have Elemental as a board game and at the other extreme you have Elemental as a fantasy world simulation.

5 Major changes from the beta group

So what are some of the big changes that occurred because of the massive beta?

In no particular order:

  1. The Economic System was completely changed.  Early on, like Civilizaiton and countless other games, Elemental had resources stored at the city level rather than the “civilization” level. Beta testers successfully lobbied for a system that has turned out to be a lot more fun where resources go into a global pool but if a city gets put under siege, it is taken out of that global pool. This makes siege warfare meaningful while at the same time letting players focus on their Kingdom (or Empire) rather than dealing with a particular city. It has also, in play testing, helped eliminate two age old problems: City spamming and late game grinding.
  2. A new technology system.  The tech tree system in Elemental was completely changed based on feedback.  This was largely due to the sense that Elemental’s system should be more about recovering lost techs than “discovering” the wheel.  This is a world where one researches an area and recovers a certain technology.  This has had a tremendously positive impact in making each game feel differently in our internal testing.
  3. A better spell system. The old spell system is still in the screenshots. We were married to it but beta testers successfully made the case that spells should be learned through acquiring spell knowledge and then “purchasing” those spells. Since Magic is such a central part of the game, giving players the temptation to grab some weaker spell early (or go for the more powerful spell behind door number 2) was more compelling.
  4. Tactical Battles. Tactical battles haven’t been part of the beta but they’ve been heavily discussed. Originally, tactical battles were designed to be RTS. Then Continuous turns.  But as time has gone on, it’s become clear that the gameplay that people (and frankly that we enjoyed the most) was more closest to XCom. That is, turn based. Tile based. Moving units to the best spots. And eventually working to have your units in spots that are easy to spot the enemy while they themselves are hard to find.
  5. The role of NPCs. Early on, NPCs were just going to be recruitable fighters. But during the beta, it became clear that was far more interesting to give players the option to go out and find units that could help their kingdom economically versus being forced to build a city on turn 1.  Now, players have a realistic choice between city build up right away versus going out and trying to find some good allies right away. Both strategies have risks but now they’re both viable strategies.

Moving forward

With Beta 2 expected in the next couple weeks, we’ll have a pretty good idea whether release is going to be this Summer or next Winter. (Fall is “booked” at retail).  I personally believe that late Summer is still likely but we’ll see.  Beta 2 will give us a pretty good sense of where things stand.

The big questions in our minds will be the role of the NPCs in the world and the role of quests in the world.  Their inclusion are the most obvious “differentiators” for Elemental.  We’ll be balancing and enhancing those features for years to come. 

377,608 views 155 replies
Reply #151 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting CrusaderScott, reply 148


You're referring to a WEGO system, right?  I am very glad EWoM is going to be turn-based as no matter how it is implemented, real time battles never feel as tactically satisfying as turn-based battles.  Now that we are going in a TB direction, I agree that WEGO would be the best way to achieve that.  WEGO games provide all the thoughtful tactics that are inherent to a TB game, but also provides the tension of a RTS game as watching the turn's cinematic replay can be very entertaining (the player can watch all the gory fun without having to worry about still playing the game).  Battlefront's Combat Mission uses this system and it makes for a wonderful gameplay experience.  It really is the best of both worlds (TB planning, real time execution).

 

If E:WoM goes with a WEGO system, I will be dancing in the aisles!

If that's what a WEGO system is, then sure. My biggest fear is something that happened fairly often in Age of Wonders - horsemen literally running around my front lines to attack units without melee capabilities. If that happens...I'll still make due. But I won't be pleased.

Quoting ioiioi9, reply 149
ok i dont understand what is this game anymore will someone pls explain

what i expected

battle: real time like total war (not like age of empire) when i say total war i mean squads of 50-100 men

now i see turn based in turn based like hmom what is point of having 1000(or milion) men i squad its like you have 1(visualy and if oponent has same 1000 there is no point of 1000 its like 1 on 1) where 1 hit of players hero magic kill whole or most of units before it even move eh

eh rpg point of game:i imagined it like 1 part of game gorgon alliance where you send your hero on mission for ex and to find magical items

Battles at the moment are turn based - I don't THINK (IE: I can't say for sure) that it'll be like Heroes of Might and Magic, because if it is, I'm out. That sort of battle design is just plain weak.

From what Elemental was advertised as, it's an RPG Strategy game. That is, your Sovereign, hero, and (I presume) Kingdom units gain XP from doing -stuff- and from doing -stuff- gain levels. You can easily take it further, by building armies that suit your Sovereign, naming cities for your Sovereign (I doubt most people would raise a capital city with an utterly stupid name; their Sovereign deserves better).

Or, you can just take it as it comes, gain levels, and play it through like a strategy game. The option to RP will be there, but it isn't held fast and totally required. Some aspects, certainly. At the moment, it's mostly up in the air.

Reply #152 from Elemental Forums Top

Battles at the moment are turn based - I don't THINK (IE: I can't say for sure) that it'll be like Heroes of Might and Magic, because if it is, I'm out. That sort of battle design is just plain weak

eh tnx for answer we share same opinion about batle

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #153 from Elemental Forums Top

I like the changes.

I'd like the quests and NPCs to be varied, that is, to avoid having one quest repeat itself too often, which seems to happen right now (with only a few quests, it's to be expected).

I might even play the tactical battles, although I think that's still room for abusing the ai. Simultaneous turns (giving orders and processing all players orders only once they're all issued) would be great.

Reply #154 from Elemental Forums Top

I guess I'm in that last camp. The desire to have a game world which feels alive, authentic in how it behaves and stuff. Particularly because I hope to create something where the player is simply one character in a world, not a kingdom leader, but one character out of many. An RPG from a TBS view. Cause while a game like Dragon Age is okay...it is all static scenery. There is no real politics because it is stuck to a scripted narrative - which is fine! But then Space Rangers shows off a galaxy that has dozens of mini stories going on in a 'real' time and you in the position of not necessarily being the main actor in those situations. 

 

I'm glad battles aren't RTS if they weren't going to be given the attention that I suppose they needed to have, as much as Total War gives them attention. 

 

 

Reply #155 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Tridus, reply 39

quoting postTactical battles haven’t been part of the beta but they’ve been heavily discussed. Originally, tactical battles were designed to be RTS. Then Continuous turns.  But as time has gone on, it’s become clear that the gameplay that people (and frankly that we enjoyed the most) was more closest to XCom. That is, turn based. Tile based. Moving units to the best spots. And eventually working to have your units in spots that are easy to spot the enemy while they themselves are hard to find.
Well, I half like this. Turn based is good, since the rest of the game is TBS.

But tile based? I don't like tiles. Especially square tiles. They create lots of oddities and weirdness in unit movement speeds and attack distances. There isn't a lot of granularity in movement speeds, units get drastically faster with a single tile increase, and diagonal moves increase speed still (hexes fix that one at least). AoE attacks are also problematic, the next size up for an area attack from hitting one tile is hitting every surrounding tile, which is comparatively huge. Whereas without tiles you can set blast zone sizes with a lot of granularity (5 meters, 10 meters, etc).

Can you ditch the tiles in combat and let units move/attack freely like they would in an RTS while keeping the TBS turn nature? That seems like it'd be great.

 

Yea ... I'd prefer fixed positions (sure, turn based) to having Tiles ... if just because I don't see how a tile-based combat system would work with all the possibilities we seem to have ... as in various unit sizes and so forth. Is battle still going to be individual characters (instead of whole unit?) or are we going to get a HOMM thing where a tile of 1 guy is the same as a tile of 1000 guys? :/

Anyways, I think we would all appreciate a good VIDEO of the Tac Battle system in action.