Elemental -- 'Epic' or not, supposed to be or not?

Its epic to me personally and thats all that I care about (:

Having a blast with the game and its improving quickly.

Cant get enough! I like it when games surprise me like this.

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Nothing kills the feel of mankind struggling on a broken world more than this.

I certainly didn't.  You can revitalize land through essence?  Or do you mean that was removed in beta?

The Dragon is kinda 'epic' in a sorta bland way.  And combat is kinda dull, so maybe that's a wash.

World changing spells are epic (raise/lower), but again as you mention, they are sorta under-utilized as well.  There's not much point in doing this other than to bottleck a path or remove a bottleneck and allow one of your spammed cities a bit more room.  Would be nice to create harbor points with it or have mega spells like volcanoes that actively destroy improvements/buildings/creatures.  That would make it more epic IMHO

The rest of your ideas are pretty damn good.

 

 

double post

MoM was EPIC in its own way... like LOTR pre-movie era, to utter otherwise is Blaphamous!!!!

On the Population thingy... would it make sense to somehow tie ones reputation from adventure and diplomacy to a polynomial influence to one's prestege?  ie. the more you make a name for yourself the faster your population can grow...

But my question is...  What are all the idle folks doing in our elemental economies?  Are they producing food, extracting raw materials, refining and producing finished goods?  I do not get a feeling those things relate to how many folks I have available to work, I feel like I have buckets of folks to recruit/train troops from and the buildings do all the work by magic?!  Shouldn't a large incrrease in conscription/recruitment affect (even to a small degree) production?  There should be trade-off decisions that the player as sovreign needs to weigh the consequences prior to making/executing.  Would be nice to get more of these tough choices....

In the intro sequence for LoTR movie, is it epic that throngs of soldiers go flying under Sauron's attacks or does the epicness lie in the fact that a single individual (Sauron) can make such powerful attacks? Is it only epic if you combine those two facts? Is a nuke less epic if it only obliterates a few thousands of people?

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Game mechanics reinforcing "epicness": At this point and with Stardock having to... er... suffer... er... popularity contests for new ones and in the way of changing things like magic system, I prefer not to comment about "Lore x Gameplay = Epic".

I could agree with the need of more struggle in the start of the game though. If fun factor and this being a TBS allows it. Epicness is based on efforts needed and/or effects produced. If it's easy, it's not epic because there is no challenge that a John Doe cannot beat.

Speaking of "epic".....I found this user's forum signature while posting on one of the other forums I help out on and thought it was apropos given the thread title! 

I laughed so hard I think I cried.  Totally made my day........and yes I can say I have not (as of yet) used the word "epic" in-person.  Guess I'm not epic enough! 

Have to agree with this. The fact that you treat "epic" as an quantifiable, scientific measurement is kinda laughable. The word means nothing beyond "good" or "a lot"...basically as useful as the word "cool". So it would be like saying "LOTR is cool, Civ 4 isn't, was Elemental supposed to be cool?" Nonsense.

Epic - A word usually used to describe something that should have finished on the high two hours ago but meanders on for a further three hours. Usually used to build bladder endurance in the populace at large.

Well, the real question is: what does the dev had in mind when they create the fondation of this game? Like Nick-Danger said in his title "supposed to be" epic? (Or change Epic by large scale trembling earth shattering decision ;)). Personnaly I didn't read all the post out there in the forum. But, I didn't found a post where Stardock as a compagny (or at least the team that produce Elemental) speak of what they had in mind when they created it. It's hard to make a choice or make a comment on what is good or bad in a game when you don't know what it's supposed to be. For example: let's take LoTR (I bough the 1-2 with expension, sorry for my english :)) and I knew what I was buying because it was clear to me that it would have a ressemblance with the movie. I will buy this game for sure, because I really love the compagny and the game that they have produce so far, and I'm not a picky player. I already like what I saw in the gameplay movies (and one of my friend buy it and I watch him played) and I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy the game. BUT, it would help to clear the mind of the gamer to have a post from the dev about how they saw the world of elemental BEFORE saying well this game should be more like or this game rock. If someone has a link to share for this kind of topic, please share it and I'll read what the dev have in mind for this game .

Ep-ic

n.

adj

1. Of, constituting, having to do with, or suggestive of a literary epic: an epic poem.

 2. Surpassing the usual or ordinary, particularly in scope or size: "A vast musical panorama . . . it requires an epic musical understanding to do it justice" (Tim Page).

 3. Heroic and impressive in quality: "Here in the courtroom . . . there was more of that epic atmosphere, the extra amperage of a special moment"(Scott Turow).

For the record I've seen two conflicting ideas as to how to make the game epic.  MORE people, and LESS.  And I can see points in both arguments...

Gavadel

Lol, funny how every discussion about epic-ness devolves into a battle of dictionaries.

*gets popcorn out*

Well, it's a  large bag of popcorn... from reading this thread I can't tell if that qualifies.

The butter, however, is epic.  There can be no debate.  It's bacon flavored.

..and that is what matters!

All I can say is I think about my empire while not playing and think about how to improve it.  I've only had 2 substantial games (thanks to memory fails ).

But, generally, if I think and try to consider how to better play something out of the blue when not playing it... /long winded

Game feels pretty epic to me, man.  Needs better AI mainly.  Don't care about fixing the world or which factions do what, though your suggestions sound fun.

Fix AI (which I know he's doing) and fix crashes :x and I'll play this one for a long time.

Oh, goodness NO, not another debate about what makes a game "epic."

As if us asking the devs to make the game feel balanced wasn't vague and subjective enough, now you want them to make it feel epic as well? When people can't even agree on what the word means (despite, I might add, the dictionary definitions staring them in the face)? How exactly are they supposed to quantify and operationalize "epicness"? It's just a vague adjective where half the people arguing for it aren't even clear on the actual meaning of the word.

The devs need specific suggestions: e.g. add combat mechanics for block/dodge/parry. Add elemenatal resists and vulnerability for elemental damage spells. Add maintenance costs for cities to reduce city spam. Those are the kinds of suggestions they can evaluate and maybe do something with.

Vague adjectives don't help them much.

Epic just describes a long story, I do not see how it applies to computer gameplay at all. Or are you asking for a long backstory that rivals Homers Ilias and Odyssee?

I'm not fussed over whether it's epic or not, or about the definitions of epicness, as long as the gameplay is good. I did find this idea interesting though:

HAHAHAHA... I love how no one is reading the OP and just keying on the word epic.

This thread is epic win.

Great post here Nick, well said. I especially love the UO city name references.

I think I can illuminate some reasons for why things turned out the way they did. I'm probably gonna piss a few people off by saying this, but, being an ex industry insider I can attest to this because Ive seen it (and unfortunately have even been told to do this) first hand in other companies. Note, I've seen and done this in OTHER COMPANIES, and all companies don't work the same nor do they act the same on an internal level.

The Real Reason why things turned out the way they did is Time, plain and simple.

They had a Grand, Epic Inspiration, for most of the game and game world. Hell the game even has a novel, which also points to more Epicness that was planned. When the time frames got bumped up and shortened by six months, internally, it must have looked like a sh!t storm and nobody had enough TP to clean up the ensuing mess. They went from having the time necessary to balance out large numbers, basically for everything, to only having enough time to lay out basic rules with basic math. That's why so many things have such simple math behind it. Like buildings that only produce +1 of something and the beefed up version only grants +5. These numbers are Small and Easy to balance and don't require a lot of thought or time...much like a board game. When you keep the math simple you can balance things down the road a lot easier and hence the job doesn't take nearly as long.

The side effects of this is now we have simplified rules and mechanics in a world clearly designed to be much more than what it is. Unit counts are small, attacks do small base numbers of damage, defense values are tiny....why? Because it's simple to do and easy to work the math. When you start getting into complicated things like high damage and resistance modifiers, calculating unit costs that aren't rounded off to the nearest whole number, applying spell modifiers that have unique and varied effects, things get a Lot more complicated and end up taking a Lot Longer to do correctly, and with the extra six months gone there just simply wasn't enough time to get into detailed mechanics.

This can be proven and is also Blatantly Obvious once you start looking in the file structure and start seeing the internal mechanics behind things. There are skills and abilities in the code that aren't hooked up. There is a basis for a magical item system that wasn't implemented, and there are tags and hooks in the XML that don't do anything at all, so why are they there? They're there because initially they WERE planned on being used, but there wasn't enough time to implement it, so they disabled it.

It all boils down to them being rushed in the end and not having enough time to live up to the inspirations behind the game. They were rushed and release was pushed up when it was obvious that they needed more time to do things right and complete the tasks at hand. When it boils down to it, we got an unfinished game without nearly half as much detail as it should of been. I think Stardock's doing decent at making up for it though because that first expansion they're giving us is what truly should have been version 1.0 of the base game. Believe me it's painful for me to even admit that, so I can imagine how the guys must feel internally.

As long as they live up to the original design intentions and DON'T make me pay another $70 bucks (LE edition here) for it I'll be happy. I have no problem waiting for the game to be finished especially since I have the majority of the tools and mechanics I need to work on my mods. Now that they have the needed time to do things right though I EXPECT these things to be Done Right and with the Depth and Complexity (no not too much complexity) that the game deserved from the start. I also EXPECT not have to have to Pay For It out of My Pocket until the game is where it should be for what I consider my initial $70 was worth. Also, I'm pretty poor so I expect my initial $70 to be worth a lot. The first expansion should be free because that's where the game should have been at version 1.0 . The SECOND expansion should be free to say "Hey, sorry we f'ked up, here's a new toy to make up for it". As long as they go along with that, I'll keep buying Stardock games in the future. If they don't, well, I've spent a lot of money on Stardock stuff over the years, and I plan on spending a lot more in the future, but not if they don't live up to their promises on what the game should have been for my initial $70 bucks.

1.  Anyone (apparently) who purchases the game pre 1.1 gets both the first and second expansion free.

2.  You keep saying 70 dollars, but you mean 50.  You bought the extra 20 dollars worth of stuff on your own.  In fact, I even remember reading before release that the profit margin was lower on the Limited Edition than the regular.

Ahh, I knew the First Expansion was free. I must have missed the part where Frogboy said the second expansion was free to those who bought on that date. I thought he said only the First Expansion was free for those who bought by date? Where did he say the Second Expansion was as well?

Yes, I keep saying 70, because I spent 70, and the only reason the second 20 was "extra" was because they didn't have the LE Edition available for order From The Start. So I consider my $70 total, for the First Limited Edition game, to be my FIRST investment, which I think anyone who spent that kind of money should too. I paid $70 for a game and the extra Limited Edition goodies.

I also knew the profit margin on that edition was low, which is why it was limited. They still made money, and I still spent money. I'm grateful for the extra goodies, that's why I spent the Total $70 and not just $50. If you got the regular edition, your game cost you 50. If you got the LE Edition, your game cost you 70. Pretty simple math there my friend.

EDIT: I found where he said the second one was free too. Nice . Good stuff on Stardock's part.

Look for the 1.08 ETA topic

Yeap , thanks.