I'm not sure I'd go that far with E:WoM, I'd go up to 'fair' on that. But yeah, I'll agree E:FE is already pretty great, and getting better.

Maybe not one of "THE greats" in the history of TBS games, but standing on it's own two feet, WoM is a great game.  I have a fun time playing every time I turn it on, especially with a few mods - and I'm a very picky about my games.

The point is that we have a few people here (in the minority) who expect Elemental to give them the same experience as when they first played HoMM, or MoM.  And when they don't get the same feeling, they consider the game a total failure.  Nostalgia aside, comparing Elemental side-by-side with a game like HoMM or even AoW there is no comparison.  Elemental (WoM or FA) is leaps and bounds better with fully dynamic, randomly generated 3D maps, built-in modding support, highly customizable units, unique and malleable champions, npc mobs that actually -move- around the map.  Elemental's feature list is 10x longer than the former games.

Inspiring post.

+1

Fair enough, I haven't tried any mods, that may really help that game quite a bit.

Agreed here completely.

I do not take comments as personally as you do, I only expressed my opinion - although not in a very constructive way I must admit.

How about you rather make a reply like this:

"Our product is still in development and we hope some of the issues expressed here will be adressed to make this game as good as it can be"

Am a big fan of Stardock and have always been - and will always be.
I just stand by my comments that you once again have made a bad business decision in not abandoning Elemental.

I will wait for "Rebellion" and GalCiv III - but I will not go away

And for everyone person like you there are others like myself. If Stardock had abandoned elemental completely after the debacle of war of magics release then I would never have purchased another title from them. So weither or not you think they made a good business decision or not. They woulda lost my buisness for good and many other peoples as well I would surmise. But they didn't take the EA way of handling things. They admitted the error and moved on to providing a better product in the series. For that they are the better company then most out there imo.

I voted "Good."  I skipped beta 2 so that might be coloring my opinion, but it is coming along really well.  I think there are still some major balance issues but the core is there. 

Pioneers should cost a lot more to make, right now there is no cost for extra cities/outposts and pioneers are cheap so the beginning strat for me is to make as many cities/outposts as I can.  I think it would be better if it were more like Civ 5 where timing on when to build your settler feels really important because it takes so much time that you could be building something else.

I'd also like to see the tech tree fleshed out some more.  A few more techs, not Gal Civ 2 amount but a few more.  The random spell books are very cool; can we have more of these?  If there are eight or twelve of them you could make every civ get at least 1 and no more than X in any given game.  I played three games in a row and didn't see any of these books it was kind of a bummer.

Also faction differences are shaping up well for Magnar and Gilden, I'm looking forward to more of this for the other factions(my favorite being Pariden and the Resolin, I really like magic.)

[quote who="ollyollyenglish" reply="216" id="3137272"                      ...

                        Tolkien emphasized each of his 'factions' by where they came from and where they lived.         ...            The seas, the skies, the pits of hell, and the ice fields. A faction for each environment. And that's the key to faction differentiation. They are shaped by their environment, their habitats that dominate these factions. That's the core of fantasy.   ... 

[/quote]

This strikes me as a very insightful comment!  I think that FE could benefit from it; because it is not too late to shape (at least) a portion of the faction differentiation, based upon "homelands habitat", and the culture that flows from that.  Of course, there are other foundations to culture, including mythology, commerce, and genetics, but your point (from fantasy literature) is really an excellent one!

In fact, your whole post was excellent (constructive and thought-provoking).  It was a pleasure to read!  It was a breath of fresh air, in this (partially) contentious and unpleasant discussion thread.  You sound like a busy guy (teacher, writer, small businessman), but I hope this won't be your last post/reply to these forums.  We could use more views and comments like yours.  Thanks!          

On a related note, how about giving some factions the ability to settle and build cities in otherwise unhospitable terrain? (mountains, deserts etc.) this would give these factions a very different playing field and strategic outlook, no?

Ok then... I started reading this thread before skipping to replying simply by about page 3 because of the negativity and yes it will be a ridiculously long post as i'd like to at least try to make it 'game designer useful' for a game i am currently playing for free. I voted excellent – it’s a beta and it is a massive step up on Beta 2.

I've enjoyed the 3 games i've played so far and have a few suggestions, First game i played altar, second and third Pariden winning all 3 with conquest victories on challenging. What i've done is focus on the areas you have improved rather than slam you for all the things you didn't say you've improved (i know weird).

 1. Monster rebalance.

Yes I can see this. My personal experience was that despite this my Sovereign (in all 3 cases) didn't appear to have too many difficulties. Some things to consider.

- Depending on the difficulty level chosen, monsters could gain experience every turn as they spend their time fighting and marauding and the like thus being more challenging as time goes on.

- I have found monsters don't really use their special attacks but am sure this will be fixed in later Beta's

- I'd go bigger and bolder. Make each creature even more specialised - better strengths and worse weaknesses. Even more initiative and movement to the quick ones, more defence etc to the slow heavy ones. As they level this would make a big difference. Again could be affected by difficulty levle chosen.

 2. Weapon rebalance.

This is a massive improvement and a brilliant move in the right direction. I did find I always went down certain pathways which the AI did not necessarily see as vitally important. Some things to consider:

- It might be worth making a bigger differentiation between the types of armour and how effective they are against various attacks.

- Currently if you move first and get into range you hit first and are then counter attacked. Perhaps initiative should be used not just for move, but also to decide who hits first even if you are attacking you can be hit first by the counter attack (a pre counter if you will). Perhaps a random roll added to both initiative as just because you have 12 I doesn't mean you will always hit a 10I first.

- Champions arcane armour basically means you can walk through the park. My queen didn't bother with spells, she just whacked people. I'd suggest dropping the + level bonus and making it set.

- Armour generally i would look at in terms of initiative negative as this doesn't seem enough of a negative to me given the affect defence has on the game.

- Perhaps consider splitting the armour and weapon types out more on the research pathways so that players have to choose which particular weapon to research (ala longbows)

- stop giving out such powerful weapons randomly from creature battles. I got heartseeker in one battle at about level 3. HEARTSEEKER!

 3. More Spells.

- Great, I’d like to see even more. I didn’t really need to use spells in any of the games as i was so powerful melee wise, but i experimented a bit

- Perhaps consider gaining spells through research rather than through levelling.

 4. Go Big.

- Great concept, I’d like to see you go even bigger than this.

 5. Or Go Home.

- Great idea. Assassin class is excellent now. My only thought is that actually, i played an assassin and 2 mage class and all 3 could wear the heaviest champion arcane armour with no issues.

 6. More understandable stats.

- very nice but I’d suggest adding in a random factor perhaps a D20 for the David and Goliath syndrome. My sovereign was lucky if he took 1 point of damage most of the time.  

 7. Faction Differentiation.

- excellent start. I’d like to see even more differentiation if possible but really we can’t judge until you finish.

- I’d also like to see the AI focus on playing to their strengths.

- The more unbalancing the better

8. Some other things, "went home", there are less techs in Beta 3.

- tricky one. I have always completed the entire research tree by mid game.

- I don’t need lots of the research path. All arcane weapons and armour with some civics is enough.

- Possibly start splitting them up more so that you have to research more of them!

 9. More diplomacy options.

- nice but we need more

- AI’s need to know what to use.

 10. Better memory consumption (my 500 turn game on a large map last night was only using 1.3 Gb), better performance (Brad is working magic with multiple threads), better AI (we are changing the default difficulty to Easy, the AI is getting to good).

- No arguments on performance

- AI is still not making the right calls but its early days. Don’t cast the right spells, don’t research the right things, don’t use their abilities, don’t attack undefended cities etc. Easy should always be easy but everything above that needs focus which i am sure you are doing.

 11. Tons of bug fixes, improvements, polish and tweaking. We replaced a lot of the spell icons to make them more clear and distinct, you can see new trees in the picture below. Lots of new traits for your champions to learn.

- Yes nice - would like more traits even crazily good ones.

Couple of things I would like that still fit your framework:

-       Make defending cities much easier – bigger bonuses (actually make them hard to take even with limited defenders) of at least 50% (i.e. 2 men can take 3).

-       I assume more quests, spells etc will come

-       Boost those monsters according to difficulty and give them xp each turn.

-       Stretch out existing tech tree (i.e. what’s already there) to make people choose their path rather than do all.

Think this is delusional, when even the developers have pretty much agreed they failed and at best it can be considered acceptable. But great?

Sure FE I wouldn't call it great but I suppose people have different tastes so I can accept, but EWOM? And no I don't count mods. 

Way too strong. Of the list of advantages you cite, most of them are useless if the game isn't FUN. Stuff like "Randomly generated 3d maps" (I presume it's the 3d part that is considered superior), build-in modding support are pretty much pointless.

Is like someone is saying my tablet is superior to Ipad cos it has a faster processor, more storage, better specs etc. So what? You can have your better specs, but we all know which is a better tablet. The fact you end with comparing the length of feature lists makes me wonder if you think games are superior because they have more "Features".

The one about NPC mobs that move around the map, MOM has that.

Unique and malleable champions? Please, in EWOM champions were all so bland and similar, FE is starting to make it worth while but just starting... and currently I would argue while you cant customize your heroes in MOM, they had far more character... 

customizable units? Nice, only it makes little difference in EWOM.

And yes, I expect FE to give me the same experience as when playing MOM or AOW or HOMM, that feeling is called fun! And believe it or not FE is starting to remind me of this, while EWOM does nothing for me....

I wonder if they will go this way, because well lore.... takes precedence... 

I voted fair for now.

My own opinions are that the game needs the attention on the factions, spells, items and monster rebalances.  Magic seems underwhelming.  Game seems progressing towards better, but not there yet.  

Other thing, not sure its been mentioned in this thread is wounds.  Needs to be made so that there's a way to eventually remove them from champions who lost a fight.  I'm just saying from my own experience in "testing" the beta that its no fun to pick a level up reward for 10% extra xp only to lose the next fight and get a - 25% xp.  Needs to be some kind of spell to remove or building that can do it.  Make it researchable and cost mana and or gold.  But to be "stuck" with it, the thought made me just quit playing.

Again, like I stated above, you represent a tiny vocal (and angry) minority and your opinion doesn't count for much in the grand scheme of things.  The casual gamer such as myself (who represent 80% of the players) have a lot of fun with both FE and WoM.

Alright. Probably the last post. A more modern writer who I feel really understands faction differentiation and who would be a great role model for FE is Adrian Tchaikovsky. He is a British writer, kind of on the border of science fiction and fantasy. He has eight books in the series, and his characters are based on the insect world, of which he appears to be an expert. Check his website out for his art and distinct faction explanations. His ability to mix insect qualities with those of his characters is quite astonishing. It isn't the same genre as FE but his ideas would easily be transferable to those of Stardock, and the factions he writes of are based in their own environment, using caves for moths, forest for mantis and wastelands for those of dragonfly origin. Then there are city states of different groups of ants, and the main faction, the beetles, which are of a scientific based faction, and the aggressive wasps who plot to take over the world. They are only a few of the many that Tchaikovsky incorporates withn his writing. It's quite fascinating and would offer some very creative ways to address not only the factions within FE but also their cities, including management, lore, individual histories and very distinct abilities.

Thanks for your positive posts. FE has the potential to go far beyond civ. I for one encourage it to do so, to look beyond itself. As a writer I regurgitate all the time. It's something about finding the right voice for your story, and it's the search for that voice that makes writing or even the attempt of it, fulfilling. As for all the barbs attached to these posts regarding the game, "in a hundred years who will remember, really who?"

Really enjoying beta 3 so far. I'd guess that I'm about 4-5 hours into a game, which is the most I've spent in one game since the WoM beta. So that's saying something.

The writing surprised me... I used to never read the flavor text but something caught my eye (think it was a monster lair or something similar) and I thought "huh, that's pretty interesting". So now I'm actually reading the flavor text more often.

I need to play more before I comment on the AI/balance but the over all game systems seem good so far.

I had some really bad performance hiccups twice. One was in a battle (had to ctrl+alt+del it was so bad), and the other was on the map which fixed itself after I zoomed out to the cloth map. Never had this kind of problem before, but like I said I haven't played a game this far in yet either.

I'll say it again, Frogboy needs to get out of the business of catering to and taking advice from the so-called "community" and put a layer between himself and them.  There's a good reason why most game companies and corporations in general do this.  He only gets advice from the most rabid fanboys who represent nobody with realistic expectations or attitudes over the game.

I built a browser-based MMORPG about 2 years ago and made the same mistake as Frogboy.  The trolling and arguing got so bad I had to shut my forums down completely.  Now I've learned my lesson and rarely communicate with the community - things have gotten much better because of it and people have become far more respectable, and there is less "fanboyisms" going on.

I don't want you to go away. But I do want you to tell us what we can do to make a better game.

Thanks for the kind words and insights.

I went back and played WOM v1.4 today and it's one of those games that a few small changes could have made a big difference.  The first thing that struck me is how irrelevant the land was. If I had to do a "quick fix" on WOM, I'd probably have had "Ruins" that were the only place players could settle.  Not a perfect solution but better than the largely irrelevant city placement. Additional cities would be founded via explorers finding other ruins to build back up (spread too fast and get conquered).  

Now, in FE, it's a very different system. City placement does matter as we have two resources (and in beta 4, we'll being adding a third): Grain and Materials.  Terrain isn't supposed to matter as much as it does in Civilization but in WOM, it didn't matter at all.

Voted Good (just played 0.90 so far. No time for 0.91 sadly. Might take another look at 0.92/next public patch if there is time).

The above verdict would be the one I whould give to a finished product excluding major bugs and stability issues (meaning about 7/10 and clearly rising...)
Since unlike beta 1 and 2 it genuinely feels like a game to me right with the start of beta 3, the issues for me are minor enough for me to see other issues as more pressing while playing (crashes seem quite rare now for me, exploits growing thinner, riddiculous now at least at the start feels like an uphill struggle.).

Kudos for that.

I do agree that the balance is not right yet (doesn't bother me overmuch as long as it doesn't heavily impede gameplay) and more importantly some meachanics need work (won't got to deeply into city stuff since its on the plate for change soon. Do agree it needs work.)

AI is now mounting serious offensives on riddiculous and doesn't feel like a passive pushover anymore... (doesn't help em against fireball, blizard ect. all that much but I still have to use heal quite often and it could easily jump to very deadly when it seriously starts to buff its units or go for higher-ini traits ect. Also heroes do come early and progress well)


Now for suggestions/ideas:
Things I feel are the most lacking (excluding differentiation since that is high on the table anyways... Slave Lord is a blast to play and Pariden-Bloodline feels like a good bloodline trait to give a hint of where I hope most stuff ends up when you are mostly done with differentiation. Really hope "go big or go home" is done full tilt in that respect):

Income-balance / high-wage armies (feel income until late midgame is to low and army-wages are to high. And my sov is a warlord! Lucked out on getting Verga to surrender to vassalage and thus skipping wages completely by midgame, there went that problem and I started to heavily use armies), can't agree that player-built armies are seriously underpowered at comparable levels, they just come to late.
Equip techs (mid-Level Armor takes to long to get imo and cheap weaponry and especially leather armor seems to powerful for how long the next steps take) take to long to attain (especially from military-tree)
Those two issues combined I feel create the impression of armies being to week
(the high level units clad in light plate (chain substitute with the right trait) I assure you and other readers are not weak (about half as powerful as a hero with awesome equip for a band of 5). Especially at Level 4 + if they would come earlier. Playing pariden-blooded custom faction though and having lots of Shards by when I started using armies more heavily. So Ini is through the roof. Though I don't think besides Air Shards the other stuff does much for my regular units, maybe substitute the fire advantage for attack boost?)
when it would just take a rebalance of the military part of the tech tree (which is unit-centric. Currently i favor the magical equip to the normal one for speeds sake alone.) to get that balance right.
Also the magic part of the tree still seems to be attainable a bit to fast (and since legendary gear is available with 2 top-tier quests it might be far more viable to go down the Quest-tree when arena for weapons and the quest node for armors are spotted early game)
Actually a solution might be to also offer a lower tier of unit-equip in a Level 3 or 4 Quest (comparable in level to longswords / chain armor).


(still much better than beta 2 where armies where far to cheap and heroes nerfed into non-fun territory and units were silly good from turn 1. Beta 1 had the opposite with totally overpowered heroes and weak armies. Much closer to the sweet spot with Beta 3. Kudos for that. 3 turn minimum also seems ok if a bit gamey to stop the sillyness of cheap mass-fooder right from turn 1 with certain factions / setups. Now it just feels like the balance is off and not that the game is broken one way or the other.)



More Quests needed
(would love to one day see heroes included into the quest system/quest nodes instead of having them being killable by the oposing faction as good sources of loot and also gaining an interesting story along the way.
Sure, the current recruitement-system for heroes works I just don't see the bigger benefit with the current system over what including heroes in quests whuld offer).
Good examples: Arena Questline (also terrific example of a tradeoff for getting a hero during a quest. The hero might not be a good choice but it is at least a choice which has me thinking somewhat), Final Quest. More like that please and less generic 1-stop quests (sadly the majority so far).
Even low to mid-level quests can be complex (can't judge how hard a time the AI has with complex quests though).


I feel more impact of non-combat spells needed (excluding the damage-dealing strategic ones which pack quite a punch), they feel lacking overall (same for differentiation of strategic to tactical cast of mirrored spells like stoneskin. Any reason why they cost the same in tactical as in strategic?).

(often cited here and I agree) Heroe's equipment (I found you quite nailed the progression and base power of mage-heroes not to badly with 0.90, hope the nerf again isn't to bad with 0.91) is far to deterministic of a heroes power and the progression from low-end to top end is way to steep (low end seems ok, but high end is way out there), Perks should have a way stronger impact on a heroes power. (I do like to power of magic but those perks might actually be a tad bit to powerful / evoker might have to be curbed a bit. Level requirements for spell-Levels might be a good idea if the acceptable progression from 0.90 is roughly kept...)
Rare items (like ventars fist and simmilar stuff which is exist in abundance right now needs to be restricted to the drop generators for truly powerful adversaries I reckon...)

Monsters seem to weak (or actually there should be more middle tier and top tier monsters since there clearly is room for more content in that field, the same as quests).
More bosses and limiting the top stuff of equipment to them maybe a good idea. (Meaning Elemental-Lord or Dragon-Level power),
Drakes/Slags (on the upper end), Demons, Shril lords and high-Level Spiders (the mass-dazing ones) seem the only true mid Level enemies I do fear tackling right at the start.
Also nothing bad with applying differentiation to monsters as well and amplify their traits.
Maybe have trolls regenerate 10-20 Points per action they get,
have Spiders poison for 10-20 Points per round,
have fire-elemental backlash be around 10 points of burn (numbers may be a bit high but you get the idea...), making monster-fights actually feel different instead of just being different-numbered but equal-themed generic obstacles. "Go big or go home" I'm sure will work just as well there...


Sov- and Faction creation to me seems to have transcended the point where 1 point for each pick sounds like the best way forward. Maybe have the difference in costs for traits / equip be either 1 or 2 and hand out a few! more points? (finetuning can be done right before the start) but no I see reason to not introduce this kind of possibilty to weigh choices again. Not all traits/choices are created equal nor do I see a pressing reason why they need to be strictly (do think that it can go to far as seen in WoM hence me suggesting starting small and slowly going up. Don't think you need to go beyond 1-3 Points for cost differentiation)

Agree that some choices need to be more pronounced and matter more (see the arena quest and the hero for a truly meaningful if still easy choice. Didn't pick the hero yet. If legendary gear weren't so powerful I might actually chose the hero...).

I wanna be a dumb fan! Can I be a dumb fan? please!... oh wait, I gotta work hard for that... Be back with dumb facts...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I'll vote good like I did last time. Last time it was good in the lower end, and now the game is good at the upper end. The game is nice to play, and I am enjoying myself, but the game is not orgasmic. Although changes have been made, factions feel the same. It's beginning to feel different but not enough, also kingdom and empire feel largely the same at the moment. I think the game would get a 7 at the moment (not counting the bugs). More work is to be done, and that work will be done. So I got good hope, not a fools hope like Gandalf had for Frodo. I'll be posting some feedback soon.

Hi Brad,

It seems we're getting a lot of repeat votes (same as last time).  I know you're big on MetaCritic scores so why not create a poll that asks people to vote on what score the current game would get (i.e. <59, 60-69, 70-79, 80-89, >90).  That might yield some more interesting results and you'd be able to quantitatively see if the game was getting better in public opinion with each beta release or not.

By this time, Brad, you know what needs to be done to make a better game, based on all our comments--from just tightening what you've got, to doing it all over from start.  You know it's perfect, and that it's doomed.  That it only needs a tweak or two, and a few dozen new game mechanics.  You also have two qualifications for making that better game than anyone else commenting on this board does.  First, you you have a sense of where you want the game to end up, what it should look and feel like.  Second, despite all the people who absolutely know how to adjust everything in FE, you have a certain degree of experience in balancing games successfully.  Consider all that has been written, discuss things with your team, and run with what feels best to you.  Win or lose, at least you remain true to yourselves.

Further example -- the tech tree.  Are we:

-discovering from anew (independent invention)?

-rediscovering using some knowledge (example -- I know that radio exists and kinda how it works and what's needed, so if I had to re-invent it after the zombie apocalypse I'd have a clue how to proceed)?\

-finding the old tech (like finding buried treasure -- I didn't make the gold coins I just dug them up)?

Does it make a difference which of the above?  No and yes.  No, cause the result is the same, but yes because how we get there, how the 'flavor' of the game, how the lore, is implemented.  The only thing I see ingame referencing the early age is lost libraries and they merely add some research points to whatevers being researched (a simple, unimaginative way to do it).  Where's the feeling of stumbling upon lost lore?

It's the 'little' touches like this that make a game stand out.

I think the 'forest has been lost for the trees'.

Another example -- originally essence turned the land green.  Now we still have the dark land turning green within the influence of my kingdom -- why?  How?  Does it matter the land is now green other than eye candy?  Do kingdoms get more 'food' from green land than dark, or if the land turns green then later is conquered by an Empire will the land be more inimical to the empire?

Is the land turning green/dark just an artifact left behind from the old essence feature?  If not, is it left in merely on account of because it's in and it looks cool?

It's easy to lose sight of the big picture as a game develops and things get added/removed, personnel change, money runs out, etc.  I think going back to the early goals, and rediscovering the lore (much like we're supposed to be doing in the game -- life imitates art) would be helpful.  The lore is what makes WoM stand out from other games -- ruined land being rebuilt by our 'immortal' Sovs.  Does anyone get that feeling from playing the current game?