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So anyway, we were talking and…

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So anyway, we were talking and…

from JoeUser Forums

Here’s a weird thing.  Stardock turns 20 this year.  That’s 20 years since I incorporated it back when I was in college.  My mom was the one pushing me. She was afraid I’d get sued by someone. I told her that was crazy. No one would ever sue us.  Cough.

I was playing FTL and if you don’t already have this game, you really should get it.  It’s a reminder that a great game can be made by just a handful of people.  It serves as a great exhibit for our internal game projects to exclaim “It’s about the game mechanics!”

We’re going to be announcing a lot of new game projects this year.  The first one will undoubtedly be the upcoming expansion pack / DLC (what do you call these things nowadays anyway) for Elemental: Fallen Enchantress.  The theme of it is to evolve the overall game design of Fallen Enchantress to help bring the role playing elements closer to the civilization building elements.  Sometimes, FE feels like it’s trying to be multiple games at the same time and as such, never fully develops a single overarching theme.  That’s what the expansion is being designed to address. 

Speaking of Fallen Enchantress, we’re hoping v1.2 comes out next week.  There’s a lot of AI updates in it and a lot of usability fixes (path finding got a lot of love).  That should (no promises) get out there next week.

133,191 views 43 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

They have already talked about plans for an RPG in the elemental world. I hope it's an epic open-world style RPG like Elder Scrolls. That could be awesome!

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

Very glad to hear that improvements are planned for the roleplay aspect of the game. Hopefully we will now have our sovereign and a couple of champions exploring proper D&D style dungeons, instead of the rather odd "battle in a cave" that we have at the moment!

Chris

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Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting onomastikon, reply 13
nice post!

is this upcoming expansion going to be the third iteration, or version, or whatever it's called, of the franchise that WoM customers from 2010 are supposed to get for free? Or is that something else? Could you perhaps clarify how "free" and these expansions work together?

 

Oh sorry I hope I'm not being dense. I remember brad saying that customers who bought WoM prior to release would get the two planned expansions for free; so FE is the first of those 2. Is what brad is hinting here the second? Or did I misunderstand and by "free" is meant FE "basic" or "light" and everything else we must purchase?

thanks much

Reply #29 from Elemental Forums Top

I think you are right, the upcoming expansion/DLC will be the last of the free stuff. Personally I'm happy to pay a reasonable price for future addons - the guys have to make a living don't they!

Chris

Reply #30 from Elemental Forums Top

This all sounds great.

But I'm going to ask to please, at least consider, focusing on the civilization building aspect, rather than the hero-buiding, in the role playing.

By this I mean: if the civilization build mines and foundries and researches smelting steel, then the hero and the armies get the benefit of steel armor and swords.  If the civilization has a college that researches a lot of magic, then the sovereign gets enchanted swords and armor and spells.

But not this: the hero goes into a dungeon and after saying a troll he finds a wand of increased harvest +10%.  Or if the sovereign is level 10 he can produce blacksmith shops capable of making arrows.  Not that.  Please.

You might say it is kind of like how I want it already but no it isn't.  Well yeah kind of it is for the armies but not for the hero and champions.  While what is available in the shop does follow the technical advances of the civilization, most of the gear I end up wearing is found adventuring, and it ends up with a disconnect between how my sovereign and key champions are geared and what the focus is of my civilization.

Well I'm sure you guys have a bunch of great ideas and I'm happy to see the outcome, but making the fantasy-civilization-building more interesting with less of an emphasis on war would send elemental in an interesting and unique direction, rather than following well-trodden ground.

Reply #31 from Elemental Forums Top

The upcoming expansion pack will be free to those who bought War of Magic before October 31, 2010.  It won't be as big of a change as FE was to WOM but it's pretty significant.

I think the best way to describe it will be a tightening of the game mechanics so that they are more related to one another. You're going on quests to help your civilization. You're champions are a reflection of your civilization and vice versa.

Reply #32 from Elemental Forums Top

Are the quest pack and item pack ideas scrapped, or are they being tied into the expansion?

 

 

Reply #33 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 32
The upcoming expansion pack will be free to those who bought War of Magic before October 31, 2010.  It won't be as big of a change as FE was to WOM but it's pretty significant.

I think the best way to describe it will be a tightening of the game mechanics so that they are more related to one another. You're going on quests to help your civilization. You're champions are a reflection of your civilization and vice versa.

 

thank you for clearing that up!

Reply #34 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Alstein, reply 33
Are the quest pack and item pack ideas scrapped, or are they being tied into the expansion?

 

 

Not scrapped.  Just not available yet.

Reply #35 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 32
The upcoming expansion pack will be free to those who bought War of Magic before October 31, 2010.  It won't be as big of a change as FE was to WOM but it's pretty significant.

I think the best way to describe it will be a tightening of the game mechanics so that they are more related to one another. You're going on quests to help your civilization. You're champions are a reflection of your civilization and vice versa.

Well, this really perks my interest. Sounds like an interactive dynamic is being added to the game. Me likes. XD

 

Reply #36 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 32
I think the best way to describe it will be a tightening of the game mechanics so that they are more related to one another. You're going on quests to help your civilization. You're champions are a reflection of your civilization and vice versa.

I am very glad to hear this.  As your opening implies, there are times when FE does feel like a mix-mash of mechanics rather than one collective experience.  Looking forward to 1.2

 

 

Reply #37 from Elemental Forums Top


I take it multiplayer is not going to show up in this dlc? or ever?


:(

Reply #38 from Elemental Forums Top

Hi Brad your post got me thinking about board games with solid game mechanics and I was wondering if Stardock would ever be open to colaborations with some of the premier board games companies - Fantasy Flight Games is one that immediately springs to mind as they do some pretty epic stuff such as Arkham Horror and Twilight Imperium which would be awesome if ported to PC. Other cool games that could also be ported as mobile apps would be something like Pandemic (I've forgot the publisher). I think some indy PC game companies have started dipping into board games for their ideas - for example FTL seems to be derived from Space Alert and Dungeonland seems to have been inspired by games like Descent/Mansions of Madness.

I'm looking forward to Elemental's Xpac and your future announcements for this year but I thought I'd just mention some of these cool board games a) in case you wanted to try em out b ) if you wanted to feed some of their ideas into future projects.

It's been a while since I've been on these threads but it's always nice to pop by this forum from time to time :)

Reply #40 from Elemental Forums Top

FTL is a fantastic little game, I just wish the developers would keep adding to it. I want to see DLC, more mod support, new scenarios, etc.

Also, if you want to watch a quick Lets Play of FTL, check out this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfpVw9ECbuA

Lastly, regarding Fallen Enchantress, try not to take too many steps back with the RPG system. I feel like the RPG aspect of the game is lacking what Elemental had. I really enjoy having a variety of truly unique characters to play with and in Fallen Enchantress they all feel roughly the same.

Reply #41 from Stardock Forums Top

Just some suggestions:

Conquering Elemental nodes must be MUCH more tightly integrated into the hero system.  With the exception of mages, so very little of what a hero can do/have is based on this.  And it could be more intertwined even for the mages and the spells. Everything in this regard needs to be ramped up, which would immediately make a bridge between the roleplaying aspect and the civ-building aspect.  By the same extension, every node should also be an elemental lair of varying power, so that, again, civ-building and hero-questing become more intertwined. 

 

Reply #42 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Kalin, reply 19
I wish someone would take FTL and combine it with XCOM game play... with some real persistent crew that you customize.... oh man, I'd literally throw money at that. If only someone would... *stares at Brad* ...

 

hELL, YEAS.

 

Hmm, why not do a spinn off of the galactic civ in that regard?

Reply #43 from Stardock Forums Top

More GalCiv (TBS!) pleeeeaaaassseeee....