What needs to be 'fixed' and what can we mod?

from Elemental Forums

Thankfully Stardock is planning to make changes to Elemental, because I think most of us agree that there are a few areas that really need to be improved.

 

The question is, what things should we focus on trying to mod, and what things do we think / want / need Stardock to 'fix?' Obviously this depends on how much modding we are able to do, and since some of our mod abilities are limited or still growing...

 

I think the main thing that needs to be 'fixed' is...

 

Tactical Combat: Most people seem to agree  that combat stats and parties are broken. This has been brought up many, many times, and I don't see many people supporting the current system. We need to make it so that stats don't stack for parties to keep low level peons from becoming monsters, and we need to make deaths in parties reduce their effectiveness so that the last survivor of a party can't still attack and defend at the full strength of the original party. This will help make combat more realistic and balanced.

 

This is something that may be beyond our ability to mod at this time and thus would be in Stardock's lane to 'fix.'

 

 

3,014 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I would say that 70% of the stuff that I hear people whining about Stardock to change can be changed with a MOD. Of course that leaves the other 30% though like the core tactical fights, memory leak, and lack of depth concerning the spell system and lets not forget the AI.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Yes.  A lot of "Balance" or "UnBalance" people want can come from editing some XML files.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting jereome, reply 1
I would say that 70% of the stuff that I hear people whining about Stardock to change can be changed with a MOD. Of course that leaves the other 30% though like the core tactical fights, memory leak, and lack of depth concerning the spell system and lets not forget the AI.
End of jereome's quote

 

Sure some people are just whining, but there has been plenty of constructive criticism of Elemental all the way back to Beta.

 

Anyways, we shouldn't be EXPECTED to mod systems that don't work well. Creating systems that work well was Stardock's job. Our 'job' is to take working systems and MOD them. Right now, I would argue that the aspect of tactical combat I mentioned is broken, and needs to be fixed. Sounds like you might agree based on your post, not really sure.

 

As for balance, I agree, we can handle much of that, so I would rather Stardock focus on the things we can't fix. Same holds true for most of the 'creative' content. I don't really care much about Stardock making new maps, quests, etc. because that is just adding content on top of a weak foundation. We in the community can create content, but fixing the basic systems is a much bigger challenge, one that Stardock is best positioned to handle.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Supreme, reply 2
Yes.  A lot of "Balance" or "UnBalance" people want can come from editing some XML files.
End of Supreme's quote

I don't think so. Granted, everything needs a balance pass and that can be done by anyone. But the way the game applies modifiers and calculate outcomes means the various improvements of stuff in the game can't really be gradual enough. Every step up is a giant & game-breakingly unbalanced leap ahead of previous generations. Almost everything in the game is handled the same way, so almost everything is fubar. The only exception I can think of off-hand is population growth.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Simsum, reply 4

I don't think so. Granted, everything needs a balance pass and that can be done by anyone. But the way the game applies modifiers and calculate outcomes means the various improvements of stuff in the game can't really be gradual enough. Every step up is a giant & game-breakingly unbalanced leap ahead of previous generations. Almost everything in the game is handled the same way, so almost everything is fubar. The only exception I can think of off-hand is population growth.
End of Simsum's quote

I'm not quite sure I'm following you. Nothing is really fubar'ed, however, nothing is really too easy to fix.