Ugleb

Join Date 09/2003

The horse and the analogy

Hi all, I'm feeling the need to talk. Its been awhile since I did that around here.

I'm an old school Stardock fan and observer, going back to the day soon after Master of Orion 3 entered my possession and inside the box I found a flyer for a game called Galactic Civilisations. Moo3 had been one of my most anticipated releases ever, and turned out to be utter junk, and never redeemed itself. So I bought GalCiv, a much more modest game by a little indie dev team called Stardock. And it was good. I also began to follow the developers when I heard early news that GalCiv2 development was beginning.

I was with GalCiv2 all the way through its development, I played every beta, I read damn near every thread and I spent quite a bit of effort on the forums helping others get to know the game and find the info they needed to play and give good feedback. I'm proud to say that my name is on the credits for GC2. Yes, I am awesome. You may bow before me.

I have been following Elemental closely, reading the journals every few days and waiting in anticipation from those long ago days when Stardock were talking of thinking about thinking of doing a fantasy game. But I've been almost entirely silent here. I got a real job, and a girlfriend. And a few other things. So, I've not put the time into engaging with the beta as much as I'd have liked, and actually feel a little guilty for it. Which is weird to say when you're a paying customer!

The point I'm getting towards is that I feel a need to engage with both Stardock, the community, and which ever random player reads this. I think at this point we're all feeling a bit like we watched Star Wars The Phantom Menace. Its Star Wars...but it doesn't feel quite right. You want to like it more than you actually do, or something is nagging at you about the whole thing.

What I want to say to the community is this; we the customers know that Elemental is not the game it should be. And now Stardock, and Frogboy himself, are facing up to that too. They see it now, if they didn't get it before. There is no need to tell them that they screwed up any more. I keep thinking of the saying "There's no use in shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted."

In the last couple of days Brad has accepted that Elemental needs more than a bit of bug fixing (closing the door). This was a huge admission and I respect that. I wish more companies had the balls and the decency to be so forthright. It does not excuse Elemental's launch, but it does I hope mark a turning point.

To Brad. To all at Stardock. To my fellow community and anyone stumbling across this. What is done is now behind us, so let's go get our horse back.

Stardock develop their games based on feedback, I have witnessed this first hand over years now. And I know from my experience of GalCiv2's development, post-release updates and full blown expansions, that Stardock are able to make sweeping, game changing improvements to their games. So, let us focus on making Elemental into the game it should be.

I'm going to start talking about the actual game now, if you're still reading then you're a bit awesome btw.

I have recently been playing Stalker Call Of Pripyat. I am looking at it and Elemental in a similar way. I really like both, but I'm aware that both need work to make them all they could be. Both are by ambitious developers running their own game engines, and both push the envelope of development. I have been enjoying both but encounter some things I know could be better done.

Lets talk firepower. Stalker has weapons that don't feel meaty enough, Elemental has spells with the same problem. An ice bolt and a fire dart are the same damned thing. Exactly the same damned thing, a damage spell with the same stats.

Suggestion 1: Make the damage spells for each book at the same level deal a different amount of damage. Fire lvl 1 is better then the lvl 1 Air damage spell, but the lvl 2 Air damage spell is better than the fire equivalent. This would provide advantages/disadvantages at different points in the game.

Suggestion 2: Counter spells. Give earth the ability to reduce the effectiveness of air. Give water the ability to defend against fire damage. How about a spell that generates a protective zone around the caster that halves damage against an opposing element? My Air channeler casts a circle of protection above his army, shielding all within 2 squares around him from the worst of the earth channeler's rain of rocks.

There needs to be a reason for me to use more tactical spells than my direct damage on one unit or the area of effect damage spell. Thats all I have been using on the battlefield.

Suggestion 3: This well known already, but I need to be able to cast spells more frequently. In most battles I don't cast anything as I know I could win without it and may need to cast next battle. Mana is such a scarce commodity that I ration its use. In a game subtitled War of Magic!

Suggestion 4: Imbuing champions. My channeler typically has less than 15 essence. This is because imbuing champions is so expensive, and getting essence back is hard work. Every time my channeler levels up I spend it on getting more essence. If I didn't then I wouldn't have enough mana left to cast anything, or too few spell casters to do anything interesting. Many spells require more than 10 mana to cast, so far I don't research many of them as I know I lack the essence/mana to use them much or at all.

Lets talk mighty armies. I researched teams, so now I've got three guys built as one unit, and are exponentially more awesome than these three guys I trained earlier.

Suggestion 5: In GalCiv2 there is a fleet management screen that allows me to swap ships in and out of a fleet. Once formed, a fleet operates effectively like a single unit with combined stats. At first glance its like that team unit of three guys. Once I can train group formations, creating single man units is pointless, they are vastly inferior even if they are all in one army stack. So, what do I do with all these single guys? Introduce a function like GC2's fleet manager which lets me combine the single units together to form groups. Its that or I disband/lemming charge my old chaff units. Which doesn't make sense given that the team unit is made up the same thing as the single unit. I should just be able to add them together.

Suggestion 6: Maybe I need to play more/research something but I have yet to own a resource that gives me a mount. Where are all the horsies at?

I'll come back to this and add more as I think of it.

But remember, the horse is out there!

elemental

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KlausBreuer

Good speech, my friend. I have the same background of getting to know Stardock as a disappointed MOO3 gamer, heh. I too have been a silent lurker all the years. And I too hope and think we must focus on what to do now.

Good ideas all of them.

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game really needs ability to combine units into squads etc. and also an option to upgrade units (over time, not the instant, ridiculously expensive way GC2 did it)

the spell book differentiation idea is a good one too. though i would vary them by adding other affects to them rather than making them weaker in comparison.

ie, earth spells do just damage (ut slightly more in the first turn), freeze spells have a chance to hold, fire spells do residual damage in the following turn, lightning has a chance to chain to nearby units etc

i am currently in a similar position of only using direct damage spells in battles. some of the others may be decent, but there's simply not enough mana to play around with them.

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Quoting Sethai,

reply 2

the spell book differentiation idea is a good one too. though i would vary them by adding other affects to them rather than making them weaker in comparison.

ie, earth spells do just damage (ut slightly more in the first turn), freeze spells have a chance to hold, fire spells do residual damage in the following turn, lightning has a chance to chain to nearby units etc

Secondary effects could be a nice way to do it, I agree. I wonder if earth might have an impact on movement (due to the ground shaking etc - excuse to use shaky cam? ), while the ice spells have a chance to cause the unit to lose its turn.

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Good post, I agree a 100% with these suggestions.

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i also agree, magic needs more power. a extremely high level caster should probably reach near godlike proportions, reshaping the land to his will. terraforming, changing, benefiting his people with his encyclopedic knowledge of spells. as of now he's a half-powered auxilary to the 9 unit footman stacks.

horses are rare

(stalker is pretty cool, too)

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Some great thoughts on improvements, let's hope they read them.

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I agree 100% with this post.

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Related to 4 and the amount of essence a sovereign has. I think this is a problem throughout the entire game. All the numbers are so low that there's no room for nuance.

Imbuing another champion near the start costs 1/4 of your soveriegn's essence but levelling up just once, can add that right back. There's no sense of being weakened and working to gain it back. It's like a sledgehammer. It's there's, it's gone, it's there again. All stat bonuses/penalties feel like this. A big on/off switch. Imbuing should hurt but it shoudn't cripple (unless you go nuts with it). It should also take time to regain, not just pop back in one turn. Using it in spells is the same. The pool is tiny and it elliminates the ability to have a more delicate spell system where drain and regen really matter.

The same thing with action points in tactical battles. At the moment, everything has an average of 2 moves (early to mid game) and everything costs one or two moves (i assume the decimal bonuses are rounded out because you can't move 1.2 squares). There's no subtlety or variation.

And with food... 4 food with a 25% bonus giving a total of 5, versus 100 food with a 25% bonus for 125. It's not only much more obvious to see what has changed with the latter but there's also a lot more room for varied and subtle bonuses and penalties.

I believe all numbers in the game need multiplying by a factor of at least 10, probably 100 so that more subtle bonuses and penalties can be applied to, well...everything. Sure, it's partly a matter of perception (1.2 is as valid as 120) but as the current bonuses in game show, there's no room for nuance. Every bonus is a big chunk of number or nothing.

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Suggestion 5 makes a lot of sense. I would go so far as to do away with teams, parties, etc in the unit training. Instead, researching teams or what not determines the max size of your stack.

So you can then combine the single guys into a stack of 3 at most with teams, and so on. If we'd need more tech for huge groups, so be it. Make that tech that allows me to stack 100 guys into an army some where deep down the line.

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Hey, horsie-lover, I loved Moo3! I mean, the box was pretty, the DVD in was great to place my coffee-cup on, and it introduced my to GalCiv, which I'be been playing like crazy (and, of course, bought them all).

Otherwise, yes - I fully agree with every point on your post, and thus: credit where credit is due

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Some good suggestions here, I agree with secondary spell effects, couldeven include spells designed to cancel the secondary effects. A battle of spell and counterspell would make the game feel more like a "war of magic".

Quick example, "fireball" causes residual damage (burning), cast "mist" and the flames disappear (+ fire resistance) however it also reduces the resistance to lightning magic.

Another example, earth magic reduces movement, so you cast the air spell "float" and are able to move over any difficult terrain/are not penalized by earth magic; however this opens up the unit to attack from a "gust" spell (maybe it blows them over a couple squares). There is so much that can be done with magic if done right.

I would also tend to limit the books a spellcaster has; ideally each caster would pick there own books and would be unable to chose spells from opposing books. If you pick fire then no water; air but not earth; life but not death and so on. Combine specialized elemental books, unique "special" books and a set of generic books available to all casters and you would get something more unique.

As for point six; you need to find the horses resource to train mounted units (or wargs if Empire) and you require the mounted warfare tech as well. The mounted warfare tech also allows you to buy mounts for your heroes through the shop interface (these can have either horses or wargs).

regards,

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Taking the GC combat mechanics and applying them to Elemental would be a horrible decision. Elemental actually has tactical battles, and ideally/eventually multiple weapon/magic/defense types. Compared to the junk combat (though it worked well enough for simed battles in GC) model of GC2 this would be a major step backwards.

To the rest of your mini-rant (because, yeah, that's what it was)...

The people who will agree with you are not the ones who are going to complain anyway, the ones complaining aren't going to care that yet another SD vet has told them to STFU. It's as pointless as their whining about crap everyone already knows about.

What we need is to hear from SD about what they are planning to do with the overhaul. There's already been so many excellent ideas to address multiple areas of the game, but without some direction from the devs about which of those ideas they are looking at it's really rather pointless to have yet another 'how I would fix this' thread (and I have one of mine own as it is). Of course we'll still have them, and of course we'll still have haters and fanboys sniping at each other.

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To all those with perfectly understandable concerns about magic's lack of oomph, I recommend Heavenfall's Bugfix mod, available for 1.07 with Icecrown's effect improvements. I keep reading all these complaints, but in my armies my mages are the heavy hitters, and the soldiers are only there in case of an unexpected calamity, like a massive numbers imbalance. I don't know details on the calc changes, but I have essence over 60 on almost all but the most recent, low level kids that just came of age. I think it's something to do with the temple of essence. Once you've built those in 10 or 12 cities, you'll never run out of mana again. Shards really punch up the damage, too.

Check it out, it's here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/395013

Enjoy.

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Quoting bloodystump11,

reply 8

You've got me wondering if the essence penalty should be a temporary effect rather than a permanent one there. Maybe you suffer a -5 points penalty when you imbue a champion, but regenerate it at 0.1 points per turn, so 50 turns later its all back again. That is quite a long time but allows for greater character development as you dont have to keep reinvesting points every time you level up.

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Every time I read one of these posts, which are spot on, the more I seriously wonder how on earth SD created the game they did, and how on earth they considered it ready for release (which I am beginning to seriously doubt they did).

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Quoting MrMT,

reply 15

I'm inclined to believe what Brad has said, he got too close to the project and lost objectivity, it wasn't until he went on holiday into the wilderness for a few days before he apparently cleared his head and took stock from a dsistance. We could see the game taking shape in beta, but I think that there was a failing here. Beta 1 & 2 went on for a long, long time with no updates, while beta 3-4 were very short and too much stuff was not released to the beta group quickly enough (some things not at all). If you add lots of stuff at the last minute then you are minimising chance for players to find and report the bugs, let alone game balancing. We needed more playable beta's earlier on to give enough meaningful feedback/bug reports.

I imagine that there is a discussion to be had on why no-one put their foot down internally and say no to shipping (the QA department/guy at least you'd think, if there is someone with the clout to do it).

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Agree with everything but suggestion 1. Don't differentiate spells by their stats, but by theirabilities : fire can ignate, water can reduce movement points, air can confuse, earth can reduce attack speed

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