Eh. Considering the popularity of his mod [FFH2], I must say that this was a good decision.

Now I wonder if part of the reason the standalone Fall From Heaven game was put on hold was because he was making a move to Stardock.

Edit: Wrong thread.

Well, at least he knows first hand how aggravating it is for a modder to run into hardcoded features that you just can't get past.
Then you spend ages with creating the illusion of having done it anyway...

If all he does is keep this kind of accessibility on the agenda I'll be happy because I simply don't care if I get "my" game tomorrow or in two years.
Of course, the kind of choices in FFH are a good omen. They aren't the typical Elemental choices like "the unit with more points is always the better unit, duh".

Yea Kael, you should give some of that new paycheck his way!

Put religion in the game, Kael

I must admit I haven't really played Fall From Heaven much at all, I did own Civ 4 and the expansions and started up a game or two but never really played it enough to learn its intricacies.

Now Kael is working on Elemental I see it as another chance to experience his game design skills for myself.

Happy thread this was.

Which is a shame, and limits creative control and ability to respond to feedback. An expansion set that really shakes things up, adds some traditional fantasy races (with an Elemental twist) and revamps the Fallen (keep a few, make them very unique from the humans and each other) is really needed.

A second cataclysm that sunders time and space and merges Elemental with another plane could do the trick. (and due to wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey doesn't necessarily negate Brad's book, it's just an alternate universe where Nero didn't kill Kirk's dad with a space squid... ermm...)

Something like one of the Fallen Empires (Resoln acting on something their oracles had planned for centuries?) attempting to summon back the Titans, resulting in the world the Titans are from being sundered and meshed with Elemental itself. Many races that the Titans had fought and nearly conquered (Elves, Dwarves) coming back to the forefront and fighting with men and the surviving Fallen. The east and west similarly shattered as entire landmasses are warped and shifted between the planes. Time itself also being broken momentarily with causality shattered. Empires the Titans annihilated restored on the broken continents in the blink of an eye, etc.

The net result- carte blanche to rewrite backstory as needed, put in some traditional races and give them new back stories, and keep the kingdoms and empires that people like the best and make them a bit more unique gameplay wise. (Say Tarth and New Pariden survive and play differently as the "Barbarian" and "High Men" archetype factions)

Channelers from what were two separate worlds have to cope with the fact that the laws of magic are still settling down from this terrible event, and there could even be differences in how magic plays out on parts of the landscape due to the residual energies of each world interacting.

Yea ... regardless of how the races look like, its still possible to make them act genuinely different.

To continually improve upon the engine and Design implementation* is the only way to do this.

I feel that Kael's experience with taking a Design, and implementing it in a way that is both within a project's means and fun ... may prove beneficial.

However, ultimately ... until the Engine becomes something that is genuinely good, I feel there is only so much that can be done.

the problem is that race and factions get blurred in this game for some reason. you would have thought all those 6 human factions (5 kingdoms + krax) are from 1 human race just different factions.. but it isn't. they are all separate races and factions which doesn't make much sense. this is eminently noticeable when you create your sovereign/faction. i know that the lore page says human race are subdivided into the 6 races, but still...

obviously it might make sense if it's paving the way into umpteen factions in later chapters and if races/factions have their own traits/stats. but without something to really distinguish the races, it's all a bit pointless.

having a fixed background story isn't a problem. the game (or the sandbox game anyway) doesn't really touch much of the story. if you look at all those historical games.. the background story is fixed. but players can still do plenty. it's not like they've given out everything about the story, plenty of scope for change if they deem it necessary

funny in a way that this is a bit like feist in reverse. they have a game (in far future) with "fixed" background and then he wrote books covering the ancient events.