Disingeniuty of Monsters [IDEA]

No offense at all to Elrhamlin, but -- as someone who did computer game design many ages ago and who spent many, many years designing commercial software in general -- I read posts like this (there are several others in this sub-forum) and sigh.

Do you really not understand the very real tradeoffs of time and complexity that every single feature presents in developing software? Let's take the suggestion above. Yes, FE already has a unit-design subsystem. But look at it carefully: as currently implemented, it's intended to design pretty much a single humanoid shape, with appropriate weapons, armor, clothes, humanoid characteristics, etc.

Now let's open the door for all 'forest drakes and other monsters'. It would seem to be a natural and straightforward extension. But here are some of the immediate issues:

-- First, what are you going to allow the user to do? Change color? Appearance? Basic stats (old or new)? Traits? Size (something not an issue for the humanoids)?

-- Second, what are the possible destabilizing or unbalancing effects? How do you set this up so that the user can't create a killer drake that AIs just can't cope with, at least, not at a point where the user hasn't progressed sufficiently up the  tech tree? In other words, what does it really add to the game design and balance, and what does it take away?

-- Third, how much work -- UI design, art work, actual function implementation, etc. -- will be required to implement all this? And we're not just talking the artwork in the design panel (though that's not trivial at all) but also the artwork and animation for these custom creatures within the game. (I strongly suspect the underlying game/animation engine handles this well, but it's still actual time and work. Everything takes actual time and work.)

-- Fourth, what new bugs or issues will be introduced as a result? It is well known in software engineering that simply fixing a known bug has a real, measurable probability of introducing a new one; for new features, the probability is a certainty, and it will likely be more than 'one' new bug.

-- Fifth, what other features/bug fixes are going to neglected in order to design, implement, and test this feature? Because there really is no such thing as a free lunch, especially in software development. Much of software development -- at least, the successful kind -- is throwing out features, some of which are truly wonderful, because without that ruthlessness, you just won't ever ship (or you'll ship so late that no one will ever care).

So, yeah, I think the lack of custom design of monsters is very intentional. I'm sure it's bubbled up at some point in internal FE discussions and was given a particular priority, ranging from "in the next beta" to "when hell freezes over".

But that's just my $0.02 worth.  ..bruce..

Ya, Webster is right, but I thought simply ignoring the post was sufficient. No reason to crush the dream.

Well I think selecting some traits would be nice, but for real graphical changes such as equipping armor, that's huge amount of resources that IMHO are better spent elsewhere.

I would be more than happy with monsters that gain new abilities as they level (DKL shamans learning new spells) and some more monsters of the same type from lairs. Pack drakes and forest drakes from the same lair and darklings, darkling archers and shaman from their lair for example.

It would be awesome if young monsters (young ogres) could be expanded so they change models when they reach a certain level. Like if you level a wolf, it becomes a great wolf or a black widow becoming a ravenous harridan eventually.

This would be more than enough customization and way more fun than custom models.

Code isn't just copy and paste?  

No, it is not just copy and paste.

This would be a really really awesome feature to have! A trait that causes a unit to transform into another on reaching a specific level. You could do some really cool stuff with modding this too.

OK, that made me laugh out loud. Especially since in many circles, code is just cut and paste.

The canonical acronym used (tongue-in-cheek) in proposing a new feature is that it's a SMOP: a Simple Matter of Programming. I've actually argued for some decades that computer games are among the most difficult and sophisticated forms of programming, not just because they draw upon virtually every key aspect of computer science -- algorithms, data structures, databases, simulation, graphics, user-interface design, messaging, and so on -- but because on top of all that, they have to be entertaining and fun. ..bruce..

Yes, want, obvious cool!

In my programming days, we didn't have access to fancy things like Notepad!

I admit I quit programming when "C++" replaced FORTRAN77.  Apparently I should stick to painting my cave wall.  Anybody got anymore of that black pigment.  The stuff with the violet highlights.

I actually started 38 years ago with IBM/360 Assembly (on punched cards) and moved up to FORTRAN and PL/1. But I still program a bit today, mostly in Java.

But that's not the point. The point is that there are vastly more 'nifty' ideas for FE than there is time and staff to design, implement, and test them properly; these forums demonstrate that very well. I can very much believe that if the idea of custom designed monsters occurred to the FE team (which I suspect it most likely did), the omission to date is very intentional. There's just more important things to work on. ..bruce..

I changed my mind, they should import the Spore creature creator.

Anything less and the game will suck!

Personally I won't be buying FE ever since it was slipped shortly before Beta started as if it wasn't a big deal that we couldn't have flames painted on the sides of our dragon mounts with matching customized saddles/armor.

I am hoping that the extra work being put into faction differentiation allows this needed feature to be implemented post-release. Gilden are becoming dwarves I think so maybe you can construct something like this?