I personally watched mod after mod break in WoM, not just in the transition to FE. Don't tell me they haven't, I saw them do it, I saw the backlash when they did, that's why I left.

Not everything they do in their patches is an improvement, they've also imposed arbitrary restrictions on modding and made it impossible to recreate old mods.

You should have a solid game with Vanilla, and there should be an installer like the Nexus Mod Installer if they're going to make you install mods to get a game that's worth playing. Compared to any other 4x game vanilla is pathetic you play up the differences between the factions, compared to just Civilization 5 they're a joke.

Actually, Valintine, I do agree that the patches in WOM did tend to break mods a lot because they were making such major changes to the game.  But that is ancient history.

The current game is much improved by all accounts and I agree with that assessment. 

One lesson everyone needs to learn (Play Master of Orion 3 if you need to learn this lesson) is that adding complexity does not necessarily improve a game.  Sometimes the simplest games (remember Tetris) can be surprisingly compelling.  So blasting Stardock for simplifying some of the design elements is unfair at the very least. 

Yes, there are some features I would like to see down the road.  Adding in (or back) some more diverse terrain types would be on that list.  And I expect that some future Fallen Enchantress expansion pack might just do that.  But for now. Stardock is doing it's best to make Vanilla FE a solid game on it's own.  Most of us here feel that that is indeed the case.

That having been said, not every game is for every person.  Me, myself, I can't stand Real-Time Strategy games.  I've tried to like them but I don't.  Based on their popularity, I am obviously in the minority.  Also, unlike the rest of the TBS world, I was never a big fan of the Civ franchise because several of the design elements ruined it for me such as the "Special Resources" were mostly useless.  Civ IV: Colonization is about the only game in that franchise I really liked though I have played Civ V some and enjoy it somewhat. 

Certainly if you don't like the game, I'm sure the DEVS would like to hear from you provided you provide useful, constructive criticism on what you don't like about it and why.  But using the phrase "this game sucks" pretty much guarantees they will ignore your post entirely.  Otherwise, it's obvious this game isn't for you.  No game is going to be for everyone.  Go find a game you do like!!

Yeah, I feel each new patch "breaks" my mods. But that's to be expected, I don't see the problem with it. When you release a mod for anything you do it for the current patch that is out. If balance changes, obviously your mod will be out of date if it contains even a single value of importance. What can Stardock do about that? Nothing.

I don't blame stardock if they are not thinking about this for mod, I guess they had lot of stuff on thier mind what game should be or not be in it on based of PC Limited...

Of course it's not funny in Large Mod, but simple mod it's easy to do...

I think most of the patches since .990 have been pretty modest and have had minimal impact on my own mod.  They have mostly been bug fixes and balance tweaks.  I'm guessing Stardock considers FE "Feature Set" and will only be making bug fixes and minor balance tweaks going forward.  Given that FE was a freebie for so many users, I suspect (and rightly so) they're already thinking about and possibly even in the early stages of an expansion pack they can charge money for.  I can't blame them for that.  Stardock bucked up and did what was right for their fans but Stardock still is first and foremost a business and has to make money to pay salaries.  The DEVs have lives and families just like the rest of us.

No, what people are get defensive about is when someone is obviously baiting them with "this sucks, that sucks, everything sucks.  Stardock sucks, they blew it. Bland, borings, suck, sucks, sucks".  If you were perhaps a bit more eloquent with your wording as opposed to sounding like a spoiled 3 year old, people may actually listen to what you have to say.  But no, instead you come off as a rude arrogant prick, and then complain that people get defensive and call them fanboys.  You've got a lot to learn about communication.

Well the "Bland" "Boring" homogeneity problem is brought up in a lot of reviews.

Please sir, completely disregard my feedback because I was naive enough to think polite constructive criticism would even get read. No I'm sorry, you have to be an asshole or they won't even acknowledge there's a problem. If you don't throw a fit, they'll assume nothing's wrong, positive feedback and polite constructive criticism alone DOES NOT WORK and HAS NEVER WORKED.

You know what's proven to work?
 NERD RAGE. Want proof? EXTENDED CUT.

If this was just the opinions of one guy on the internet you might have a point. 

And just as many reviews that don't.  What is bland and boring to some, does not make it bland and boring for everyone.  I'm not a fan of cream style corn, I find it bland and boring.  But I don't rage about how Del Monte sucks for making such a boring bland item.  I simply don't eat it.  You don't like the game because it;'s bland and boring, move along.

And nerdrage does?  No, it merely points out how immature and asinine you are for lowering yourself to those standards.  There are many, and I do mean MANY threads within this forum where there is intelligent, civilized, and productive discussions about some of the failings of this game.  But go ahead, stand up on a pedestal waving a "I'm a loud mouthed moron" sign all you want.  I'm sure all the people here will take you so much more seriously.

If it was the only opinion, you might have a point.  And yet many reviews, both professionally and personal, seem to like the game and do not call it boring and bland.

But go ahead, continue with your moronic tirade, it will bring you much more of the attention you so desperately crave.  While I continue making productive postings, and playing the game that I enjoy.

Without getting into the "Bland" debate, the reason the environments are limited has to do with the texture limitations on the video cards we required WOM to run on.

In the future, we will likely up the hardware requirements in future expansions/follow-ups to allow us to give each race their own unique environments.  

The minute we drop support for 32-bit versions of Windows, a lot of things change.

I know this isn't much help from a player's perspective, but from a modder's perspective it just give you more to mod -- discovery is half the fun

Thing is, we were able to mod this in WoM, whereas we cannot in FE. 

And it probably took up a lot more memory in E:wom.

I'm really looking forward to the "future", screw 32-bit and ancient machines holding you back, then people saying it looks bland. But we have to respect that FE and its expansion was making it up to E:wom buyers. You can't do that by ditching their hardware.

In WOM, we only had 1 texture for each environment. That's one of the reason the brown and blah colors got so bad.  In FE, we have a lot more textures per environment.

Since the original design was that each race would get their own environment (i.e. temperate, desert, ice, swamp, vivid, dead, etc.) I think I have the most justification to complain.

We have a lot of things fighting for memory.  Each unit being a unique instance, hundreds of unique buildings, a deformable terrain with lots of different environments, etc.  They all fight for that 2GB of memory.

Heck, I'd love to have a dozen different ecomorphs (i.e. every race have its own completely different skeleton) but that would means we'd need to abstract out the unit design so that the changes we make don't show up on the map.  And to be honest, we may have to revisit that somedy in the future since it you'd need >4GB of memory to supprt so many different types of textures.

So that was the original plan? Just that would have made such a big difference in terms of the factions feeling distinct. I know it's purely cosmetic, but that's art, the mechanics might be the same but the experience would be different.

How did everything get so memory draining anyway? Is it because everything is represented in 3d on the map?

Thanks for responding and I'm sorry I've been such a jerk but the whole point was to make sure someone at stardock saw what I had to say, since you did there's no reason to keep stamping my feet like a four year old (it's not dignified but it works).

Yes and it did. What you don't comprehend is that polite positive and docile threads fall out of sight and never get read. This one did, I got an answer, it's not dignified but it works. The industry won't even see an issue a lot of the time unless there's someone throwing a big enough tantrum to call attention to it. You may not like it but that's how the world works.

Uh no, it didn't.  What changes have been made since your temper tantrum?  Absolutely nothing. The answer you got is the same answer that can be found in other threads, if you took the time to read them as opposed to climbing up on your high horse. The only thing you actually accomplished was turn ing people completely off to anything you had to say.

And what exactly makes you think that your demands are the only demands that must be met.  You've offered absolutely zero constructive criticisms.  All you did was whine and cry like a child.  I'm glad you think you accomplished something, but I'm willing to bet that most people just chuckle and laugh at your expense.

Hey is it possible to make scalable 2d representations of everything in the game based on screenshots from different zoom angles?

Do bear in mind that Lord Xia had been asking for ponies for quite some time, and he never bitched or nerdraged about it and guess what, he got his Pony. So your wrong when you say being polite gets you no where, and furthermore people are more willing to take someone seriously whom presents his case in a polite fashion rather than foaming at the mouth.

And lastly just because you don't get a dev responce does not mean they have not read your thread and considered the requests you wanted.

^ I can't disagree with your other points, but to say Xia's polite and doesn't ever bitch??  LOL.

And I'd like to thank Frogboy for so kindly responding on this issue.  Most of the reasoning you gave for the lack of terrain types was no surprise IMO.  I look forward to the day more terrain types for factions are a reality.  Thanks again.

There's an early mockup around here somewhere that has the wraiths territory (dead and spooky) up against magnar (burning lands) up against urxen (desert) up,against tarth (magical swampy).

we had to choose between unit customization or that. Next time you play a game, COD or HALO make a note of how uniform the environment of a map is. 

How about a nice new desert texture? It is not sandy at all. That could be a nice addition for the expansion.

not without a banding 32 bit.  

heck, here's the mockup from the original design doc:

Now picture that with each race having its own environment and you have a pretty good idea of what we wanted.

I remember that pic. Got me excited way back when. But your desert texture can be replaced or slightly changed to look sandy without removing the 32bit users. I do like the effects you add to the sand tiles and tactical maps. That was a nice touch. Also, it would be nice to add some minor rolling hills to the tile so that it looks more like a desert. One thing I do is add a few hills here and there to make the desert look right. It also adds some much needed strategy to moving through those areas.

Normally I would just do it myself, but there is no way to load a stamp in the editor. It would have to be done by the creator of the map.