War of Magic, should it be brought back?

Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

War of Magic, should it be brought back?

Greetings!

For those of you not familiar with our Elemental game universe here it is in brief:

Elemental is a fantasy world made up of many different civilizations vying for control the world. There is a great deal of history and lore to tap into and we decided to begin making games in this world back with 2010s release of War of Magic. Unfortunately, when it came out, it was pretty buggy and got some negative reviews. We fixed the bugs but the game itself was still pretty meh.

So in 2012, we released the second game in the Elemental universe called Fallen Enchantress which was good and we're pretty proud of that game. We followed it up with an expansion pack called Legendary Heroes that further refined the Fallen Enchantress game mechanics.

We do intend to follow Fallen Enchantress with a third strategy game in the Elemental universe but it'll be very different from either War of Magic or Fallen Enchantress as it focuses largely on, well I can't really go into that yet.

When Fallen Enchantress was released, we discontinued War of Magic. I don't think it's available for sale anywhere anymore. My question is, would anyone be interested in us revisiting War of Magic in the future to release a kind of "War of Magic: Director's Cut" or something where we refined the WOM game design, updated the visuals.

WOM had some interesting game mechanics such as a pretty big emphasis on a dynasty system and a number of other distinctive mechanics that could be refined further.

Let us know what you think. Would we be opening up "old wounds" or would be restoring faith to those who believed in the original "not-MOM" concept?

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antoomp

Please no, never come it back, it was crap and you would waste money and time.

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DsRaider

Join Date 11/2008

+70

The problem with adding the dynasty system to LH is it doesn't really fit. Diplomacy in LH is very rudimentary, there are only a few tightly scripted treaties and trade goods. Mostly you just fight everyone else. As is adding in dynasties would simply be another way of bribing other civilizations into liking you, until you decided to kill them or they allied you. It wouldn't add a whole lot to the game beyond the obvious hey now you have children! In order to really utilize the Dynasty system a lot of work would have to be done on making Diplomacy a real strategic part of the game, because right now it isn't.

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Ashbery76

Join Date 02/2002

+36

A dynasty system kinda falls apart when Daddy can never die.Kings should age and die and the gameplay is keeping the family strong.

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Polistes

Join Date 02/2008

+19

It works just fine, in fact dynastioes can be used to extend the turn limit the game has, because if you reach the end of the turn limit, your character supposedly "dies" then, and the game will stop taking score if you keep playing, if you have heirs, you can in theory extend this.

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I like the updated FE and LH. I do like the heritage stuff in WOM and wouldn't mind the return of that. I do think the naval part of this series need love and lots of it.

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LH is such an improvement over FE that I would not want to see SD devote resources to Elemental.

I would rather see those resources go towards something new such as;

1) a non-linear Elemental RPG d20 Open Gaming License v3.5 game focused on tactical combat; i.e. Troika/ Atari's Temple of Elemental Evil, that is continually expanded with new DLC adventures

2) an X-COM like Elemental game or

3) an improved tactical battles in an LH sequel modeled after Rome Total War / Decision Games' Ancient Battles or Slitherine's Legion Gold.

4) or LH sequel with Hero only dungeons that only hero's (not army units) can enter to explore, fight monsters and recover treasure.

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I missed the title entirely (and I can't even remember why) and have no personal experience with it. Currently I don't mind to buy it for T&E for reasonable sum of money.

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mqpiffle

Join Date 10/2010

+44

Quoting Edwin99,

reply 106

3) an improved tactical battles in an LH sequel modeled after Rome Total War / Decision Games' Ancient Battles or Slitherine's Legion Gold.

4) or LH sequel with Hero only dungeons that only hero's (not army units) can enter to explore, fight monsters and recover treasure.

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A bit off topic but I would love a party based RPG set in the elemental world. I personally liked WOM, I did enjoy it even back in its broken state.

and It got me fallen enchantress for free. If you wanted to take some time and develop a DLC that flushes out the WOM much wider scope I would buy it.

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KzintiPatriarch

Join Date 05/2007

+95

No. Spend time and energy on new projects.

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

Quoting DsRaider,

reply 102

You hit on something.

I think for Elemental to come back- perhaps as War of Magic 2, a revamped, properly done dynasty system needs to be one of the pillars of the game.

For it to work you'd have to remove item levels on equipment, and have robust inheritance systems, and a few other features. It could be neat as an add-on to LH as an experiment to see if it's viable, but it would be much more than a DLC.

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Would the combat system from FE and LH be in? The combat for EWOM was not any fun. Oh, and the spells from FE and LH, otherwise I enjoyed EWOM for awhile, with its unique features.

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I would love to see it brought back, updated and made to work. I was a big fan of the story and just the general feel of the game. Honestly i was bummed when i came to realize that it was going to be shelved.

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I would buy a new Elemental game. Doesn't matter if it has dynasties or not.

TBH, I would probably even buy it if it's Candy Crush with an Elemental theme.

If I can have a choice, I would prefer an RPG with turn based combat.

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There are features I'd love to see again

-cities that "can walk and chew gum"!!

- Essence done right (and heroes with their own mana)

- Dynasties are probably an expansion rather than a DLC from what people have been saying

I'm not keen on the FE tech trees but not completely certain how I'd fix them either.

Some of these could best be done as OPTIONS that you can choose to play with or without in any given game (dual-queue cities in particular).

RTS is NOT one of them. There are tons of RTS games -don't mess up a good Turn-based game with that [expurgated] ...bigger battles is good though.

I haven't got to LH yet but I reckon going forwards is the way forward reintroduce the good ideas.

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Quoting Heavenfall,

reply 17

I played E:wom last summer and compared it to FE, it was still garbage at the last patch.

You've spent years improving on E:wom to reach FE:LH, which is borderline great. The only reason to do an E:wom release would be so people can see how bad it was, because that will be what people will think. The only redeeming feature of E:wom compared to FE:LH is the dynasty system. You'd be far better off building a DLC pack with that in the game for FE:LH instead.

I can totally understand wanting to go back in time to "do it right", but that's what you did with FE and FE:LH. You re-did it the right way. FE:LH is an E:wom "director's cut" years in the making.

i agree with all you said

only 1 thing (not to you, just in general)

dynasty wasnt great at all, i mean i understand "the coolness behind" this idea but its one of those things good to hear that never works out

dynasty was always superimbalanced in every single aspect and not something like "ehy i give them +1 strength and its fixed" so imbalanced its even hard to THINK at a fix

there was nothing working in its implementation, not even the idea behind was working in practicte and there never was a goal the dynasty wanted to achieve and never something that it achieves aparta making the game even more chaotic

thats not to criticize again WOM just to say its unbelievable to even think "ehy i put this part of this game" like it was a working part

the only thing it could be said is "ehy i think this idea was cool, now i ll work it out from scratch and make it a real feature"

so like heavenfall said... better just make your new game and think of a way to put dynasty (and eventually few other things ) in it

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Blake00

Join Date 11/2003

Absolutely!!!

As I said in https://forums.elementalgame.com/444141/page/1/ I created a few months back (which sadly went unanswered) I'm still holding out for a physical Elemental Gold Edition series pack with WoM, FE & LH all in one just like what you did with the Gal Civ series. I would THROW money at you if you did that especially if you went back and polished WoM up some more before doing that!

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 70

The original WOM concept was a lot LOT simpler than what shipped and, in some respects, players can kind of tell because a lot of the "Hey, let's throw this in" parts were just barely sketched out.

The original WOM could be summed up like this:

I do think that taking the current engine and using it create what EWOM was supposed could be interesting. And while I'm not against the idea, I also wouldn't want it to greatly impact the development of other games. If you can fit it in, then I say go for it. EWOM had some interesting ideas, and the simplified design you posted could make for an interesting and different game when compared to the FE games.

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I am new to the franchise, I recently bought Legendary Heroes on Steam during the sale, it was probably the best decision I made with the limited funds I have left since Christmas. It is an excellent game, just a shame we only have a handful of DLC for it.

I remember the bad reviews of War of Magic and it did affected my opinion of the franchise, even Fallen Enchantress skipped past me because of this. The name War of Magic to this day is slightly tainted, but if a Directors Cut was released and marketing relied on the name of Legendary Heroes/Fallen Enchantress I think it could save the name.

More Elemental is not a bad thing, no matter what name it goes by.

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I would. I think it would be cool to go back to WoM and fix some of the issues around features that are no longer in the new games. Like Dynasties. Focus and fix what makes that game different than the new ones. I think you could re-release it and make money on it. Guess it depends on how much resources you want to put into it.

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Biggest concepts that I would like to see revisited either in a remake of WoM or a playable option for LH

Broken, dangerous world
Sov was an insanely powerful being that can start a civilization and had the ability to use his powers to change the world in a finite manner.
Everything revolved around essence
Essence was a finite resource
Sovs and some sov children had essence - so dynasty concept was important
Essence was needed to imbue spellcasting ability, create cities (reduce city spam!!), improve cities, improve champion/sov stats

It didn't really turn out this way but I lived the idea of essence determining the game:

sov with full essence - big badass that can conquer a civilization by himself. Negatives/risks - could be ganged up on and killed with massive force, could only be in one location in one time, will have minimum/weak troops and cities
Sov with expended essence - Large forces, powerful cities, better economy/production/enchantments. Negatives/risks - puny in combat, easily killed if caught.
Sov with half essence - moderate forces, moderate cities, etc. Moderate in combat - equal to one or two powerful armies.

So a player could have a different game every time depending on the decisions to expend essence. If a Sov started with 10 essence (low #)

Badass at 10, but with only starting city and weak troops economy. Pretty much indestructible to normal troops/beasts though. If manages to die - is resurrected but loses a permanent portion of essence.
Spends 5 to get 4 cities and a huge spell. Pretty good economy/coverage. Can field a moderate army. Can probably keep the home area safe and go on a war of conquest.
Spends 9 (lose 10 and dies) and has 6 cities and 3 buff champions. Can handle 3 moderate fronts, but if the sov is killed its game over.

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And whatever you do - figure in some way to display game metadata and ideally keep a historical track. I keep putting the series down (even after 1000+ hrs) because there is no continuity between games/civs/profiles, etc

If you do bring dynasties back - keep a family record.

This would allow starting a game with an added parameter "Generation"

Gen 1 = no additional benefit

Gen 2 = some benefit from a prior generation - nothing, added equipment or gold, additional champions (maybe pre-existing siblings)

Gen 3 = same as above, possibly more powerful.

So a 3rd generation Sov would start the game with either a bit of a boost or at least a bit of history and continuation. It could also be randomized or added as a play parameter - i.e. I start at gen 1, but all other Sovs start at third generation.

For example:

I play game 1 as john smith.

This creates a 'smith' profile.

game 1 ends as a victory with 3 kids Bob, Joe, mary smith. A defeat can either mean the family dies (harsh) or you go back to the original family leader and can't use the children from this game.

Game 2 I can pick from Bob, Joe, or Mary and can bring X with me from the prior game - nothing, gold, champion, equipment, etc (remember these are supposed to be big essence wielding super beings). Possibly also allow the other kids to start out as starting champions.

For game 2 I pick Bob and his sidekick pet dragon george.

Game 2 is a gen 2 game - all AI sovs start at Gen 2 with added benefits

Game 2 is a victory with bob being succeeded by his kids Jane and Janet.

Game 3 starts with Jane and an extra helping of gold (george passed in the last generation due to an explosive incident)

Game 3 is a gen 3 game - all AI sovs start at gen 3 with added benefits

Etc, Etc.

Can then start a new family, continue with the old

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Admittedly I never played WoM so the difference of game mechanics is lost on me, instead I will just talk about how to reestablish the WoM name and concept.

How about simply reintroducing WoM as an extensive DLC or addon campaign for Legendary heroes? A remade WoM game might not do well due to the reception of the original, but releasing a campaign might be a way to test fan opinions. No doubt it would minimize the risk as making a fully comprehensive game would be much more costly and Stardock would have no idea how well it would be received.

Stardock admit that DLC sells like hotcakes and it would satisfy that community need for more content and at the same time test the waters.

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I would like to see War of Magic given another go. With what has been learned from FE, I think it could be great...

Granted, in my imagining, I'm seeing some sort of CK2 - WoM hybrid. What a game that would be!

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More content is always welcomed. IMO it would sell better as a DLC to LH and just add it as a scenario. That way you release the game without people seeing it for sale by itself and remembering the bad launch.

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