Replayabitity Suggestions Master List

I'm not sure how that helps replayability.

The reason I replay galciv over and over is because I don't know what good stuff will be around me at the start of the game and I don't know who will be my friends and enemies in a particular game. I don't know what strategy I might have to use.

The problem I'm having with SK (and hey, I'm the designer) is that you know how it's going to end. Either you kill the SK or you don't.

Now, when we were starting off with this, we wanted it to be like Star Control and FTL both of which have definitive endings like SK does.  But I'd like to have more surprises in each game.

I think SK's a pretty fantastic game as-is.  But I want to see the replayability improved further and that has to come from game play rules not adding more "stuff" to the game (the game already has far more content than GalCiv has).

Good points, Brad. I agree that gameplay variance in the form of "more surprises" is definitely a key aspect of replayability with SK. I hope to see more of the Dungeon Master at work.

In defense of my suggestion, I feel that adding some end-game super units that are unique to your sovereign does bring an exciting element to each play through. It would be incentive enough for someone like me to try out a different sovereign - in addition to seeing what their skill tree is like - and play it all the way through to see their cool "badass" unit. It's just a thought.

I appreciate that you may not see that as a true replayability factor, but I know some of us enjoy that sort of "carrot".

Does this mean you're back on the project in a more full-time capacity?

decisions made throughout the game need to carry more weight and impact

and we need a lot more map generation options

As Brad mentioned above we all know how its going to end.It's the journey that matters.In my mind that means there should be plenty of ways to reach the final destination and many things to see before that.Here are some things i would like to see

-More map generation options and more maps

-More options to be different in each playthrough.Outposts should have 2 ways to go.One super offensive path and one super defensive with each giving appropriate bonuses

-More events through locations.Like an ancient tree that talks and gives you a level if you pay it with logistics or a big chunk mana.(only once per game).Or a 2 tier-dungeon battle  with a boss at the end and a legendary sword or shield as a reward

-City sieges are a bit underwhelming.They need to be bigger,and maybe cities should have more defensive options for building.Extra towers with archers or a mage tower that gives an aura of +1 movement and +1 attack to defenders

-Cities when they level they should give you an option of 2 possible upgrades(like you had in FE and LH),like 2 extra units to defend it or 2 production.Or +1 attack in zoc or +1 defense

-Some building options should be also a 2-way option.If you build an academy of war that gives +15 hp to all units built in this city you can't build an academy of magic that lets you produce mages and gives you extra mana each round

-Neutral races should give something very good(1 or 2 legendary items)in case they join sk and you are able to defeat them

-Give us reason to care for our units more.Some units die too easily and after the starting phase no one will try to produce them again.More starting hp,and a bit bigger leveling bonus would be much appreciated

-More balance is needed and i know that you are looking into it right now.Some heroes,and some leaders are not strong enough right now.Its better to make them a bit OP than the state we have right now

-More starting races should be included.Right now we have no such option.With it you should have different combat units to produce,with elves giving more movement and accuracy and dwarves having bigger damage and more hp

-More spells

-Maybe an option to fight against different sk,with new units and dialogue options

Almost everything i have suggested is good idea for an expansion or dlc and can't be added right now but i think that they would add a lot in replayability.I think sk is a great game,and has all the potential to be one of the best games in the genre.It just needs more variety in each playthrough.I don't think that can be achieved only through starting options.Balance as the game is right now will be crucial,as not all units-heroes and sovereigns are equal.Sorry in advance if my post is too big or is not well written.Keep up the good work guys you have a real diamond in your hands

Can this be done by July given the focus on GCIII, Servo, Ashes and Offworld.

Seems like there could be resource allocation issues.

GC3 and Sorcerer King are being made by Stardock. Offworld Trading Company is developed by Mohawk Games. Servo by BonusXP, while Ashes of the Singularity by Oxide Games with help from Stardock.

Yeah, I'm not worried about resources.  What I AM worried about it allocating SK resources to the wrong things. This is why we like to pool suggestions from the user-base to see where our internal lists line up with outside feedback.

The key issues will be prioritized for 1.0, with auxiliary or 'wouldn't it be nice' features lined up for later updates.

And thanks again for everyone input!

So SD and the others share nothing except web forum space and advertising? Hmm, I would assume SD, at least, holds a partial equity position in the other companies, which means SD has financial interest in the other games success..so shared resources wouldn't be out of the equation. Regardless, I'm guessing GCIII is a (human) resource hog - being SD's flagship game.

I just watched some videos and never played the game, but I am interested in SK. That is why I will add some of my general thoughts to the discussion.

My biggest driving force behind replayability (beside a good multiplayer and mod-support in non-singleplayer-only games) is the amount of different races and magic schools I have to test out and play with. Unique endgame units are going in the right direction, but that can only be the tip of the iceberg.

You should focus on the uniqueness of races and magic schools. A good example for different races is in my opinion Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Starcraft, Birth of the Federation and to some extend Disciples 2. My favorite is HoMM3. Playing with the undead, demons or other races lead to unique units, playstyles, buildings, hero skills etc. Add random hero upgrades to chose from, powerful artifacts and of cause different magic schools with beginner to master level spells, and you can play the same map over and over again and you always get another game experience.

Many games did different races and magic schools, but most of them ended up just using the same unit or spell for all races. The developers gave them different names, looks and effect colors, but in the end, it was the same thing and that is getting boring very fast. The best part about HoMM3 is that it created charming and truely unique races on top of a diversified upgrade and magic system. Combine that with city upgrading and a lot of random stuff to explore on a map and I think you have the ideal solution for replayability.

I think many developers go with the "everything the same in different skins - then we don't have to balance it" approach. But that is making a game bland and boring. And as HoMM3 proofs, unique races can be balanced. And SK is not Starcraft. As you mentioned in one of the Let's Plays, SK is a single player game where you fight a mighty Sorcerer. Adding some "overpowered" goodies to SK can't harm. I think that this is a great way of thinking. Go all out, do some crazy stuff and let the player choose from a lot of options like in HoMM3 and you will get not even a great but an awesome game!

At last, I want to speak about an example of how you make a game boring. Many will hate me for that, but I think that Age of Wonders 3 is a boring game. It is a great game and I love it, but it suffers on the described problem above. You have different races and magic, but they all are the same with minor changes. Orc spearman are strong and goblin spearman are a bit weaker, but at the end of the day, every race has a spearman unit or a low level spell that does 10 damage...that is not what I call variety.

P.S.: Adding more huts to the map if a city grows is nice. But is there a city screen where I can see my built structures and the evolving inner city like in HoMM3? A growing city is good, but a city screen that adds more and more buildings with some moving parts (a well, flying dragons in the back etc.) is what I call immersion. That is important to build up a connection to a race or city and it has a collectors's album effect - you want to keep building.

Maybe I should add some smilies to keep the reader awake ->

A couple of alternate suggestions for how the game could end differently:

None of these I expect at launch.

1. Tyrant at least, or maybe any sovereign who chooses evil options, has the option of co-opting the doom counter and actually "wins" the game by becoming the big bad and ending life instead of the SK. What could be interesting about this path is that you'd have to learn how to cast the spell. The spell might be researched like the spaceship from the Civ games where you could to develop different parts and then cast it. The difference is that it takes time to cast the spell and the SK will come out of his stronghold and come find you. This would lead to a different battle. Of course there would be major bonuses for you destroying the shards instead.

2. Another race defeats the SK instead of you. You lose, maybe allied victory, the game based on how well you fought against the SK. You might "lose" the game because one of the other races got it's act together and beat him instead. This obviously would take more AI coding and other things.

3. So I think for the priest path or a good path then there should be an option to "talk" the SK from destroying the world. The biggest thing that this game has been missing is a nice storymode like there was in Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes. I think there is a lot of room for discovering why the creature went evil and wants to end everything. What if there was an option to heal the SK instead. The final battle might not be about killing the SK but casting a spell on him and saving him. There would be room for questing and a great story to be told.

4. Another option harkens back to the days of playing Dragonquest game where I'd get the main boss's house and he'd have castle bosses that'd I would have to get through to be even get into the chamber of the superbadguy. I'm also explaining most MMO raids and dungeon. I realize the wandering lieutenants are partly that but it'd be nice to expand the last battle in four or something. Then based on what you fought first and how and what methods you might get an easier or harder last battle. 

5. I've always felt like it was a little silly that you can't talk to the massive lieutenants and get a feel for them as far as story is based. How did they end up that way? Why are they happily destroying shards? Is there a way to convert them to our sides? It should almost be impossible but doable. Not an ending but a hope that those Lts will be fleshed out except being keykeepers.

That's enough for now. I think more ability to tell a good story. I know there is one but it's fairly based: stop SK from casting spell whether good or evil.

I think these are all decent suggestions.

i really like some of your ideas Natasin, especially the notion of "alignment based victory conditions / quests", ie. incentives to play through the same game in a different manner - towards good ends, balanced ends, or evil ends.  even just the idea of each sovereign class having their own victory condition in addition to the defaults, is a wonderful way of enhancing the games replayability.

and i agree that we need more impactful ways of spicing up the story and creating variety in how it unfolds...

 I really enjoy the game and it is very easy to get started in a game and sucked into hours of gameplay.  I've been trolling this forum for awhile and watching the weekly replays of the dev videos.  Every time I am listening to the replays, I keep thinking I wish there was more variety to the game.  The basic idea of you against the "Big Bad" is awesome, but the BB kinda hangs out for the most part.  And the minor factions seem.... minor.... 

I wish SK was a bit more like one of my old favorite NES games, Bandit Kings of Ancient China.  I still play this game after 25 years.  It had the "Big Bad", Emperor Gao Qui, who was trying to take over China.  There were a number of playable "Bandit Kings" that were trying to defeat him and unite China.  All of these bandit kings played against GG and the other bandits.  GG was huge, had super large armies and if you ever settled next to his area, he constantly attacked or made you pay for your safety.  After he bled someone dry he would wipe them off the map and imprison the defeated BK.  One neat thing was that when you defeated other BK's you could recruit them to your cause and you could free imprisoned BK's as well.  

And all of this had a Doomsday counter.  If China was not united by a set time, China would be invaded from the north and the game was over.  Everyone lost, even Gao Qui.  If anyone is interested, I highly recommend looking at this game structure.  I think if SK could somehow enter the multiplayer realm in this manner the game could unlimited replayability.  I like where SK is, enjoy how easy it is to get sucked in, and look forward to the upcoming release.

N/A

Brad had brought up the idea of minor factions being able to expand and do their own thing and I, for one, originally shit the idea down. 

I think now that it's a good way to vary up gameplay, especially in the instance where you roll up on the Swamo Giants, for instance, and they're already being wooed by the SK, but to make matters worse, theyve already expanded and are looking pretty strong.

You would definitely change your strategy to win them over. 

That sort of variant/divergent gameplay is what makes this genre my favorite. So, I vote to allow the minors the ability to expand.

I'm slowly moving back onto Sorcerer King.  I'm also the designer on Ashes of the Singularity. Ironically, Galactic Civilizations III was not supposed to be on my list at all other than advising on the AI originally.  But I've kind of jumped onto that with both feet and been tweaking, writing, fixing and updating it like a madman.

So broadly speaking here are things we can do and can't do (in no particular order)

• We cannot create any new major art assets.  That means no new units. The game already has plenty anyway.
• We cannot move the release date (well, we can, but we're not spending any more budget on it, its budget is its budget).

Below are some of the ideas I've pitched:

1. I'd like to see the sovereign trees vastly increased.
2. I'd like greatly reduce the # of starting recipes and instead tie them to the sovereign trees so that what recipes are available depend heavily on your sovereign
3. I'd like to look at having the "minor" factions expand (as in, they will build towns) and have simple diplomacy that is unique per minor.
4. I'd like to reduce the prevalence of monsters starting out on the good lands a bit (at least, ones close to your starting location)
5. I'd like to make the premise be that you are the leader of a city state who has learned that the King is on a quest to become a god (The Sorcerer King) and you must build a kingdom that can raise the forces necessary to stop him before it's too late while convincing rival leaders to work with you towards toppling him rather than fighting you or each other).

-brad

Brad,

a thing for me that increase the replayabitity of a game are missions (quests) that are either chained and/or have a mobile target.

For example to complete a quest you must go somewhere to obtain an item, however when you arrive there you get another quest that you must complete before you get the needed item, and the resolution of that quest might even require yet another quest. At any step in the chain you will have option to decide what to do, like a quest decision tree. Since the quest logic in the game already seem to support for quests interlaced with battles, it might be fairly easy to implement.

Second example: the quest "Go and kill Gruk the young Ogre". You must hunt down Gruk (who is in a mobile army on the strategic map). Half the fun would be if there is not a "Goto" button (on the outstanding quest report) that would zoom the map to his current location, but focus the map on his last rumored location.

I see to things that might also be needed to be implemented for this to work:

1. He might be hard to find. Therefor every-so-often a popup might say sometimes like "Gruk was last seen at this location" which zooms the map to that location (and updates his last rumored location on the quest report).
2. He might have died (for example you have killed him before you got the quest) in which case there should be gravestone on the strategic map.

I know you said no major art assets, but i think a gravestone on the strategic map could be a minor asset (i does not even have to be animated).

Brad,

making the the minors more significant is a great idea. At the moment they're too weak and their cities are pushovers. I'd like to see them strong enough to keep their area of influence free of roaming armies and maybe build one reasonable mobile army. The second thing that would help is to allow you to defend the shards in your area of control. At the moment, I get notification that the shard is being attacked and my forts do nothing and I can't attack the force destroying the shard. Annoying. Being able to build a strong defensive position and fight a war of tuition with the Sorcerer King while hunting down the Lieutenants makes it more of a 4x game and adds some strategy. Now it's a race to find and kill the Lieutenants and don't worry too much about the home front. Last suggestion, when fighting against a minor race, let the player capture the city vice destroying it. It would still take the minor out the game, but it would be a great reward to have a fairly advanced city and possibly access to a new unit type.

One last thought, have faction specific high level spell or spells that can only be unlocked through the sovereign tree or a major quest. For example, the cleric faction (the weakest in my opinion), having a resurrect ability would be great and would fit with the cleric theme.

I have not played yet, so I cannot comment on personal experience (just watching the dev streams and reading the boards).  However, the ideas the stand out to me include

1) Different Variations of the Sorcerer King (Magic Based, Mighty Warrior Based, General/Army Based, Elemental Being - Stronger at end fight as Doom Grows, Cunning Diplomat/Schemer - better relations with minor races and spies (handled by the Game Master) that randomly wreck havoc with your troops, cities, etc.).  Different play styles for the sorcerer king (personality styles from Gal Civ as inspiration), one that focuses on aligning with Minors, one that focuses on destroying shards, one that is defensive oriented, one that offensive, one that is expansive, etc.

2) Change Starting Conditions (e.g. some minor factions already aligned to Sorcerer King as vassals or already wiped out, variety of lieutenants that are not always the same ones in every game, both could scale with difficulty)

3) Make the Game Master have more impact, more random events based on choices/actions made previously in the game. 

These may not work for various reasons or be more appropriate of after launch.

Thanks

I'm looking forward to Ashes myself but I'm also really looking forward to SK as a finished game. It's hard to see the complete vision when you start playing in Alpha. It's sometimes incremental creep and you don't always see the great leap (like the art). Glad to see other help on this before you get to work on Ashes.

Some of the idea I had above would be nice to see in the base game but it's already pretty good right now. I certainly would hate to see it pushed out past July.

Responding to each point:

1. This would be awesome if, and I really mean if, we get more skill points faster because my experience is that I rarely get through half sovereign tree. Plus, not every skill I get is equal in coolness. I'd rather have a limited number as long as each step was cool and great. The alternative would be several different paths that a Wizard could take and that finishing the whole tree was not expected but they might finish the Dark Wizard path.

2. Uniqueness is great. I still feel like I can rarely equip anyone beyond my main hero though. It'd be nice if humanoids dropped armor and weapons too. I should be swimming in leather armor and maybe that armor could be broken down into leather components.

3. Yeah, that was my suggestion above and I went as far as to suggest that they could win the game too instead of the player. Can't imagine the coding headache that would be though.  

4. This is going to make getting resources and XP a lot harder unless the quest system will allow the player to make up for the lack. I currently don't like building soldiers and usually hope I stumble upon a useful unit. I only build soldiers if my heroes starting flunkies get slaughtered in a few turns (and they currently almost always die in one or two battles.) Part of me would rather make the flunkies more useful and use the danger of the world as a way to tell a story like you have to figure out how to defeat the bandits close by. That might be done through might or brains.

5. This is a good starting premise. I still like the idea (in later expansions most likely) where the sovereigns have the options of saving the SK from his madness, or you kill the SK and then become the god in his place. Most of this comes from my experience with Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes where I had choices at the end of the game. I could X or Y and both effected how the end a bit. 

Either way, I'm looking forward to the game quite a bit and I'm grateful all the work the developers do.

Natasin

Here's what I'm leaning towards:

Premise:

You are the leader of a city state in a world filled with Magic.  But the King, the self-styled Sorcerer King, has begun to destroy the magical shards in a quest to become a god. You must build a kingdom and raise a force powerful enough to challenge him while at the same time dealing with rival factions who only care about conquering more land and resources for themselves. 

Gameplay Changes:

1. "Minor races" will be referred to as "Rivals" (other factions)
2. You are the leader of the city state of Altar (or whatever you call it)
3. You can select which rivals and their intelligence during game setup.
4. You will be able to set what the doomsday counter threshold is (low, normal, high)
5. Each rival will take a certain type of "thing" and provide certain types of things (i.e. no generic trade/diplomacy, it'll be per rival)
6. Rivals will expand and found new cities
7. Conquering a rival will not turn it into one of your cities, instead, you will be able to build their unit unique unit there.
8. You will have a lot fewer starting recipes
9. Most recipes will come from the sovereign skill tree and be different from sovereign to sovereign
10. City buildings will come from the sovereign skill tree
11. Every other level up of a city will involve selecting a special building

These all sound great. I hope you can work in #11, as that sounds great, too.

Is this all stuff you can do in a month-ish?

Has anyone thought about making the SKs Lieutenants a little malleable?  For example, SK can choose to buff lieutenants as one of his punishments for you.  I could see this breaking up the pattern of every game requiring the same stack of doom (mostly high init).  What if one had a buff to decrease attacking units attack strength by their initiative?  Or what if a Lieutenant could get sweep, but took double damage from arrows?  Or built up defense based on how he was attacked recently so a mixed stack would do better than a stack where all the units were the same?  Or Lieutenant stats will determine which allies you want most badly as some potential allies will be better against certain flavor of Lieutenants.

Or let him equip them with armour and other equipment. After (if) you defeat a LT it drops the equipped gear and you can then use it.

How i envision it:

the SK has a counter that is every turn incremented by the points in the doomsday counter, and when a certain number is reached he can then craft an item for the LTs. So the higher the doomsday counter the faster the SK-craft-equipment-counter will rise.