Goontrooper

Great news on paths. That is a really helpful feature. The encumbrance system is one of the many additions that seems like it will add great depth without adding pointless extra junk. Overall, the UI changes look great. Tooltips are such a huge part of a good, modern UI. EDIT: Something I just thought of, when using diplomacy or other interaction screens, will it be possible to have multiple choices, or just two (yes / no) o

Great update, lots of juicy new information here. Hopefully things will be fairly balanced for Beta, but I see that as one of the main areas that we will be able to help with. It would be a huge step forward if FE at beta is complete, stable, and fun enough that balance is the main concern. I'm very interested to see the full list of abilities / perks / etc and also see how easy it is to work with this stuff in XML. Thanks for the great update

I'm a bit nervous because it is also set for consoles. That isn't always a bad thing, but it does make me worry about the depth and UI. Maybe I will be pleasantly surprised. So far it looks like it is getting most things right. The combat is the big question right now. Xenonauts is also coming soon, so hopefully at least one of those two will get it right. Oh, and also Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. I just really, really hope that they d

I completely agree that trying to market FE as something completely new and different would be a horrible idea. Frankly, it would be a total lie and would only likely only frustrate and annoy gamers and reviewers. This is still a fantasy, TBS, 4X. Same world. Same characters. Same lore. Same basic mechanics (shards, channelers, etc.). Many of the same art assets as well. If someone picks up a screenshot of both games, they will easily see the similarities. &nbsp

[quote who="Campaigner" reply="80" id="3020289"] Ok, I don't see what's wrong with my first post in this thread. I just said in a funny way that I find her goodlooking. But maybe americans (both you and the other guy are from the US) got different morals than here in Sweden. Anyway, that's your problems.[/quote] It isn't a moral issue or a nationalist issue. I just find your comments to be very stereotypical 'awkward internet gu

[quote who="Thormodr" reply="75" id="3019838"]Personally, I think all the "Women of Stardock" are cute for that matter. And no, I am not a desperate internet nerd or anything. Some people need to lighten up here. [/quote] I for one was simply getting some good laughs out of Campaigner's creepy, awkward posts. There is a big difference between saying that some girls that work at Stardock are

[quote who="Campaigner" reply="54" id="3019397"]If someone believes I'm gonna change my behavior then they're very mistaken. If I see a hot chick, I'm going to smile and check her out since girls like attention. Besides, shy guys are lonely (believe me, I was very shy up until I was around 22. Still a bit shy but I'm working on it.... Also, if you tell a woman that you find her attractive then she'll be happy becaus

Seriously, while it may seem flattering to figuratively jump all over one of the female employees...you guys are creepy. Not trying to play big brother / white knight / whatever or speak for her or anything, so try not to take offense. You just come off a bit like desperate internet nerds, IMHO. OMG GIRL! ON THE INTERNET! IN A GAME COMPANY! MARRY ME! :)

[quote who="Goldmos" reply="19" id="3018313"]Who is the Firefox girl?[/quote] Why, planning a stalking?

The Minecraft costumes are especially cool.

Apparently the 'new' build is just as terrible as the last. Same UI issues, same placeholder crap, tons of bugs, oh and now the options menu is apparently greyed out. Bad enough that they cut features less than 48 hours before release and then ripped up people that expressed amazement. If they had at least delivered a playable game, we could all get past that. Instead we have gotten a buggy piece of garbage and nothing but 'working as intended' excuses from Kerberos. So basica

[quote who="Alstein" reply="25" id="3015427"]I did think of one problem, combined monster armies. Then again if a spider meets a bandit, they should fight it out, not join together. There should be different monster 'factions' if that is possible. [/quote] Right, like I said in the post right above yours. ;)

[quote quoting="post"] How aggressive should monsters be? Make them too nasty and people get frustrated. Make them too passive and they’re a joke. I’ve got to tweak them in both directions. Gonna have to be a lot of subtlety in the difficulty levels. [/quote] Overall difficulty setting should be the main thing. I don't think we need a separate slider for aggression. That seems to be a needlessly complex addition that c

[quote who="Sir_Linque" reply="39" id="3014961"]Regarding portraits, I don't think anyone would disagree that 2D painted portraits look a lot better, but I believe it would simply be too resource intensive to execute properly. I wish it would be feasible to make the 3D portraits slightly better looking, but I guess it's not going to happen. It does hurt the immersion a bit, but since it's not going to change I'm fine with it. About Random House, Goontrooper, you hav

Very cool. I've never understood the Random House partnership. Since Brad wrote (right?) the book himself, and since there was hardly any lore presented in WoM...and now a new writer has been doing FE...what the heck did Random House ever contribute, other than maybe publishing the book?

Great update! We have a beta timeline to shoot for, cool news screens, further details on known features, and new details on new features! I'm especially excited to see details on the new options for diplomacy. One month or so until beta...can't wait to dig in and get to work / play.

Agreed. Been hoping for this since WoM beta! I'm not sure how many quests FE will have compared to WoM...I would be very curious to know. I hope it is a much larger variety. I always get really tired of the small WoM quest pool. Something like this really would be a huge boon, since there are tons of very creative people here who would make lots of great quests, if it were a bit easier to do.

I have no problem with the rivers. Anyways... Looking forward to the next update on AI, or anything else for that matter.

One comment on some of these ideas....guys, lets try to stay away from the talk of 'should do this, should do that.' We aren't the designers here. Offering up ideas or discussing things we would like to see in the future is one thing. Saying what should and should not happen regarding features we haven't had a chance to try yet...well, that seems a bit arrogant. I know I would be annoyed as a developer if I was taking the time to showcase WIP stuff from my game, and everyone w

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="17" id="3007616"]There isn't a world population per se. Instead cities have a growth rate which is dependent primarily on city prestige (how nice the city is) and faction prestige (how prestigious your faction is). The more cities you build, the more diluted your faction prestige gets for each city. We aren't modeling births or immigration specifically. The focus is on growing your city's population and strategies to increas

The more I have thought about it, the more I am convinced that Brad was just being a bit unclear here, based on the various other oddities in this journal. I can't believe even for a second that FE will be designed to have some sort of 'maximum world population.' This would be like hardcoding the prestige bug from WoM as some sort of game feature, in which eventually you can't grow any larger. I mean, it makes sense at some point for your population growth to generally level o

Agreed - unique equipment would go a long way towards this. I'd especially like to see unique armor sets, even a variety of armor sets within each faction. In WoM everyone ends up looking the same. Armor design is one of the most visually interesting ways to differentiate factions, and it could have gameplay impact. For example, Capitar has access to a variety of clean, standardized armor, representing their organization, knowledge, and wealth. The Capitar metal arm

I like this idea. Sword of the Stars did a decent job with a random tech tree. Sometimes you would not have access to certain techs. This was annoying at times since technology is driven by need. So in that game sometimes you can't ever research Point Defense, which is silly since people would naturally come up with a counter for things like missiles, fighters, etc. You could get 'hidden' techs from certain things like salvaging an enemy ship, so that was ne

[quote who="kapeman" reply="38" id="3007252"] Quoting seanw3, reply 34But you have to admit that there are alot of great ideas and general intellectual power on this forum. I am amazed that more companies don't take advantage of this free resource (aka crowd sourcing). There are a lot of posters with a lot of great ideas, especially in this forum. Many, if not most, of the folks with the great ideas in this forum would probabl

Good idea. That thread was misleading since the title was 'tactical combat' or whatever not just 'tactical combat AI' or something. They are both very important topics. Honestly though, I think we are well past the point of adding in major new features such as big changes in the way tactical combat works. Depending on how FE turns out, I'd like to see the next expansion / sequel / whatever add things like LOS, ZOC, Sieges / Assaults, etc. &nb