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[quote who="the_Monk" reply="88" id="2836329"] My observations with regard to strategy games are very much the same as yours Brad. People have come to very quickly focus on the metagame (this is made even worse thanks to built-in ladders and ranking systems) and create optimal "build-orders" which are followed in order to yield a win. Since wins/losses are what is being used to determine ladder rank etc. nothing else factors (least of all "fun") into gameplay anymo

[quote who="joasoze" reply="8" id="2836307"] None of these arguments hold water at all in my opinion. Balancing is not a problem. There would be a standard value to balance against. If users wants more or less than standard in their games its their problem. [/quote] And what would that standard value be? In the middle of the slider? The very end? 3/4's of the way in? How will the player know what the standard value is? These are tough questions which may not have an

[quote who="CHiZZoPs" reply="3" id="2836041"] Quoting tjashen, reply 2 A game slider that controlled how frequent the monsters appear would be nice. That way, those of us who get a kick out of monster hunting can set it high, while others who don't want to be bothered can choose a lower setting. Yes. This. There's not reason not to have one.[/quote] Actually, there are MANY reasons for not having a spawn frequency slider. For starters

[quote] One change I would make is allow to buy your soverign equipment by deducting from your starting gold instead of your "creation" points. [/quote] In its current implementation I think SD should do away with buying equipment altogether. The gear you buy at the start will be replaced very quickly so there's no need to spend gildar on it...especially at the beginning of the game when you are gildar-starved. Also, there is a very subtle design flaw with spe

I don't think so. There was a similar post to mine back in October - the talent shows up as a trait but does not actually work.

The sovereign selection screen is uninformative and a new player may find it very confusing. For instance, I don't know what each sovereign specializes in. Is Porcipinee a caster or warrior? The stats may give some clue as to where a sovereign's strengh lies but that's a lot of mouse-over work that needs to be done by the player. Anyone looking through the list of sovereigns should have a rough idea of what kind of playstyle they require. If there were a few windows that provide the play

The organized talent still shows up when you mouse-over a sovereign in the sovereign selection screen.

[quote who="uga-bugga" reply="67" id="2834055"]Blizzard is fail @ match making. They have failed since WarCraftII. They fail in WoW. My guess is the MatchMakingBot is an unmarried retired accountant from a large company like Enron that still feels since the CEO went to church he couldn't have done anything wrong. "Hmm let's see we have beginner1, beginner2, & beginner3, heavens to betsey it's getting late how about match with KoreanGenius, PKUFaceOFF, and SkankyPaj

[quote who="Hound" reply="65" id="2833849"]Winning becomes more important than enjoying the game. [/quote] Like I said earlier, winning and enjoying the game should come hand-in-hand IF you have a well designed game. A player shouldn't be able to distinguish between 'playing to win' and 'enjoying the game'. Winning is the anchor which defines how the game is played, balanced, and enjoyed. If winning is not the end goal it adversely affects both the game designer and the player.

[quote]One of the things I noticed when I was playing was that after awhile, the monsters become simply fodder for experience and gold. The low level ones just don’t keep up. So I made it so that intelligent monsters (like bandits) will tend to tame/combine up with other monsters into bigger and bigger groups as the game goes on (basically as they find each other).[/quote] That is a very original idea and I like how you came up with it. Taking a design problem (how to

[quote who="lbgsloan" reply="47" id="2832889"]It's a problem with all online games, though worse with RTS'. You have a small group of people who want to play, and you have a much larger group of people who just want +1 win as fast as possible. Too many fun games have been reduced to shit by a player base that use 5 minute win cheese tactics, every day, every game. The age of a game doesn't seem to matter here. Regardless of how old the game and how small the playerbase

[quote who="Myles" reply="40" id="2832629"] The problem is that their are different types of people. People who derive fun from winning and those who derive fun from the game itself. And of course there's a whole multitude of people like me who are somewhere in between.[/quote] If it is possible for a gamer to derive fun from the game itself and not from winning then I would argue that the game is poorly designed. In fact, I would question whether the player is even playing a gam

From my experience, the cheese starts to dwindle as you climb the ladder. Cheese is inherently a high-risk high-reward strategy and gets easier to stop as players get better. I think the reason most soft-core RTS gamers have trouble with cheese is because they instinctively like to turtle and "play the game" i.e. safely climb the tech tree and get huge fleets of battlecruisers and battle it out in a massive battle in the middle of the map. Having said that I feel that cheese is necess

I agree with you. The best place to start would be to make city building interesting. The system in place right now is very mechanical and cold. City building doesn't even have to be complicated, just simple, robust and FUN.

Elemental's art style is originally what drew me into the game. I guess it's one of those things you either love or hate. And I love it!

[quote who="TorinReborn" reply="6" id="2828108"]Let me ninja this topic for a moment. What is stopping me from hiring all wandering NPCs that I ran across? You probably need to pay some gildar upkeep like for normal units, but is there anything else?[/quote] As others have said there is no maintenance cost. This is actually a part of the game that slightly annoys me...there is no decision making process involved in hiring wandering NPCs. You just go around hiring everyone a

[quote who="huminado" reply="24" id="2828461"] quoting post For the first time, I honestly believe this game is well worth the money I spent. Since I haven't spent a penny yet, and thus have to wait for the demo, can someone post a youtube video of the Elemental-du-jour gameplay that convinces me I should buy it today? Thanks! [/quote] Let's not get ahead of ours

Are we in the twilight zone!?

[quote who="Derek Paxton" reply="21" id="2825512"] Quoting onomastikon, reply 15Looks very promising, thank you! But ... why did you remove morale? Even if you were dissatisfied with the way it was currently working, it would have been excellent to at least have the mechanics in game to tweak (perhaps later, perhaps post 1.1). Now, there will be no use for such wonderful spells such as Fear (there goes my spell contest idea), and an interesting option in tactical battles is go

[quote who="kalzer5" reply="5" id="2824436"]Help... I can't find my serial number. What should I do?[/quote] Open up Impulse, go to your games tab, right click on Elemental and click 'View Registration'. That is your serial number.

Trojan.Agent is a general term MBAM and a few other security packages use to specify a "generic" trojan. It's hard to say how much damage it did (if any)...but IMHO I wouldn't worry about it since it's a fairly common low risk infection.

What is the model name of your laptop?

[quote who="Tridus" reply="38" id="2821760"] Maybe. But this isn't a new game. It's an overhaul of an existing one. I don't think there's another two years to get it right. With limited time, limited developer numbers, and a lot of things that need doing, I think the chances of success increase drastically if you pick a focus and make the game really good at that. Trying to do more things at once then you have the capacity to do just results in weak implementations across the board, and

GW and Tridus, you guys make good arguments. What worries me though is how we got to where we are now in the first place. If two months after release we've ended up neutering a core mechanic (and whether it really had a future in the game is debatable) this leads me to believe that SD never really had a coherent design plan for a lot of the mechanics currently in the game.

Gazz brings up an interesting point in talking about how a trait or special ability can become completely useless due to factors outside of the player's control. I'd like to expand on that a little and ask Derek how auto-resolve and traits that boost spells within tactical battles will be reconciled. Although enabling auto-resolve is a player choice, having it enabled will completely invalidate all special abilities that affect tactical battles. Do you guys see anything wrong with that pictur