mastroego

In addition to my earlier comments, I have to say that removing Imbuement also feels wrong. It was one of the original ideas that ADDED to the flavour while giving an additional layer of choice to the player. The accessibility problem could have been solved with a big red line "Unit cannot cast spells unless imbued!". But yes, they also had to give a fighting chance to enemy heroes standing there in the open. Which in turn

Seems like a lot of users are beginning to feel like I feel. The trees are pre-planned as a linear progression of "Steps That Unlock Things" . What those things actually ARE is secondary. Items on a Spreadsheet. Now take for example Civ: if you want to improve your weapons, you can't just research "warfare". You want gunpowder ? Sorry, my dear warlord, you'll have to learn some chemistry , first. In a tech tree

Right. There's a reason why I dearly remember MoM and not all the dozens of games I've played (or tried) at that time and later. MoM captured the magical, the adventurous, the wondrous that we players were looking for. FE, for the most part, still feels like a Glorified Spreadsheet - and with this I mean: the underlying game mechanics come first, while their meaning (if any) come after. As a result, I can't shake the feeling that I'm playing through a spreadsheet inste

[quote who="RooksBailey" reply="35" id="3074838"]On champions: One of the things that bugs me is how they are often harvested like a map resource. This is dull. [/quote] This has been said many times. But apparently this kind of feedback is - and I quote - "not going to even be considered." On the other hand, if this design will raise a few reviewers' eyebrows, you'll get to say: "I told them so!!!" That may be worth it, but

[quote] What I do like about this game is Heroes coming to you because of your fame or not coming because of your lack of it. Said fame influencing the quality of said Heroes. The all inclusive cities. The monster lair/magic nodes exploration. ... That being said, I really liked the way MoM used mana for research, casting, and increasing your ability to cast/channel per turn. That division created some really interesting decisions about mana use that F

We players aren't supposed to know about development. I don't know anything about it. I can only play, state if I'm having fun or not, and, IF I'm capable of putting it into words , state WHY I feel one way or another about the game. Then the developers can, of course, do what they want with that feedback. Now, NO ONE complained about traits for heroes for example. EVERYONE is happy about them. In this regard, the m

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="47" id="3074289"]Quoting mastroego, reply 40 Personally speaking, I'm not real interested in listening to people who think we should jetison the tech tree or not have mana in the game or whatever. I'm glad our community is welcoming enough that people feel comfortable posting these ideas. But it's not as if something like that is going to even be considered. [/quote] Personally I'm not suggesting to jetison the t

You guys are taking things too literally. It's not just about "missing content": some of the content is structured in a such a way that suggests the developers are happy with the basic underlying mechanism, while some of us think that a few of the game concepts might need to be re-thought. Hence I say, imho, the game is not as close to completion as initially estimated... unless they disregard all the feedback that suggests so.

Well it's been implied dev-side, as a "rough guess" at least.

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="31" id="3074152"]Quoting mastroego, reply 20I'm writing this since this comment looks a little bit like the ones we used to read for WoM. "You just have to trust us, the game is fine, even though of course we know we can't please everyone". I think some people may have a distorted memory of WOM. The biggest problem with WOM's design was that I did try to implement features from the community. And not little ideas either. The big o

[quote quoting="post"] And yet, if I were the lead designer, I would probably have tried to have a bunch of the ideas implemented because I'm not a game designer, I'm a game player and I love most of the suggestions I read. But being a game designer means making choices and explicitly deciding not being all things to all people. [/quote] This is a sound policy, of course. But it implies something else: those things that end up being IN, while other th

[quote who="CdrRogdan"]The current method of research seems out of sync with itself (do I want to research armor techs from the warfare tree or do I want to research blacksmithing from the civics tree - wait what?) [/quote] [quote who="Ratatosk7"]A single tech tree is what this game needed 2yr ago. Especially since awesome ideas like rare/common techs were dropped and we can see the entire tree(s) now civ/galciv style. I get the funny feeling that at this rate

[quote who="Mmrnmhrm" reply="34" id="3071806"]Me thinks some people are too full of themselves. In the poll, https://www.elementalgame.com/journals, nearly everyone has rated the beta good to great. Yet, reading this..thread..you would think the game was in dire straits. What are the developers supposed to think? [/quote] My vote was "fair". Which, if you consider that I quickly deemed WoM "beyond fixing" (as it proved to be), is a pretty HUGE leap forward.<

Great idea. [e digicons]k1[/e] [e digicons]:)[/e] Preserves a mechanism the developers -apparently- care a lot about by reversing it and finally giving it a REASON to exist.

I can't vote because it's more than 3 things for me right now. For instance, without a performance boost I won't be able to play the game (I prefer large maps). Without substantial changes to research, city management and the magic system I won't probably be wanting to play the game. Everything is doable but everything is necessary.

[quote who="Astarach"] Not entirely. Questing party goes out adventuring, comes across a door with a big sign on it saying "Do not enter! Extreme danger! You WILL be mauled, mashed, eaten and pooped on by big nasty creatures". They look at each other, grin, and say "Let's go", reach out to open the door, only to find that there is a magical binding spell on it preventing them from getting in. "Bugger, does anyone know how to open this?", says One-eyed Ja

I dig research as a concept, and I'm glad it's in... for the most part. "We need some kind of regulating organism to deal with the increasing number of citizens". "We need a more efficient way to work this metal" "I understand the fundamentals of magic, what kinds of spells might we be able to master?" As a ruler you would surely face issues like these: "research" is how you'd deal with them. <

Frankly, the whole Adventuring Tech Tree seems just a left-over from EWoM, almost as if Derek couldn't summon the courage to ditch everything that was wrong in EWoM, in a [good-hearted] attempt to salvage at least some of the original concepts. Further proof of it is the fact that it collects elements that have little to do with each other. Imho, to be an "adventurer" you don't fund research and scholars, you just <span style="text-decoration: underline;

[quote]I have a problem with those special quest locations which one cannot enter until some specific level of research has been reached. It just doesn't make sense. Either a specific area is somehow locked and some research has to be done to unlock that specific place ; or one can enter any place an face it's dangers. .... I have other problems with heroes, which are just waiting on the map. First, they also sufffer from the fact that they can only be convinced to join y

Happened to me as well. Honestly, it tends to happen with all 4x games, but the problem here is the "magnitude" of the issue. Let me add that micromanaging is not an issue in itself, actually it can be the funniest part. The problem here is that early enough it becomes pointless. I've decided to wait for the next Beta Serie before trying another FE game (apparently a couple of weeks from now they're going to release a version with new content and AI).

Seems like they haven't been daring enough to ditch EWoM's original design entirely. Which, let's just say it, is precisely what should have been done, at least in this and a few other areas of the game. More races were needed, for a start. Anyway, there's room for more differentiation before release, a future expansion coming, and mods. It can actually turn out well even in this regard.

Again, MoM's system was simple, elegant, and it worked perfectly: as you became more powerful and famous, heroes started showing at your door to offer their services. As it's been said elsewhere, heroes standing there with a lock on their heads is certainly not the way to go, for all the reasons discussed (though locks add colour to the map!!!). Something different is needed. Quests would work, but I wouldn't want ALL heroes to come from quests. A mixed system, maybe?

Ok, I take your word about the AI. If it's not there, it's doing great right now. The game has a good foundation this time around. I don't agree with all the choices but in a way you could say that it already is a success, since modders seem able to do a lot with it, and indeed they're already at work on truly amazing things. So, player side, it looks good. Performance and AI are the only things that could "ruin the party" at this point. Performance

Brad, I've been harsh to you in the past, but I'm "on your side" now. I want the game to deliver and I want Stardock to get merit for it. But it's not there yet, and something you said in another discussion made me decide to post this. You said you wanted a 90+ score for FE. You said there's no release date. Yet you're not ready to dramatically "overhaul" mechanics at this point. Which makes sense, I get it, even from a financial perspective: even FE will have to b

Well, we survived discussions over what we saw before the release of the Beta, didn't we? People are spending time, efforts and imagination (those who have it, I don't!) to give feedback. If some issues have already been dealt with, we should be informed. If they're being dealt with in a way that may cause new issues, we may spot the problem before too much time is wasted. I say let us know what you're working on. [e digicons]:\[/e]