Philocthetes

[quote who="kyogre12" reply="18" id="2322091"]... You're kidding, right ? Sins has one of the weakest multiplayers I've ever seen for an RTS. Go to the forums, there are a ton a people complaining about how very few people play online. At peak time there's about 150 people online[/quote] No, I wasn't kidding, but I'm very poorly informed on account of being one of those folks who goes away promptly after reading "real-time." I have an apparently-misguided impression that all so-calle

[quote who="RisingLegend" reply="20" id="2322119"]... Extreme circumstances being me imbuing those untrained rabble with some of my essence and unleashing them upon the army. What's your training doing for ya now, bub? [/quote] Sounds like one of those quickie-game vs. long-game things to me. I'm a large-map junkie, so I can't say anything 'authoritative' about small maps in any TBS game I've liked. But, I'm pretty sure that, on larger maps, the essence 'investment' you describe shoul

[quote](there goes my animated Elemental avatar idea....)[/quote] If it's any consolation, I snagged a copy and sent it off into the net-aether on account of it being both damned funny in its own right and even more damned funny as part of an ongoing exchange with a friend who's got a reluctant 'foster-kitty' thing going with a stray Russian Blue.

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="8" id="2321662"]Kryo will be the bug/issue tracking system. He'll be sifting through the forums and have a locked running thread constantly updated with unique reported bugs and other issues.[/quote] Is this some IRC gossip you caught? We have no assigned moderators for Elemental yet, and I've long been fretting that these boards will lack Kryo's deservedly-paid presence when the teeming masses start pouring in their posts. IMO, he's been an exemplary mod

[quote]Not likely. Usually with this stuff the email you get will be Impulse telling you that your order was processed, and if you get in that will happen once the game goes up for download. I mean they could send out emails to tell you that you got in early, but it doesn't seem like something they need to do.[/quote] This assumes that everyone on the alpha list is going to be running Impulse in the background. I was in the Stardock beta for GC2 TA, and Stardock Central fil

[quote]... OTOH, long beta can lead to burn out before launch. I played a ton of Sins in beta, had burned out before it went public.[/quote] The mailboy's remark here was the first one that made me question my longstanding no-wine-before-its-time position about dev scheds (for all software, actually, not just this project). But then I remembered that Sins is one of those 'real-time' thingies with a strong multiplayer focus and I started remembering just how long I've seen very involve

[quote]Also, seeing as how this is a War of Magic game, wouldn't it be a lot more fun to obtain all your secret spy info thru magical means? I mean what spy could be better than an air elemental?[/quote] I think it would be more fun to have my cake and eat it too. psychoak has another thrice-damned good point when he basically asks why so many TBS games have semi-buried espionage in underwhelming unit-based systems. Faced with that good crit, I find that I'd actually rather se

My guess re the swarm-o-OPs is that the forum is really colicky again.

In Brad's journal asking what folks think about extending the beta schedule generously, he inlcuded this picture: The filename is SwampLordPaintingFinal. The big thing in the painting looks to me like a very plausible candidate for Geoff the Slug's (single?) parent. The beta schedule post also includes a (deceptively?) simple question about the n

'Realism' is a distracting and troublesome word in this context. From what I can tell, it seems that both pigeon and NTJedi want the game functionality to have internal consistency that is presented via words and images that can parse easily for 'the average' player while still providing some sense of a deeply imagined world. Most of the ping-pong (here and in other threads) on realism seems to me to boil down to matters of taste, not engineering, science, or even metaphysics.

[quote]... I'm going to wait until someone actually tells us something regarding the design of your initial character before jumping to the conclusion that life and death coming from channelers means channelers are primarily or entirely generating life and death.[/quote] Please, stop making sense. Now I'm fairly persuaded that what Scoutdog's onto is an interesting idea for a mod that begins with something like Composting the Shards. The whole digression also reminds m

I just want to thank the repliers so far and encourage some more of both authors/titles not yet mentioned and some back-and-forth about How Can You Say X Is Good. I have a fair amount of sympathy for folks who dislike how 'sprawly' the Wheel of Time became, but even though I had more than a few "not another digression into doilies" moments, I retain an impression that he was really trying to do something with the grand themes of the Pattern, reincarnation, and how the messiah thing is

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="5" id="2317270"]... If you are patient the larger maps are always better because it means more strategic paths not only on the map, but strategic options and it means much larger armies for larger battles. I'd rather fight an enemy of 20,000 units, 100 different summons, 15 heroes and 3 unique dragons than an enemy of 1000 units, 10 different summons, 3 heroes and 1 dragon.[/quote] I'm interested in how the game might manage to produce some t

The Siffy Channel has a real history of involvement with one-season wonders, including both 'wonder why that got made' and 'wonder why that got cancelled' stuff. I would really have liked to see more of the new Night Stalker and the Dresden Files, for example. Unless some business decisions got changed, Sanctuary is on track for a second 13-episode season. If Warehouse 13 takes off enough to earn them some decent revenue, I'll be pleased enough as long as a good chunk of that

[quote who="psychoravin" reply="25" id="2318451"]... There's good in all things and there is evil in all things. Look at Skywalker he started out good and ended up evil only to turn back to good in the end. I want those elements possible in a game. I want the choice to jump sides back and forth a double agent so to speak. I like games to be open ended so players can go any direction they choose. Evil races/factions should be able to cast good spells as well as good races/factions be able to c

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="7" id="2318127"]It's been alluded to in an earlier post here, but there is a cost to imbuing heroes with essence other than essence itself: risk. Spreading it out across various heroes, who will all be weaker than a sovereign who hoards his essence, means if you lose those weaker heroes, you lose that essence investment. And you're far more likely to lose those heroes than you are your sovereign (at which point you probably lose, anyway). That combi

[quote who="Darkodinplus" reply="15" id="2317636"]... @Scoutdog: I love the idea of terrain generating corresponding types of mana that would be a very intuitive and interesting gameplay mechanic. The only problem I see with that is at the start of the game the only mana you would have is either Death, Earth, or Fire because the land is suppose to be post-apocalyptic.[/quote] I don't gamble, but I'd pretty much bet that the devs are not going to ditch shards at this point no matter ho

[quote]Earth: Final Conflict[/quote] Deeply under-appreciated series, probably because it shared the bad acting and bad dialog problems B5 had but didn't have enough heavy makeup and CGI in comparison, which meant not enough drooling fools to make an impressive audience share. Don't get me wrong about B5. I'd have followed the show completely if the producers hadn't managed to create a perfect train wreck of awesome plot arcs and average actors struggling with below-average di

Forum go boom, ick!

I definitely think this subject is worth its own thread, not least because I don't have a strong preference about whether Life/Death mana comes from a shard or from channelers and imbued champions. The point that I hope is still open to change is whether Life and Death magic are categorically distinct (how it seems to me as of the July FAQ) or whether 'the Black Rune' connotes a middle-way, pseudo-biological, D&D druid-style view of a cosmic force that encompasses both birth and d

[quote who="Ploeperpengel" reply="5" id="2317558"] Not meaning to be rude but I was mainly interested about the modding possibilities of the game. The mysteries of life and death could you guys possibly discuss in another thread? thx[/quote] You are not being rude, although it is (sadly) a bit unusual to see folks actively trying to keep their threads 'on topic.' I'll stop giving aid and comfort to my fellow threadjackers right now. Apologies.

I've just been involved in some minor threadjacking in the July FAQ and even though I kept aiding and abetting digression over there, I actually think it might be worth trying a new thread to host some discussion of fantasy fiction in general and what titles folks might most like to see as dog-eared copies on dev bookshelves. I'm also nearly as interested in reading about authors, titles, or series that folks might wish had never been in an Elemental dev's hands. J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord

[quote]As badly as The Wheel of Time was butchered by Robert Jordan with his "feature creep" (or maybe "plot creep" is more appropriate) he did succeed in creating a believable world that you did not read about, you experienced.[/quote] I long ago gave up on trying to fight threadjacking by others or avoid it myself around here--the Stardockia norm seems to leave the matter up to a given OP, and when the OP is a dev, there's no question that they don't have time to police individual t

I wonder how many years passed between the last time psychoak *read* Tolkien and the time when he came to appreciate the value of a well-rounded liberal arts education. Anyone with half a brain and a scrap of attitude can come up with crits of Tolkien, many of which are plausible, e.g. he had no real ability to conceive of female characters other than archetype beings like Galadriel or 'tomboys' like Éowyn. On the other hand, that 'hacking up old stuff' thing psychoak so blithe

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="5" id="2316957"]Pigeon, I think you are absolutely right. If the AI modding created an environment like GW fears, it would be quite nasty. However, I highly doubt that something like that will ever happen.[/quote] I've never seriously played with a mod, but I've always thought the practice was interesting and I might well have gotten into that fall-of/from-heaven thing if Civ 4 hadn't pissed me off so much with its initially insane sys reqs (what you reall