Good to hear that I am not the only one who found 3A boring. To me, the system seems too diffused between questing and city building and diplomacy that I barely have an idea what I need to do in order to advance at all. Everything seems promising, but I cannot seem to find out what I need to do.

The game is disappointing so far, but I hope beta 3B will make everything interesting again.

Maybe a crazy idea, but couldn't you include those unused tiles in a random map generator?  Random - Sandbox - Dungeon or Random - Sandbox - Tim the Enchanter or somesuch.  Does that make any sense?  Then it does help with the filthy lucre idea.  Put on the box "Includes 18 trillion maps!"

Oh boy....I can't wait to start modding...

Oh and Frogboy that capitalist part of you shouldn't feel too bad. Just consider that stuff reimbursement. I mean we did pay for a product on good faith, and to basically be testers. consultants and QC.

You do realize that Med2:TW is a seriously Kick Ass game by its-self right? Though I do recommend using the Happiness Mod. What this does is increase base town happiness modifiers so that you can actually conquer the whole map without having to worry about your Empire falling apart because of territories on the out-skirts of your Empire revolting.

Med2:TW is probably my Favorite TW game next to Rome:TW. The only option Med1:TW had that I wish they would have carried over to part 2 was the ability to name your kings heir. They never should have taken that out.

It might help slightly with initial sales but it'll probably be negligible. However, once modders get working and start morphing the game into all the things it could possibly be it starts to appeal to a larger group of possible purchasers. When the first lotr mod comes out, you'll likely see sales from that. When somebody turns it into a psuedo pnp RGP, you'll see some sales from that. With a healthy modding community you'll see extra sales because of the mods that get released that people want to try. Part of the reason I'll buy TES5 is because of modders, the elder scrolls games are mediocre at best, especially oblivion. If you've already got a solid game underneath, powerful modding tools will extend the life (and sales) of the game for a long time (all the way up to the sequel).

A current example of a game that will die off faster because of the exclusion of modding, Bad company 2. The people playing battlefield still, and thus still creating sales for the older games, are all playing mods instead of vanilla. Bad company doesn't even allow for community made maps, much less new assets like vehicles and weaponry being added in. Some people have already migrated back to the games released years ago simply because they like the mods better and are willing to give up the advances in tech since then.

Modding isn't a skill I have, it's definitely something I'd like to try out, especially if this system is new user friendly. But I most definitely enjoy and appreciate the work a good modding community puts in, and how they can make games I enjoy even greater.

I don't think the modding will move units, but the mods created from it will.  FFH2 and Wolfshanze moved units of Civ IV, I am sure.

That said, you are going to make expansions of some sort, so those unused assets can become used.  

I do think eventually you'll have to support mods on the official servers though.

Also robust game engine + lots of mud support= chance for total conversions, which you can later sell as well (see TF2)

While I don't think it will  happen, if you created the HL2 of TBS games, you'll make money.

Yep, 100%.

The longevity can move products.  By the time Demigod figured out what it was, the community was gone and I couldn't get any friends to move into the product.  They kept asking how many people were playing and what the community was like.  With people modding, the community tends to stay a bit longer and hopefully we can pull in stragglers that don't drop during the first few weeks of sales.

Hopefully there is some marketing budget planned for after the first month of sales.

This is obviously troublesome.  Using your mana cap to produce effects in the game will do a few things which I'm sure we'll have to prove through play.  Perhaps after this next beta release, enough of the game will be in to either prove Frogboy is a genius or perhaps sway his intellect to that of the masses.    

I agree with previous posters, a solid modding community should drastically improve the sales in the long run.

I bought the Civ IV complete just to be able to play FFH (which I read about in these forums, thanks for the tip guys.) I own Mount & Blade just to play the mods as well. There's probably more but those are the ones I'm playing right now. Already own TW:Medieval II though, so maybe I'll have to look in on the LOTR-mod.

My guess is that PC-gaming is going towards more modding, something that I don't see the console-market doing yet for a decade or so.

Long live the PC.

Tomas

In general, You want to make something like the D&D RPG, you sell the people core books and then you can add expansion material to extend the core rules.  Modding is OK, as long as it does not hinder the development of the core rules. The core rules cannot be easily modified or extended once the game is released while the modding can be done easily.

You should follow a set of guide lines to make sure you do not over mod the game before it's released.

- Make sure that each elements is modded in an even amount. For example: You could get a situation where there is too much quest and to few different heroes. If you Mod, Mod evenly.

- Make sure that each element bring a new feature so that modders can use these basic data as an example to add some feature of their own. If for example, you have 12 types of quests. Well make 1 or 2 quest of each type so that all types of quest are used. So you want to have fewer elements that use all the features rather than a lot of elements that use little features.

- Make each element creative and unique: Remember that at some point, some mod elements will only be permutation of information would could eventually be possible to randomly generate some quest for example. You do not want to do the job of making all possible combination. You want to select combinations that are more interesting or unique than the generated ones.

One thing I forgot to add, You should include, hidden, in the base game any rejected artwork or other piece of work. The idea is to give modder a larger bank of pictures, tiles and other stuff to play with without having to create these themselves. I would say, even include the sketches, modder might put colors on it.

Still, this rejected material should be placed hidden to the user and only available for modding.

I'm not planning on selling my Mod at all, period. It's a totally free "Fan Work". My personal tribute to the books and characters I grew up loving. My reply was to the person who brought up selling Mods.

As for Roman things. Once we can import models and make them work in Elemental, there are Plenty of games out there that you could "borrow" units and units designs from. That way all you have to do is convert them over to work in the Elemental Engine. As far as I know doing such is perfectly Legal as long as your work is a "Fan Work" and distributed for Free. Once you start charging players for it you enter the realms of IP infringement and then copyright holders start wanting their share of the proceeds. Of course you could also say "All Proceeds go to Charity". Something like the "Buy Wintersong a New PC Charity"

Modding does not bring in short term sales, nor a very large portion of sales overall. Modding is good for game longevity, and once some high-profile/high-quality mods come out some more people may pick up Elemental from the bargain bin (or wait for an Impulse sale), but the vast majority of the full-price sales will have to come from the game built from those tools on release. The majority of people aren't modders, and don't play mods. These people are not going to spend $50 on a modding platform.

Elemental has to be a good *game* first, so it can sell and live long enough for the total conversions and all that to get developed and come out to keep it going. So, modding isn't going to move units up-front. It'll just help make the game live longer and get a little boost to trailing sales, if it's good enough to begin with.