...  But ... Why wouldn't you just look to actual Greek and Roman styles/weapons/troops/tactics/clothing for inspiration, rather than what another game did from those same sources?

This statement frightens me.  As I've said in my previous post https://forums.elementalgame.com/387454 i and several others seem a bit concerned on the state of essence.  We don't know what you have working in the background but at its current state it is not a well working system for casting magic..... and wisdom is useless.

I can only hope that by "mana cap" he means essence has been replaced with a hat your character wears known as his/her "mana cap". Then changes involving mana/etc have all been made. Or at least (and I'm sincerely hoping this), wisdom now has a big impact on... I dunno, tactical-spell-strength compared to Intelligence for strategic spell strength? That would certainly be interesting.

In the past there have been plenty of games that have offered powerful modding tools. Yet, many of those simply failed as modding platforms and no real modding communities ever sprang up around the games. Why? Two things:

1) Lack of decent modding documention provided by the developers.

2) Modding tools were offered that only the most technically savy could ever figure out how to use without documentation.

A good recent example of this is HOMM5. Incredibly powerful editor but the lack of initial documentation and obtuse nature of the tools even with the documentation mostly killed the community by posing a huge barrior to entry. On the other hand, one of the reasons that I think NeverWinter Nights modding was so popular was that Bioware made the tools user friendly and scalable so that even those not technically inclined could still do a surprising amount with the tools. Also, there was a ton of info available on how to use the tools at launch.

I haven't seen much mentioned about what documentation or tutorials will be provided out of the box by Stardock but I stongly urge the developers not to overlook these few critical points if you want a robust modding community to flurish for Elemental.

My dos centavos.

Modding will move maybe 5% of your sales, I'd guess, at best.

What will really boost your sales are all the people who get talked into buying the game because you "just have to try out this awesome mod." How many copies will you sell when someone releases a true-to-bones clone of MoM? Or makes a total conversion to space sim.

There are a thousand odd people playing* NWN (the first one) right now in the middle of a weekday, eight years after the game was released. They're not playing the official campaign. They're playing the mods that some very talented people have built up over the years and released for free. They have all of the expansions, told all their friends what an awesome game this was, and brought in people year after year. They may not have hung around but they did buy the game.

A vibrant modding community = residual income for years after the game would normally be dustbin material.

NWN and NWN2 tools were not that easy to use. Yes drwing out rooms and placing monsters and treasure was easy but Scripting you needed to know C++.

I like the Essence = Mana Cap Idea...

It was always intended and it fits perfectly. Now if you want to play a caster sov your faced with a choice. Use an overwhelmingly destructive spell at the cost of your essence, or tone it down and use weaker spells so your mana can regenerate.

It doesn't make playing a casting Sov impossible and boring as some have stated, nor does it destroy the purpose of Essence which is made very clear. Essence = Magic. It's that simple.

All it REALLY does is put a hard cap on the amount of nuclear game-enders that even the most powerful mage will want to fire off by making the source of magic for such spells impossible to regenerate and by hampering future casting.

This makes the ultimate spells a strategic choice rather then the no-brainer they would be if Essence wasn't tied to Mana Cap.

So in short... Stop your whining.

Um, no?  He's got a very valid concern, that has been shared by a majority of the active community members here.  Originally it seemed like they would do so much more with essence than they eventually decided to.  Right now essence seems pretty shallow, and a lot of the stats are tied to a single thing, which also seems shallow.  These are legitimate concerns for people who want to make the game as good as it can be.

My name is Recnelis and I approve this message.

I'd throw my hat in with approving that message, however I think at this point it's beating a dead horse. Given everything still left to do I don't see them being too excited about re-doing Essence. There are a few more minor tweaks to make Essence useful beyond just giving mana, such as using it to modify the effects of abilities/spells (damage bonus, max number of targets bonus, radius bonus, etc per x points of essence), but I wouldn't expect anything big to change.

The problem is that is should be allowed to be modded not hard coded, that is what everyone is talking about.

The issue is balance, I think. Sovereign A gets lots of melee stats, gets a few useful essence-expending spells which he uses to full benefit (he may not be able to cast the BEST spells, but he can find some use for his essence) - then he spends the rest of the game ignoring essence, further raising his melee stats and hacking things up. Sovereign B gets lot of casting stats, but he doesn't dare use essence-costing spells because it'd nerf his ability to cast regular spells (by lowering max mana). Sure he could get more essence when he levels up, but keep in mind that Sov A is getting ever more powerful as he pumps up his melee stats, Sov B needs to be raising int just to keep up - if he spends his levels on essence, and then spends that essence on a spell, he's wasted an entire level without getting any stronger.

In the end the melee sovereign can cast lots of awesome essence-expending spells without hurting his melee abilities, while the caster sovereign can't cast the best spells or he hurts his casting abilities.. not only does this not make any sort of sense for the melee sovereign to be throwing out better spells than the caster sovereign, it's bad for game balance, casters are at a clear disadvantage.

It's like if the melee sovereign lost a point of strength every time he used a claymore in a battle, and thus had to rely on a weaker shortsword or gimp himself in the long run - yet the caster sovereign could freely use the claymore until he ran out of strength, and not care because he's focusing on casting stats. What kind of sense would that make?

The obvious solution, I think, is to detach essence from mana and have mana depend on something else (int or wisdom). Not the only solution, of course, if they really want to keep essence = mana then there's probably some way to balance it - but it really does need balancing.

[I should clarify that I vastly prefer melee sovereigns, the above strategy is exactly what I do most games - focus on melee stats and expend excess essence wherever I can, keeping just enough mana to cast basic buff spells. It's frustrating to try and play a caster and have to hoard that essence or not be able to cast the better spells.]

That ... sounds pretty bad. I'm not in the beta so I know no details of the system. However as a rule of thumb any permanent expenditure for a temporary advantage is a terrible idea.

So my question is, are these essence spells permanent? Or are they poweful enough to turn a tough city battle into a cakewalk? If the answer to both those questions is 'no' then that is a self-gimping system.

Rule three of good game marketing. Do not promote a newb-trap as the core of your gameplay.

Oh, most of them are permanent (well, the summons that cost essence CAN die, as can the champions you imbue, etc - but they don't have a set duration, you can benefit from them the entire game if you play carefully). I don't mean to imply that essence-expending spells are bad, they're great, generally worth the permanent cost, at least imo. As long as you don't need mana, you're free to expend essence without regretting it or feeling like you fell into a 'noob trap.' The only problem so far as I see it is mana; if you actually intend to rely on your mana pool as a primary caster, you can't afford to cast those essence-expending spells, while the melees can.

Also if you do expend essence and later come to regret it, you can always get more when you level up - but you get that essence instead of raising any other stat, like strength or intelligence. It's a matter of scaling, my warrior sovereign increases his combat abilities when he levels, my caster sovereign can make his spells more powerful when he levels -or- he can buy some essence; so technically using essence isn't a permanent loss, but replacing it causes you to fall behind sovereigns that raise their strength or int when they level, it's not a viable longterm strategy.

It's also not quite accurate. Strictly speaking, a melee sovereign who only raises melee stats will be able to cast much fewer spells per turn (and not even all spells due to having low essence) while a caster sovereign who raises his INT/Essence scores will not only do more damage with his spells, but be able to cast more per turn (and more mana in tactical battles as well). So while the melee guy hacks better, the caster guy is able to fling spells left and right. Also, only the really high-end spells will use any meaningful essence. The few low ends that do are creating fertile land (food), and imbuing Champions (gives other units essence, so also spellcasting abilty) - which are powerful enough to warrant it.

The problem with Essence isn't balance at all. It functions well enough, it just doesn't have very much flavor as a "core super important stat".