Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.

We’ve got N resources and M things to work on. Based on your experiences with beta 2, where would you like N to go the most?

Vote here:

https://www.elementalgame.com/journals


Comments (Page 4)
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on Mar 03, 2012

The tech tree and city building both need to be completely reworked imo.

 

on Mar 03, 2012

Overall, I like what’s in the game so far. I voted for Tactical Battles but only because I think changes in this part would need more man-hours than ever other part in that I’m missing something.

 

- Some kind of line of sight mechanism. Or at least tiles that give a 25% or 50% protection against Archer and Damage-spells.

- Archers (and possible Mages) that are moving before they shoot should get a heavy reduction to their accuracy (less kiting).

- Some/all ranged weapons and throwing knifes should use Dexterity as damage-bonus stat.

- Flanking. A 10% damage bonus if another unit of mine stands at the flank of the enemy, and a 25% bonus if it stands behind the enemy. This is more of a distraction bonus but it encourages a little thinking about movement.

- Positioning of my units before combat begins, maybe in an extra screen or just simple in that tiny army screen we have (3x3, what’s on top is in the front line…J)

- Same more unusual tactical maps.

Example: Ambush map in a forest – the enemy is all around me – also possible for the factions if the have an assassin in their army-composition.

- Some more useful traits for the assassin. Invisibility/Hiding/Traps

Aygis              

on Mar 03, 2012


guys guys it's not like faction differentiation and stuff like an improvement in spells are mutually exclusive goals.

on Mar 03, 2012

So hard to choose... It's a pity that we don't have the current internal build so we know what already has been done. I've got full trust in mister Wardell in making the AI great, so I'm not going to vote for extra resources for that one. (Altough I think that one is important.) Stability and performance are great for me, so no need to vote that(, for me). Random events would be nice, but the core game needs to improve first. More spells are to be added if I'm correct, so no need for that at the moment. What I've heard from the Frogboy is that the first strike advantage in being handled at the moment, so no need for that.

So that leaves me with: more quests, cities and factions. This is a hard choice for me here... Quest are really important to nail the roleplaying part of this game, but cities and factions are to bland at the moment. Then I'll chose what I think will make the biggest game change: Faction differentiation. With Faction differentation the whole game will be different according to the faction you'll pick. So my vote will go there.

on Mar 03, 2012

City building was entirely pointless in .76 and they haven't touched it since. The building placement mechanic doesn't even have a real reason to exist. Yet, the whole issue has been added to the poll as an afterthought which tells me we aren't going to see a lot of improvement no matter what we say.

Also the tech trees would need some serious work, imho, and everything else. 

I'm afraid I can't pick one. They're all necessary or the game will feel unfinished and directionless, even if the feeling will trigger surely later compared to WoM. Will wait and see.  

on Mar 03, 2012

stability for me as the first, second would be faction diferenation, then tactical, than AI , then cities, then quests and random events.

the reason for stability is that .77 was able to play through in a full game(small map 3 ai) to victory without a crash, BUT .86 only manages about 3 hours at a time even on small maps

harpo

 

on Mar 03, 2012

City Management, then Faction Differentiation

City Management needs some kind of a point to it, as it is now it seems like a relic from WoM with pointless features like the tile placement system.

on Mar 03, 2012

mqpiffle
Exactly.  If one of the options was "Balance of Game Mechanics" I would probably choose that. 

Same here. I voted "More spells", because it was the closest option to "Balance of game mechanics" and there need to be more useful spells (not overpowered in act I and not useless in act III), too.

on Mar 03, 2012

I find that booting the game is very slow and when I turned anti-aliasing on performance dropped like a rock.  It feels like there are some things that can be cleaned up somewhere.

 

Incidentally, I find launching the installer also strangely slow.  Installing the game in the first place was dicey and although its been better for patching I still find I have to click the .exe then :wait:.

on Mar 03, 2012

harpo99999
stability for me as the first, second would be faction diferenation, then tactical, than AI , then cities, then quests and random events.

the reason for stability is that .77 was able to play through in a full game(small map 3 ai) to victory without a crash, BUT .86 only manages about 3 hours at a time even on small maps

harpo

 

 

I'm on board with your throughts fully, brother.

 

Stability -> factions -> then maybe tech tweaks/spells

on Mar 03, 2012

Thank you for making such a poll, I love it when companies do that.

As for my vote, it went to the AI as challenging still bores me and I see lots of irresponsible behaviour by the AI ("Sure we can build an outpost right in the early game with nearly no troops next to this bone oger").

I'm amazed though that so many people want so much faction differentiation, I don't really care about it to be honest - imo it just becomes a balancing nightmare.

on Mar 03, 2012

Voted more Quests but wanted to say that faction differentiation, more spells, better Buildings/City-development and focus on better AI especially in Tactical, are very closely behind (roughly in that order of importance).

More random events whould be nice but isn’t all up there...

Sadly this is not a poll where multplie answers are possible. Imo whould have suited this question here better. (at least chosing the 3 or 4 top options...). Since I'm sure many players would be fond if their 2nd or 3rd choice whould be adressed with priority if it can't be the first...

I can live with moderate! Instability and performance issues in a beta (and you are bound to create new causes as you add features, better do stability work in batches imo than doing lots of redundant work overwritten every other day when something new gets in...)

on Mar 03, 2012

For my personal point of view, Elemental seems to not fit my taste of game at all even if master of magic is one of my favorite video game. Elemental has none of the elements that makes MOM addictive and that cannot be changed without changing the core game play. So this is why it's not appealing to me anymore, but other people might like. One of the reason why it does not hook me up is the pacing. The gameplay is so slooow. It takes 6 turns to build a spearmen ... Seriously!? I can't imagine the knight

Since the game progress is so slow, the players receives little feedback from the game which makes him drop off the game. The idea behind CIV, MOM and MOO is that there is always something new that happens to hook you up and make you dream about what you could do with this new feature. In elemental, it's wait, wait and wait again then Oh! something happened ... but who cares because I need to wait even more before it gets meaningful.

On my point of view, it's not a matter of adding more quest, races, equipment, etc. This can be easily done afterward by fans. It's the core of the game that does not work. The economics system is still way much better than war of magic. It is possible that reducing all time variables, especially production, could improve the level of feedback the game gives to the player and might hook the player more easily. That would be on my point of view that fastest way to patch the problem. So a basic spearmen should take only 1 turn to build even near the beginning of the game.

Else, the only thing that matters for me right now is the flexibility of the XML to make a MOM mod. So I am basically waiting for the release to be able to hack the XML since it is impossible to do right now due to the downloaded binary blob. But I don't think I will ever play the original game besides for testing features.

on Mar 03, 2012

mastroego
City building was entirely pointless in .76 and they haven't touched it since. The building placement mechanic doesn't even have a real reason to exist.

yes, we mention it again and again. If the building playing mechanic doesn't have any influence on gameplay it should be removed. It's on level with a hat costumization program.

on Mar 03, 2012


u want the workshop in front of your city or in the back? it doesn't matter either way but you still have to choose were to place it!.

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