| Title | Confessions of a Dominions manual writer |
| Author | Bruce Geryk |
| Posted in | Features |
| When | October 25, 2013 |
Almost exactly ten years ago, I happened to find an amazing demo on the Internet. It was for what looked like a fantasy strategy game. It was crude, even by the standards of 2003. It was completely inscrutable. You clicked on things and seemingly nothing happened..
Read the full articleFirst of all, great article. I completely agree with the main point, that the mystery and the unknown is what can be so alluring about Dominions. Even after all the thought and analysis that the community has put into it, there's no consensus "this strategy wins the day because X and Y". There are so many unknowns you can encounter that you could probably dedicate a university to the study of the game and still it would take decades to unravel all the complexity. I like knowing generally what I'm doing in the game, but not completely. It gives this sense of immersion within the world - why SHOULD I know everything? Sure, I'm playing a god, but I'm up against other gods. Unless I'm from Kokytos, should I know EXACTLY what it is and how I get sent there? I'd like to learn from experience and look back and say "oh yeah, I remember that one time..."
There are a lot of simple turn based strategy games I love. But with those I often feel like I've maximized my own ability within the game, I stop uncovering new ideas and new things to wonder about. Even after years of playing Dominions 3 I still feel like I don't know what I'm really doing. And I hope it stays that way.
Thanks for this wonderful piece. I just love this idea of a historical record in the world of Dominions - that things are the way they are because well, that's just how things were there. That trying to understand every element of the world and the game is not only impossible, but misses the point.
I was introduced to the world of Dominions by way of Conquest of Elysium 3, and those first experiences were ones of pure joy. I spent countless hours traveling that world with no goal other than to "see what's out there." Some of my fondest gaming memories are a result of spending time in that world for the sheer sense of discovery and wonder it conveys.
I remember that guide very well. I really wish the game had stuck with me like it did so many other people on Qt3, but I just couldn't get into it. Dwarf Fortress however...
This is a wonderful article, Bruce, and the things you discuss are why Dominions is really great. I have been playing these games since the first one (I never learned how to really play the first one, though, since it was opaque, and there was only spotty online discussion of the game back then), and there are still lots of spells I have never used. I do love that often I don't really know what some spells do, exactly...that is part of the attraction. I want to discover them.
Great article Bruce and I know the conversation you're talking about in the Dom 4 thread. I was complaining that spells weren't described clearly and precisely and 3 other people said they preferred it that way. One other guy may have shared my point of view, but I can't remember. Maybe that part of my brain was whisked to Kokytos.
The way you guys revel in the mystery of Dominions makes it sound like so much fun to play that way, but I just don't think I'm capable. It's like I have a compulsion to know the details. I don't feel like I can make a decision about what to do if I don't have the information.
For the people that don't want the spell descriptions to spell out the details, do you try and discover the details through play, or do you not care at all? Do you play at a really high level (meaning you are casting a spell the does fire damage, but you don't pay attention to the damage it does)?
I still grab my Dominions 3 manual sometimes if I'm going to the bathroom and need something to read. Thats no small compliment.
There really is something magical about Dominions, and as I grow up and games because less magical and more mechanical, Dominions becomes more of a special thing for still tickling that place in my mind/heart that used to always be active when I was a child. This piece of yours, Bruce, explains that idea nicely. Well done.
Hm, I was just leafing through my Dom3 manual tonight.
The Dominions 4 webpage lists as one of its important features "Many user interface improvements." Does anyone know how significant these improvement are compared to Dominions 3?
Correction:
The third footnote only has two asterisks.
Amazing game. Its so unique. I really do wonder if there will ever be another game like Dominions.
If Civ V et al., are chess, then Dominions is Go on an infinite board.
The wheel turns again and another Dominions is released.
I do not agree with this at all, and just sounds like a bull&%$£ excuse to me.
Trying to promote the viewpoint that "it is better for some things to remain unknown" is not an acceptable one for a computer game of this type (or any type really). Usually this approach is used in other media forms such as books, TV, or films, and the majority of the time it occurs then is because the writer (or whatever) created "a mysterious thing" but without any idea or plan on how they would explain it. And when the time comes to explain it, they will often use the tried and tested "we left that mystery unresolved because we think it is better if some thing are left unknown" excuse as a get out of jail free card, and hope the reader/viewer will accept that as an answer to "the mystery". Sometimes the reader/viewer will accept this, sometimes they won't (as an example, see the polarised opinion of the Lost finale)
But I don't see how this view is possibly acceptable for a computer game. The developers can not claim that they wrote themselves into a corner and so therefore need to look for excuses due to not being able to explain how the mechanics work or what the formulas are, because the answers are right there is the source-code. All they have to do is check the source-code and provide the answers required. There are no mysteries in the game that can not be perfectly answered by the developer checking the source-code because nothing can happen in the game, mysterious or otherwise, without the game obeying the source code. Therefore any and all answers can be had from the source-code. There are no unexplainable mysteries, and therefore no excuses for them existing, and you can not use excuses from other forms of media and expect them to apply to a computer game, because they don't.
If some people prefer to be blind and totally ignorant of the specific formulas and mechanics of the game then that is their choice, but only THEIR choice, and this choice should never be promoted as a better approach, only a personal one. And it should NEVER be a choice forced onto the player by the developers, and certainly not a choice that should ever be trumpeted (which seems to be the case with this article) and promoted as a positive of the game. Since in reality it is simply a poor excuse that is being used to explain the reason why the proper formulas and mechanics are not made available to those players who wish to know them. The lack of this information is a bad thing, not good.
If the developers can't be bothered to invest time and effort into assisting the person writing the game manual (by way of checking the source code for accurate formulas and mechanics), then that can only be seen as a negative point against the developers. And it is certainly wrong to promote this as being a good thing, because it is not, and also because the lack of such information can cause huge amounts of frustration and alienation of the player base consisting of those who want to be informed players, and not ignorant ones.
Not all players want to play with their head in the sand, and if they are forced to by the developers (by way of them not providing accurate information where necessary) then the developers should be called out on this point and a black mark recorded. They certainly shouldn't be given the luxury of being able to hide behind an excuse that in no way applies to a computer game.
Bruce nice article.
First I wanted to say that Dom 3 manual was the best game manual I ever read. I still have it and read it sometimes.
Your article also made me buy Dom 4....Thank you and damn you.
I am reading your new manual on my phone. All I miss is your country/nation definitions and background with analysis.
Thanks, all. There is a new manual update posted, with a lot more data (all units, all nations). There will also be more updates. It is all a time issue.
Thanks for posting, Scott. I don't see it as an "excuse," simply another way of appreciating the game. Dominions is now one of the most heavily documented strategy games out now (the current manual update is 400 pages long) so far from this being some kind of apology or justification for a deficiency that doesn't exist, it's a story about how many ways there are to appreciate a game. I think games can be appreciated in ways similar to a novel or movie. Even with some hardcore wargames dependent on rigorous modeling, there are players who enjoy the data for being there, but prefer not to worry about it and just play the game for immersion. I think this is very similar to a less "quantitative" approach to Dominions. No matter how much code is involved, games are still a construction of an imaginary world, and what we get out of that is up to us individually. I know many players who prefer to "discover" Dominions for themselves without burying themselves in mechanics, and who don't like looking things up because it breaks their immersion. While I originally don't think I had a good appreciation for this view (and if I didn't share much of your desire to see documentation of game mechanics, most if not all the current Dominions documentation would not exist in its current form), I have come to a new understanding of this perspective. That is what the article is about.
I don't entirely disagree with the author. People can wax poetic about Dom, and it does have some really interesting lore behind it (since its fantasy draws from the creators' own interpretation of mythological sources rather than just deriving from Tolkein's), but there's no reason why it should have to make life any harder for a newbie than the mechanics it contains. I think I saw the same forum comment mentioned in the article and the thing is, many spells actually describe themselves adequately by providing statistics above the description, e.g. a ton of evocations, or simply being super special cases like the global enchants that aren't gem-gens. But then after that things get more and more unclear. Many buffs don't give you numbers even though they'd be easy to give. Then there are the summons, which have a ton of unknowns numbers since the descriptions generally only describe abilities. And finally there's the murkiest nuances like the differences between item quickness, spell quickness, and bless quickness which all use exactly the same name for different things.
I don't think spell descriptions should be done away with, but I find it very unfortunate (though not altogether unexpected for an indie game) that I have to look at a manual, a mod inspector, or use a debug mod game to figure out what a lot of spells do when in an ideal world you could, say, for a summon, see the picture(s) of what you summon above the spell description and right-click them to see stats just as you would any other unit. Flavor text doesn't mean that you have to not let newbie what they're getting, otherwise why did you create the manual in the first place? Yet some people seem to act that like that is true.
The type of player that wants to discover how to play a game on there own is in the discrete minority imo especially with a game as complicated as Dominions 3. There is no way to prove it either way but my feeling is the dominions series would be more popular if it was more accessible. Also, the manual does only an ok job in my opinion. Now part of that is how in depth the game is but I stil struggle with understanding things like communion and magic duels in Dom 3 which are extremely important and barely covered in the manual. You read that manual and win a couple of solo games and then go play multiplayer for instance lol.............................
im sorry all i heard was whhaaaaaaaaaaaa
dont buy it
this game isnt made for people like you > less difficult, more explainable, less complex games are everywhere
thankfully its not a pubic company beholden to casual pressure for a game they will play for 2 hours then move on
