5921

I just want my spiritual successor to MoM.

5922

THIS x 1000!

Also, I’m pretty confused, since the last statement I saw from brad a few days about this, was that they were now aiming to make it MoM2010…

I’m so confused

5923

I think that’s one of the better possible outcomes, but wouldn’t Brad need to be willing to jettison his beloved cache of personally constructed lore for that to happen? You know, the stuff he wrote a novel about during the design process (perhaps, in lieu of doing more designing during the design process).

Would FFH3 really be FFH3 without Kael’s rich, more than a decade in the making, sprawling DnD setting?

5924

congrats, kael!

5925

graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghrlgeltrle

It’s some guys D&D campaign, let’s keep our heads.

5926

Many well-regarded modern fantasy novel series started out as some guy’s DnD campaign. The point is, is the game really “Fall From Heaven 3” without Kael’s signature lore? Without that, FFH 2 is mostly just modified, but clearly recognizable Civ 4 gameplay, albeit with a lot of added replay and variety in the form of a wide assortment of unique factions that could alter the way Civ 4 games typically played out in interesting ways. But at it’s core, it was still Civ 4.

I’m not sure Fall from Heaven really has that much of it’s own identity outside of Civ 4, if you strip out Kael’s setting, lore, and faction concepts. But Razgon may not have been speaking literally, and possibly meant something more along the lines of “the spiritual successor to Fall from Heaven”.

I find Kael’s setting much more compelling than the default Elemental lore, though, and would love some scenario that makes his world the new default setting for the game. “Elemental: Fall from Heaven”.

5927

By the way, it’ll be some time before Paxton’s effect on Elemental will be felt.

Stardock’s communication still isn’t up to scratch. In their press release, they neglect to mention when the new guy starts and they fail to address the question they absolutely have to by now know will be on many, many minds: How will this change affect the game design of Elemental? Not the production process, who cares about that besides the people performing the work, the game design.

5928

My guess is that they don’t know exactly how this will change game design yet.

Patience is a virtue…

5929

Code is different to other things in that you fight the problems with tools you make yourself for the most part. A plumber don’t make his tools, but a programmer create tools, to craft other tools, to craft other tools, that result on the final product.

If the initial tools (functions, frameworks, general design) is bad, then continuing building is hard, like tryiing to build a steel and glass house with tools made of bananas and cocos. This is another reason why adding more manwork to a delaying project don’t help it. The newcomers are forced to use the available tools, if the available tools are bad, his work quality will be bad. Good workers result on bad quality with bad tools.

I don’t say this is the case here. But we can’t expect miracles.

5930

Surely there are only very patient people left in the Elemental conversation by now.

It’s difficult to imagine that Wardell doesn’t have a pretty good idea of how he’s going to organise the game design duties after Paxton steps in. For some reason he hasn’t published his thoughts on the specific subject. He seems very open about things otherwise so this could be just another communication oversight.

It’s true that as the FNG hasn’t been shipped to the compound yet his exact duties are probably not yet defined and will be a work in progress for a while. Stardock seems to be a pretty informal organisation based on Wardell’s posts. Also, Paxton himself could conceivably affect how much game design he gets to do at Stardock. Power isn’t given, it’s taken.

5931

To me this reads, “I’m not sure FFH has that much of its own identity if you strip out its own identity.”

5932

FFH’s identity is mechanical. FFH is training a brigade of spellcasters to transform all your deserts into grasslands. The hodgepodge background didn’t mean anything.

5933

Is more like the elf like civ getting angry at the demon like civ, because the rivers of lava of the demon like civ is flowing and burning all the forest of the elf like civ, while the pirate tchulu civ is planning to flood the world.

5934

I played the human horse civ running amuck the continent pillaging other cities and pissing on the zombie civ cos I didn’t like them while the passive civ sat behind walls and tried to out tech me.

I also played the 5 city civ trying to survive the zombie civ and the vampire civ.

FFH is one of those games where the mechanics definitely support a large part of the lore behind it, or vice versa. It’s not purely mechanical. Civ IV vanilla is more mechanical.

5935

One of the things that I admired about FFH2 was how they managed to take advantage of the mechanics that were already there in new ways that were woven into the world story.

For instance, in regular CivIV, the AI did not do much with “culture bombing,” but that is the main mechanic of the Balseraphs.

The vampire civ mechanics, already mentioned above, would be another good example.

I take this as a good omen for Kael’s involvement in Elemental.

5936

Kael can hopefully make each race truly unique and undeniably different. One of the many complaints of Elemental was the lack of races (ie: only human and fallen). What Kael did in Fall From Heaven, all civs there were humanoid to some extent, yet each played vastly differently, and each was undeniably different. There was no reliance on elves, dark elves, orks and other fantasy types to make up the civs, though of course there were things like Giants, Ogres, Goblins and the like that could form an army. And, I guess two civs were dwarven, but dwarves are really just little people (and I’ll cyber glare anyone who says orks are just green people…)

I just hope Brad will have some flexibility with the lore of Elemental. It needs some massive boost to it imagination wise. It’s fucking boring.

5937

GalCiv2 had an issue with this until Twilight.

FFH had renamed elves, dwarves, and orcs. Yeah, they were called other names- but Khazad were dwarves, Ljos and Svalfs were elves, Clan was orcs.

Not criticizing, but to say that FFH didn’t rely on different races isn’t true.

5938

I sort of doubt Kael will be able to run amok with Elemental like he did in FFH2 – balance is always a stupid hangup of Stardock’s, plus there’s always those vocal four (when last I checked the “leaderboards,” only four people had played Elemental online) who will scream bloody murder about multiplayer balance being the most important thing evar, and you better just go make a mod if you want anything that’s actually fun.

5939

FYI your examples aren’t actually renamed anything, they’re simply different names for the same things. In Tolkien’s ME universe, Khazâd is the dwarven word for for their race. Ljös, svart & alf are all real-world words that mean, respectively, light, dark & elf. And Clan… Is generic enough to refer to anything.

5940

That’s fascinating - I never picked up on Ljös, svart & alf being real-world words before. At least I knew Khazâd, so perhaps that counts for something in the world of geek cred ;)