5981

It’s not his title that’s interesting, it’s how much say he will have in the game design of Elemental. The looking into his title and its actual meaning at Stardock was just in service of that.

5982

Fair enough.

5983

The new Associate Producer of Elemental, Toby Sarnelle, fleshes out some of the changes coming in v1.1. He provides more details in his (Kestral2040) later comments in the same thread.

Some picks:

I’m here to tell you guys about some of the cool new stuff I’ve been adding for version 1.1.
…
Elemental spell books will again be picked up through research
…
The way global mana will actually work is similar to any other resource; you will be able to build magical shrines in your cities that provide a steady stream of mana that will accumulate over turns until you cast spells. Also in an attempt to simplify some of the confusion over spell damage and how it is affected by your INT we are going towards more flat damage numbers for spells which your intelligence will not be increasing. This should make it easier to balance damage numbers across spells and the rest of combat (another thing I will be getting to for the patch). Obviously this combined with the mana changes basically eliminates the old purpose of the intelligence and wisdom/essence stats. Going forward they will now be used instead as requirements for a unit to cast a particular spell.

There’s also lots of high-impact stuff about the changing role of population.

It’s clear now that at Stardock a role in production means a lot of game design responsibility.

5984

Balance? …that surprised me.

So the game is already fun, but for a minor inbalance that make that people don’t use all the available fun toys?

5985

I’m not overly fussed about the point, but why would announcing a list of design changes be any indication, one way or another, of the amount of “design responsibility” one has? PR types do it all the time, and have nothing to do with the design of the game.

5986

Sarnelle made several references to stuff he’s already done and is currently doing for v1.1. Not announcing what others have done but what he’s done.

5987

Well, I’m not sure laboring on the game equates with any degree of creative oversight (someone has to actually implement design decisions), but we’re well into semantics now. I’ve given up trying to understand the things Stardock does, so I’m certainly not going to argue with anyone else’s interpretation.

So sure. Why not.

5988

I don’t like the sound of that at all. That’s just going to lead to a lot of worthless spells that you’ve outleveled which no longer do enough damage to be worth casting.

5989

Wouldn’t that mirror the normal progression of any other tech tree in any other game as well?

5990

Plus this necessitates having duplicate or similar spells that differ in power levels so that e.g. you always have a level-appropriate fire attack against enemies weak to fire. I think it’ll end up like GalCiv2’s tech tree and you’ll have Fireball 1, Fireball 2, Fireball 3, etc.

5991

Or you know they could do it properly and have Spark, Fire Bolt, Fire Ball, Inferno and Lava Call

5992

Maybe damage should be somewhat tied to level, like spells in D&D were? (in the 70s and 80s anyway, don’t know how it is now).

5993

Can be solved with prerequisites (inelegant). could be a strategic decision- invest in fireballs now, or blazing infernos later.

That said, I would like to see a better system.

5994

I haven’t paid attention to Elemental since about August 26 when I put it down. I’m 2,500 posts behind. Anyone care to catch a brother up? I see Kael joined.

So, does it still suck or what?

5995

Yeah.

5996

A lot of people (outside of James) have indicated that the game has shaped up to be half-decent, but definitely not great. However, Stardock’s new hires are working on it as we speak, and I’d except to see the fruits of their labor after the next couple of months or so.

5997

1.1 is their first gameplay overhaul patch, so I’d check back when that’s been release. Everything up till now has just been cleaning up the engine.

5998

I think the whole general consensus thing is that Elemental is now a working bad game, not a broken bad game.

5999

Thanks guys. Maybe I’ll give it a look again around Christmas.

6000

Next spring might be a better target, after the first real, substantial expansion. Going by Gal Civ 2 precedent, anyway.