Elemental all-purpose thread

[Tyjenks]

Stardock never wanted to call Elemental “Master of Magic 2”. Stardock wanted to make Master of Magic 2, but when the deal fell through, they decided to make a 4x fantasy strategy game of their own instead. But if it hadn’t, they would have tried to make their sequel faithful to the original.

Could they have not done that anyhow? I mean, duplicate a lot of the mechanics, tweak some stuff, Brad could have certainly made a better A.I. and then call it whatever? Just curious.

[Dave_Weinstein]

Someone want to sneak into Stardock HQ and move all the calendars forward a few days?

[Dan_Theman]

Someone want to sneak into Stardock HQ and move all the calendars forward a few days?

I would try, but sadly I’m headed in the other direction for the next few days (fwiw, I’ll be driving right past Firaxis tomorrow, although they won’t let me in to grab an advance copy of Civ 5, the bastards … lol).

[KevinC]

Going back to the technology thing, I saw this on the GameShark interview:

…The one difference between Master of Orion and Elemental is that the technologies were all interchangeable because everyone used the same tech tree, whereas in Elemental every faction has its own slightly different technology tree - in fact some of them have dramatically different technology trees - so they aren’t compatible.

Interesting!

[KevinC]

Egads, wait a minute. Further on in the interview:

Yeah… I’m not a good advocate for multiplayer… I love multiplayer in, say, StarCraft II, but in turn-based strategy games… basically we put it in because some people like it a lot. Some people imagine that multiplayer should be like the single-player game with humans in it, but our play-testing on it found that that isn’t fun at all. So what we’ve been doing with the multiplayer is really streamlining it so that players get a different technology tree that focuses on the parts that are the most fun in multiplayer. It kind of moves the game along a little better.

Seriously, why do this? At least make it a game mode option to play the full-featured game in MP if so desired. I’ll have to wait and try it out for myself, but I don’t really want a streamlined/stripped down version for MP, I want the real deal. Depending on how this shakes out, my LAN group that I play FFH2 with could be seriously bent out of shape about it.

[Dan_Theman]

Presuming those players are comfortable with mods (seeing as they’re playing FFH2), I’m pretty sure the MP tech tree could be adjusted to the same as the SP tech tree with with minimal effort.

edit - as for why, I’m guessing some things that appear in the tech tree are really not very useful in a typical MP game and so Stardock adjusted it for the sake of better gameplay.

[Mysterio]

Part 1 of Brad’s humorous Elemental AAR. Nice read!

[ckessel]

Egads, wait a minute. Further on in the interview:
Seriously, why do this? .

Because right in his comment he mentions that playtesting showed the normal game isn’t fun at all as multiplayer? Rather than ship and be forever burdened to support and patch something that isn’t fun, they took a different route. If multiplayer is already a small niche of TBS games, the even tinier niche that wants the un-fun version would make little sense to try and support.

[KevinC]

What I meant, ckessel, is why remove the option. Let the player decide what is fun, whether they want a shorter, more streamlined tech tree, or the full thing. Civ IV doesn’t limit you to “Quick” game mode in MP because testing found it to be “more fun”, because more fun is completely subjective. My friends and I enjoyed playing Epic/Marathon, and although we were probably the minority, we had the option to choose how we played.

[ckessel]

What I meant, ckessel, is why remove the option. Let the player decide what is fun, whether they want a shorter, more streamlined tech tree, or the full thing.

For exactly the reason I mentioned in my previous post. It’s more stuff for Stardock to support and maintain. If they patch single player tech trees, they’d be responsible for understanding the impact on the un-fun multiplayer version in addition to the streamlined one.

I get you might like that option, but the option probably doesn’t make much sense for Stardock to spend time on. Maybe it’ll happen as a mod of some sort.

[Taranis]

What I meant, ckessel, is why remove the option. Let the player decide what is fun, whether they want a shorter, more streamlined tech tree, or the full thing. Civ IV doesn’t limit you to “Quick” game mode in MP because testing found it to be “more fun”, because more fun is completely subjective. My friends and I enjoyed playing Epic/Marathon, and although we were probably the minority, we had the option to choose how we played.

Yeah I’m with you on this and it might be worse then just a shorter tech tree, if I remember correctly Brad said that MP might not include tactical battles at release. If Elemental ends up having some kind of streamlined MP with only auto resolve I’ll never be able to convince my friends to buy it…or really why would I try.

EDIT: I cant find the quote about tactical battles but I did find this:
http://forums.impulsedriven.com/387333

Q: What is Stardock’s position of Elemental’s multiplayer?

A: Elemental has multiplayer. To ensure that it is robust, we basically threw money at the problem (i.e. set up servers around the world to just host the game) rather than monkey around with trying to get players to connect with one another. However, Elemental IS a single player game that happens to have multiplayer. Out of the box, Elemental’s multiplayer will be essentially skirmish on fixed maps that have been pre-balanced (i.e. not randomly generated).

Our standing policy continues to be that we won’t sacrifice the single player experience for multiplayer. That is, if we want to have a cool feature in single player that would de-balance multiplayer, we’ll just disable it from multiplayer rather than not have it in the game at all.

Over time, we will gauge the interest in expanding the multiplayer to see how many resources to put on it.

[Chris_Nahr]

I don’t care about Elemental multiplayer, I’m just surprised that they added it in the first place. Why bother, if Brad himself believes that the game is not a good fit for multiplayer and must be reworked for that mode? Can’t imagine that too many sales would depend on that feature, especially when people learn that multiplayer offers only a restricted version of the game.

[Bossman]

The Civilization series works just fine in multiplayer and it’s a lot more complex than Elemental.

[Therlun]

I don’t care about Elemental multiplayer, I’m just surprised that they added it in the first place. Why bother, if Brad himself believes that the game is not a good fit for multiplayer and must be reworked for that mode? Can’t imagine that too many sales would depend on that feature, especially when people learn that multiplayer offers only a restricted version of the game.

It’s the same with map size and game length.
Stardock games include huge, humongous map sizes, because many players think “wow,I would really love a game on a map as large as possible that lasts as long as possible”. People actually playing or even finishing such a map are pretty rare though.

[ckessel]

The Civilization series works just fine in multiplayer and it’s a lot more complex than Elemental.

How exactly do you know Civ is a lot more complex than Elemental? I haven’t really seen anything to indicate they aren’t on par.

[Telefrog]

That, and “works fine” is pretty subjective. If you get two hardcore Civ players willing to slog it out, then it works.

[KevinC]

How exactly do you know Civ is a lot more complex than Elemental? I haven’t really seen anything to indicate they aren’t on par.

I think we could safely say that it’s roughly comparable in complexity? Civ IV has fantastic multiplayer, though, which has options for different playstyles. Want a once-off game? You could play a Quick | Duel-sized map. Want a long-term coop game with a friend? Knock yourself out, nothing’s to get in the way from playing a Marathon game on Huge. Is it going to be everyone’s cup of tea? Hardly but, you know, why restrict it if it was already developed for, and exists in, singleplayer?

I know SP is the focus of Elemental and that makes sense, since the MP community is going to be a minority. As such I think it’s reasonable not to expect all kinds of extra features for multiplayer. That’s not really what I’m asking for, though, I just want the capability to play the full, unedited game with my friends. That’s the only reason we purchased the game.

If anything, creating a separate MP game setup, with “pre-created, balanced maps”, and it’s own separate tech tree, seems like a lot more work, not less.

This is just my perspective, but it feels to me like a lot of Devs have this perception that “Multiplayer” must equal online versus play in random pickup games. This style fits really well with RTS games, but TBS have a broader appeal than that. There are those of us out there that are okay with a complex strategy game that you don’t finish within an hour.

I realize that this might be much ado about nothing, and that maybe the differences between SP and MP will be minor. It’s just not what it’s sounding like, and since the only reason I dropped fifty bucks was to play this with my friends, it concerns me. None of us purchased GalCiv2 due to the lack of MP, and it was MP that got us interested in Elemental.

[Sam_Jones]

This is the only game that would make me find an Atari ST emulator. While I love the Atari 8-bits to death, I don’t really miss the ST.

Presumably you played the first game - Millennium 2.2? The moonbase you re-activate early in Deuteros is the one you manage in M2.2 while you figure out how to make Earth habitable again.

These were my favourite games on the ST. Shame Deuteros was delayed for about two years, and still not finished when it was released…

[Brad_Wardell]

I think we could safely say that it’s roughly comparable in complexity? Civ IV has fantastic multiplayer, though, which has options for different playstyles. Want a once-off game? You could play a Quick | Duel-sized map. Want a long-term coop game with a friend? Knock yourself out, nothing’s to get in the way from playing a Marathon game on Huge. Is it going to be everyone’s cup of tea? Hardly but, you know, why restrict it if it was already developed for, and exists in, singleplayer?

I know SP is the focus of Elemental and that makes sense, since the MP community is going to be a minority. As such I think it’s reasonable not to expect all kinds of extra features for multiplayer. That’s not really what I’m asking for, though, I just want the capability to play the full, unedited game with my friends. That’s the only reason we purchased the game.

If anything, creating a separate MP game setup, with “pre-created, balanced maps”, and it’s own separate tech tree, seems like a lot more work, not less.

This is just my perspective, but it feels to me like a lot of Devs have this perception that “Multiplayer” must equal online versus play in random pickup games. This style fits really well with RTS games, but TBS have a broader appeal than that. There are those of us out there that are okay with a complex strategy game that you don’t finish within an hour.

I realize that this might be much ado about nothing, and that maybe the differences between SP and MP will be minor. It’s just not what it’s sounding like, and since the only reason I dropped fifty bucks was to play this with my friends, it concerns me. None of us purchased GalCiv2 due to the lack of MP, and it was MP that got us interested in Elemental.

Does Civilization have quests or something like them where you gain special, powerful items?

The things we are restricting in multiplayer are features like that.

It is not fun to have someone go on a quest and gain a +3 sword. Even if it doesn’t really make a tangible difference to the final outcome of the game, players tended to think they did.

[Scotch_Lufkin]

Does Civilization have quests or something like them where you gain special, powerful items?

The things we are restricting in multiplayer are features like that.

It is not fun to have someone go on a quest and gain a +3 sword. Even if it doesn’t really make a tangible difference to the final outcome of the game, players tended to think they did.

Well, Age of Wonders 2 had quests in the multiplayer and it was pretty fun?