FE surely has its issues and is by far not the perfect strategy game, and won't be it even when finished, but sorry whoever does express his critic of the game in such an hyperbolic way is just not credible.
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FE surely has its issues and is by far not the perfect strategy game, and won't be it even when finished, but sorry whoever does express his critic of the game in such an hyperbolic way is just not credible.
Fallen Enchantress doesn't have a deep gameplay, it has a bloated gameplay. I prefer boardgame-style games with simple rules that create easy to learn, hard to master gameplay. Stardock prefers to make simulators with a hundred of useless features (which either are inefficient so they may as well not exist in a game at all, or too powerful and AI can't use them/defend against them). And Stardock can't even write a manual (let alone a tutorial) for even a third of what they randomly throw in the game. Instead of adding dozens of useless random features, they should think more about how players are supposed to PLAY it, and which exact STRATEGIC / TACTICAL DECISIONS players are supposed to make.
Sadly that wasn't hyperbole. I have played a lot of strategy games, a lot. I can not think of any war games with more boring options or gameplay. You dress a generic soldier unit up in the best armor and weapon you've researched and send them out in throngs, there is no variation or options. At the very least these games usually have a rock-paper-scissors aspect and a few units that have some special purpose in combat, but not WoM and not FE. Compared to similar games in the genre like Age of Wonders, King Arthur, M&MH, Disciples, Warlords, or even Fall from Heaven, it's not just slightly worse than them, it's way below par. I'm not saying it's unplayable, I'd still rather play FE than whatever generic FPS game just came out, but it is, without exaggeration, the worst strategy war game I have played.
While I disagree with the extent of Astasia's disappointment about FE, I do agree that there are underlying strategic problems once you get past the first phases of the game. As this is in beta I'm hoping they act on these before release. Warlock is looking more 'war-gamy' of the two so far based on the way it handles units, but Fallen Enchantress does show a hell of a lot of promise at this early stage in other areas.
Hopefully both will be great in their own right.
Hopefully both will be great in their own right.
Glad you have written it off so easily. Your loss.
I haven't "written it off" yet, this is my opinion of the current state of the game. While I continue to participate in the beta and make suggestions and bug reports in the hope of a better game coming to fruition, we've been basically told "the game is what it is and wont see any major changes and that's not up for discussion." At the same time they tell us there are "additions we may like coming soon." Unless those additions are an overhaul to the city management and generic unit system though (and AI obviously), it is never going to be a serious strategy game.
In your opinion, ok. But it is a highly moddable game. Trust the community to polish the uncut gem, and make wonders of it (I can envision a crafting system already, and a more survival start like a caveman oriented gameplay)... Anyways, do we know if WMoA will be moddable? Because it LOOKS like a civ5 fantasy mod so far to me already ^^....
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I thought Elemental: War of Magic had problems when developers from Stardock were seriously discussing on a public forum their idea of a semi-manual management of 300 resources and their semi-manual transfer between cities. A simple multiplication tells me that interface for that should manage at least 30.000 numbers (20 cities * 300 resources * 5 numbers for each city/resource (stock, used locally, produced locally, sent in, sent out)).Glad you have written it off so easily. Your loss.
Anyone who thinks something like that can possibly be fun shouldn't design computer games IMHO.
You can't mod AI. And original AI sucks. So, you can't really do much to salvage a situation.
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300 ressources, come on, what are you talking about ? Gold, materials, grains, mana, diplomatie are FE ressources. Not all people are console players, who can only handle gold as a ressource....
Can't mod AI ? looool...
Camp #1: “Sophisticated”
1. Everything in Elemental is a resource. Food, metal, swords, armor, horses, you name it.
2. Resources can be processed into other resources. Iron Ore into a Sword.
3. Part of the fun of the game would be running a proper empire (or letting AI governors take care of it).
Now count a number of resources if everything is a resource, including each type of a weapon, armor, potions etc., in addition to basic resources.
Also note a line in bold, i don't find it fun to "watch how governors play instead of me" in a game. It failed in Orion 3 (the one they beaten by their own GalCiv 2), and yet they wanted to make the same mistake? Or force the player to manage 300+ resources with per-city resource storage, like in Colonization (they decided to get rid of it almost a year later, here "Originally, only cities could build improvements because resources were local to the city. Now that they’re global"
If they consider such a flawed ideas strong enough that they discuss them on open forums, it's a bad sign for me.
Compared to Civ 4, for example? LOOOL
Also
The Gameplay of Elemental
By Frogboy on February 17, 2010
Key Features
Randomly generated maps - well fine (but they look the same)
10 Unique Factions (more like unique faction names, in MoM it makes more of a difference)
Design your own Sovereign (kinda yes but it doesn't matter, again MoM is more diverse)
Powerful Magic System (magic totally sucks)
Tactical Battles (worse than in MoM)
World Class computer AI (ROFLMAO)
A rich, story-driven campaign (very small campaign)
Strong single player sandbox mode (given that AI sucks, and everything is about the same each game, NO)
State of the art, client/server multiplayer (ROFLMAO)
Low Hardware Requirements (well maybe)
Extensive Modding Support (much worse than in Civ 4)
Can you really fix all of that in expansion? IMHO no. Usually expansion fixes only one or two major issues at best, if it's a good expansion. You can't fix entire game.
*Links removed*
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This is currently the biggest issue with the game and the biggest reason I don't think it's going to get better. Frogboy does the AI, he owns Stardock, he calls his AI "World Class." He enjoys what he does, which you can't blame him for, but he simply can not do this type of AI, at all. He doesn't recognize this fact and refuses to pass the AI off to somebody who has a clue. Nobody can fire him or force him to step back, so unless he magically learns WTH he's doing the AI is never going to be any good and it's going to result in another terrible release. Like I said it's not the only issue, but a competent AI would at least make it feel like a game instead of like rolling a snowball down a hill (your sov killing everything in it's patch without challenge).
Yes you can "mod" the AI, and what that involves is simply adjusting the weighting of certain things, you can't touch the core of the AI and that's where the problems likely all are.
Master of Mana, the Civ IV mod is the current fantasy TB game world champion. Let's see if any of these are worthy of a match.
Well, after a second look, they changed a lead game designer (to the one who designed Fall from Heaven) and a concept (now it's "Fall from Heaven ~ light" instead of "we have oh so many useless features that you should admire, but don't touch"). Basically, Fallen Enchantress become a Fall from Heaven 3 mod on Elemental engine. Given a disastrous design of Elemental (or rather a lack of design), it should work in a game's favor.
So in theory a total conversion should be able to fix more gameplay issues than just an expansion. The only problem is, why should anyone buy Fallen Enchantress (Fall from Heaven light) if there is Fall from Heaven and Master of Mana already?
Though AI still is in Brad Wardell's hands. And i bet a Fall From Heaven mod AI is better than Fallen Enchantress AI. So...
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I really don’t understand the point of this thread. Why “against”? Don’t you see the big picture?
Name five grand turn-based 4X strategy games which came out in last five years. Three games? The truth is that 4X genre is in a bad condition. I dare say that the very future of turn-based 4X games depends on success of both: Fallen Enchantress and Warlock. So don't antagonize Fallen Enchantress and Warlock. It will work against 4X genre and therefore against both of them (and against possible future expansions). I’m not saying there is no competition between the two. There is and that is good. But competition is one thing and war between both fan(boy)doms is another thing.
A thought about Fallen Enchantress. I didn’t play the beta, but thanks to reading the official forums and watching few hours of gameplay videos I can say that it’s gonna be a decent game (not an expansion, not even a stand-alone expansion). It’s already better than WoM after a year of patching. They will work on the game for about next half a year and much can change, so it’s too early to say anything more. AI is lame you say? It is, but don’t forget it’s BETA 1. Stardock say that tactical AI will be worked on after all the spells and other stuff are ready. The game will came out in a few months and then we will judge the AI – both strategic and tactical – and everything else. All versions before the gold version are testing ones. I bet Warlock beta hasn’t the best AI either. Because it’s BETA.
I’m pretty excited about both games. And I believe that they can revive the turn-based branch of 4X genre. But not when fans of one game will hate the other game all over the internet. Reasonless hating Fallen Enchantress would not contribute to success of Warlock. Reasonless hating Warlock would not contribute to success of Fallen Enchantress. Quite the contrary. The 4X market is too small and too weak for a civil war! We better work together and unite against dumb causal pseudo-strategy Facebook games, instead of fighting each other. It’s not worth it.
Name five grand turn-based 4X strategy games which came out in last five years. Three games? The truth is that 4X genre is in a bad condition. I dare say that the very future of turn-based 4X games depends on success of both: Fallen Enchantress and Warlock. So don't antagonize Fallen Enchantress and Warlock. It will work against 4X genre and therefore against both of them (and against possible future expansions). I’m not saying there is no competition between the two. There is and that is good. But competition is one thing and war between both fan(boy)doms is another thing.
A thought about Fallen Enchantress. I didn’t play the beta, but thanks to reading the official forums and watching few hours of gameplay videos I can say that it’s gonna be a decent game (not an expansion, not even a stand-alone expansion). It’s already better than WoM after a year of patching. They will work on the game for about next half a year and much can change, so it’s too early to say anything more. AI is lame you say? It is, but don’t forget it’s BETA 1. Stardock say that tactical AI will be worked on after all the spells and other stuff are ready. The game will came out in a few months and then we will judge the AI – both strategic and tactical – and everything else. All versions before the gold version are testing ones. I bet Warlock beta hasn’t the best AI either. Because it’s BETA.
I’m pretty excited about both games. And I believe that they can revive the turn-based branch of 4X genre. But not when fans of one game will hate the other game all over the internet. Reasonless hating Fallen Enchantress would not contribute to success of Warlock. Reasonless hating Warlock would not contribute to success of Fallen Enchantress. Quite the contrary. The 4X market is too small and too weak for a civil war! We better work together and unite against dumb causal pseudo-strategy Facebook games, instead of fighting each other. It’s not worth it.
I agree, I really hope both games will be good. There are so few new games in the genre... For me the best thing would be a real spiritual successor to MoM. There are some games that are close to it (Age of Wonders series, FFH and its modmods, and now Warlock and Fallen Enchantress), but all of them are missing some important features of MoM. But still they can be good games.
Yeah. If the future of turn-based 4X games depends on success of W and FE, then the future of turn-based fantasy 4X games depends on it even more. If both games fail there will be no games within this precious sub-genre for years.
BTW, a real spiritual successor to MoM would make me very happy. EDIT: Frankly, I don't believe that any of those games will be one. It's too early. Maybe Fallen Enchantress 2 (War of Magic 2?) or Warlock 2 would meet the challenge.
BTW, a real spiritual successor to MoM would make me very happy. EDIT: Frankly, I don't believe that any of those games will be one. It's too early. Maybe Fallen Enchantress 2 (War of Magic 2?) or Warlock 2 would meet the challenge.
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Not going to limit it to turn-based because that's irrelevant and you can pause and give orders in the real-time ones.
Civilization 5
Galactic Civilizations 2 (expansions)
Sword of the Stars (expansions)
Sins of a Solar Empire
Distant Worlds
Civ 4 still has a huge and active mod community with some really great 4x mods being constantly updated and new ones on the horizon.
I don't agree. There's more 4x games coming out now than ever before. It's never been a super popular genre, pick any patch of 5 years and you'll have a hard time listing 3-5 that came out. We don't need bad games coming out in the genre potentially turning new players away. SotS2 has hurt the genre, and FE might as well.
Try the beta. It's a WoM patch, that's where it is right now, a patch. It is WoM with UI adjustments and slight mechanic changes. It's not a new game, not even close, I wouldn't even call it an expansion at this point. Randomized maps and some new spells aren't really "expansion quality" improvements. I can list the changes between WoM and FE right here, it's a short list.
New random map system.
Monster spawns tethered to a goody hut.
Random quest dialog rewritten.
Houses removed.
Random techs drastically cut and moved onto 3 small trees.
Some new spells.
That's it, that is FE right now. It is WoM with those "major" changes. There's a few more smaller ones, like boring traits replacing stat points and old stat effects, and some minor item changes.
Two things.
1. I was in the WoM beta, I know what changes they are capable of, and the AI never got any good in that game either.
2. FE has been labeled as "near complete" and they are only looking for bugs and balance issues at this point. They have explicitly said the game is not going to change much by release, just a few small changes here and there. This is not an early beta or alpha, it's a last stretch mass beta.
But yes, it's beta, and i haven't said otherwise. Maybe they will pull out a miracle, or listen to their testers.
I'm not a Warlock "fan." I don't know how I could be after a handful of screens and a couple short trailers (I'm not crazy enough to think I can judge a game off that much). We know almost nothing about the game other than that it looks eerily like Civ5 and appears to use resources stripped directly out of Majesty 2 (unit models and portraits). That said I think it would be difficult to create a game as bad as I think FE will probably end up as.
I have nothing against Stardock, I just feel like they've been wasting their time on a WoM patch when they could have been working on the GalCiv2 support they promised, or at least starting on GalCiv3. They are great at space 4x games, they should be working with their strengths. There's a figure of speech about polishing a certain substance that Stardock hasn't learned.
Pausable real-time is not the same as turn-based. Pausing at the right time requires some "arcade skills", and when many things happen at the same time it's not the same as when you control your units individually. Because of that, I avoid most RTS games.
Btw it's interesting that none of the games you mentioned is based on a fantasy setting.
As PawelS said, it's not irrelevant. Distant Worlds and the like is simply a different type of game. Still 4X, but different.
That's great. But modders can't jump over engine's limitations. I don't want to stuck with iterations of the same stuff for ever.
From my point of view the situation looks like this: there are dozens of ppl (that played FE beta) saying that FE beta is waaay beyond WoM, and there is you. And believe me, on Stardock forums there are very few "fanboys". Almost every single one of them was disappointed by WoM. And almost every single one of them say that FE is a huge step forward in almost every aspect. I'm basing on the second premise also: I've seen hours of gameplay videos of both games and I really see huge difference.
But I may be mistaken. And I'm too careful to pre-order FE (so no beta for me). If the game gets more than 80-85% on metacritic (I'm pretty sure it will be so) I will buy it. (Elemental: War of Magic got 53%, Civilization V got 90%, Distant Worlds got 78%.)
EDIT: Few hours ago Brad Wardell said: "The next public build will be where we begin the tactical AI implementation" (source). In about two weeks we will see how this new tactical AI works.
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Have you played Sins or Distant Worlds? There's no "arcade skills" involved. They aren't real-time to add "skill" and frantic microing like you'd find in Starcraft 2, they are real-time so the combat can look pretty without relying on annoying load screens. The gameplay is slow enough that you are not only never rushing to do things, but you are often speeding time up after issuing a few orders. It still feels turn based because you issue a few orders at normal/slow/paused speeds, then you crank up the game speed to 4x or 8x as your commands are carried out. I felt the same as you before I played Sins, RTS just don't have that same feel as TBS, but then I actually played Sins and it blew me away.
And yes that is interesting, but not really something I feel that detrimental yet since I can play FFH and a slew of mod-mods for it. I've also been kept busy by "near 4x" fantasy games like King Arthur and The Guild 2.
I don't think you've spent as much time in the FE forums as you've claimed. They are full of unhappy testers who are aware of how "complete" the beta is supposed to be and yet how lacking it is.
Case in point, there are countless threads about how bad the AI is. So Brad made a comment to attempt to calm things down for a while, even though it's contradictory as he's already talked about, how great he thinks the AI is off of the versions we have and how he himself has been playing each version and making AI adjustments off of them. How could he be playing 0.76 and making AI changes in it if the AI "isn't in yet?" We'll see.