I've been on a bit of a Majesty kick lately, and I'm getting frustrated again with how there's no game that has the good features of Majesty 2 without the bad ones. So I've been thinking a bit about how I would go about designing a Majesty 3, and am arrogant enough to believe that people might care what I think.
First and foremost, I think Paradox's problem making Majesty 2 was that they mistook Majesty for an RTS, when it's really a city-builder. Most of the fun of Majesty comes from the fact that you're building up an intricate society and watching your heroes go about their own business. Majesty 2 did make a few strong contributions to this - the varied terrain, and the idea of trade post locations. But unfortunately, the heroes wound up a lot less autonomous than they should have been.
To that end, if I were designing Majesty 3, I'd start with Majesty 1 as my base, and make the following changes:
First and foremost, I think Paradox's problem making Majesty 2 was that they mistook Majesty for an RTS, when it's really a city-builder. Most of the fun of Majesty comes from the fact that you're building up an intricate society and watching your heroes go about their own business. Majesty 2 did make a few strong contributions to this - the varied terrain, and the idea of trade post locations. But unfortunately, the heroes wound up a lot less autonomous than they should have been.
To that end, if I were designing Majesty 3, I'd start with Majesty 1 as my base, and make the following changes:
- Bring in the following mechanics straight from Majesty 2: varied terrain; Trading Post locations; mana and mana potions; fear and protect flags; Peasants being based out of Houses rather than just the Palace; one Marketplace limit.
- Continue to allow Trading Posts to research the ability to sell healing potions. Let them research the ability to sell mana potions as well. Finally, allow the Trading Post to spawn a henchman called a Sheriff, who acts as a sort of remote Tax Collector - the Sheriff gathers money from the surrounding buildings and takes it to the Trading Post, which then adds that money to the value of the next caravan it sends. This means that you can use each Trading Post as the nexus of a small village, where heroes can rest and resupply without having to go all the way back to town.
- Make henchmen more autonomous, especially Peasants. Peasants should be seen doing things even when not actively engaged in repairs or construction. For example, they could build small farms next to their houses and tend them, generating some gold. The point is to make it feel like your kingdom is not populated exclusively by its heroes.
- The first big change to hero AI: make it possible for heroes to divide a task (especially a response to a reward flag) into individual subtasks. For example, a hero interested in pursuing an Attack Flag might break that quest up into three steps: Prepare for the journey (by rallying friends to join a party, buying potions, etc.); Travel to the target (engaging any monsters that threaten them along the way); Attack the target (pausing to defend themselves, but not losing sight of the main goal).
- The second big change to hero AI: Give heroes some form of relationship modifier with each other, which can change depending on interactions. Heroes who are friendly to each other will more readily form parties together and will come to each others' aid, while heroes who dislike each other will avoid each other and may attack each other. Inter-racial and inter-religious rivalries are both modeled using this system: you may hire both Elves and Dwarves, but they will begin as enemies, and unless something is done to prevent it, will attack each other on sight. A kingdom with both Elves and Dwarves might wind up disintegrating into inter-racial gang fights.
- Apprenticeship for heroes. Your first guild comes with a free Level 5 or so hero of the appropriate class. When training a new hero, an existing one will grab a random peasant and take them back to the guild to be trained. Paladins and Warriors of Discord form a second order to this system for Warriors. Demihumans, Adepts, and Solarii are the only friendly units that are trained conventionally.
- The ability to give orders to "the Royal Army", as a sort of sop to people who want a more RTS experience. This would cause some Guards to form up into a regiment and then go attack or protect the thing you told them to attack or protect. They'd probably get slaughtered without hero support, of course, but it would at least feel like you're doing something. Perhaps Warriors could also be inclined to support the Royal Army whenever they see them, given their knightly aesthetic.
- The ability to give specific quests to specific heroes or groups of heroes. Not in an RTS "handing out orders" sense, but more in the "You are an RPG quest-giver" vein that is critical to Majesty. For example, perhaps you could put out summons to your Palace, and then assemble heroes in your Palace into a specific adventuring party, and offer them a high reward to go out and destroy a specific target.
- Build on the idea of apprenticeship by changing over to a race/class system - Peasants and Houses have racial affiliations, and theoretically any race can become any class. Villages would tend to be made up of one race or another, so you might have an Elven village and then a separate Gnomish village.
- Mounts! Add a "Stables" building where heroes can buy horses. Warriors past a certain level could fight from horseback, while other heroes would simply use them to get around faster, dismounting for actual combat. Perhaps it might be possible to train certain monsters as mounts.
- More artifacts scattered around the map by default. Artifacts found by sufficiently loyal heroes would be brought back to the Palace, where they could then be used as a currency for giving specific quests to specific heroes.
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