Things that made the original Majesty great

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Sergeant
Jul 9, 2007
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I don't have an awesome introduction on hand like Alfryd, so I will just get to the meat of the post. :p

Beyond the obvious... A sequel to Majesty should not just live up to the original, but should capitalize on what made Majesty great (as well as avoiding the little flaws that inevitably cropped up in the original game)... Now, in my opinion, Majesty should have a whole genre to itself - many more games should have been made with the same principles, units that you hardly control and are often stupid, etc, so that the concepts could have been more thoroughly explored - but unfortunately, the mainstream gaming industry is too stupid to latch onto such an idea.



1. Heroes. Need I say more?

Majesty managed to have 16 hero classes with distinct uses and distinct personality - personality ranging from the superficial (graphics and voice lines) to matching gameplay effects (behavior and combat skills). Sure, sometimes they're stupid, but sometimes their stupidity is one of the most strategic and/or entertaining things about the game. Anyway, how fun would it be if your heroes were all geniuses and made foolproof plans for victory without the Sovereign being involved?

I like the way you get to choose how to grow your heroes - you can just recruit them, let them do whatever they please, and hope they level up and become awesome, or you can specifically nurture them with carefully selected bounties sovereign spells. That's what defines a hero - the progression from the relatively weak but effective level 1 hero to the all-around awesomeness of high levels.

A few heroes don't manage it. I should want to ressurect any high-level hero, but Gnomes, Healers and Cultists somehow don't inspire me to do so. Plus, they are bad at slaying monsters, and being a real hero is also about slaying monsters. (The only other class I really don't like is the Solarus - it's totally lame, it has no coherent theme.)

I'd love to see more hero classes, but only if they all stay different enough from each other and they all can keep a coherent personality.



2. Monsters with personality. How boring would it be if all the monsters just headed for your kingdom and attacked the first thing in sight?

Ratmen who come out of the sewers, steal a fortune from your markets, and kill your poor Peasants and Tax Collectors. Trolls who appear out of thin air, regenerate, are so stupid that they randomly switch targets in battle, and love to pound on undefended Marketplaces and Trading Posts. Life-draining Vampires that choose a single living target and hunt it, paying no attention to other heroes approaching it to attack. Evil Oculi who wander harmlessly until a hero approaches, upon which they paralyze that hero and blast it with magic. Giant Spiders who avoid heroes until they can attack in groups. And even Minotaurs - there is definitely a place for the single-minded axe-wielding shock troops that just march towards your kingdom and attack the first enemy or enemy building they see - and are powerful enough to kill most level 1 heroes in one or two hits.

On the other hand, there are also boring monsters in Majesty - Zombies, Rock Golems, Hellbears, Ratman Champions, Yeti... Even Dragons are boring, despite being one of the few monsters powerful enough to be a worthy opponent for a kingdom once it really gets set up. I'm not sure what would make them better - maybe if they had a tendency to attack your guilds and try to hunt down your most powerful warriors?

The Northern Expansion tried to add more interesting monsters, but overall they didn't really work out - Ratmen Champions are a lot less nasty to your kingdom than ordinary Ratmen; Goblin Overlords don't do a lot to make a goblin rush any more interesting; Ratapults would be nice because they're much more effective against buildings, except that they're just not effective anyway; Ratman Shamans' spells are just weak unless the plague gets over your whole kingdom, which is definitely interesting but too annoying to be worth it; Ice Dragons were no real improvement on Dragons. I must admit that the Wendigo had personality, but they mostly showed up alongside other monsters with less.



3. Kingdom protection dynamics. Marketplaces are SUPPOSED to be vulnerable!

The funny thing about your kingdom is that for the most part, if there isn't a hero around, monsters can just walk up and attack any given building, and they can also chase and kill your peasants if that's what interests them. This is particularly noticeable with the kind of monsters (Trolls, Ratmen, Harpies) that like nothing better than to run up against your least well defended buildings and take a stab at them. And even more nefariously, you end up with sewers, and trolls randomly appearing in front of any building - the enemies don't just come from the outside. It helps increase the role of heroes in city defense, since heroes aren't, and aren't supposed to be, a linear defense that only works against outside attack.

If the kingdom was simple to defend, well, what would be the point?

The monsters only have a limited amount of time to kill the buildings, though, because the moment they attack, the Peasants will be alerted to the problem, and if the Peasants get there, the building is almost invariably saved. Heroes randomly show up, or depending on their class, intentionally hunt the monsters, and the longer the monsters spend, the more heroes they find arrayed against them. On the other hand, if your kingdom has few hunters (Warriors, Paladins) and the building is on the outskirts, heroes won't defend it (and there's a lot of strategy in placing buildings such that the places that need the most defense are also the ones that heroes are likely to move to on their own.) If worst comes to worst, there are various sovereign spells that help defend your kingdom, but this option costs lots of cash.

In Majesty, there's a nice balance between the various defenses - Peasants, randomly appearing heroes, sovereign spells, and guardhouses (which have a strategy all to their own.) It's a good system, but there's still lots of room for improvement - which is where the possibility of a sequel comes in. :) In particular, one thing I'd like to see added to the balance is reward flags - currently, if you put a 300 gold bounty on an attacking Troll, your rogues who were hanging around on the other side of the map will sally forth to fight it, while your Paladin who is buying herself a new suit of armor in the Blacksmith next door won't notice until it's already killed your Marketplace. Flags just don't attract heroes fast enough to be a worthwhile means to defend, and it would always be nice to have somewhat more specific flags, like a "Kill this thing FAST!" flag.



Well, that's about all I could think of for now - feel free to post and add what made the game great for you!
 
4. Rogues

These heros definitely deserve their own chapter. No matter if you curse at them for stealing from your marketplaces and running away simple rats or bless them for being easily lured with bounties and looting gravestones, you must love them.
 
Voicelines. A lot of them are a scream.

"BWAAAAAARHHHRGH! Hi!"
"Here, kitty kitty kitty..."
"Wild adventure builds character!"
"One day... this will all be mine."
"I wasn't trying to hurt you!"
"The Law of Dauros is above all others."
"I deem your mandate just."
"I'm meeeelting!"


The music was also fine stuff.

nd naturally, the fact that... imperfect as the AI may be... it was generally sensible enough that you had enough time on your hands to actually plan and execute a startegy without getting tied up in menial micro, was what most appealed to me. And , of course, the general sort of Tamagotchi effect that kept me playing until I had all my monks at level 10... 15... 20... maybe I can set some kind of record...
 
Nobody mentioned George yet so..
George Ledoux as Venn Fairweather.
I loved his voice.
I know it's a strange reason to like a game, but I once bought a game based solely on the voice talent.
The game was Tachyon: The Fringe and the voice talent was Bruce Campbell.
I would have never purchased the game had I not seen "Featuring the Voice of Bruce Campbell" on the back of the box. The fact that it turned out to be a nice game was simply a bonus.
 
Majesty is like one of those classic movies that is so great for quotes.

Every time I see someone running (I.e, running across a road to avoid cars) I can't help thinking to myself what the cultists say when they see a monster too tough for them..

'Run, run, run, run, run'

Their 'oooh, pretty flower' makes me chuckle as well.

The whole voice acting was so well done in Majesty. It gave the game a real charm.
 
Vortex_13 said:
It's always funny when like multiple wizards die at once and you get to hear that back to back.

I once had 5 wizards die within 15 seconds.

Not a nice experience, I tell you.
 
Recruit? Eh? I ressurect my wizards! :p
 
I'm not sure I really like the resurrect feature (I think that came in with the expansion?)

Don't get me wrong, I always used it if a character got up to a decent level.. but towards the end of a game when I had lots of money.. I would just resurrect if someone died..

'My highest level ranger just died' oh well, I'll just res him'

Kinda took something away from how I cared and watched over the guys in some strange way. It made the game feel more epic when you looked at the graveyard and saw all those venerable hero's that helped to build up the kingdom and gave their life.
 
Well, it's not that bad of a tradeoff when it's between making them not die and making them die fruitlessly (because they did something stupid when the Sovereign wasn't looking.) When you have enough money to ressurect every hero that dies, you also have enough money to constantly cast Healing on every hero that's close to death - the fact that you can't feasibly do that is just a problem with the user interface.

Maybe the Sovereign could use some sort of a hero-in-danger indicator. Maybe the heroes could yell some sort of a "Hey Sovereign, I'm in trouble here" line, depending on their class.

...or maybe heroes just shouldn't be as easy to kill. Like, when they get to 0 HP, they are incapacitated but not killed, and then the monsters, depending on their type, either capture the hero or continue to hack at them. It would be really cool to have a situation where you have to work to rescue a fallen hero.
 
Maybe the Sovereign could use some sort of a hero-in-danger indicator. Maybe the heroes could yell some sort of a "Hey Sovereign, I'm in trouble here" line, depending on their class.
Oh, Gods yes. I don't want to hear that 'a hero hash been killed' I want to hear 'majeshty- our hero ish in mortal peril!'

But that's for the other thread. :)
I'm not sure I really like the resurrect feature (I think that came in with the expansion?)
Nope, reanimate and ressurrection were available from the beginning.
Bear in mind that none of the single-player quests are really intended to give the player a thorough grilling (except, perhaps for spires of death and legendary heroes.) In multiplayer where you're running on the clock, the choice whether to replace or resurrect is a serious enough conundrum.
 
Ithacus said:
I completely agree with that statement. I would like to see some kind of consequence for death. Once your kingdom had become firmly established, all of your heroes were basically immortal.

<shrug> Once your kingdom was firmly established, you pretty much won the game anyway.

Unless you used one or more of the monster wave codes.

Tip for helping Level 1 Wizards survive: Invisibility. Available at Wizard Guild Level 1 and only costs 400, as opposed to Resurrecting (1500?) or recruiting a new one (500).
 
Spiderman said:
<shrug> Once your kingdom was firmly established, you pretty much won the game anyway.

Unless you used one or more of the monster wave codes.

Yes, but you could start res'ing higher level characters before the kingdom was firmly established.. and getting back a high level character for what.. 2-3000 gold is a lot more helpful than paying 3-600 gold for a level 1.

Maybe others played better than me but I would often res 10-20 characters during a freestyle quest. Without the sadness of having them die (and being unable to bring them back), I cared less about their activities which, for me, took something away from the game.

But hell, I still used it! (Couldn't resist) I know I could just have had a house rule not to.
 
Alfryd said:
Nope, reanimate and ressurrection were available from the beginning.
Bear in mind that none of the single-player quests are really intended to give the player a thorough grilling (except, perhaps for spires of death and legendary heroes.) In multiplayer where you're running on the clock, the choice whether to replace or resurrect is a serious enough conundrum.

Yes, that's true.. but the crematorium (or whatever it's called) was, I think, introduced in the expansion which even removed the time limit before the body disappeared and meant you didn't even have to locate their corpse.
 
Natural disasters were a hoot...A level 1 Wizard comes out of the guild and dies to a Meteor Storm...how ironic.

Mausoleum. Nice building, though high level heroes kinda got a bit too expensive.

*shrugs* I liked the resurrection system. If I had the money, I'd even resurrect a level 1 Gnome. I don't like my heroes dying. :p