Hello all, sorry for the late reply, I just wanted to check all the details before posting so I didn't give you the wrong information.
I agree with you on a lot that has been said in this thread. As much as I enjoyed Majesty 2 (I have played it close to 40 hrs according to Steam) there were two major things missing from my point of view:
- The ability to continue playing after missions are finished.
- The limited amount of replayability.
What I do not agree with is:
- That it was a buggy mess on release. During my 40 hours of gameplay I have experienced one crash, probably caused by my own clicking on several things at the same time. We also postponed the release by 6 months to be able to smooth out the gamebreaking bugs.
- That people just think the game is not fun to play. It is different from Majesty 1, but it is quite a good game, at least I think so.
The Majesty 2 project was a bit complicated from a contract standpoint. We contracted Russian InoCo to make the game (we had already seen, and enjoyed their remake of Fantasy General, named Fantasy Wars) and they used a third party engine (which we didn't know the capabilities and limitations of) for the game. The same game engine has been used to create games like Men of War. The ability to continue after missions was one of the things that came from the engine. We got the explanation this feature was not possible to create and that the whole engine would need to be redone to support this.
At least this is the information we got at the time.
The contract also gave other limitations on what we could do with the game and unfortunately we found out over a year into development.
The mission replayability is something we should have workec on from Paradox' end. As a small company, we are normally a bit understaffed and during the Majesty 2 development cycle it was a bit more than usual since a few people from the team were off work long-term due to different reasons. This ended up in a situation where I was the main Producer from Paradox during the course of the development cycle and this is was not a good solution. We have doubled the publishing team since then and are now ready to do a better job in Producing and providing the developers feedback on game design and gameplay related issues.
If we ever create a new sequel to the Majesty series, we will definitely address the issues above. We will also improve our communication.
Best,
Fred
I agree with you on a lot that has been said in this thread. As much as I enjoyed Majesty 2 (I have played it close to 40 hrs according to Steam) there were two major things missing from my point of view:
- The ability to continue playing after missions are finished.
- The limited amount of replayability.
What I do not agree with is:
- That it was a buggy mess on release. During my 40 hours of gameplay I have experienced one crash, probably caused by my own clicking on several things at the same time. We also postponed the release by 6 months to be able to smooth out the gamebreaking bugs.
- That people just think the game is not fun to play. It is different from Majesty 1, but it is quite a good game, at least I think so.
The Majesty 2 project was a bit complicated from a contract standpoint. We contracted Russian InoCo to make the game (we had already seen, and enjoyed their remake of Fantasy General, named Fantasy Wars) and they used a third party engine (which we didn't know the capabilities and limitations of) for the game. The same game engine has been used to create games like Men of War. The ability to continue after missions was one of the things that came from the engine. We got the explanation this feature was not possible to create and that the whole engine would need to be redone to support this.
At least this is the information we got at the time.
The contract also gave other limitations on what we could do with the game and unfortunately we found out over a year into development.
The mission replayability is something we should have workec on from Paradox' end. As a small company, we are normally a bit understaffed and during the Majesty 2 development cycle it was a bit more than usual since a few people from the team were off work long-term due to different reasons. This ended up in a situation where I was the main Producer from Paradox during the course of the development cycle and this is was not a good solution. We have doubled the publishing team since then and are now ready to do a better job in Producing and providing the developers feedback on game design and gameplay related issues.
If we ever create a new sequel to the Majesty series, we will definitely address the issues above. We will also improve our communication.
Best,
Fred