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[Elemental]:WarofMagic:FallenEnchantress:LegendaryHeroes: Sorcerer King: Electric Boogaloo
Cog
What'd you expect?Registered User regular
What'd you expect?Registered User regular
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mny75V0Pu2kThe beta of Sorcerer King, the standalone expansion to Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes, the standalone expansion to Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, the standalone expansion of Elemental: War of Magic (I legitimately don't fucking know if I'm kidding or not. Really.) is on Steam!
Holy shit, really, are we doing this again?
Yeah, man, I know how it looks, okay? Yes, Stardock is fucking that chicken again.
Ok, but why? Why a whole new game?
Well, this time it looks like it's mainly about story and not about trying to salvage gameplay or mechanics.
What's the story?
I'm so glad you asked. You lost the last game. The Sorcerer King is an evil ruler who essentially won the last game. He's conquered the world and what remains of his enemies (you) are broken and scattered. The game begins as the Sorcerer King begins to cast the Spell of Making which will destroy all the magic shards in the world and essentially end life as we know it. You have to rebuild your empire, tame the world, and stop him before he destroys it.
That doesn't sound like a 4x
It's not, in a traditional sense. Stardock is calling it an Asymmetrical 4x. The game isn't built around the traditional concept of multiple balanced UI/Player factions vying to simply rule the world. Someone already rules the world. Far more than every other game so far in the franchise, this is looking to really blur the lines between 4x and RPG. The game has a goal and a definitive end point, an antagonist, and the opposing factions (You and the SK) play with vastly different mechanics. A "Game Master" AI controls game pacing and world events, and runs the SK's forces, to keep driving the action forward. There will be some minor factions that will have some questlines and can ally with either you or the SK, but the only factions with a hope of winning control of the world are the SK, by completing the Spell of Making, and you by defeating him. Events in the game build up a doomsday counter and if it fills, you lose.
What sets it apart from the other Elemental games?
Right from the beginning, you, as a sovereign, no longer have a physical presence in the game. You pick a class, some abilities, and a number of spellbooks (is this sounding familiar?).
Some things that are known at this point about classes are that they can interact in different ways with the doomsday counter. The Tyrant Sovereign, for example, sees the SK as more of a competitor who's getting in on his gig, rather than a world-ending threat. The tyrant and his armies get stronger as the doomsday counter grows, and have their own special win condition of taking over the Spell of Making and casting it for themselves. The Guardian heals "shadowlands", converting them back to normal land, and avoids the attention of the SK.
Crafting is apparently kind of a big deal now. You can craft a lot of stuff, and anyone can wear it, not just champions. You can craft equipment for rank and file troops. Crafting materials can be gotten everywhere, from quest rewards and loot from monsters, to spells that harvest materials from the land. This is one of the things that gives the game a big shove into RPG territory.
Anything else?
It's gotten a facelift on the graphics engine. It's looking pretty nice.
Have a beta gameplay trailer!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PxWARwGG0YCan I play it?
You can! It's in a semi-open beta right now. I say semi-open because (anyone who's been through this the first 3 times was ready for this) if you pre-order, you get into the beta automatically.
The game is priced at $39.99 on steam, but if you order through Stardock's webpage, you'll be given a Steam key for the game AND you can use the coupon code STARDOCK50 for half off through Nov 25th. That is the lengths I go to prove my love to you all.
Cog on
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There were two mini updates to the current beta in the last few days, it's up to .992 right now. 0.99 was a giant change from the .98 line, but I think the biggest change so far is Raise/Lower land moving to Earth 3... which is actually pretty big, because it's now, for the first time maybe since WoM, not accessable from the beginning of the game. It offsets the new mana cost of 5 (down from 50) pretty well though.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Seriously, I've been playing this for crazy long and I've seen maybe 10% of what the game has.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Played some .992 overnight as the Ironeers. Things went surprisingly smoothly by comparison with the .98 series, and I didn't randomly get wrecked and a half by monsters ten feet from my capital, so that's a distinct improvement. One of the dragon types appears to have turned into a suicide-bomber, taking damage from its own breath weapon, which might be intentional but was a real surprise when I had it surrounded by knights.
It probably helped that I got the swamp wildland while playing a side largely immune to poison, as well. Golems + shrink = dead Swamp Thing.
Yeah, some of the top-end magic is pretty darn impressive, and I hadn't had the patience to endure the rough ride on the way there until now, really. This time, though, my economy was rolling right along after prying a bunch of land away from Verga and building herbalists all over it, and although I had some "fun," with ogres invading my land, it was pretty manageable to roll towards victory. I'll try to put that game away later this week; looks like I'll finally finish the Dragon Statue quest, rather than attempt to blow Tarth off the map.
My only real complaint is that I've been leaning heavily on Bannon Heighsley, who is still my favorite guy to see on Turn 1, but I don't have any water shards to let him have a real-boy attack now that he's got Blizzard, so he's still running around with a bow hiding behind swarms of units.
Speaking of magic, I really need to break out of my standard warrior-centric sov setup again, and try a caster sov. It's been a couple betas since I've done that. I'm thinking air/water/fire. I always play earth/life. I will hate life without enchanted hammers, though.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Honestly, gold isn't usually an issue in most of the games I play.
Though, damn caster sovs have it rough. It's so much easier to play a melee focused sov in the early game. I really am finding myself looking wistfully at the leather armor I can't afford for once. I think it's good though, you shouldn't be decking yourself out in a full suit of ANYTHING in the first 20 or 30 turns.
It's a good time to be an old gamer.
My first real good computer game memory was going to my friend's house after school and him showing me MoM. I swear I sat down to just play a few turns, and next thing I knew it was 8:30 and my mom was calling his house looking for me and I got in sooo much shit. It's a shame that Stardock wasn't able to secure the MoM license, but I understand there's a big clusterfuck about who actually owns it and it wasn't worth mucking with.
There certainly is a hump to get over with caster sovs, and that hump appears to be level 4. Once you can choose Path of the Mage and get the 25% tactical spell cost reduction + 50% spell damage bonus (combined with the warlock trait of 50% and the spellstaff 25% I took during creation), and I finally secured a fire shard, I can really start putting a hurt on stuff. Flame dart was hitting for 3 points at level 1, 7 points at level two... and now twenty seven at level 5. I might eat mana, but I crap victory.
The Life 2 / Water 2 combo spell is just silly for that.
Combined with the right robe, and you're casting spells for almost nothing.
EDIT: Also, I fucking love that they upped the accessory slot limit to 4.
There's always that unit enchantment that lets you cast Fireball. Or the research that gives you Flame Wave...
Wonder if I'll get a steam key when it releases.
I believe that people who bought it directly from Stardock won't get a Steam key.
The Stardock updater seems pretty lightweight though, so it isn't too bad.
Yeah, that is the gist of it. You throw in some RPG elements for your hero unit development, and a lot of learned lessons from the first failed attempt, and things are turning out really positive.
You sadly do not get a steam key. There's a lot of legal bullshit involved, I guess, but if you bought straight from Stardock's teat, you are latched to it for the duration.
If it makes you feel better, I bought it less than a week before it was put up on Steam.
As you say, they have had more than two years to get rid of the flaws... they've always claimed they were "listening"... has anything changed? I'm not going to get my hopes up... but I'm getting it for free, so I will try it at least.
EDIT: I'm not getting a Steam key retroactively? Well, fuck them. Nothing has changed apparently.
EDIT again: I forgot that this lacks any kind of multi-player. So I guess it's not that important. (I got a flash of rage because of the way they put Demigod on Steam, with zero integration... just like those assholes who shits out all those Blood Bowl games, which could have been awesome, but because of their networking bullshit isn't.)
They really are listening and this is absolutely a great game.
Yes, shitloads. The most recent example I can think of is the problem of adequate, but not overwhelming city defenses. The community opinion has been that city defenses were too weak. Derek implemented a "fix" that in enemy territory, you would receive a -25% modifier to attack and defense. The community raised a big outcry to this fix, because it came with a host of other issues - the biggest of which was that this would impact you if you should happen to be fighting neutral monsters in someone else's territory.
Additionally, long ago, Derek had posted a criteria of his own devising for adding new features to the game, saying that they needed to meet at least some of the criteria of: Matching the games focus, solving multiple problems, "drool factor", ease of implementation, and if it provides gameplay feedback. The community rightly took Derek to task over the fact that the territory penalty "fix" met almost none of his own criteria, and Derek responded in the thread:
This is really just one example, and there have been a lot of recent changes, big to small, made where they have either gotten permissions from community modders to absorb ideas from popular mods, made balance changes to equipment or spells based on forum suggestions, or at the very least explained why they would not follow a popular feature request. The support forum is full of bug, UI, and gameplay issues and when they are fixed or otherwise addressed, Derek generall posts in the thread what the result was.
So, yeah, while I am sounding like a relentless Stardock shill here, I'm really not trying to be. You asked if they listen and things changed and the answer is definitively yes. The game has flaws, but very very few games don't. This game isn't WoM, it isn't even recognizably comparable aside from sharing the same game engine. It's not even terribly recognizable in its current (beta 5) incarnation compared to even something as recent as Beta 3.
Retroactive Steam keys are 100% out of Stardock's hands. Sure, it'd be great to have, but this isn't Stardock's doing.
They said there are reasons for why people aren't getting Steam keys. Do you really think they aren't handing them out due to incompetence or malice?
This should be the rallying cry of every spell caster in every game ever.
Cog brought it up on their forums and here and Brad himself responded directly to his concerns and recognizes how silly it is to just use a single super unit to beat the entire game without ever needing a city. He has some ideas to fix that so we'll have to wait and see if it does or not.
We made some significant changes to address this in the past few weeks.
1. Reduced the bonuses to hit points, accuracy, spell resistance and spell power when leveling up so a level 12 isnt orders of magnitude than a level 3 or 4. The hit points in particular were a huge deal, if you want high hit points on your hero you will need to go for path of the defender (and sacrifice some of the attack power of other paths).
2. Adjusted all the champion loot attack values. Soem of these were to high, finding swords and such that did more damage by themselves than entire armies. They were readjusted to fit in the same scale as the rest of the game.
3. And the biggest change (though ti sounds minor) is that goodie huts only give common items now. You wont get a decent item from a goodie hut, you have to kill a fairly tough monster for it. And you wont get a rare item unless you beat something at the death deamon or umberdroth power level. This was the biggest change to bring champions back into control. Previously you could have a decent midgame weapon and a few pieces or armor for them 80 turns in, when you were still working with spearmen and leather armor. Now they grow at a similar pace. (some of the easier early game quests gave to good of loot to, especially that ignys longbow).
I'd be inclined to argue that monster HP is now a little bit out of hand relative to unit durability, but the heroes really are in a more-reasonable place as of my last playthough. I spent most of the game leaning pretty heavily on horsemen and iron golems for damage rather than Markin or my other heroes. As the man himself is saying, they're pushing in a positive direction with the current balance changes.
On the other hand, I'm not Cog, who appears to have the game on lockdown, and might have a different theory.
I just patched everything up and was HORRIFIED to see they'd removed random maps. Then I saw they didn't. So then I was angry but I'm not sure at who.
Point two sounds pretty interesting. Point three seems like it only delays the journey to godlike status. Point one seems like it weakens both champion and conventional military units so that the same disparity is there in the end game.
The stat I'm most concerned with though is Defense. Is it still possible in the latest build to get a champion with a defense so high as to be basically invulnerable? That's the real deal-breaker in my mind. It doesn't matter if you do crap damage if it's effectively impossible for you to die in a fight.
There were some spells, like stoneskin or evade, that were way to good, making champions impossible to kill which have been addressed.
This is what the game looks like through the eyes of the editor, a tool we use to manage and model the games assets:
screencast.com/t/h31S3cHqD
Eh. For point 1, champs depend much, much more heavily on leveling than trainable units do.
I think most of what I'd care to address is probably contained in this post.
I agree that the changes Derek introduced recently have helped the issues significantly. Lower hitpoints, especially for non-defender path heroes are right on point. As of now, without soloing to some absurd level around say... 25+, breaking 100hps is quite difficult for any other path, and it feels right.
The counter to this is that hitpoint regen is still far too high. Once you reach level 8-10, healing after battles is not even an issue you have to consider anymore. 5-6 turns from near-death to full health, while outside a city is vastly too high, and trivializes the small hitpoint pool, as well as the healer trait (+1 healing/turn? YAWN.) Currently you regen 1 hitpoint per level, per turn. If a level 8-10 non-defender hero has ~45-55 hps, simply not dying from a combat means in 4 or 5 turns, you are good as new. Depending on your monster density that is all the time it takes to walk to the next encounter.
Additionally, a hard number for regen, even one that is a function of level, is actually punishing higher hitpoint heroes. Why should my frail spellcaster bounce back from a near-death experience in 4 turns while my robust defender may take 10 or 12? Hitpoint regen needs to be slowed down, and the defender and possible warrior paths could use some traits to improve it marginally. Keeping heroes from rebounding in a handful of turns would slow down their progression immensely. It is no challenge to push a hero past level 15 or into the 20s, and those sorts of regen rates are absurd.
The loot attack values are definitely better, there's no more pulling longswords from unguarded goodie huts. I think the only weapon left that seems out-of-whack to me is probably the stone mace. It's a 14 atk common weapon and while it has some fair penalties to init (-4 plus the fact that it weighs 20) those are overcome easily enough by the strength trait, and the huge infusion of early game atk bonus in that scale lets you 1 shot some otherwise dangerous enemies -- black widows & banished ogres come to mind.
Side note to this point, I think some of the early game items could use some weight tweaks. Rusty armor should probably be even a little heavier than it is. As it stands, I haven't generally had a problem with the weight. Mounted combat is a very early tech that gets you horses who have a huge weight capacity, things like the enchanted backpack are still common items, and the strength trait is available as a general-pool trait, even to mages & governors. If you bother to make a small investment in your encumberance limit, rusty armor is actually pretty goddamn good -- better than leather. It might also be cool to see some caster focused accessories that have weight as a tradeoff - maybe some items for lowering spell costs for tactical spells (vital in the early game) or increasing mana regen.
The only other immediate change I would make is to have a touch more armor on some early game monsters to make spears a more attractive option. As it is, the 66% defense reduction is useless against monsters that tend to carry 0-3 defense, and by the time you see better defended monsters, you've usually also got access to weapons with significantly higher damage output than spears do. Plus when you can start with a rusty short sword that has 8tk with a counterattack, and lets you use a shield, it vastly overshadows what a spear brings to the table. Shields are simply too good in the early game to pass up for a lower damage armor piercing weapon.
The final caveat to all of this is that playing a stacked melee sov really does put the game on easy mode. The difference between starting the game with 14 atk (16 with burning blade) as a maxed out melee or ~7-8 as a caster is monumental. Not only are you working with roughly half the atk, meaning you take a LOT more incoming damage at a time when your hp regen is just 1 or 2/turn, your major DPS output is magic, and mana is extremely scant in the early game. Also, the damage potential of the early magic schools is slanted in favor of fire. I can't imagine trying to get by in the early game as a water/life mage. I suppose in that instance, a city and some militia units would be required, slowing your early game progress immensely, while a melee sov is out soloing the world without founding a city -- which is still a totally legitimate strategy, even in 0.992. The difference is that now it’s just limited to a much smaller handful of sov builds.
TL;DR: Yes, progress. Lots of good progress. Some things still need tuning.
Yeah, agree 100% on this. Some monsters are pushed way too far in the direction of HP without armor, and a couple (some of the ogres come to mind) are a little too armor-heavy and lack HP. The monster defenses could really use a going-over.