Also, goddamn the difficulty ramps up, the minotaur level kicked my ass, I discovered the towers before I was ready due to a wandering hero and they got rushed.
Yeah I don't use rogues at all. I just build the Rogue Guild for extortion and poison
alset85 on
override said: I can't wait until Toady causes pressurized water to be able to actually damage things. I want to hit goblins with a shit cannon of such pressure that the meat is ripped from their bones
Rogues are nice, if you build their guild in the beginning and make sure they don't croak too often. Once they're at level 10+, they're pretty damn useful.
Megazver on
Chief Tyrol. Academician Megazver of the Jol-Nar Universities
Personally I love rogues. Without upgrades they suck, but with all their abilities (especially stun) they are incredibly deadly. Plus they're cheap as hell to resurrect, so I never get too upset if they die.
Also, goddamn the difficulty ramps up, the minotaur level kicked my ass, I discovered the towers before I was ready due to a wandering hero and they got rushed.
The minotaur level where you have to find the two towers? I actually had the opposite reaction. I basically turtled until i had a sizeable force, was rid of most the monster dens and simply went north. Build them with almost no opposition.
Rogues are insanely cost effective. They're cheap to build, cheap to upgrade, cheap to res, and they even work for cheap. (They'll go after the most pitiful reward flags no one else will touch.) They also have enough sense to take off right away when confronted with a stronger force.
Also, goddamn the difficulty ramps up, the minotaur level kicked my ass, I discovered the towers before I was ready due to a wandering hero and they got rushed.
The minotaur level where you have to find the two towers? I actually had the opposite reaction. I basically turtled until i had a sizeable force, was rid of most the monster dens and simply went north. Build them with almost no opposition.
This is actually what I was trying to do, one of my rangers wandered into range and started the quest.
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited September 2009
Going off of the demo so far, i'm going to have to agree with TekDragon. There was some "trite bullshit" in there, that compared to some of Northern Expansion's hardest missions.
Also, Majesty is in no way a "simulation". The original was billed as one for marketing purposes, but it's more of a backwards version of Dungeons and Dragons, where you're the DM, and set objectives for your heroes, rather then an actual simulation.
Multiplayer in the first Majesty was fun, but holy hell it was easy to break, too. Focusing on it seems like a bad idea.
Going off of the main forums, the developers are either sleazy, or somewhat incompetent, since when all the complaints concerning the weak AI came up, they claimed that the demo that was released wasn't the right version and that the right version was on Fileplanet.
When someone else claimed that it was the same version as the previously "released" demo, the CEO of Paradox came on and insisted that the guy was wrong repeatedly. So another person compared the MD-5 HASH of the files, and found that they were, in fact, the same. There wasn't another developer post in that topic after someone pointed that out last I had checked.
There's also the whole mis-leading features fiasco, with co-op and AI skirmishes against kingdoms (The website sort of danced around the issue, and claimed that co-op would be in at one point. At release, someone brought this up, and the executive producer logged on and said "Oh, well, you can do 2v1 player matches. That counts as coop! The parties are the AI!") supposedly having been marketed features at one point.
Still, i'll pick this up, and see if I re-evaluate my impressions. Hopefully i'll be surprised, since i'm setting my expectations low. At the very least i'll be helping to keep one of my favorite IP's alive.
Going off of the demo so far, i'm going to have to agree with TekDragon. There was some "trite bullshit" in there, that compared to some of Northern Expansion's hardest missions.
Can you cite some examples of any sort of bullshit in the demo? Considering there's all of the one tutorial mission, I really have no idea what you're talking about.
Unless you mean the unwinnable Survival map where the goal is just to see how long you can survive?
It's not unwinnable.
Megazver on
Chief Tyrol. Academician Megazver of the Jol-Nar Universities
Going off of the demo so far, i'm going to have to agree with TekDragon. There was some "trite bullshit" in there, that compared to some of Northern Expansion's hardest missions.
Can you cite some examples of any sort of bullshit in the demo? Considering there's all of the one tutorial mission, I really have no idea what you're talking about.
Unless you mean the unwinnable Survival map where the goal is just to see how long you can survive?
Releasing a demo with, according to the developers, sub-par and bugged AI, and adding in top to near top-tier enemies such as Bearmen and Ogres, which actually spawn in waves and bee-line for buildings, regardless of the lairs that are up, while locking the second tier hero classes which are supposed to be the ones that can deal with them, isn't trite bullshit to you?
It's like they looked at the hardest settings for Majesty 1's random scenario generator, then decided that "Monstrous Horde" wasn't hard enough, and that they had to limit your options at defense too. Not even Northern Expansion threw that level of bullshit at you outside of the hardest, initially locked, missions.
Going off of the demo so far, i'm going to have to agree with TekDragon. There was some "trite bullshit" in there, that compared to some of Northern Expansion's hardest missions.
Can you cite some examples of any sort of bullshit in the demo? Considering there's all of the one tutorial mission, I really have no idea what you're talking about.
Unless you mean the unwinnable Survival map where the goal is just to see how long you can survive?
Releasing a demo with, according to the developers, sub-par and bugged AI, and adding in top to near top-tier enemies such as Bearmen and Ogres, which actually spawn in waves and bee-line for buildings, regardless of the lairs that are up, while locking the second tier hero classes which are supposed to be the ones that can deal with them, isn't trite bullshit to you?
It's like they looked at the hardest settings for Majesty 1's random scenario generator, then decided that "Monstrous Horde" wasn't hard enough, and that they had to limit your options at defense too. Not even Northern Expansion threw that level of bullshit at you outside of the hardest, initially locked, missions.
Dude, that mission isn't really hard. Use towers, clean out the ogre lairs first, rush the trading posts.
Seriously.
Megazver on
Chief Tyrol. Academician Megazver of the Jol-Nar Universities
Going off of the demo so far, i'm going to have to agree with TekDragon. There was some "trite bullshit" in there, that compared to some of Northern Expansion's hardest missions.
Can you cite some examples of any sort of bullshit in the demo? Considering there's all of the one tutorial mission, I really have no idea what you're talking about.
Unless you mean the unwinnable Survival map where the goal is just to see how long you can survive?
Releasing a demo with, according to the developers, sub-par and bugged AI, and adding in top to near top-tier enemies such as Bearmen and Ogres, which actually spawn in waves and bee-line for buildings, regardless of the lairs that are up, while locking the second tier hero classes which are supposed to be the ones that can deal with them, isn't trite bullshit to you?
It's like they looked at the hardest settings for Majesty 1's random scenario generator, then decided that "Monstrous Horde" wasn't hard enough, and that they had to limit your options at defense too. Not even Northern Expansion threw that level of bullshit at you outside of the hardest, initially locked, missions.
Dude, that mission isn't really hard. Use towers, clean out the ogre lairs first, rush the trading posts.
Seriously.
It's not unbeatable, as others have posted. I'm just saying it had an unusual amount of bullshit in it compared to the original Majesty.
The tooltip's for tier 2 heroes implies that you're supposed to be able to use them in that mission, which would make it less of a "frantic rush to hit the lairs to keep you from losing by default" sort of thing and make it much more fair, since everything i've heard about them seems to imply they're the guys you want taking those sort of mobs on.
I know most people i've talked too who tried to deal with that mission the first time got completely blind-sided by the Bearmen and Ogres. Especially the Bearmen, in fact. One person I saw playing it actually yelled out "You've got to be shitting me!" when the first one showed up and started wrecking his town.
You shouldn't have to lose a mission just to find out how to beat it. That's bad gameplay design.
Wow. You people suck. Did you really have to hate TekDragon out of the thread while I was asleep?
I thought he or she was contributing an interesting perspective to the discussion, albeit with a bit of invective thrown in.
I feel like you have more control over heroes in the sequel than in the original (non-rogues are more responsive to bounties), but that it consequently takes more gold to motivate them to do anything. Heroes are quite single-minded in bounty hunting, which is a double-edged sword; I think that's one of the things that makes Wizards so suicidal in spite of game engine changes that otherwise make it easier for them to survive.
Edit: Never mind, TekDragon decided to come back and brought a heaping helping of condescension to boot. Carry on.
Going off of the demo so far, i'm going to have to agree with TekDragon. There was some "trite bullshit" in there, that compared to some of Northern Expansion's hardest missions.
Can you cite some examples of any sort of bullshit in the demo? Considering there's all of the one tutorial mission, I really have no idea what you're talking about.
Unless you mean the unwinnable Survival map where the goal is just to see how long you can survive?
Releasing a demo with, according to the developers, sub-par and bugged AI, and adding in top to near top-tier enemies such as Bearmen and Ogres, which actually spawn in waves and bee-line for buildings, regardless of the lairs that are up, while locking the second tier hero classes which are supposed to be the ones that can deal with them, isn't trite bullshit to you?
It's like they looked at the hardest settings for Majesty 1's random scenario generator, then decided that "Monstrous Horde" wasn't hard enough, and that they had to limit your options at defense too. Not even Northern Expansion threw that level of bullshit at you outside of the hardest, initially locked, missions.
Dude, that mission isn't really hard. Use towers, clean out the ogre lairs first, rush the trading posts.
Seriously.
It's not unbeatable, as others have posted. I'm just saying it had an unusual amount of bullshit in it compared to the original Majesty.
The tooltip's for tier 2 heroes implies that you're supposed to be able to use them in that mission, which would make it less of a "frantic rush to hit the lairs to keep you from losing by default" sort of thing and make it much more fair, since everything i've heard about them seems to imply they're the guys you want taking those sort of mobs on.
I know most people i've talked too who tried to deal with that mission the first time got completely blind-sided by the Bearmen and Ogres. Especially the Bearmen, in fact. One person I saw playing it actually yelled out "You've got to be shitting me!" when the first one showed up and started wrecking his town.
You shouldn't have to lose a mission just to find out how to beat it. That's bad gameplay design.
By "Tier 2 heroes" you mean templar, yes? You can already use nonhumans in the demo, I believe. From what I can tell, templar can't be upgraded until you are already at Tier 3 and have their temple; it's a way to get high-level templar immediately at the cost of more gold and one of your basic heroes. The fact that it's locked in the demo is annoying, but it doesn't make that big a difference in your strategy.
PaleCommander on
0
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
Going off of the demo so far, i'm going to have to agree with TekDragon. There was some "trite bullshit" in there, that compared to some of Northern Expansion's hardest missions.
Can you cite some examples of any sort of bullshit in the demo? Considering there's all of the one tutorial mission, I really have no idea what you're talking about.
Unless you mean the unwinnable Survival map where the goal is just to see how long you can survive?
Releasing a demo with, according to the developers, sub-par and bugged AI, and adding in top to near top-tier enemies such as Bearmen and Ogres, which actually spawn in waves and bee-line for buildings, regardless of the lairs that are up, while locking the second tier hero classes which are supposed to be the ones that can deal with them, isn't trite bullshit to you?
It's like they looked at the hardest settings for Majesty 1's random scenario generator, then decided that "Monstrous Horde" wasn't hard enough, and that they had to limit your options at defense too. Not even Northern Expansion threw that level of bullshit at you outside of the hardest, initially locked, missions.
Dude, that mission isn't really hard. Use towers, clean out the ogre lairs first, rush the trading posts.
Seriously.
It's not unbeatable, as others have posted. I'm just saying it had an unusual amount of bullshit in it compared to the original Majesty.
The tooltip's for tier 2 heroes implies that you're supposed to be able to use them in that mission, which would make it less of a "frantic rush to hit the lairs to keep you from losing by default" sort of thing and make it much more fair, since everything i've heard about them seems to imply they're the guys you want taking those sort of mobs on.
I know most people i've talked too who tried to deal with that mission the first time got completely blind-sided by the Bearmen and Ogres. Especially the Bearmen, in fact. One person I saw playing it actually yelled out "You've got to be shitting me!" when the first one showed up and started wrecking his town.
You shouldn't have to lose a mission just to find out how to beat it. That's bad gameplay design.
By "Tier 2 heroes" you mean templar, yes? You can already use nonhumans in the demo, I believe. From what I can tell, templar can't be upgraded until you are already at Tier 3 and have their temple; it's a way to get high-level templar immediately at the cost of more gold and one of your basic heroes. The fact that it's locked in the demo is annoying, but it doesn't make that big a difference in your strategy.
I was more talking about the upgraded hero classes you can select for tier 1 heroes, like the Blademaster, or whatever it's called, which upgrades from the warrior.
Most of the other buildings/units that aren't available say "Not available in this mission", meaning they specifically, aren't available for that mission. Some tier 2 class upgrades say "Not available in the demo" instead.
Given when temple units come into play, i'd say they're more tier three, or four, even, if you count the racial units as their own tier given their strength, and the cost of getting a temple going.
I was more talking about the upgraded hero classes you can select for tier 1 heroes, like the warrior. Most of the other buildings/units that aren't available say "Not available in this mission", meaning they specifically, aren't available for that mission. Some tier 2 class upgrades say "Not available in the demo" instead.
Those are the same as the ones you build at temples, I believe. The cleric lists Priestess of Krypta and Priestess of Agrela as her upgrade options, no?
Most of those wouldn't have been available because you didn't have the right temple, even without demo silliness. Not to say there wasn't demo silliness.
PaleCommander on
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
I was more talking about the upgraded hero classes you can select for tier 1 heroes, like the warrior. Most of the other buildings/units that aren't available say "Not available in this mission", meaning they specifically, aren't available for that mission. Some tier 2 class upgrades say "Not available in the demo" instead.
Those are the same as the ones you build at temples, I believe. The cleric lists Priestess of Krypta and Priestess of Agrela as her upgrade options, no?
Most of those wouldn't have been available because you didn't have the right temple, even without demo silliness. Not to say there wasn't demo silliness.
If you click on heroes, you'll actually be able to upgrade them to certain classes that, mostly, don't appear to be temple related.
For example, the Warrior can upgrade into a Paladin (Traditionally, linked to building a Temple to Dauros.), or a Blademaster (Which is probably the temple-less default you can upgrade them too.), while the Ranger can upgrade into a Beastmaster.
These classes were listed as "not being available in the demo", rather then "not being available in the mission".
The cleric gets upgrades too, but I believe they're all temple related, since it sort of fits that unit's theme.
I was more talking about the upgraded hero classes you can select for tier 1 heroes, like the warrior. Most of the other buildings/units that aren't available say "Not available in this mission", meaning they specifically, aren't available for that mission. Some tier 2 class upgrades say "Not available in the demo" instead.
Those are the same as the ones you build at temples, I believe. The cleric lists Priestess of Krypta and Priestess of Agrela as her upgrade options, no?
Most of those wouldn't have been available because you didn't have the right temple, even without demo silliness. Not to say there wasn't demo silliness.
If you click on heroes, you'll actually be able to upgrade them to certain classes that, mostly, don't appear to be temple related.
For example, the Warrior can upgrade into a Paladin (Traditionally, linked to building a Temple to Dauros.), or a Blademaster (Which is probably the temple-less default you can upgrade them too.), while the Ranger can upgrade into a Beastmaster.
These classes were listed as "not being available in the demo", rather then "not being available in the mission".
The cleric gets upgrades too, but I believe they're all temple related, since it sort of fits that unit's theme.
Blademasters are linked to a temple of Krolm (and are amusing Conan-lookalikes); Beastmasters are Fervus. You can't build those temples in the demo, which I'll admit would have been cool.
Figured I'd go ahead and give the game another try on the dragon level. Despite having a dozen level 20 heroes, I still lost.
Why? Well, the game developers decided that even if you kill monster lairs, monsters keep coming. I wiped out every lair on the map besides the dragon and I was still facing 20+ wyrms, minotaurs, rats, rat men, and more every 60 seconds. Despite having layered towers, they still couldn't keep up with it. I figured the only way to beat the game was to kill the dragon since the developers thought "Hey! Endless waves of monsters combined with a poor building placement mechanic is FUN!".
So I sent my dudes to kill the lair. No problem. Except now the Dragon is focusing on my town, not just occasionally showing up and killing my tower. No problem, I figured. I've got a dozen 20+ heroes, I'll just kill it. Ordered a 10k bounty on the dragon and watched as my guys wittled him down.
Only problem? Remember the retarded gameplay mechanic I mentioned above where waves of monsters come from the edge of the map DESPITE KILLING ALL THE LAIRS? Well pretty soon I had 30-40 monsters PLUS the dragon and my heroes started getting the scared effect. So now no one can fight the dragon and the 40 monsters and dragon start dismantling everything.
I'm fully aware I'll get a "You suck, game's not for you" response to this. That's fine, I expect it. The reality is that I've been gaming for decades. I know how to play games like this. I played Populous and Populous 3D. I play REAL simulations like Supreme Commander, the Tropico series, and more. I even play games like Heart of Iron 3 and the X series that make a game like this look like tic tac toe on a comparison of complexity.
This game is hard, but it's not fun. I enjoy hard. This type of hard is the type that stems from poor game mechanics and poor design. It's a type of hard that can't be beat by strategy or by playing well. It's a type of hard that has to be beat by following a 1,2,3 order of doing things and combining it with a boat-load of luck that the game doesn't screw you over anyway.
TekDragon, just stop before Tube hits you with something.
Stop trying to meta-mod. He doesn't like the game, he's given good reasons why. Threads don't have to be 1-sided lovefests for a game.
Stop trying to meta-meta-mod me.
While I agree with some of his statements, he's basically been repeating himself for the last 4 pages.
And saying shit like
I play REAL simulations like Supreme Commander, the Tropico series, and more. I even play games like Heart of Iron 3 and the X series that make a game like this look like tic tac toe on a comparison of complexity.
screams of elitest douchebaggery, sorta like your post.
Figured I'd go ahead and give the game another try on the dragon level. Despite having a dozen level 20 heroes, I still lost.
Why? Well, the game developers decided that even if you kill monster lairs, monsters keep coming. I wiped out every lair on the map besides the dragon and I was still facing 20+ wyrms, minotaurs, rats, rat men, and more every 60 seconds. Despite having layered towers, they still couldn't keep up with it. I figured the only way to beat the game was to kill the dragon since the developers thought "Hey! Endless waves of monsters combined with a poor building placement mechanic is FUN!".
So I sent my dudes to kill the lair. No problem. Except now the Dragon is focusing on my town, not just occasionally showing up and killing my tower. No problem, I figured. I've got a dozen 20+ heroes, I'll just kill it. Ordered a 10k bounty on the dragon and watched as my guys wittled him down.
Only problem? Remember the retarded gameplay mechanic I mentioned above where waves of monsters come from the edge of the map DESPITE KILLING ALL THE LAIRS? Well pretty soon I had 30-40 monsters PLUS the dragon and my heroes started getting the scared effect. So now no one can fight the dragon and the 40 monsters and dragon start dismantling everything.
I'm fully aware I'll get a "You suck, game's not for you" response to this. That's fine, I expect it. The reality is that I've been gaming for decades. I know how to play games like this. I played Populous and Populous 3D. I play REAL simulations like Supreme Commander, the Tropico series, and more. I even play games like Heart of Iron 3 and the X series that make a game like this look like tic tac toe on a comparison of complexity.
This game is hard, but it's not fun. I enjoy hard. This type of hard is the type that stems from poor game mechanics and poor design. It's a type of hard that can't be beat by strategy or by playing well. It's a type of hard that has to be beat by following a 1,2,3 order of doing things and combining it with a boat-load of luck that the game doesn't screw you over anyway.
I realize you don't like the game, and you've stated your case multiple times already, but please - Stop. We get the hint.
Lunysgwen on
0
Handsome CostanzaAsk me about 8bitdoRIP Iwata-sanRegistered Userregular
edited September 2009
Just bought this and played around with it for a little bit. It's pretty fun so far. I read the thread beforehand and kind of got the idea of what the game was trying to do so I handled the fact that you just sort of watch your guys do stuff easier than some other people in the thread.. It plays a lot like Evil Genius, with more focus on the units obviously. I have a feeling I will be sinking many hours into this.
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited September 2009
Having spent about half an hour with the game, I can say that the full game is massively better then the demo and that i'd recommend it.
The AI seems to have been fixed from the demo. Guards don't ignore mobs that run right by them anymore. Heroes actually cooperate out of groups, and they don't ignore enemies that spawn while attacking lairs. It feels like Majesty 1, AI-wise. Ogres are still bullshit building killers, but with the AI "upgrades" are easy to distract. Gameplay, over-all, is very fun, provided you slow the game down to .2 speed at the start and set up an outer defensive perimeter of towers.
Towns are, generally, much more alive then they were in the original, once you get a sizable one set up. Planning your town also makes a big difference, as you'll want guards to patrol past graveyards and the like, to keep your peasantry from getting slaughtered by the hordes of zombies and skeletons that they produce.
That being said, there's some stuff I don't like still.
There's a pretty big lack of content on the single-player side of things. The game's pretty obviously geared for multi-player at the moment. There's about six single missions, and at least three of them are demo-esque last stand types. The rest are campaign missions.
Some of these single missions are balls to the walls hard/near impossible. One of them has you taking on an enemy "kingdom" (really, it's just a bunch of ranger camps set up across the map.). Within three minutes of starting the game, I had 13 level 2-6 rangers pounding on my tower, marketplace, and warriors guild. I was, obviously, obliterated. That seems a bit extreme, difficulty wise, but maybe I just had a bad start.
Amongst the descriptions of each single mission/scenario, I don't see an option to just play a standard game of Majesty, ala the old scenario creator "kill all lairs!" sort of missions, either. So each one is "specialized" (IE, a demo-esque last stand, or a versus match against hordes of rangers, etc, etc.). The closest one i've found is a relatively small mission where you have to hunt down and kill an ogre, vampire, and another type of monster which is extremely entertaining, so far.
Hopefully they'll do the DLC plan they were thinking about, or at least release a map editor. Because I can't see this holding my attention in the long-term like the original did.
Having spent about half an hour with the game, I can say that the full game is massively better then the demo and that i'd recommend it.
The AI seems to have been fixed from the demo. Guards don't ignore mobs that run right by them anymore. Heroes actually cooperate out of groups, and they don't ignore enemies that spawn while attacking lairs. It feels like Majesty 1, AI-wise. Ogres are still bullshit building killers, but with the AI "upgrades" are easy to distract. Gameplay, over-all, is very fun, provided you slow the game down to .2 speed at the start and set up an outer defensive perimeter of towers.
That being said, there's some stuff I don't like still.
There's a pretty big lack of content on the single-player side of things. The game's pretty obviously geared for multi-player at the moment. There's about six single missions, and at least three of them are demo-esque last stand types. The rest are campaign missions.
Amongst the descriptions of each single mission/scenario, I don't see an option to just play a standard game of Majesty, ala the old scenario creator, either. So each one is "specialized" (IE, a demo-esque last stand, or a versus match against hordes of rangers, etc, etc.). The closest one i've found is a relatively small mission where you have to hunt down and kill an ogre, vampire, and another type of monster.
Hopefully they'll do the DLC plan they were thinking about, or at least release a map editor. Because I can't see this holding my attention in the long-term like the original did.
Run the game with -editor.
Megazver on
Chief Tyrol. Academician Megazver of the Jol-Nar Universities
0
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
Having spent about half an hour with the game, I can say that the full game is massively better then the demo and that i'd recommend it.
The AI seems to have been fixed from the demo. Guards don't ignore mobs that run right by them anymore. Heroes actually cooperate out of groups, and they don't ignore enemies that spawn while attacking lairs. It feels like Majesty 1, AI-wise. Ogres are still bullshit building killers, but with the AI "upgrades" are easy to distract. Gameplay, over-all, is very fun, provided you slow the game down to .2 speed at the start and set up an outer defensive perimeter of towers.
That being said, there's some stuff I don't like still.
There's a pretty big lack of content on the single-player side of things. The game's pretty obviously geared for multi-player at the moment. There's about six single missions, and at least three of them are demo-esque last stand types. The rest are campaign missions.
Amongst the descriptions of each single mission/scenario, I don't see an option to just play a standard game of Majesty, ala the old scenario creator, either. So each one is "specialized" (IE, a demo-esque last stand, or a versus match against hordes of rangers, etc, etc.). The closest one i've found is a relatively small mission where you have to hunt down and kill an ogre, vampire, and another type of monster.
Hopefully they'll do the DLC plan they were thinking about, or at least release a map editor. Because I can't see this holding my attention in the long-term like the original did.
Run the game with -editor.
I'm guessing that that starts up a map editor? Because if so, kickass. I always wanted to design my own Majesty maps.
Also, lay off of TekDragon, he actually has some good points. Some of these single missions are either going to require a step by step strategy to do effectively, or you're going to have to cheese them by knowing what to hit/build at the start of a match after losing a bunch of times. That ranger mission was absolute bullshit.
Edit: Ok, scratch my previous comment. All of the single missions, at least, are going to require specialized strategies. The game inexplicably decided to go from throwing level 5 undead and wolves at me, to sending dozens of level 15 veteran skeletons and veteran skeleton archers with re-usable, high damage skill attacks, at me, while throwing a vampire boss with a life leech skill at me at the same time.
I had no way of knowing it was coming too, and the vampire seems to emit some sort of bullshit aura of fear, since everyone runs as soon as he gets close, so I can't stop the assault. Couple that with the fact that apparently my heroes are too busy cowering in their guilds to come out and fight or deal with the bounties I put on the monsters, and, more importantly, the lairs spawning them constantly, and it looks like i'm screwed.
Gotta hand it to my guards, though. They're pretty damned awesome. I'm spawning so many guards and royal guards, that they're single-handedly stone-walling the assault at my palace, keeping it from reaching the southern end of my city. Neither side is making progress, though, because my guards, and their insanely powerful skeleton soldiers respawn at about the same pace. Also, the vampire is just milling the streets, murdering my peasants, and the scaring the shit out of the occasional hero it stumbles across.
Edit: And a dragon just spawned in and started burninating my southern buildings. Then I went to revive a ranger that died, and the game crashed when I opened up the ressurection menu. Lovely.
Also, lay off of TekDragon, he actually has some good points.
Absolutely. The original Majesty had those issues, and this is very much the same. My issue with Tek was being called "honest-to-god third graders, neck deep in fangirldom, who are about as far from logical discourse..." because I still think the game is fun. :P
Edit: Speaking of the dragon mission, mine was an absolute slaughter. I lost everyone except two high level clerics the first time around, leaving him at 5000 HP. Luckily, his lair had been killed so he couldn't regen, and for whatever reason he didn't attack the town, so I built up and tried again. Good stuff.
I don't have a huge problem with the whole "you have to lose at the level before you can beat the level thing", since it just seems like a big puzzle to me that I have to solve by trial and error. Once I figured out in the demo that I had to go after the ogre lairs first, and that I had to be more proactive with flags than I did in the original game, and how useful dwarven towers were at attracting the big monsters, everything fell into place.
That said, I have run into a few bugs that were kind of annoying. Like on one campaign mission, I had the resurrect window open when I won, and it was stuck on the screen and wouldn't close when I started the next mission. And the lack of co-op is a definite let-down. I'm hoping that they'll fix the bugs and, if they get enough demand for it, add some stuff in with the expansion. The game's definitely far from perfect, but I'm enjoying it so far.
Poking around in the game's files has unearthed some stats and such that aren't available in game (unit ability cooldowns, spell effects, etc.), including stats for the Ice Mage and Death Knight. Has anyone heard of an attempt to document some of this stuff?
Can anyone who's finished the campaign tell me whether you encounter Death Knights or Ice Mages? I'm trying to figure out whether these are left-out templars or something else.
PaleCommander on
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited September 2009
Over the course of a few hours, i've swung back to the "it sucks" spectrum. I stumbled across some nasty errors/shitty AI tendencies that they just covered up with some clever programming instead of fixing. The AI really isn't that bright, and is nowhere on par with the original Majesty's AI.
Keep in mind that I haven't had a chance to peruse the resource files yet, so this is mostly just an explanation based on me constantly observing the heroes for the past few hours. Starting tomorrow i'm going to start ripping my way through the game's guts, and see if the resource files tell you how the game really works behind the scenes. If I can, i'll also look at making a quick mini-mod that fixes the radius issue with guilds.
(Spoilered because there's a crap-ton of text here that tries to explain how the AI functions in this game.)
They covered up the whole usual "mindless drone" thing that occurs in RTS's pretty well, but there's some glaring flaws there that give it away, along with the fact that it's pretty obvious that they never programmed heroes to do "checks" to see if they should go hunt lairs and monsters on their own like in the original.
That's also why sewers and your city are camped so heavily at the moment.
Currently, every hero is basically a very advanced guard with an expanded patrol radius, in that they patrol around their home when "looking for adventure" and do tasks on their own in that radius, unless something draws them away from that radius. Any time that heroes leave that radius, they're being called to specifically respond to an event in another area. The only "event" I know of that will, technically speaking, provoke a hero to go out on their own is if it's a ranger and they have the "exploring" status listed.
Also, that's why heroes sometimes ignore other heroes getting slaughtered when outside the town and they're going for a bounty. It's not that they're going after a bounty, it's that they're not programmed to respond to that sort of thing, since the radius for that crap is all the way back in the town, if it even has a say in that sort of check.
In the original Majesty, that radius, if it even existed as a function, was the entire map. Which was why you'd have heroes actively keeping the monster population down in the original, and from reaching your city in the mid to late game, since the map would be explored, giving the heroes access to the ability to independently target them.
In order to make it more like the original so that they'd intercept nasties without your aid, heroes would have to have that radius expanded to the full size of the map, along with having the time before they have to "return home to rest" increased. It's also why heroes sometimes inexplicably "search for adventure" in completely safe, monster-free areas of your city before going home to rest, and never leave the city without an extremely high bounty on a target. Their guild (Or home, as it's referred too.) is placed in an area of the city outside where you want the action to be.
The current method also leads to some occasional annoying errors in the AI, where a warrior will engage one target in a group, kill it, then get a "town" AI status like "buying new gear!" and start walking back to town all while getting hit by the other monsters, canceling it a few moments later, engaging the next monster in the group and repeating the process all over again.
You can tell that this was at least partially intentional, if not to get by some of the issues of designing a more complex AI, since some of the quests rely on the AI being dumber then Majesty 1's to keep you from advancing before you're ready.
There's also the issue of heroes fleeing. The current way it works tends to not accomodate certain circumstances, like a level one warrior trying to duke it out with a dragon, and only running with 10 HP left, or (Mission spoilers)
The mission with the five/six Dark Wizard Towers surrounding the wizard's castle. Heroes will gleefully attack any target you put a bounty on, while ignoring the rest of the towers plugging away at their health and party.
Those things hit heroes at about the same rate an ogre does a level 1 warrior. Only, they don't do knockbacks on each hit, and have a low recharge on their rate of fire, meaning that anything short of a party going in there is going to get slaughtered (Along with parties, until you take out about three.).
Putting a bounty on one means that you'll likely lose your heroes by the dozens if you don't luck out and get a dwarf getting their first, along with a healer, to tank the attacks for a short period of time.
The "supporting heroes" hero event and hidden AI status for it seems to have been removed as well, in an effort to force you to party. In the original this was how heroes naturally partied. Some were more geared toward's it, like wizards (Which is why they die so often early on, currently. Typically Wizards would get alot of their initial levels before they turned into death machines by either camping a spawn in your city, or by supporting a tank.).
Also, looking at the map editor, and some of the ingame spawn features, I suspect that their "we can't do random map generation on this engine" claim is bullshit too, given how Majesty did it, and the assets and features that are already ingame.
All it would take is the ability to randomly place lairs at coordinates on a map from a list that the player selects (IE, the lair selection in the original.).
Rather then generate maps randomly, they could simply do what Majesty 1 did, and give the user pre-made maps. That's exactly how Majesty 1's "random" scenario creator worked. It'd take a basic map, do some quick cosmetic terrain adjustments, then place lairs at random X and Y coordinates. If you just made pre-made maps, you could skip any terrain randomization too.
I suspect that if they're actually serious about not being capable of doing this, that their main complaint relies on being able to tell if an area if inaccessible to heroes or not. However, some clever map design, or a check to see if the area is accessible prior to loading (forcing re-generation of assets while loading the map.) would probably get around this.
They certainly wouldn't be breaking any new ground by implementing a check like that, too. Tons of decade old games did the same thing when using randomly generated maps. Heck, I even think that Dwarf Fortress uses a really complicated version of that check to plot rivers.
Also, multi-player is fun, but impossible to play. I joined over twenty games, I only got to actually play five due to one player lagging, or various server issues. Of those that worked, I only managed to play through one completely thanks to the host not losing the connection to the servers at some point.
Also, I crash. Alot. Just clicking on stuff seems to have a fair chance to make it crash. I haven't crashed so much since I installed S.T.A.L.K.E.R and tried to play it without patching it.
And a TL;DR for those that don't want to read through all that:
They handicapped the AI in certain ways, making it much less independent then the original, in order to artificially ramp up the difficulty, and make their job easier when designing quests.
Edit: What I don't get is why they chose to go for the reduced "radius" system that they're using, when the game clearly could have supported, and indeed, probably would have exceeded the original if they had used the old AI system for hunting. The game includes a new sort of flag, the "fear" flag, which tells heroes to stay away from areas it's placed at and would complement the old method of AI heroes hunting perfectly.
If they were worried about players accessing content early, gimping them in terms of winning, then it makes no sense to go with the current system, since the current system promotes replaying levels over again to discover their gimmicks to win. Indeed, optimized fear flag placement pretty much requires you to restart, so it's not like players wouldn't have learned to place a fear flag at the northern edge of the map at the start of a mission, or something like that.
If it's for MP balance, then holy hell, that makes no sense too. Four-way multiplayer games devolve into orgies of violence that noone can control, currently. Either a player puts down a 2K bounty on a target, causing those heroes to rape another player's kingdom without any way to defend against it in time, or both players get armies of high level heroes up, and the game devolves into five minutes of combat where things are too muddled to see what's going on or influence the battle. Either way, allowing heroes to hunt would have helped thin the ranks of each army out, since they'd be much more exposed wandering the wilderness, then they would camping a cities sewers. The end-game for skirmishes would be much more balanced as a result.
The only reason I can come up with, is that they either wanted to be "different" from the old game, or that they were just lazy or didn't have time to implement a proper system for heroes hunting outside of town on their own.
TekDragon, just stop before Tube hits you with something.
Stop trying to meta-mod. He doesn't like the game, he's given good reasons why. Threads don't have to be 1-sided lovefests for a game.
Stop trying to meta-meta-mod me.
While I agree with some of his statements, he's basically been repeating himself for the last 4 pages.
And saying shit like
I play REAL simulations like Supreme Commander, the Tropico series, and more. I even play games like Heart of Iron 3 and the X series that make a game like this look like tic tac toe on a comparison of complexity.
screams of elitest douchebaggery, sorta like your post.
I hope you realize that the reason I posted about REAL simulations was because someone tried to pull the "If you don't like a SIMULATION like Majesty 2, go back and play Warcraft 3" card on me. When someone pulls the "this game is too complex for you" card, I pull the "bitch, I play games that would have you whimpering in the corner" card.
Fats, I think it may have to do with timing. If you kill the dragon lair when he's inside your town - you're stuck with him. If you kill it when he's flying around - he's stuck there. Since you have no real control over anything the game winds up being "Start the game in a terrible spot, spend 30-45 minutes getting your shit ready to take on the dragon, then flip a coin. Heads the dragon winds up in a manageable spot, tails you start the game over".
Honestly the dragon issue wasn't a big deal. What bothered me was the trite gameplay design decision to make the level "difficult" by sending non-stop waves of monsters at you. Killing the lairs means nothing. Putting up layered towers outside the non-killable towers means nothing. In the end they're going to overwhelm you, even with a bunch of level 20+ charachters, and your only hope is to finish the mission before then which, again, requires a flip of a coin.
TekDragon on
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
Huh. Archonex, I've been playing this game quite a bit, and I can't say I've come to the same conclusions as you.
That's cool, I understand that people have different tastes. It's just, that in a game where the focus is on the AI, I expect the AI to pull some weight on its own, and not be as blatantly stupid in certain situations.
Either way, i'm going to look at the feasibility of changing the system into something I like a bit more/that's more like the original's AI. I'll probably post the mod on the official forums as well, if it's doable, since there's quite a few people on there bitching about the AI differences between the two games.
Posts
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHavingFunGuys
Also, goddamn the difficulty ramps up, the minotaur level kicked my ass, I discovered the towers before I was ready due to a wandering hero and they got rushed.
I am a freaking nerd.
Steam ID
The minotaur level where you have to find the two towers? I actually had the opposite reaction. I basically turtled until i had a sizeable force, was rid of most the monster dens and simply went north. Build them with almost no opposition.
This is actually what I was trying to do, one of my rangers wandered into range and started the quest.
I am a freaking nerd.
Also, Majesty is in no way a "simulation". The original was billed as one for marketing purposes, but it's more of a backwards version of Dungeons and Dragons, where you're the DM, and set objectives for your heroes, rather then an actual simulation.
Multiplayer in the first Majesty was fun, but holy hell it was easy to break, too. Focusing on it seems like a bad idea.
Going off of the main forums, the developers are either sleazy, or somewhat incompetent, since when all the complaints concerning the weak AI came up, they claimed that the demo that was released wasn't the right version and that the right version was on Fileplanet.
When someone else claimed that it was the same version as the previously "released" demo, the CEO of Paradox came on and insisted that the guy was wrong repeatedly. So another person compared the MD-5 HASH of the files, and found that they were, in fact, the same. There wasn't another developer post in that topic after someone pointed that out last I had checked.
There's also the whole mis-leading features fiasco, with co-op and AI skirmishes against kingdoms (The website sort of danced around the issue, and claimed that co-op would be in at one point. At release, someone brought this up, and the executive producer logged on and said "Oh, well, you can do 2v1 player matches. That counts as coop! The parties are the AI!") supposedly having been marketed features at one point.
Still, i'll pick this up, and see if I re-evaluate my impressions. Hopefully i'll be surprised, since i'm setting my expectations low. At the very least i'll be helping to keep one of my favorite IP's alive.
It's not unwinnable.
Don't try to salvage your ignorance.
And I'm really liking the full game. That minotaur mission was easy to me, thankfully none of my rangers managed to trigger the rape.
Releasing a demo with, according to the developers, sub-par and bugged AI, and adding in top to near top-tier enemies such as Bearmen and Ogres, which actually spawn in waves and bee-line for buildings, regardless of the lairs that are up, while locking the second tier hero classes which are supposed to be the ones that can deal with them, isn't trite bullshit to you?
It's like they looked at the hardest settings for Majesty 1's random scenario generator, then decided that "Monstrous Horde" wasn't hard enough, and that they had to limit your options at defense too. Not even Northern Expansion threw that level of bullshit at you outside of the hardest, initially locked, missions.
Dude, that mission isn't really hard. Use towers, clean out the ogre lairs first, rush the trading posts.
Seriously.
God damnit, I need to buy this yesterday!
PSN: Kylogue
It's not unbeatable, as others have posted. I'm just saying it had an unusual amount of bullshit in it compared to the original Majesty.
The tooltip's for tier 2 heroes implies that you're supposed to be able to use them in that mission, which would make it less of a "frantic rush to hit the lairs to keep you from losing by default" sort of thing and make it much more fair, since everything i've heard about them seems to imply they're the guys you want taking those sort of mobs on.
I know most people i've talked too who tried to deal with that mission the first time got completely blind-sided by the Bearmen and Ogres. Especially the Bearmen, in fact. One person I saw playing it actually yelled out "You've got to be shitting me!" when the first one showed up and started wrecking his town.
You shouldn't have to lose a mission just to find out how to beat it. That's bad gameplay design.
I thought he or she was contributing an interesting perspective to the discussion, albeit with a bit of invective thrown in.
I feel like you have more control over heroes in the sequel than in the original (non-rogues are more responsive to bounties), but that it consequently takes more gold to motivate them to do anything. Heroes are quite single-minded in bounty hunting, which is a double-edged sword; I think that's one of the things that makes Wizards so suicidal in spite of game engine changes that otherwise make it easier for them to survive.
Edit: Never mind, TekDragon decided to come back and brought a heaping helping of condescension to boot. Carry on.
By "Tier 2 heroes" you mean templar, yes? You can already use nonhumans in the demo, I believe. From what I can tell, templar can't be upgraded until you are already at Tier 3 and have their temple; it's a way to get high-level templar immediately at the cost of more gold and one of your basic heroes. The fact that it's locked in the demo is annoying, but it doesn't make that big a difference in your strategy.
I was more talking about the upgraded hero classes you can select for tier 1 heroes, like the Blademaster, or whatever it's called, which upgrades from the warrior.
Most of the other buildings/units that aren't available say "Not available in this mission", meaning they specifically, aren't available for that mission. Some tier 2 class upgrades say "Not available in the demo" instead.
Given when temple units come into play, i'd say they're more tier three, or four, even, if you count the racial units as their own tier given their strength, and the cost of getting a temple going.
Those are the same as the ones you build at temples, I believe. The cleric lists Priestess of Krypta and Priestess of Agrela as her upgrade options, no?
Most of those wouldn't have been available because you didn't have the right temple, even without demo silliness. Not to say there wasn't demo silliness.
If you click on heroes, you'll actually be able to upgrade them to certain classes that, mostly, don't appear to be temple related.
For example, the Warrior can upgrade into a Paladin (Traditionally, linked to building a Temple to Dauros.), or a Blademaster (Which is probably the temple-less default you can upgrade them too.), while the Ranger can upgrade into a Beastmaster.
These classes were listed as "not being available in the demo", rather then "not being available in the mission".
The cleric gets upgrades too, but I believe they're all temple related, since it sort of fits that unit's theme.
Blademasters are linked to a temple of Krolm (and are amusing Conan-lookalikes); Beastmasters are Fervus. You can't build those temples in the demo, which I'll admit would have been cool.
So I sent my dudes to kill the lair. No problem. Except now the Dragon is focusing on my town, not just occasionally showing up and killing my tower. No problem, I figured. I've got a dozen 20+ heroes, I'll just kill it. Ordered a 10k bounty on the dragon and watched as my guys wittled him down.
Only problem? Remember the retarded gameplay mechanic I mentioned above where waves of monsters come from the edge of the map DESPITE KILLING ALL THE LAIRS? Well pretty soon I had 30-40 monsters PLUS the dragon and my heroes started getting the scared effect. So now no one can fight the dragon and the 40 monsters and dragon start dismantling everything.
I'm fully aware I'll get a "You suck, game's not for you" response to this. That's fine, I expect it. The reality is that I've been gaming for decades. I know how to play games like this. I played Populous and Populous 3D. I play REAL simulations like Supreme Commander, the Tropico series, and more. I even play games like Heart of Iron 3 and the X series that make a game like this look like tic tac toe on a comparison of complexity.
This game is hard, but it's not fun. I enjoy hard. This type of hard is the type that stems from poor game mechanics and poor design. It's a type of hard that can't be beat by strategy or by playing well. It's a type of hard that has to be beat by following a 1,2,3 order of doing things and combining it with a boat-load of luck that the game doesn't screw you over anyway.
How exactly are you supposed to do that
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Stop trying to meta-mod. He doesn't like the game, he's given good reasons why. Threads don't have to be 1-sided lovefests for a game.
Stop trying to meta-meta-mod me.
While I agree with some of his statements, he's basically been repeating himself for the last 4 pages.
And saying shit like screams of elitest douchebaggery, sorta like your post.
I realize you don't like the game, and you've stated your case multiple times already, but please - Stop. We get the hint.
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
The AI seems to have been fixed from the demo. Guards don't ignore mobs that run right by them anymore. Heroes actually cooperate out of groups, and they don't ignore enemies that spawn while attacking lairs. It feels like Majesty 1, AI-wise. Ogres are still bullshit building killers, but with the AI "upgrades" are easy to distract. Gameplay, over-all, is very fun, provided you slow the game down to .2 speed at the start and set up an outer defensive perimeter of towers.
Towns are, generally, much more alive then they were in the original, once you get a sizable one set up. Planning your town also makes a big difference, as you'll want guards to patrol past graveyards and the like, to keep your peasantry from getting slaughtered by the hordes of zombies and skeletons that they produce.
That being said, there's some stuff I don't like still.
There's a pretty big lack of content on the single-player side of things. The game's pretty obviously geared for multi-player at the moment. There's about six single missions, and at least three of them are demo-esque last stand types. The rest are campaign missions.
Some of these single missions are balls to the walls hard/near impossible. One of them has you taking on an enemy "kingdom" (really, it's just a bunch of ranger camps set up across the map.). Within three minutes of starting the game, I had 13 level 2-6 rangers pounding on my tower, marketplace, and warriors guild. I was, obviously, obliterated. That seems a bit extreme, difficulty wise, but maybe I just had a bad start.
Amongst the descriptions of each single mission/scenario, I don't see an option to just play a standard game of Majesty, ala the old scenario creator "kill all lairs!" sort of missions, either. So each one is "specialized" (IE, a demo-esque last stand, or a versus match against hordes of rangers, etc, etc.). The closest one i've found is a relatively small mission where you have to hunt down and kill an ogre, vampire, and another type of monster which is extremely entertaining, so far.
Hopefully they'll do the DLC plan they were thinking about, or at least release a map editor. Because I can't see this holding my attention in the long-term like the original did.
Run the game with -editor.
I'm guessing that that starts up a map editor? Because if so, kickass. I always wanted to design my own Majesty maps.
Also, lay off of TekDragon, he actually has some good points. Some of these single missions are either going to require a step by step strategy to do effectively, or you're going to have to cheese them by knowing what to hit/build at the start of a match after losing a bunch of times. That ranger mission was absolute bullshit.
Edit: Ok, scratch my previous comment. All of the single missions, at least, are going to require specialized strategies. The game inexplicably decided to go from throwing level 5 undead and wolves at me, to sending dozens of level 15 veteran skeletons and veteran skeleton archers with re-usable, high damage skill attacks, at me, while throwing a vampire boss with a life leech skill at me at the same time.
I had no way of knowing it was coming too, and the vampire seems to emit some sort of bullshit aura of fear, since everyone runs as soon as he gets close, so I can't stop the assault. Couple that with the fact that apparently my heroes are too busy cowering in their guilds to come out and fight or deal with the bounties I put on the monsters, and, more importantly, the lairs spawning them constantly, and it looks like i'm screwed.
Gotta hand it to my guards, though. They're pretty damned awesome. I'm spawning so many guards and royal guards, that they're single-handedly stone-walling the assault at my palace, keeping it from reaching the southern end of my city. Neither side is making progress, though, because my guards, and their insanely powerful skeleton soldiers respawn at about the same pace. Also, the vampire is just milling the streets, murdering my peasants, and the scaring the shit out of the occasional hero it stumbles across.
Edit: And a dragon just spawned in and started burninating my southern buildings. Then I went to revive a ranger that died, and the game crashed when I opened up the ressurection menu. Lovely.
Absolutely. The original Majesty had those issues, and this is very much the same. My issue with Tek was being called "honest-to-god third graders, neck deep in fangirldom, who are about as far from logical discourse..." because I still think the game is fun. :P
Edit: Speaking of the dragon mission, mine was an absolute slaughter. I lost everyone except two high level clerics the first time around, leaving him at 5000 HP. Luckily, his lair had been killed so he couldn't regen, and for whatever reason he didn't attack the town, so I built up and tried again. Good stuff.
That said, I have run into a few bugs that were kind of annoying. Like on one campaign mission, I had the resurrect window open when I won, and it was stuck on the screen and wouldn't close when I started the next mission. And the lack of co-op is a definite let-down. I'm hoping that they'll fix the bugs and, if they get enough demand for it, add some stuff in with the expansion. The game's definitely far from perfect, but I'm enjoying it so far.
Keep in mind that I haven't had a chance to peruse the resource files yet, so this is mostly just an explanation based on me constantly observing the heroes for the past few hours. Starting tomorrow i'm going to start ripping my way through the game's guts, and see if the resource files tell you how the game really works behind the scenes. If I can, i'll also look at making a quick mini-mod that fixes the radius issue with guilds.
(Spoilered because there's a crap-ton of text here that tries to explain how the AI functions in this game.)
That's also why sewers and your city are camped so heavily at the moment.
Currently, every hero is basically a very advanced guard with an expanded patrol radius, in that they patrol around their home when "looking for adventure" and do tasks on their own in that radius, unless something draws them away from that radius. Any time that heroes leave that radius, they're being called to specifically respond to an event in another area. The only "event" I know of that will, technically speaking, provoke a hero to go out on their own is if it's a ranger and they have the "exploring" status listed.
Also, that's why heroes sometimes ignore other heroes getting slaughtered when outside the town and they're going for a bounty. It's not that they're going after a bounty, it's that they're not programmed to respond to that sort of thing, since the radius for that crap is all the way back in the town, if it even has a say in that sort of check.
In the original Majesty, that radius, if it even existed as a function, was the entire map. Which was why you'd have heroes actively keeping the monster population down in the original, and from reaching your city in the mid to late game, since the map would be explored, giving the heroes access to the ability to independently target them.
In order to make it more like the original so that they'd intercept nasties without your aid, heroes would have to have that radius expanded to the full size of the map, along with having the time before they have to "return home to rest" increased. It's also why heroes sometimes inexplicably "search for adventure" in completely safe, monster-free areas of your city before going home to rest, and never leave the city without an extremely high bounty on a target. Their guild (Or home, as it's referred too.) is placed in an area of the city outside where you want the action to be.
The current method also leads to some occasional annoying errors in the AI, where a warrior will engage one target in a group, kill it, then get a "town" AI status like "buying new gear!" and start walking back to town all while getting hit by the other monsters, canceling it a few moments later, engaging the next monster in the group and repeating the process all over again.
You can tell that this was at least partially intentional, if not to get by some of the issues of designing a more complex AI, since some of the quests rely on the AI being dumber then Majesty 1's to keep you from advancing before you're ready.
There's also the issue of heroes fleeing. The current way it works tends to not accomodate certain circumstances, like a level one warrior trying to duke it out with a dragon, and only running with 10 HP left, or (Mission spoilers)
Those things hit heroes at about the same rate an ogre does a level 1 warrior. Only, they don't do knockbacks on each hit, and have a low recharge on their rate of fire, meaning that anything short of a party going in there is going to get slaughtered (Along with parties, until you take out about three.).
Putting a bounty on one means that you'll likely lose your heroes by the dozens if you don't luck out and get a dwarf getting their first, along with a healer, to tank the attacks for a short period of time.
The "supporting heroes" hero event and hidden AI status for it seems to have been removed as well, in an effort to force you to party. In the original this was how heroes naturally partied. Some were more geared toward's it, like wizards (Which is why they die so often early on, currently. Typically Wizards would get alot of their initial levels before they turned into death machines by either camping a spawn in your city, or by supporting a tank.).
Also, looking at the map editor, and some of the ingame spawn features, I suspect that their "we can't do random map generation on this engine" claim is bullshit too, given how Majesty did it, and the assets and features that are already ingame.
All it would take is the ability to randomly place lairs at coordinates on a map from a list that the player selects (IE, the lair selection in the original.).
Rather then generate maps randomly, they could simply do what Majesty 1 did, and give the user pre-made maps. That's exactly how Majesty 1's "random" scenario creator worked. It'd take a basic map, do some quick cosmetic terrain adjustments, then place lairs at random X and Y coordinates. If you just made pre-made maps, you could skip any terrain randomization too.
I suspect that if they're actually serious about not being capable of doing this, that their main complaint relies on being able to tell if an area if inaccessible to heroes or not. However, some clever map design, or a check to see if the area is accessible prior to loading (forcing re-generation of assets while loading the map.) would probably get around this.
They certainly wouldn't be breaking any new ground by implementing a check like that, too. Tons of decade old games did the same thing when using randomly generated maps. Heck, I even think that Dwarf Fortress uses a really complicated version of that check to plot rivers.
Also, multi-player is fun, but impossible to play. I joined over twenty games, I only got to actually play five due to one player lagging, or various server issues. Of those that worked, I only managed to play through one completely thanks to the host not losing the connection to the servers at some point.
Also, I crash. Alot. Just clicking on stuff seems to have a fair chance to make it crash. I haven't crashed so much since I installed S.T.A.L.K.E.R and tried to play it without patching it.
And a TL;DR for those that don't want to read through all that:
They handicapped the AI in certain ways, making it much less independent then the original, in order to artificially ramp up the difficulty, and make their job easier when designing quests.
Edit: What I don't get is why they chose to go for the reduced "radius" system that they're using, when the game clearly could have supported, and indeed, probably would have exceeded the original if they had used the old AI system for hunting. The game includes a new sort of flag, the "fear" flag, which tells heroes to stay away from areas it's placed at and would complement the old method of AI heroes hunting perfectly.
If they were worried about players accessing content early, gimping them in terms of winning, then it makes no sense to go with the current system, since the current system promotes replaying levels over again to discover their gimmicks to win. Indeed, optimized fear flag placement pretty much requires you to restart, so it's not like players wouldn't have learned to place a fear flag at the northern edge of the map at the start of a mission, or something like that.
If it's for MP balance, then holy hell, that makes no sense too. Four-way multiplayer games devolve into orgies of violence that noone can control, currently. Either a player puts down a 2K bounty on a target, causing those heroes to rape another player's kingdom without any way to defend against it in time, or both players get armies of high level heroes up, and the game devolves into five minutes of combat where things are too muddled to see what's going on or influence the battle. Either way, allowing heroes to hunt would have helped thin the ranks of each army out, since they'd be much more exposed wandering the wilderness, then they would camping a cities sewers. The end-game for skirmishes would be much more balanced as a result.
The only reason I can come up with, is that they either wanted to be "different" from the old game, or that they were just lazy or didn't have time to implement a proper system for heroes hunting outside of town on their own.
I hope you realize that the reason I posted about REAL simulations was because someone tried to pull the "If you don't like a SIMULATION like Majesty 2, go back and play Warcraft 3" card on me. When someone pulls the "this game is too complex for you" card, I pull the "bitch, I play games that would have you whimpering in the corner" card.
Fats, I think it may have to do with timing. If you kill the dragon lair when he's inside your town - you're stuck with him. If you kill it when he's flying around - he's stuck there. Since you have no real control over anything the game winds up being "Start the game in a terrible spot, spend 30-45 minutes getting your shit ready to take on the dragon, then flip a coin. Heads the dragon winds up in a manageable spot, tails you start the game over".
Honestly the dragon issue wasn't a big deal. What bothered me was the trite gameplay design decision to make the level "difficult" by sending non-stop waves of monsters at you. Killing the lairs means nothing. Putting up layered towers outside the non-killable towers means nothing. In the end they're going to overwhelm you, even with a bunch of level 20+ charachters, and your only hope is to finish the mission before then which, again, requires a flip of a coin.
That's cool, I understand that people have different tastes. It's just, that in a game where the focus is on the AI, I expect the AI to pull some weight on its own, and not be as blatantly stupid in certain situations.
Either way, i'm going to look at the feasibility of changing the system into something I like a bit more/that's more like the original's AI. I'll probably post the mod on the official forums as well, if it's doable, since there's quite a few people on there bitching about the AI differences between the two games.