Stardock Forums
Heya; been thinking about this one for a long time now and I'm really curious what everyone else thinks. A simple Yes/No is a good enouogh answer; but if you want to write a book or whatever feel free to do so.
It is trying to be, the basics are there, but there is no story. In FFH2, we had Armageddon, we had a pretty good understanding of the relationships between a lot of the nations, their motivations of the rulers, the world had landmarks and such. The world has no story in the game. The elements (not a pun) are there, and the book provided some of that. If I find some mystical library, how can I find it just about anywhere? Or Azors armor? I could really go to half of the level 3 caves and its in there, amazing. Not very unique or RPG like. The characters have no motivation, they are not dynamic, the world is flat and flavorless.
One thing that would make things come to life a little more is if things had names. I'm sure there's someone here that's played Dwarf Fortress - Notice how when the world is generated _everything_ has a name? To keep the clutter down it'd have to be a separate layer of text on the cloth map that we could turn off, but I'd love to zoom to the cloth map and find out that there are places like "Mountains of Blood" "Hills of Sorrow" and other things - Names for rivers and oceans, things that would allow the world to seem more real.
When we get notifications like "Our northern timber mill was destroyed!" it could be changed to "The Timber Mill in the Woods of Mourning has been destroyed!" Things that tell us where it is before we even click to go see it.
Also, I've noticed a severe lack of rivers - It would be amazing for strategic battles and for commerce to have rivers, and even better if we could build "river ports" that generate additional money and/or food. Imagine having a strategic battle where your forces are constricted to a single river ford, or a bridge if there's a road over the river.
And one last thing in my ramble - If anyone here has played Avernum or Exile or Geneforge, they can probably back me up - Line of site for tactical battles would make them much more interesting. Having that archer hiding behind a rock to avoid spells, making the decision to step out, shoot, step back instead of using the step out and step back movement points for healing or attacking in exchange for the cover, having ruins with windows for sniping points, making it so that area spells are more tactical than the every day "Blow up everything" spell, because if someone's hiding around a corner you could take the risk of wasting your attack points and making a pot shot by shooting an area affect spell next to a hiding spot - If the person's not there you just wasted points and if they are you just negated their cover.
Then you'd have a use for sight spells where you could reveal areas for single turns, and then have spells that allow ranged units to have cover-piercing attacks.
Right now everything in tactical battles is related to visual appeal and apart from that it's about as entertaining as rolling dice.
The answer to the OP's question is as simple as the answer to the question, is the campaign finished?
No, it's not, at least for some unknown share of us who've been following the game since before the public beta builds started. One of the great ambitions for the early project was to create a viable fusion of the TBS and RPG genres. To me, that would require a sandbox mode that essentially played like an RPG but was based on a strong random map generator and a large enough base of supporting content to ensure serious replay value--like hundreds of games worth of serious.
What your talking about is something i definitely had not considered and is different to the typical way RPG works! Most RPG games have a campaign and no sandbox at all!
Indeed. That's why I found the early dev talk about some sort of TBS-RPG fusion really fascinating.
I still think that the multiplayer side needs a Referee role so that someone can build and operate a map that other folks play on. The best thing about real RPGs is that the ref has the power to ignore rules/rolls and change plans to help the story the players are building be more fun/interesting. For an MP Elemental game, that could mean taking control of major and minor computer factions, invoking events (if the game ever gets them), and placing (and maybe operating) champions and creatures.
When Elemental was first in development, there was talk about allowing the player to add names to everything on the strategic map. Unfortunately, this was another really cool idea that never materialized in the final game.
As to the OP's question: no. Elemental, for me, is currently existing in some sort of shadow realm where it is not sufficiently 4X, nor sufficiently RPG. 
Not sure what you mean by "RPG world" but it definitely has RPG elements.
There is too a story but ahem... you need to pay for that and read it separately, not built in to the game. 
The answer is clearly NO.
But the flip side is that it never should have even bothered trying.
Let the modders do that stuff, it is something they truly excel at.
No, not realy. The heroes and sovereign act more like the heroes in Warcraft 3. They are generic (meaning: they are all the same) and the quest are all the same. When you have done one game, you know all the quests (unless you did not research 'adventure tech'). I think that the intro movie gives enough background for the game. But once you start the game, the background ends...
Heya everyone, glad to see the discussion taking shape.
Just to clarify, I'm not out to cause grief; I just want SD to realize that they should change the EWoM Home page ( https://www.elementalgame.com/ ) to properlly reflect the game. This would avoid any potentially hostile feelings from furture buyers if one of the strongest reasons for buying the game happened to be the heading... "A strategy game in an RPG world".
Currently it is not that sort of game, no matter how much I wish it was. A more acurate description would be "A strategy game in a Low Fantasy World". (Low Fantasy is a term used to describe a variety of works within differing sub-genres of Fantasy fiction. The word "low" is used to indicate the quantity of fantasy in a work and not the quality)
I also had high hopes that the fusion of TBS & RPG would have been much more successful; and I still have high hopes for the next 2 incarnations of the EWoM series. Can only hope that it will not be a feature of the EWoM series that will be abandoned. One of the reasons I think it has the potential to be included is from seeing 1st hand what some of the modders have been able to accomplish so far. There success shows that the potential is there for EWoM to have this RPG World.
Anyways, thanks for taking the time to post your opinions and comments.
EDIT: Sorry about the changing font sizes.. I copy pasted from the elemtalgame homepage and things got weird after that (super tiny)... decided to make it all larger so its readable.
i have a problem with this. yes i am pro 100% that modders can get as much tools as possible for them to create BUT i think that the core game needs to have a real good rpg world/4xtbs game in place as well. or else gonna have to call the game
Elemental : modders create your own worlds from our empty skeleton of a program
right now yes its a low fantasy world. but lets be honest here. its very little strategy. i dont see no archers in towers with advantages vs attackers. i dont see any real formation tactics. to be quite honest all the tactical battles are the same. move foward and kill. as long as your equipment is better u win the slug fest. im not a real fan either of the "you go i go" system since favors who gets the turn first. any case im at work so ill make this quick
but its not much of a fantasy game as yet and not a strategy game yet iether.
hmm...
The engine is supposed to allow the modders to do nearly whatever they wish, the concept is not that elemental not have a developed engine or modding tools, it's that elemental does not need to ship with this 'RPG world'.
Well it hasn't anyway, so really not an argument to be had, just a hope that the new content is actually helpful to the game mechanics and play, rather than fluffy bunny stories about Hidgardtiock and Damsaytrew or what ever other pointlessness constitutes the 'rpg world'.
I don't care if the quests and characters are generic fantasy, indeed that's more along the lines of what I wanted. Of course that was not Brads goal, but frankly, the Lore doesn't seem to be more than an afterthought in as much as it has any particular impact on the actual game play. Not a knock on the Lore itself, just an observation from what I have seen and read.
I don't think its a bad way to describe the game and I'm not fussing over words and phrases on the website. Not really a big deal either way.
I like this idea. What about allowing the player to name things. Why inherit names when we are exploring the world anew? Creating a template for names that overlays (and is toggled on and off) should not be a problem.
How about random names to start with and we can rename them as we go? I'm not creative enough to feel like naming every single object in every single game, but if I build my capital around the base of a mountain, I might rename it Mount Doom or something. 
Sorry to double post -- Maybe this naming thing should be put in a suggestion thread?
And anyone feel the same about line of sight in combat?
Naming features and areas in the game would be very cool.
I am a big fan of reading AARs and I think that would make them that much better. 
This is from a post about Beta 1Z and it mentions naming as being in game. I'm at work so I can't look to see if it's there or not in the editor, but could someone confirm if it's still there or not? If it is then could someone see if the names load up in the game as well?
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