A Positive Post of Praise

from Elemental Forums

Since I've spent the last 50+ posts (no, seriously: https://forums.elementalgame.com/posts/605627) doing nothing but reporting bugs or critiquing the game or the engine, I figured I'd throw out some stuff I do genuinely like about FE.

To be clear, I had zero intention of picking up FE after the Elemental mess, but Brad's insistence that they're going to do a real beta this time around, giving it the time that it needs, and giving the game free to people pre-ordered counts for something, so here I am, reporting away, as I was around Elemental's launch.

Their hiring of Derek and Jon (and a real writer) also had a lot to do with my renewed interest.

So, stuff that's cool:

Whoever did all the tooltips for the UI did a great job. Some are missing, and more are needed, but in general, everything I wanted to know I was quickly able to intuit from the tooltips, and they provide a clear and accurate mechanical picture of how the game is working under the hood. Good stuff. More please!

The new Wildlands. _Very_ cool. I love these. All of them are neat, themed wilderness areas with 'bosses' and unique rewards, plus unique biomes to explore. Great stuff. More please!

The new spells. There are lots of balance issues, but in general, almost every spell is unique in some way, and there are some cool, fun and powerful spells to play with.

The equipment system. The differentiation between strength % modifiers, armor piercing, handedness, and initiative bonuses or penalties for basic weapons is clean, simple, and elegant. Nicely done. I'd like to see more traits like Backswing and Maul on magic items, they're fun to play with. Definitely want to see more magic-affecting items, beyond simple spellpower staves.

The overall stats/unit balance. There's definitely lots of balancing work to be done here, but the interplay between heroes, monsters, and multi-figure units has lots of interesting design space to explore.

The hero and city trait leveling systems. Both cool. Cities need this feature expanded greatly, and heroes have some dud and some overpowered traits, but that's all expected. The core of the system is fun, and seeing a useful uncommon/rare trait or structure popup has shades of diablo loot joy. Hope to see this developed further.

The research trees. Research speed and a few other issues need some tinkering, but right now it feels like you have to make a real choice about which tree you're going to focus on - all civs need some of the bottom tier techs, but past those, you have to commit to one tree or another, and that's a good thing.

The writing. I'm still no fan of the setting, but in general, the flavor text and quest writing is much, much better than Elemental. Also there seem to be a lot more interesting creatures out in the wildlands, which is cool. More Shrills and Umberdroths, less spiders and bears please!

The quest system. It still needs a lot of fleshing out, but I'm seeing the roots of a system that can provide branching quests with different challenges and rewards, good stuff.

Some nice new graphics. The elemental lords and the tactical battles on their wildlands backgrounds actually look quite good - I mention this because I found almost nothing in Elemental to be visually appealing and these are (as an aside, I really think a major problem with the graphics in WoM and FE is their size. A lot of them look ok or fine up close, but if you zoom out even a little, all detail is lost, and you can't play the game comfortably zoomed all the way in. The big elemental lords, drakes, and dragons all look good because they scale well. I'm not sure if this can be tinkered with across the board, but its something to consider)

Tactical combat is greatly improved. There's still a lot of work to be done here, but again, the core is solid. More hero abilities! Tactical combat spells are nicely done and fairly broad, Zone of Control is cleanly implemented, monsters have lots of abilities, etc. Add more interesting battlefield terrain and mix up monster stack/city garrison compositions a bit and it'll be a lot more interesting.

Anyhow, back to bug reporting and griping about the UI :rofl:

2,880 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

A lot of great stuff was added. Agreed on the quests and spells. I can never have enough of those two, but I'm really happy with the creativity of some additions and the flavor text is really good. I think the research trees could stand to be rejiggered a bit (IMO it takes a bit long to get mounted troops, especially on wargs), but the core structure is pleasing to me.

 

Tactical combat is enjoyable to me now, whereas WoM's was a chore. I give the credit to the increase in traits and unit/champ abilities that make the fights more engaging.

 

My favorite addition is probably the Wildlands. I've only played enough to really delve into one, but I'm just really happy with the concept and implementation so far.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I totally forgot to mention the tac combat, added! It needs more work than the other areas I like, but its wayyyyyyyyy more interesting than WoM was. It starts out bland due to the spiders and bears problem, but once you're fighting troll priests, drake packs, elementals, and so on, its cooler.

They just need to add greater variance to monster and garrison stacks and some battlefield terrain effects/chokepoints/elevation/whatever and it'll be appealing.

There are actually some very cool looking tac map backgrounds, but you almost never see them because so many fights either take place in brown wastes or city gates. There are ones for the various wildlands terrains, I've seen one around elemental shards, some special ones on quests, and so on. They need to ditch the plain brown wasteland one entirely and put in more unique maps (like the arena, that was cool).

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Hear hear!

The key to my fun with FE -- and my odd rig is suffering from crashes quite a bit -- is that it is just that: fun! I love the birds flying over the battlefield. I love that you left the cloth map in and the wargame-like die-cast view of the armies when you zoom out. I love that a spell like Haste is often more useful than just shooting fireballs out of my eyes and lightning out of my arse.

One of my favorite games of all time is the oft mentioned Master of Magic. I like it for the variety and fun. And for all the threads bitching and moaning about balance, I'd like to throw in another side of the argument:

A balanced game does not a fun game make.

To take the MoM example: Life magic is essentially broken in that game, it is so overpowered. So were Hobbit Slingers with Adamantium ammunition. Ever been afraid of little short furry men who live in hill homes? You should be, they can take out dragons with a flick of their leather strap. And lets not even mention Dark Elf warlocks and their bolts of doom and destruction. Even auto-combat was horribly abusable: it forced all participants to use all of available magic each and every combat. Nice way to soften up wizards with one spear unit after spear unit draining the opponents castable magic reserves that turn. And the list goes on. Yet somehow that game is _fun_ even today, possibly in spite of today's so called standards of gaming.

If I may have one request, keep on the emphasis of FUN and PLAYABILITY. No game, no software, no relationship, no human is perfect. I don't want perfect. I want fun! No, I don't think FE is done, but it's getting there.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I praise FE for being engaging enough that I want to keep playing it. I probably didn't give WOM enough of a chance, but the fact is, I just wasn't hooked. Despite crashes, I want to keep playing FE, because I enjoy it.

I gave FE a first spin last night and besides Maul destroying far too many of my armies and a few crashes, I quite enjoyed the experience. Heroes are fun to level up. Although the heroes themselves may not be as memorable/unique as I would like, having them be fun is of primary importance. 

Research is slow, but fairly rewarding. The tech tree was always my favourite part about GC2, so I feel like it is a strong area for Stardock. I expect big things here, but am not too worried about it being delivered.

I haven't played long enough to delve into things too far, but one thing I thought would be fun would be to have shards guarded by monsters (kind of like nodes in MoM) Right now I feel like it's too easy to pick up shards. In the one game I had, I had three by the time my capital had reached about 300 population.

 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top


And the main menu is real work of art! It's so tranquile.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Nice post!  Indeed there are many very good things about FE and thanks for taking the moment to reflect that.  If we're being critical elsewhere it's because we know the team is shooting for "amazing" not just "good"!

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

I wonder what the devs are doing today?

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top


Agreed: Fallen Enchantress is a good game so far, with so many great elements.  I guess the reason we're so critical because we don't just want a "good game", we want a "great game".  If we didn't care, or want FE to live up to the potential it so clearly has, than we wouldn't post at all.

My personal favourite aspect of the game is easily the atmosphere, and the love that has clearly gone into the game.
From the title screen onwards, the game works tirelessly to bring every element, from the UI to the writing, together to form a cohesive and enjoyable "Elemental" style.

The almost picturesque artistic stylings of the game's visuals betray the savagery of the game world.  From the screen that fades in when you found your Captial, to small rays of light through the clouds - Fallen Enchantress is it's own world.
In a market of Brown Military Shooters and over-done 8-Bit "throw backs", Fallen Enchantress is a breath of fresh air.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Leveling their toons in SWTOR is my guess.