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Concerns about lack of Tutorial and Price of Game
( This is not a flame or a rant, I LIKE THE GAME, I just have some issues is all)
I am a longtime SE fan and I own quit a few other Shrapnel titles as well. I am not too concerned about graphics of the game although it's pretty rough. I'm big on gameplay, strategy and re-playability however I think that quality graphics and sound should be a part of any game nowadays. I like the demo and the game deffinately seems to have promise, however I was not at all impressed that there was no tutorial. Not a smart idea to send a demo out to try to get people to buy the game and they end up getting frustrated in the first 5 - 10 minutes into the game because they couldn't figure out that they had to create a God before they could start playing (yea, I saw the little sub-title down in the bottom but my other 3 friends did not). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif My main issue however is with the price of the game. How did Shrapnel or Illwinter come up w/ this kind of price tag??? This game is by no means an "A-List" game. It's very rough around the edges and would not stand up to the games that are coming out in today's standards when it comes to graphics and sound. Other turn based strategy games that come to mind are Age of Wonders and Civ 3 (I paid 39.99 for AoW). I would like to get everyone's feedback on this or just some explanation to a loyal Shrapnel fan as to why I should pay 45.95 for a game that should be priced around 34.95 or less. |
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Its a tricky question I suppose, the pricing of a game such as this through a company such as Shrapnel.
In the end you'll only be willing to pay what you think the game is worth, I think the game is worth the $40 I spent (got the $5 discount), but everyone will have their own opinion. GFX and Sound are fluff (which you point out), they can help or hinder though, compared to Dom1 they are drastically improved, so perhaps the people coming from Dom1 arn't the best to answer critiques on Gfx and Sound. Really though I don't see them as a hinderance, though they are not as nice and clean as in other titles. Again, its going to be a personal decision as to how much you need better gfx and sound over gameplay. I think that part of what you are paying for is the continued support that the Devs will give this product. If their responces to suggestions from Dom1 is any indicator, it is likely that this Version of Dom2 (1.0 or whatever it is) won't be the final Version. Patches including not just bug fixes, but tweeks and new content will appear. Anyway, you're questions are quite valid, just they are difficult to answer in an absolute sense... |
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It's the content that Dom II has. I once bougth AoW 2. To me it felt like the game would be in friggin beta testing phase... It was hardly stable.. All the nations had a handfull of units and all the nations were overused cliches... There were something like 14 spells per sphere... I couldn't care less about the sounds or graphics when the game was hardly working... Then i found Dom I and dumped AoW 2 immediatedly.
To me, the price is justified. People just can't see through the Gfx and Sfx... |
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There is a Quick Start guide to create a God and launch a party. It is located in the docs directory, but is unfortunately very *very* short (two pages). At least, you cannot say there are no tutorial. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Dominions 1 demo was too big on the other hand. There was almost everything, all nations, no turn limit, you were only lacking a few elite units and spells above level 4 (IIRC). You even had the manuals of the game in a PDF format.
I agree with you though, Dominions 2 is lacking some help for newbie players. And you may not be patient enough to check for resources on the web. As for your second point, the price tag seems fine for me, but games are a bit more expensive in Europe I believe. Dominions 2 costs much less than almost every game when it launches (in France at least), especially with the current exchange rates. However, the shipping costs are expensive. (And I cannot buy the game for now, but that's another matter. *Grumbles*) And the graphics and music are impressive for Dominions 2, when you have played the first game at least. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif (There was no music, the graphics were... erh rough, and sound was rudimentary) However, I believe the price tag needs to be higher since less players will buy Dominions 2 than, say, AOW. (And there is not that much of a market for TBS games so.) The look of Dominions 2 isn't that bad really, and the music is enjoyable. AOW:SM may be cheaper, but I never really enjoyed this game. Your average nations, a very limited list of spells, your average limited AI, while the multiplayer options are not that great. (No strategic battle, but instead figures and formulas when playing PBEM against humans. Strange) The graphics and sound of this game are impressive, but in the end, I would rather watch AOW than actually play that game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif |
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Dominions is the best, or only game at doing what it does best. It offers extremely rich gameplay if you are interested in a huge variety of pseudo-historical nations, units, spells, magic items, etc., with interesting game balance, well-crafted cause & effect, varied and imaginitive situations, detail down to individual unit experience and specific Lasting battle wounds, large-scale battles resovled down to the individual man or monster, etc.
Many of the players who enjoy those things, don't particularly care about the graphics, or consider them secondary. The Doms II graphics are more than sufficient - my imagination far surpasses the latest multi-million-dollar graphics showcase game. Doms II is almost the only current computer game I have any real interest in buying. For players who appreciate Doms II, they will be paying far less per hour of play than they would paying even $5 for a graphics masterpiece with no replay value. I'm not sure how Shapnel figures its prices (something to do with the manual in this case?), but I just bought Doms I a couple of months ago, and even so I consider Doms II very reasonably priced considering the play value it has for me. I don't even buy pretty-but-crappy games once they hit the $5 bargain bins. Ten such lemons would be a worse buy than one actually good and interesting game, to me anyway. Also, the economy of producing and selling such games is entirely different comparing Illwinter/Shrapnel to mass-market games. As for a lack of tutorial, I expect the fans would be happy to supply plenty of tips. A tutorial might help players figure out the game, but with the existing developers who have been doing this for years, they might not be the best ones to be spending their time guessing what new players won't understand. PvK [ October 30, 2003, 20:35: Message edited by: PvK ] |
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Not a flame, or putting anyone down, this is just my (humble) opinion on DOM2.
Having played, and owned http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif pretty much all the 4x games out there lemme say this. This game absolutely rocks. PvK is *dead* on about DOM2. The depth of this game is simply amazing. As far as pretty graphics as opposed to content? The multimedia aspects of this game ain't too shabby (imho), and I'm not playing on dog old system that can't handle the new stuff. I've said it before, I'd rather play something interesting and involving than just "ooh" and "ahh" at shiny objects. Too many of the big time publishers push things out the door in a hurry and only worry about the eye/ear candy (MoO3 anyone?). I'll support Shrapnel and their product line any day so long as they continue to focus on quality of content over "shiny objects". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Not to mention, $50.00 isn't too bad considering how long you can play this game. I also don't think it's too hard to figure out. I started testing w/o any documentation whatsover (I play first, read later http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif as I'm lazy). It only took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to get rolling on the game. Of course the more complicated nuances took me a bit to catch on to, but overall it was pretty intuitive. |
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Why do you feel the game should be priced lower? I'd be happier if it were priced lower myself, but I'm not sure I have the reasons to justify such a pricing. Its still cheaper than alot of bigger name games out there. Remeber the comparision needs to be made to AoW2 not to AoWSM, SM is just a rehash of 2 with some tweeks and 3 new races. No big deal really, hell I was surprised they wanted $30 for it. [ October 30, 2003, 22:08: Message edited by: licker ] |
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Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but Illwinter was no slouch about supporting the first Dominions game; patches not only fixed bugs as they were discovered, but also addressed balance issues and added features e.g. Move-and-Patrol. The Last Dom I patch, 1.15, was released Feb 4, 2003; not at all bad for a game released July 2, 2001.
I've only owned one previous Shrapnel-published, "Space Empires IV", but that went through something like... up to Version 1.44 or 1.45 or so before the Gold Version release, and a LOT of feature tweaks and additions happened if memory serves. Shrapnel does not seem to be a "one patch and abandon" company. For a game with as much replayability as Dom 2 should have -- the 17 sides needing different playing styles, for instance -- and the amount of support I'd suspect that Illwinter and Shrapnel are likely to give, the price seems fair. |
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PvK </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, but if you're used to the Dom I music, Dom II's music will blow you away. (Apologies to the composer of the Dom I music...) Dom II is the cheapest game I have bought new in months (PC or PS2). Admittedly I got the pre-order discount, but I think that would be true even if I didn't count the preorder discount. Most games start at $50+ now. (Well, $49.95 anyway). It's called inflation. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif |
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It is an expensive game and especially for the continental Europeans you have to consider that to this price you have to add shipping and about 16% tax. Ordering from the UK doesn't make it any better. Not all the people have 60€ (about 72 US$) for a game and some just have to chose what game they buy. If you can get sometimes nearly 2 games right in the shop next door for the price you get one game from Shrapnel it's hard to decide. A distributor in continental Europe would help Shrapnel with their selling IMHO.
P.S.: I hope they begin the shipping soon. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif |
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I'd expect Dom II to be supported at least as well as Dom I - after all, they now have Shrapnel's personnel to draw on too (at least for some things). |
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As usual, I'm a bit short on hard facts and the like, but there are some things I can say with confidence.
I've been involved in several projects for Shrapnel. One was a patch for TWE with so much new content that most companies would labelled it an expansion pack and charged for it instead of giving it away for free. I've never seen them just grab the money and orphan the product, unlike so many other game companies do. That's one of the reasons I hang around this place the way I do. Shrapnel has always been great about continuing to support their products. I think they are very aware of the value of a satisfied customer, which also leads me to believe the pricing of Dom II might not be entirely a matter of choice. As I've mentioned, I was involved in the text editing. I didn't do the ingame text (although my partner edited the unit descriptions) but I did do the item and spell lists. Those lists are to be printed, in color if my info is still correct, and that is a LOT of printing cost. I suspect, but cannot confirm, that having this extensive hardcopy documention is what has boosted the price above Shrapnel's norm. It's a great game, and I can't find anything in the stores around here that's cheaper (except for the grab-bag "day old" sale products, which can either be overlooked classics or just plain turkeys.) When it comes to quality, I have come to expect a price of $50 or more, which makes me feel $45 for Dom II is a good deal. (Oh, and for those who are thinking "what does he care? He'll probably get a copy for being a beta-tester!", I should mention that I'm going to be buying several copies to give as Christmas presents this year, so the price is a viable concern for me as well.) Let me add that I do think the game needs more of a tutorial, however, and am hoping there will be downloads to assist in closing that gap. The idea of "starter" games seems like an excellent move in that direction. |
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PvK, I only had the demo for Dominions 1 at that time. (I seem to recall there were musics though... Or was I daydreaming?) |
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And I don't even scratch the replayability of 17 nations, themes, maps and such. So I ask thee: Why Dom 2 should be priced about $34,85 or less? Because it's distributed by Shrapnelgames? - Humer |
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I agree hearthly with the points you raised in your post. (Especially when it comes to the emphasis upon gameplay rather than shiny new graphics) [ October 31, 2003, 13:04: Message edited by: Alneyan ] |
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I bought the game because the game content quality seems very good. Personally graphics only need to be as good as the original Diablo... and that game was only 10MB in size. |
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Heroes IV. strategical AI was very bad, even worse than our current Doms II. strat AI. The Heroes IV. devs knew about it, there were lot of discussion about it...but they did nothing about it.....
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Heh, I actually have some experience with making color documents, I'm somewhat surprised that the cost would only have been $30 for a 150 pages, though I don't know the volume...
Your points are well taken Tim, I've been trying to point out the same thing in various threads, the consumer simply doens't know the costs, nor (in most cases) what a reasonable margin is. I do hope that the demo is rereleased when the game ships to be a bit more user friendly though, or at least some new files with more explicit instructions on how to start are made available for download with the demo. |
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Normally, I'll pay no more than $40 for a game. Just depends on the game. With that said, I sent in my check today for the game, because the description sounds like it will be a killer game (I just wish I had played Dom I, or at least seen it in action. I'm buying this game on faith, but Shrapnel Games hasn't disappointed me in any of the purchases I've made so far). I don't really care about the graphics as much as gameplay. Space Empires 4 Gold is a very good example of gameplay over graphics. But I also play Galactic Civilzations. So I'm anxiously waiting to play th is game.
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Couldn't resist adding one more point, and that would be (okay so two more http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif )--support and community. Shrapnel is very responsive, unlike some of the juggernauts that seem to auto-delete your E-mails upon receipt. And Shrapnel is awesome about supporting product that's been out for a while!
Also, visit any of the Shrapnel Games forums and you will see that people in the community are *very* helpful and nice. When you stop to consider that the community involvement is totally voluntary, it speaks very highly of both the company and it's customers. Add that to this game, which is just phenomenal in and of itself, and you have a product that I'd gladly pay $50 + for. Heck, it's something you can play over and over as different races--not to mention I'm sure that there will be stuff added over time. Anyway, just popping in to throw out more of my opinions. |
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Licker, Taqwas, Chris B., Psitticine: You made some very valid points and I can see this all from a different perspective now.
Tim, you make a GREAT point regarding fluff and after some thought I can't tell you how many times I've been let down by the "A-List" title (I'm still having nightmares over MOO3) and to be honest I should have thought of that before I posted the remark. I will also say that when SEIV Gold came out I was completely blown away and I can honestly say the money was well worth the price tag of the game..... There were more than several valid points and I have pointed my friends to this post as well because we pretty much had the same feelings after playing the demo. Thanks again and I'll be seeing you in MP!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif |
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Rogue, Dryton: That truly is the difference between Shrapnel and many other larger publishers. Consistent customer support, communities of fans talking about the games, and after-purchase patch and feature support. That's what I knew about before I joined Shrapnel, and it still holds true. And more direct interaction with the actual developers than you would most likely ever have with anything from EA or other "big" companies.
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Yeah that's about right. Seriously I can't think of the Last time I have seen a full color manual from any publisher. The main page might be color, but the insides are almost always black and white. Unless it's a leaflet manual.
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I agree hearthly with the points you raised in your post. (Especially when it comes to the emphasis upon gameplay rather than shiny new graphics) </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> |
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Hi All:
Dryton raises some issues that I believe should be addressed by Shrapnel here. Hope you don't mind me barging in on your discussion. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif As most of you know, we don't supply our games through the normal retailer network, as this is a sure way to make sure our developers make absolutely nothing on their games. Therefore, we don't sell tens of thousands of copies of our games. This alone, the economy of printing, makes our games a higher price point than most of what you find in the market place. We have titles that have been in the market for 4 years that now, on reprints, cost as much as 25% more than they did when Shrapnel Games started. This due to the fact that printers and cd duplicators raise their pricing on an annual basis. We have never raised our pricing. In fact, we are considering moving our pricing higher in the coming month. Not because we want to, but because we need to. The manual for Dominions II is our largest to date, weighing in at 146 pages. It is however, not in color as someone else posted. Wish we could have done it in color, but for a manual this size, the price of printing in color would have been over $30.00 per unit. Still, the manual is huge and includes a reference of all magic items and spells. As the Shrapnel faithful also knows, we support our products relentlessly through patches, demo downloads, these forums and a customer service department second to none in this industry. All of these things cost alot of money. We run two dedicated servers - soon to be three - just to handle the traffic. While I'm thinking of it, someone mentioned in another post that maybe we would sell more copies if we lowered the price. We have experimented with this through sales and special offers and have found this not to be the case for Shrapnel. Our special pricing events do nothing (less than 5%) to increase sales. People buy our games not on price, but because they like the type of game we are known for. Even long term price changes, we have had a few, do nothing to increase our sales. Which brings me to Dryton's comment about this not being an "A-list" game. Dryton, this is an "A-list" GAME , as all of our titles are. What it is not, is an "A-list" piece of fluff. We don't publish fluff -- gameplay is what games should be about, and Dominions II has more game and replay value than any major publishers product that I know of. Now alot of the Dominions crowd is new to Shrapnel Games and probably doesn't understand our philosophy as is stated in the above paragraph. We are all about making quality games, and very little about making the next generation graphics engine that has no gaming value. We couldn't sell these types of games the way we do. We would have to put them into retail just to get the "oh wow, look at the graphics" impulse buy. Does that mean we don't want our games to look nice? Not at all. And I thnk all of our games do look nice. They just aren't all state of the art. If that offends you, I'm sure you have an e-retailer just down the street that has shelves full of graphics marvels. Okay, on to the tutorial. We are considering doing something with the demos. With each new developer, we get a new crowd. When I sat down with the game I spent about an hour playing it and realized the depth and the intangibles of this title. This game is something special and if presales are any indication, alot of others think so too. This game can be almost anything you want in a gaming experience and we thought limiting it with alot of pre-setup would not be a good thing. We may have been wrong. We know this partially because a group of people are unhappy with the AI. I say to them, you haven't set it up for a hard game, if you think the AI is that easy. So, we will keep you informed of what we decide to do with the demos. I have gotten off on a rant, which was not my intention. Sorry. I hope this helped explain Shrapnel's position some. Happy Gaming! |
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Also 50 bucks is a very good price for the most complex strategy game ever. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif |
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You could print a special edition of the manual in color and sell it separately, for the big fans. I'd suggest selling it with a copy of the game, but most of the biggest fans probably pre-ordered a long time ago, so they'd have to pay for the game again. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Could always do both though. I don't know what your minimum orders have to be for numbers of manuals, so it might not be worth it if only a few dozen (or less) people want to buy a color manual...
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Just look at any development team from a major publisher, there are 4 to 6 times as many artists as there are programmers and designers. The unfortunate consequence of this is that truly great games are overlooked, because they are not cutting edge in the graphics department - the money didin't go into a team of artists but into design and gameplay. Now every once in a while you get both, but this is usually in a new title, where the developer already had the gameplay and design in place and the publisher didn't have to foot this bill - they concentrated their assets on the graphics. Rarley do you find sequels, that have both graphics and gameplay going for them, because the development effort was now funded with the emphasis on graphics. |
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For the costs involved I doubt enough people would be interested for us to make any money on that. A full color manual is ridicously expensive.
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If the manual costs that much.......then scrap it. Seriously, Give me a nice PDF (I hate adobe but whatever) and save me some cash.
If company's stop paying for them, the price would go down considerably in a few months. But that's neither here nor there. I always lose my manuals anyway. [ November 03, 2003, 05:28: Message edited by: Watchdog ] |
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No we have to have a printed manual, it is the number 1 way to stop pirates. Normal manuals are fine as far as costs go.
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I have bought most of Shrapnels Games but FWIW I really don`t understand the lack of at least a text tutorial for a mini game in the demo that would at least highlight the building-research-battles-magic aspect and how they relate.
It would take what, about an hour to write one up...?? Something like do A then B then C, so you get D. In a Game that all the vets from D1 ( which I did buy but gave up on due to the poor quality of the interface descriptions ) say is rich & complex, the Demo, with no clues as to how to make things come together is either going to leave people with the idea this is simple & dumb or so confusing and a pain to learn, they won`t buy it. |
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There is a doc file with the demo though its pretty bare bones. There is a thread pinned near the top of this forum, something about "lost people", which has much more
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well that 50$ is a heavy price to pay but i pay it gladly
about lag of tutorial well does not bother me.... i learned dom1 via trial & error it really is not that hard system just look at it for sec and you know the basics... try and get your *** whoped couple times and you are fine... |
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I really would like to buy this but need to know if there is more in it then Make Army-Fight Battle-repeat. Let me try some specific questions. Is there any kind of a economic model in the game ?, in other words do you build up resources to produce Gold or is that fixed in each province ? How do resources & gold effect what you do ? Is this Game really designed for H to H or is the AI reasonably decent ? Thanks |
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Black Cat --
The economic model's not that complicated compared to, say, Civ. Basically, there's gold and resources. Gold: shared in a nationwide treasury. Generated by taxpayers, certain magical sites (including mines; you can't build mines, but can get them randomly), alchemy (turn fire, earth gems into gold), random events. Spent on units (generally reflects rarity/training), unit maintenance, building construction (temples, labs, castles), province defense, repairing damage from random events. Resources: local. Used in province and adjacent provinces if they have castles. Does not accumulate -- use 'em or lose 'em. Required for training most units; amount reflects equipment e.g. knights require a lot, barely-armed militia very little. Castles: Improves resource utilization (locally), sucks in resources from neighboring provinces, boosts tax income. Boosts related to administration value. Also permits production of national troops, with exceptions (underwater/land difference). Taxes: Rate defaults to 100%. High taxes result in less taxpaying population due to people fleeing, starving, and being killed by your patrols after they revolt. Low taxation levels may ease unrest. Order, production scales affect taxes, resources respectively as well. Growth may, don't recall; it has a long-term effect on no. of taxpayers as well. Heat/Cold affect taxes negatively if your people don't like the local conditions. There's no investing in, say, trade guilds or loans or banking centers or what-not. It's not a civil-development game. |
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Personally I think it's a little silly to be so worried about piracy. A low profile game like this would probably not be spread extensively, so it would be a big hassle for most people to find it...Given that it's just not worth it to take such steps.
Even ignoring the above - do you see ANYONE ELSE AT ALL in the game industry who release demos without an extensive readme? Hell, most have a tutorial. I suspect that you are hurting sales badly by not including the instructions to actually play the game in the demo. [ November 11, 2003, 23:33: Message edited by: mr.white ] |
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They seem to have realized that. I believe that the Shrapnel guy has said he pressed them for the release Version. And programmers never have been known to do good docs.
They are taking our suggestions here to heart. They are watching the growth of the "newbies" sticky thread. They are planning to add things like starter gods and a partially started game so that all the menu options will work for a new player. The needs for newbies to learn this game are being laid out by those best able to do it. Newbies who are learning the game. |
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Taqwus
Many thanks for the details. I just ordered the Game and should you ( or anyone else ) have the time, I would be interested in knowing what kind of decisions you make other then Army based ones in a Game turn. |
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Well most everything is related to Commanders, the only things not Commander related are raising province defense and fiddleing with taxes (though upping taxes usually means you need an army to patrol later). The magic system doesn't require armies, but it does require your mages to devote their turns to research, forging, summoning, or empowerment. You can also use priests to preach and build temples, mages to search (priets can search too) or build labs, and anyone can build a fort. Most of the turn will be spent assiging your commanders to their tasks, and scripting your armies and commanders for any offensives you wish to undertake. Deciding what magic school to research, and how many mages to pump in research points is important too, but that doesn't usually take much time. The economy is really quite abstracted (which is a good thing to many people as it cuts out micro quite a bit) there isn't much to directly do about it (other than tax and patrol). Most of the game will be trying to implement your grand strategy (be it based on magic or might or somewhere inbetween) and making adjustments to that strategy as you stumble on new obsticales or opportunities. Bit of a ramble there, sorry... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif |
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Ummmmm thats all I can come up with for now. |
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I just figured I'd agree with everyone else here.
The only reason I'm shelling out the money (when I can get them to tell me where to mail the check or do a phone order) is because they did the demo. That was a very shrewd marketing ploy IMO. I know what it's going to be like...and I like it. It's not like buying the contents of a "mystery box." |
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The only part about the demo I did not like was the 40_day limitation. There have been some games in the past that I did not purchase because I felt I didn't get to playtest enough of the game.
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No one was pressed to put the game out. The demo documentation was just overlooked when the demo was put out, we have a new one in the works.
And our games are all over the warez scene, trust me I know that. We do have to balance how much we give away, because what stops the pirates is having to buy the game to get the manual. But like I said a new demo is forthcoming in the future. |
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