Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

1) I think buildings in the capital should be immune to random event destruction.

2) I think any mage left idle and capable of doing research should research.

3) Communions in the lab: Select a group of mages, hit a key for communion and then, cast/cast monthly/forge. The whole group can only produce one spell or item but they do so as a communion, thus permitting you to reach levels you otherwise couldn't. I think the other mages should only contribute to paths they actually have a level in.

3) Siege should be considered an activity as far as the Next command is concerned.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Misfortune is already popular enough as a design choice, why make it easier to take?

That could work, but I guess it would be complicated to implement. Thus it's unlikely to happen.

That would be a major rebalancing of gameplay... interesting, but possibly horrible. It's also a big enough change that it's vanishingly unlikely to occur.


That seems sort of reasonable.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

#3 goes pretty much against the idea of communions, which is to provide a temporary boost to the master for the duration of a battle. Would be the same as a mage with E2 casting Summon Earthpower and then forging an E3 item without actual path boosters.

One turn is one month, and the item crafting process is complicated, involved and spread out over the month, which is way longer than a temporary communion could be maintained.

In my opinion, such permanent communions as the idea entails run counter to the way of how magic is supposed to work in the Dominions universe. Your mileage may vary.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Well, while this suggestions are being proposed I'll go ahead and make mine despite its preposterousness and triteness. When I beat the game, as far as I can remember, I only really received a message saying I had become a God and then was shot back to the main menu screen. How anticlimactic after a long grueling campaign!

Why not make the ending different based on how many enemies you killed or provinces you conquered or turns you took to beat the game. Think of it like Tetris: based on your performance you would have a different ending. I know, it's likely not possible for anyone here to do, but I'd like to see it nonetheless.

Come on... don't lie and say you wouldn't like to to see your pretender do a little dance across the screen upon victory.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Originally, you never were supposed to finish the game. The anticlimatic end is more of a "Uh, you won. Sorry."

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Yes, something like the victory screenshot from the Amiga version of Nuclear War would be sort of appropriate.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

As long as we're tossing out suggestions...

Use the terms 'heavy' and 'light' appropriately. (Seriously, 'light' means a primary ranged weapon, not that they're wearing lighter armor - although historically these tended to go hand-in-hand because light infantry/cavalry were more cost effective without the heavier armor, its not what the terms mean). And when I use these terms below I intend them in their actual military sense.

More historical unit performance and army performance. For example:
*Sufficiently long weapons receive first strikes when charged (enemy moves up to them). Ie, pikes vs. cavalry.
*Heavy cavalry 'trample' and penetrate into units of troops they charge.
*Heavy cavalry 'cause fear' against infantry. (Undisciplined units should break and run in the face of a heavy cavalry charge, especially light infantry).
*light cavalry actually uses historical light cavalry tactics (shoot while falling back) - this may require larger battle maps. The muslim armies during the first crusade lured crusader armies into ambushes by harassing with light cavalry and then leading them in apparent retreat, often for over a mile or more - all the while firing back at the pursuers - until the pursuing crusaders were surrounded and overwhelmed by ambushing forces.
*Armies which are defending a territory entrench themselves. Archers put down archer stakes in front of their position. Units construct earthen ramparts, etc... Similarly, sieging armies of at least some nations should be able to practice circumvallation (building an earthen rampart all around the sieged city). Notably the Rome themed nations, since this was Rome's historical siege tactic.
*Cities which are starved long enough surrender.
*light infantry attempt to fall back and regroup when melee units get too close.
*light infantry receive the ability to 'Fire Rearmost'.
*Units behave more like units and less like loosely aligned mobs. In particular, they should hold formation when at all possible. (melee will necessarily involve breaks in the line and whatnot, but they should move together as a unit even if some individuals are faster than others).
*Armies should be allowed to pillage in the turn they conquer a province (seriously, its a month between turns). Ie, a 'move and pillage' command. The hundred years war was mostly a conflict of armies pillaging the countryside with the opposing side trying to chase them down and make them fight. (Ideally, moving and pillaging should not cause the territory to change hands, but it produces nothing for the owner, cannot produce units while occupied, and the pillager gains gold and gems at some % of the territories normal rate. Pillaging armies with a map speed higher than 1 should be able to ignore PD (PD is too slow to assemble to deal with an army that doesn't intend to actually fight).
*Mounted units require appropriate amounts of food. If people are size 2 and horses are size 3, each mounted person should require food for a size 2 and a size 3 individual. Similarly, they should consume air (from air producing items) appropriately. The way the game currently handles it the rider should starve, and also suffocate when brought underwater via an item which produces a fixed quantity of air.
*Ability to provide logistics for your armies without magic. Living off the local province is not the only way to feed an army without magic.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

@squirrelloid : I thought about modding in supply chariots for every faction, but it would completely imbalance the game, as the gluttony characteristic would be completely neutered, as well as armies of big size troops ...etc

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

To squirrellord:
Unfortunately, these require writing a new game engine. Except the first one about heavy cavalry - but then, it's not particularly needed: they already can kill 1-2 infantry a turn, which is not worse than with Size 3 trample.
The last one is actually present: your troops gain supplies from your nearby forts, which decline with more distance from fort. And some nations do get supplies-producing units.
And, of course, fire-and-flee order is present - it's just mostly useless. If you are going to try and make a new engine... well, then we can discuss this. This game was made by 2 people, after all! ;)

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Cavalry and trample:
I suppose what I mean by trample is the horses trample - the rider should still get his normal attacks. But 'trampling' into the enemy unit would allow more cavalry to take their attacks (again, mimicing historical behavior). For a late example of the continued importance to shock cavalry of breaking into the enemy ranks, consider the ~17th century pistol and saber cavalry, who used their pistols to open holes in the enemy formation so they could interpenetrate. The lance helped achieve a similar effect before professional pikemen became common (ie, before ~1350).

Infantry units who have their ranks broken should also take a morale penalty, fwiw.

Supplies:
Local supply by a fort isn't what I'm talking about. The crusaders during the first crusade managed to supply an army in the holy land far from any local supply centers. This seems like an emminently reasonable thing for at least organized civilizations to be able to do.

Fire and Flee:
Except flee actually involves running away, not just withdrawal to a prepared position or merely keeping the opponent at arm's length. There's no 'ambush', no 'turn and fight after fleeing so long'. And no real disadvantage to the pursuing army in pursuit. (The actual history of medieval warfare shows that unrestrained pursuit is a failure of troop discipline, and generally leads to disaster. I'm reminded of the triple alliance of the Khan of Persia, the Crusader states, and the Georgian christians against the muslim armies. The Crusader states defeated the rearguard (left flank of their enemy) and pursued them for miles. While they were busy chasing beaten enemies, their allies were defeated decisively and lost the battle, whereas if they'd regrouped and flanked the muslim armies it would have been a decisive allied victory).

I find tactical flight of the nature i'm talking about distinct from retreat, which is what the fire and flee seems to represent (since it actually cedes control of something the size of a province). You might also consider the experience of the Romans (infantry) agains the Parthians (primarily light cavalry). The Romans couldn't bring the Parthians to melee, the Parthians rode circles around them and annihilated every legion ever sent to fight them.

I suppose there are two problems here: 1) the battlefield is so small that rather little force is sufficient to compel a foe to melee. A cavalry unit should be able to keep out of range of a melee unit indefinitely if it so desires. 2) ranged units do not attempt to keep out of range of shock units. Given that classical light infantry (slingers especially) and all light cavalry routinely used their improved mobility to deny shock combat to the enemy, this is a failure of modelling.

New - army strategic choices
Speaking of bizarre. Anyone who knows anything of pre-Napoleonic military combat knows that the hardest thing to do was to compel an opponent to fight. Generals should be able to be given strategic settings that tell them when to engage and when to refuse to engage when challenged by another army. The only way to force an army to fight when its determined to flee should be when every route of escape leads to an entanglement with military forces (in which case the initially encountered army should be fought, potentially in combination with whichever military units it tried to withdraw into. And I don't mean go to battle map and have every unit start withdrawing, I mean no battle occurs (the enemy army never gets that close) unless the retreating army is cut off.

New engine:
Most of this is really just tweaking the engine a bit - I'm sure given access to the code base I could figure out how to implement all of that. Honestly, some of it (handling units as entities instead of individual people) would probably make things easier in the long run.

So, for example:
-Starved fortresses surrender: Implement a counter during the phase where you check to see if the walls are breached that counts down until fortress surrender. (trivial)

-light infantry attempt to fall back when shock troops get too close: Each light infantry unit would need a metric of too close, although you could just make it 'is within movement range of an enemy shock unit'. Unit then moves backwards until it reaches a 'safe' distance and reforms. This is a quick If/Then check at the start of the units action. (easy)

-Units behave more like units and less like mobs: This is the most profound change I proposed, actually. Its also the most desirable. So, there are two ways you can go about this: (1) define a unit entity which has a depth and facing size, and move that unit entity instead of moving individual guys (this substantially decreases the processor work because it aggregates decisions). Or (2) have individual models know where in the unit they are and check stay in the same position relative to other models in the unit. This is aided by doing things like checking the slowest speed in the unit and capping all model speeds at that speed. I'd vastly prefer #1 for a number of reasons, such as because you can have individual sub-entities which take damage and make attacks, but you don't need to make many AI decisions below the unit level (substantially increasing game performance). I'd need some help implementing this because I'm not used to working with graphical applications, but given a week and someone to ask questions of I could probably figure it out. (Moderate)

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Actually, I think individual fighters already know which unit they are part of. If you give an attack order to a 50-man unit, the 50 men will swarm around lone opponents in front of the enemies rather than go through an dfight behind. They swarm around their target instead of staying in square formation (they should have more than a square formation if we wanted more realism)
Regarding point (2),it's not graphic. It's a simulation on a terrain, but graphics don't matter.
Problems happen when units get killed and you want to regroup. If the forward left part of the unit has been killed and they want to stay in square, then units from left back and right must move left and forward to fill the gaps.

I don't think Illwinter's ever going to do something like that.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

This is sort of a pointless thing to state in this thread :]

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

I'm very new here so excuse me, just an idea, but I think it would be nice:

Sets of items, much like in Diablo II, could confer really interesting boni.
Consider, for example, a Lesser Item, a cap (call it: Tarnhelm) which requires N2A1 to build and offers some protection against lightning and darkvision; consider a Greater Item, a cape (call it: Mist Pelt) which requires E3N1 to build, and offers some frost protection and small magic resistance; consider another Greater Item, a ring (call it: Seal of the Secret Priests), it costs S3W2 to build and it gives its wearer a nice patrolling bonus and immunity to rituals which pick the wearer up and transport him somewhere else (friend or foe).
(Just off the top of my head, and I didnt think of balanced costs right now).
But if you wear ALL THREE TOGETHER you unlock a "set", say, "Disguise of the High Priests", and you get, in addition, stealth +5. (Or whatever.) (I realize Stealth is too nice an attribute to get so easily, hence my requirement of many different paths for all 3 of the set and the necessity to block a misc, body, and head slot.)
I can imagine that this could be made in a patch? Just an idea...

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

The mechanics are already in -> Axes of Rulership.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Plus you get Awe+0 as a side effect of dual wielding the Twin Spears (leadership+100).

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Wow! I missed those! Maybe when I am big and strong I will mod my "Disguise" and other sets if I figure out how it works?

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Sadly there's very little you can do with item modding.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

The things that really annoy me are behaviors like mixed-speed units break up as they charge pell-mell down the field. Disciplined troops should not do that. Ie, anything better than irregulars (irregulars are generally militia or forced conscripts when it comes to shock troops).

As to filling gaps, if you define a unit entity then a massive loss in, say, teh middle would lead to a recalculation of unit facing length/depth. Its not like troops don't move to close holes in the line in shock combat - having a hole punched in your line is bad for you. It means the enemy can separate you and defeat you in detail.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Yeah. We have magical supply sources. How about some non-magical supplies? It would be a supply wagon unit--a troop type anyone could recruit anywhere. There would probably be a couple of them, say a 10 unit and a 100 unit one. They would only cost a gold but creating them would use up that much supply from the province--this could never cause the supplies to go negative. (Same as with resources--if there isn't enough supply the unit simply doesn't get built.)

If an army is short on food it eats supplies that are tagging along rather than starving.

Agreed. Fast ranged troops should get a basically free victory over slower melee troops.

Agreed. I think the battlefield should be infinitely long.

This should depend on mobility. A faster army should always be able to bring a slower army to battle.

How about doing it as a morale check? Have two siege modes: light and heavy. In light siege mode the defenders have to make morale checks once the supplies run out, failure causes the unit(s) that failed to flee--they retreat from the province. In heavy siege mode the checks are against a lower threshold but a unit that fails surrenders (disbanded, the other side gets anything it was carrying). In light siege mode the defenders can be ordered to leave the province.

Yup. If there is an enemy unit within range, move away, otherwise shoot. If you're out of ammo and don't also have a melee weapon, keep moving away regardless of range.

I don't believe this would work--the formations would keep getting disrupted by the presence of other troops.

This is how I would implement it. At the start of battle each unit notes it's position within it's group and always seeks to maintain that. The group moves at the speed of the slowest mobile unit in it (anything that can't move gets left behind.)

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Yes. However, you have to take into account crippled units. If a soldier is crippled, you probably don't want him to cripple the movement of the whole unit. Crippled individuals should be removed from the computation somehow, so the unit would move at the 1st slowest decile speed for instance (means 9 units out of 10 move at least at that speed) rather than the slowest unit. Otherwise, you'd have to remove crippled units by hand systematically, which is a pain when you have big armies late-game, particularly if they get old or have fought a lot.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

It would also mean one lucky crippling arrow would bring a whole unit to a crawl. Not something you'd want or could do anything about.

Nor would you always want such unit discipline to apply to flanking cavalry, or the like.

Approaching the enemy front line in a solid unit is important, but if you're charging the archers who are mowing you down, you might not be so concerned.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Holding a line is far more important for shock infantry than anything else. Possibly there should also be a distinction between skirmishers and regular units.

And I'd rather a crippled unit just be removed as if killed. No one loses the use of a leg and keeps fighting - that's just silly.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Squirrelloid and Loren

Those are some interesting ideas, but Dominions_3 updates have virtually ended as Illwinter is developing a new game. Also Dominions_4 is not even being considered by Illwinter at this point, so I'd recommend storing all your ideas for when Dominions_4 does finally begin development... otherwise it's a forum discussion only amongst the community which doesn't go anywhere.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

That depends on how motivated people are =).

No, seriously, I'd be totally interested in collaborating on a purely historical tactical and/or strategic military simulator that gets it (mostly) right. I wouldn't mind doing a fantasy one either, but ideally you'd have this core historical simulator that you could append various levels of the fantastic to. I have some free time, but certainly don't have the expertise to do it all myself (in particular, I know nothing about the graphics end, and its been awhile since i've used a plausible language for doing this in).

I mean, this is a hypothetical 'this is what would make the game cool(er) for me' thread. But if someone with vision, motivation, and organization wanted to try to actually do something... I'd at least think about being involved. At one level there's 'ask the company to make it cooler', but at another level there's 'do it yourself'.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

So are you going to do it yourself? I don't get it. You can't dangle that carrot as justification for a load of hypotheticals unless you actually might do this stuff yourself.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

I think I said I'd be willing to help if someone else was willing to organize such a project. I really don't have the time to do it entirely by myself right now, nor the expertise to do everything. (And while I can learn, that takes more time).

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

I've done it before - had best game of 1993 by Computer Gaming Mag; mentions in other mags as well.

Game was called Suzerainty. Yeah I know. Sucky name.

Anyway... have a game idea in mind. Interested in workers. Sweat equity venture..

Interested?

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

This 'someone else' guy is evidently awesome, but he also seems quite busy. I think he has ideas from at least 50 people on these forums alone on his to do list ;]

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Ideas and detailed hypotheticals are incredibly valuable. The entire SemiRandom project was born of someone else's vision. One of the projects that I have been working on currently was prompted by a thread on these forums. Threads like this one can be a great resource for the "someone else" guys. (But you are right Sombre. We are awesome & busy! :) )

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

I agree they /can/ theoretically be useful, but the noise rate appears to be somewhere around 99.99%. You say semirand was born of someone's vision, fair enough. I highly doubt it was this kind of brainstorming. Semirand's fundamental ideas are not pie in the sky and never were. There's a LOT we can already do regarding dom3, but these kind of threads go way, way beyond those limits imo. And since we're using personal examples, I haven't found a single useful idea amongst any of the vast number of 'brainstorming' posts on these forums.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

If you mean Illwinter (the Dom3 devs) if I remember there is a language requirement (swedish? finish?).

There are tons of such projects that you can just jump in on.
You might check the Shrapnels forums. I remember that the Combat Command Series guy (Horse & Musket amoung other award winning games) asked for more programmers here a couple years back. Shrapnel has put out various calls. For Female game programmers. And another thread to gather together programmers, sound, graphics, writers, etc to try and do a collaborative in-house project (I dont think it got past the discussion of what kind of game it should be).

But I digress. Its no longer my place to mention those. I would suggest that you check out SourceForge which has tons of open source projects for games and you can jump in with any side skill involved with game development.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Certainly too far fetched for a Dom3 patch, but I am thinking in broader terms. Yet another personal example is a game project that I have fiddled with for several years now. It is a blend of concepts from Dom3 and Lords of the Realm 2. There are pages and pages of conjecture, sample algorithms & programs scattered across my hard drive that are all about ideas. Time that I spend in a text document thinking through game concepts and mechanics is time not spent writing the program. A discussion like this one is very interesting to me as the pitfalls of a given feature or technique are weeded out. It's not so much a step by step manual of what to do, but rather food for thought.

It might be argued that the discussion is wandering away from Dom3 possibilities and should therefore be squelched. I wonder if it might be interesting to the developers regardless?

(Sorry for going so far OT myself.) :)

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Well, I do find it interesting, from a slightly similar point of view.
And it is certainly doing no harm.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Just more useful if the ideas are placed on the shelf until Dominions_4 begins. I've provided a healthy list of improvements for Dominions over the years, yet I know reviving them will not provide any changes, until we know development of Dominions_4 begins.
Squirrelloid mentioned willing to help someone lead a project for his idea which is extremely unlikely to happen. Now if he was leading the project and already has working pieces than he might be able to find someone to help him with a few adjustments/improvements.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Ah to have that kind of time. No seriously.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

I think that some of the best ideas that became useful to this community were not treated well when offered just as ideas. But they did help move us forward when someone else was sparked by the idea to flesh it out.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Examples?

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Not like they were actually attacked. Some might have been but I tend not to remember things like that. This community is too great for that. But sometimes the helpful suggestions werent always taken as helpful suggestions by the original poster. :)

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

I have to back up Sombre on that one. I have TONS of very awesome ideas. Ideas that I very much wish somebody else would implement for me, or even just help me to work on. And sometimes I do fail to restrain myself from propagating them, though I know that to walk the walk is a lot more difficult than to talk the talk. I haven't seen anybody seriously saying "Hey, I want to do something awesome, but I don't know what, give me something to work on" and then following through with it here - so as far as market economies are concerned, there is a lot more supply than demand for ideas to work on here. I'm very glad that there are a couple of altruistic people here that find the energy to make sure that not everything stays at the "idea" level.

Regarding suggestions to the devs, I wouldn't condemn them, the devs should see those suggestions as a form of flattery. People do care about their game, even when they criticize it. But those people should be very, very aware that their suggestions, however good and meaningful they might be, will have minimal chance of getting implemented, for various good reasons.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

There are always more ideas than results. The other side of the coin (often seen in the open source world and mmorpgs) is the abundance of experts offering assistance who never follow thru which is probably another version of the same thing. Id rather have the semi-productive ideas than the non-productive help if I had to choose.

Anyway Im not sure that holding back the ideas is a good idea. :)
Altho it does have a drawback of lost credit. Ive been promised any number of times to be mentioned in the credits (even on this forum) for extensive email conversations fleshing out a project that I recommended and others have finished. Luckily Im not real bothered by that but if I was then I would certainly understand holding back the flow of ideas. You would probably have to even take into account that some of the projects which were completed by the original suggester were more often IMHO spurred on by people saying they want it. Not to mention the projects done out of spite for the original persons refusal to do "such a simple task".

Squelching idea conversations or DIY responses might have had a large impact on this community altho we will never really know. Im not sure if we would have CBM, or SemiRand, or a pbem server. Or map generators (even the in-game one), or the many map modification utilities. Are you sure that the utilities for checking status on online games, or score charts, or backups would have just appeared out of the blue without someone requesting it?

Then there are any number of popular modded nations, spells, AI improvements, special maps which I think sparked from an idea put forth not by the person who developed the mod. Im probably biased or dont fully understand what the wealth of worthless ideas was.

Gandalf Parker

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Come to think of it this might all boil down to the age-old preferences for forums. Thats a conversation Ive had often with many forum owners. There are many sliding scales with forums and one is how much preference the owner has for a quieter newbies ask and elites answer Q&A forum vs the more active higher noise ratio of community conversation newbies talk to newbies. How much are OT posts slapped, how much editing of threads, etc.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

"When all is said and done, there's much more said than done".

Sorta cuz its easier to talk than do = ).

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

That isn't the issue. We aren't talking about non idea noise. The fact is there are more people coming up with ideas (regardless of quality) than there are people willing to implement the ideas of others. As evidenced by the many, many threads like this and the near total lack of results from them.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Im sorry.
But I feel thats just an impression. I think that many of the conversations like this did end up creating something which everyone went on to enjoy. I would not give it a 90%-or-greater failure rate at all.

Im also quite aware that if I did give it a percentage it would just be my own impression and probably be just as incorrect on the other side of the real setting. But there are only a few major threads that stick in my mind as completely failed conversations while many come to mind as producing worthwhile results. Much fewer results would have come about if the person didnt bring it up as an idea first but simply pursued it on their own.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

I agree with you gandalf. I have seen many ideas implemented here, as the result of discussion.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

"Much fewer results would have come about if the person didnt bring it up as an idea first but simply pursued it on their own."

That's patently untrue. There would be far more out there in terms of mods, utilities and games if people actually did something about their ideas rather than posting them up for someone else to do (which almost never happens).

chrisp - discussion of the game is a very different beast from idea threads like this.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

It may not have Dom3 results, but it's given me some ideas for my GURPS project. The comment on infinitely long battlefields, for instance[1].

-Max

[1] The insight here being that you can be infinite in only one dimension without hurting the tactical complexity much if at all, while possibly making the UI and gameplay more fun.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

For some people the glass is half full.
For some people the glass is half empty.
For some people the glass is made of glass and it could break and cut you.

My friends always tell me I'm #3.

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

Ahhhh I see. We are not talking about the same thing. Not quite anyway.

What you say is true. IF every idea was tackled by the initial person and completed then there would be more. But that isnt very likely.

On the other hand, some of our best stuff would not have happened without someone bringing up the idea and someone else finishing it.

It wouldnt take many suggested-that-someone-else-finished to outnumber the number that were finished by a DIY response. My impression is that most of those simply died on the vine, or were sloppily done then taken up by someone else anyway.

Not to mention that some of the most interesting discussions on here would not have happened. :)

Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
 

I don't think it ever hurts to put ideas up, whether or not they are implemented. First rule of brainstorming is not to stifle any ideas, no matter how impractical they seem. If 100 ideas are put forward and out of them 1 great one is picked up and implemented by someone, then they are all worthwhile.

Besides, who knows which great idea will spark renewed interest in Dom3 by the devs?