Dominions 3 News!

[Alneyan]

I frankly would be surprised if a mundane player found 50$ to be a bargain for Dominions. A few more bucks does not seem that likely to make a difference for the non-convinced player: 50 bucks is still as expensive (if not more so) than a retail game with their shiney graphics, so the comparison is never going to turn out to Shrapnel's favour.

Then again, perhaps I'm biased. I bought Dom II for roughly 60 euros, with a fast delivery and no hassle, and found the price fair enough. Games here are (or were? Been a while since I last purchased anything in retail) more expensive than either Dom II or Dom III (through Shrapnel). Or perhaps it is because there were also complaints about the pricetag for Dom II a couple years ago.

Of course, I'm not saying it is good news, but I'm more concerned about the "why" than the end result. Somehow, I doubt Shrapnel has raised the pricetag so that Tim can buy his third mansion in California. I'd trust Shrapnel that something is not looking quite so well in the Book of Scribbled Figures of Doom (the accounting department, and the dust therein), hence making the price increase necessary.

[B0rsuk]

Sounds like you never heard about Linley's Dungeon Crawl
http://dungeoncrawl.org/

Most computer 'RPG' games tend to look primitive when compared to typical roguelike game (A.D.O.M., Nethack, I suppose I also have to mention Angband but I'd rather not)

[Alneyan]

B0rsuk said:
Sounds like you never heard about Linley's Dungeon Crawl
http://dungeoncrawl.org/

Careful with the "Reply" fields! It looked as though you were replying to me, while it was probably not the case (DominionsFAN was probably the one you replied to). Don't dare say I never heard about roguelikes, or else.

[Nerfix]

My only problem with the price is that the I'm not sure if I have any way to pay it.

The closest credit card to me is owned by my paranoid mom.

[atul]

Nerfix said:
My only problem with the price is that the I'm not sure if I have any way to pay it.

I had that problem with Dom2. However, at least back then it was possible to pay the game by sending a cheque to them. The actual process was a quite weird experience and involved a lot more unnecessary paper prints than a printed manuals ever will, but unless you're too green-minded it does work. What I did was to go to my local bank, had them transfer money to a collaborating bank in US, which in turn mailed the cheque to the store's bank. It costed about 10 euros extra, at least in Osuuspankki.

On the matter of manual, I like mine printed. Reading from a screen gets tedious after a while, there's no lag for page refresh on paper and finding a correct spot from a book is a learned skill (we didn't need no Ctrl-F when I was young, well fossilized at the ripe age of 24). And Dom2 manual is in active use when I play, assuming I find it. But, to each their own, other people are accustomed to different things.

[Gandalf Parker]

My complaint on manuals goes like this...

A) I dont tend to use a printed one unless Im going to the dentist or somewhere I have to wait

B) I dont like PDF because it always feels like Im using a giant truck to deliver a small box. Its long and eats CPU and Memory to let me look up some piddly little thing. PDF is a ton of special options that the manual never uses.

C)I will use local copies of manuals in HTML form or something else that my browser can pop right up. Especially if its multiple files that are named in ways that tell me how to jump to what I want. Besides, most html manuals do a better job of keyword linking to different sections than any pdf Ive ever gotten.

D) most file forms of manuals I just convert to .txt files. Thats what I did with all the pdf files I got from Dom2.

I'd get more use from a Dom3 hot-coffee mug that has all the keypresses on it for those late night sessions Im going to be plagued with (and if someone else doesnt CafePress it then I will)

[Annette]

Alneyan said:
Of course, I'm not saying it is good news, but I'm more concerned about the "why" than the end result. Somehow, I doubt Shrapnel has raised the pricetag so that Tim can buy his third mansion in California. I'd trust Shrapnel that something is not looking quite so well in the Book of Scribbled Figures of Doom (the accounting department, and the dust therein), hence making the price increase necessary.

Still working on that first mansion The only reason for the $5 bump is because of the increase in production costs. Remember, we're going from a 134 page manual to a 200 page manual. And everyone is working very hard to be sure it will be worth every penny!

[PrinzMegaherz]

Annette said:

Still working on that first mansion The only reason for the $5 bump is because of the increase in production costs. Remember, we're going from a 134 page manual to a 200 page manual. And everyone is working very hard to be sure it will be worth every penny!

If the manual is as helpful as the manual of Dom2, you should just drop it, save the money, lower the price and include a good tutorial / launch a Dominions 3 wikipedia as Stardock is doing for GC2. Maybe you could offer a cheaper download only version, saving people the shipping cost.

[Endoperez]

PrinzMegaherz said:

If the manual is as helpful as the manual of Dom2, you should just drop it, save the money, lower the price and include a good tutorial / launch a Dominions 3 wikipedia as Stardock is doing for GC2. Maybe you could offer a cheaper download only version, saving people the shipping cost.

They are adding 60 pages. If they leave out the things we had in DomII, that's a 200 page manual, not for listing in-game stuff, but for telling how to play the game. With 60 nations, that would be 3 pages of strategy/tactics for each one, and 20 pages for the general mechanics...

I DON'T believe they'll do that radical change, though. I think the 70 extra pages are going to be in addition to the item/spell lists. As I doubt there are enough new items and spells to last for 70 pages, most of that will have to be something else. What else? Explanation of game mechanics can't take that much, maybe 50 pages, at maximum. Currently, they take 30 pages, so there'd still be about 50 pages left for non-mechanics, non-spell-list, non-item-list stuff. That is probably this part:
"A comprehensive manual written by veteran computer game scribe Bruce Geryk will also ease players into the third installment."
I don't really know who he is, but Google tells me that he has done some kind of Dom2 tutorial already. It's a .pdf in Shrapnel Games' DomII downloads page, so I have probably went through it, but I don't remember what it actually says. If you are worried, read through that and see if 50 pages of that would be worth the 5$.

I find this whole price discussion absurd, BTW. If we are waiting for a game this much, we are going to buy it. Of course, we would be much happier to pay only half price for it, but that wouldn't make us buy two of them. Shrapnel Games knows we are hooked, and won't let us just get away with less. They also know what they are doing. Their blog covered this over a year ago.
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/blo...mes-dont-work/

[Agrajag]

Isn't Bruce Geryk a writer for Computer Gaming World?
If I'm not mistaken he's also the one that reviewed Dom2 and fell in love with it.