Remove Curses and Horror Marks?

[Dragar]

I just came across this thread..

The argument regarding whether save/reload is cheating or not I’ll sidestep – personally I think it would be convenient, especially for a new player, but its not a big deal once past that point. I’d agree it is a barrier to entry, it was frustrating at the beginning when I managed to self-destruct every few turns one way or another

One very interesting thing about all of this is that the devs really don’t seem to care about selling a lot of copies. This is bad in some ways, but overall good so I’m happy 

The bad – there really is a lot that could be done from an interface point of view to make this game better; save games, repeat forging, waypoints, automated troop movements, etc etc. Especially for single player where one just seems to flip through the turns, a lot of the game is a tedium. I am sure that between all that, the complexity and the graphics, a lot of players get turned away from the game and sales are lost. The complete lack of attention to SP doesn’t help there either, but I can see what a massive job that would be, and really it would take a lot to make Dominions really good purely as a SP experience.

The good – devs with a primarily commercial aim in mind tend to dumb down games too much for the gamer that really wants to be involved. Having just started playing multiplayer I can see why people regard it as totally different. With such a range of options from people and unpredictable behaviour, you never just go through the motions, you have to consider everything carefully and react quickly. The tedium vanishes because everything must be considered. Dominions isn’t forgiving – I’m sure I’ll be 4 weeks into my first MP game when one action Ididn’t know was possible will destroy me. That’s great!

A few years ago I played an MMPOGD called Faith for a couple of years, a team based strategy game that operated in real time. In a lot of ways that game really rocked, it had massive potential and a core of very involved, passionate players that spent a lot of time on it – much like Dominions. The major difference is the devs’ attitudes. In dominions they focus on making the game better for the existing player base, and focus on what is important for them – balance and new content. Stress the balance here! In Faith the emphasis quickly moved to keeping new players, which meant neglecting balance and dumbing down the lethality of combat. They also kept creating new content and fluffy roleplay stuff before they had their core mechanics sorted properly, which compounded initial problems rather than improving the game.

I would love some of the nice to haves sorted out, especially AI improvements, but all in all I’m just grateful to have a game where development targets improving the experience for existing players. Transparent development, a simple and understandable (even explained in manual!) game mechanic with complexity out of the vast number of races/units/spells/items and their combinations. Its all good 

And should our Swedish friends ever want to take it to the next level where it will appeal to a wider base (though it will always remain a niche game), I’m sure they will have plenty of support here to get those things sorted.

[Zentar]

Dragar said:

– it would take a lot to make Dominions really good purely as a SP experience.

Wow! I am one of those who truly loves Dominions as a SP experience. Set indie defense at 9 and adjust AI. It is true that the learning curve is steep initially, but the manual that comes with the game as well as this forum are both excellent guides. This game never seems to get boring. I still discover new tactics / strategies long after the initial learning curve. There seems to be no end to new content through patches, maps, and mods. The patches also continue to tweak the game to operational perfection.

Dragar said:
I would love some of the nice to haves sorted out, especially AI improvements, but all in all I’m just grateful to have a game where development targets improving the experience for existing players. Transparent development, a simple and understandable (even explained in manual! ) game mechanic with complexity out of the vast number of races/units/spells/items and their combinations. Its all good 

And should our Swedish friends ever want to take it to the next level where it will appeal to a wider base (though it will always remain a niche game), I’m sure they will have plenty of support here to get those things sorted.

I Agree, but as you can tell that would no longer be necessary for me.

In chess programs, you could take moves back all day and still not beat the AI. Each time you would find a new way to lose. You would improve some by continuing in this brute force manner, but progress would be slow and limited. If instead you read material on the game, and then applied it, you would improve much faster. The same is true for dominions. Read some of the guides in this forum, look at the battles and pause them to see how battlefield set-up dominion/pretender choices effect them.

Zogundar said:
Actually, I do play roguelikes (Well, just Nethack, Slashem and Dwarf Fortress.)
But even Nethack has Explore & Wizard Mode!

I remember Nethack (throwing rings in a sink ect.) and Slashem. I deleted them off my computer and replaced them with Angband (Moria type) and its derivative Tome. This was because of my content preference.

Zogundar said:
I never did buy the game, by the way. I did want to 'check in on' it though to see if anything had changed.. I guess the community is still too divided between the unrelentingly-hardcore camp and the hardcore-but-not-insistant camp for things to swing in the latter's favor. As far as save games go, yes, that would be nice, but for me the barrier remains the curses/horror marks/insanity/any other permanent afflictions.

For someone who wants to use an SC solely to win the game, these afflictions can be a strategy buster. There are however threads in this forum that address this very issue with a Prince of Death example. Some people even play with an imprisoned pretender. If curses/horror marks/insanity/and other permanent afflictions are game busters, then make sure your opponent gets plenty of them.