Concerns about lack of Tutorial and Price of Game

PvK · #1 October 30th, 2003, 10:33 PM

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 ]

PvK · #2 October 30th, 2003, 10:41 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Alneyan:
...
And the graphics and music are impressive for Dominions 2, when you have played the first game at least. ...

Actually Dominions 1 does have music during battle, if you keep the CD in the drive! It was of the "hard rock" variety.

PvK

Rogue · #3 October 30th, 2003, 10:53 PM

Not a flame, or putting anyone down, this is just my (humble) opinion on DOM2.

Having played, and owned

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".

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

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.

Particle · #4 October 30th, 2003, 11:10 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Dryton:
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.

I second this.

Nerfix · #5 October 30th, 2003, 11:13 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Particle:

quote:
Originally posted by Dryton:
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.

I second this.

What is your favorite game? May i go to their offical MB and whine how their game is overpiced? If you aren't willing to pay $45 for a game like Dom II, then don't, but please, don't whine about it. I'm used to pay $50-60 for games.

licker · #6 October 30th, 2003, 11:18 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Particle:

quote:
Originally posted by Dryton:
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.

I second this.

More to the point...

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 ]

Taqwus · #7 October 31st, 2003, 12:03 AM

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.