On the cusp...

[Ballbarian]

1) Long times for map generation and turn processing.

There are already existing random maps being provided by Gandalf, and alternative random map generators exist and another is in develpmont.

As for the turn generation, Dominions is a game with tremendous depth and with that depth comes complexity. I am actually impressed that Johan has managed to keep the turn processing as streamlined as he has.

1) Pretender generation. This should all be one screen, simple as that.

Eh. I could care less one way or the other on this one. Might be nice, but I don't mind it as it is now.

2) The map. I'm sorry, but the icons and such are still ugly. When it was ugly and minimalist, as in Pretenders II, that was cool -- it was what it was. But this intermediate level of ugly is atrocious.

Huh?

I don't need to see a sizable chunk of my screen flashing every time I click an area

Sounds to me like you are zoomed all the way in. (Either that or you are playing on a cell phone screen.) You can zoom out via page up/down keys or by the mouse wheel.

3) Menus in general -- get a dang GUI expert to go through and clean house, making all of the backgrounds get along with all of the sprites for the various units, et cetera. This isn't an enormous task, and it would vastly improve playability.

The developers have included the ability to mod the gui backgrounds to your own tastes and several users have already done so and made them available here on the forums.

4) Various report options. Let me know how many x's I've killed or gotten killed. That's called flava, and it makes games fun. Let me know how many people died in a siege or assault. If a commander was killed in a battle, let me know which one. Those suckers are expensive. If critters which cost more than 100 GP per were killed in a battle, let me know. Don't make me watch every battle to see if it was my Sorceror or my Water Mage who ate it, because I can't remember who all I committed. When I whack a Pretender, throw up a summary screen of the Pretender's accomplishments (units created, etc.) and a couple of paragraphs on how I threw my enemy down before me. If you're feeling clever, tune the paragraphs to what kind of unit killed it -- if a militiaman finished the job, emphasize ignomy. If it took Joe Stoic, Holder of the Sacred Flame of Badassery, emphasize the heroics. But something. Seriously.

The game is already loaded with "flava"
Overall I am satisfied with the reports that I get, but I will never complain if I get more verbose reports as long as they don't become spam. If I have an important commander in a battle then I watch it unless it is a sure win scenario. But if the report shows that a commander died then I watch the battle replay closely to see what the heck I did wrong.

The game still has its overall amateur feel, which isn't a terrible thing; the idea that it is the creation of people who love gaming to give to other people who love gaming is fine. I feel the love. But you gotta take away the un-fun parts, or I can't get at the delicious nougatty center underneath.

I hope you can get past the things that are un-fun to you, because it is delicious.

Finally, now that Dominions 3 is out, you should totally start selling Dominions 2 for some ridiculously low price on download. Think of it as the first hit being free.

This has been discussed in other threads, thus no comment.

When I first read your post, my first impression was to post a reply similar to Arralen's. I think it was something about the tone or choice of words that came across as "I won't buy this game because it does not have enough wizbangs ."

[MythicalMino]

Can someone explain to me why the animated arrows are such a problem? I must be missing something, because they do not really bother me at all.....

[Ballbarian]

I like them. Makes it much easier on a large map with many commanders on the move to see what is going on. Try to take away my arrows and you will draw back a nub.

[Endoperez]

Can someone explain me why this post was met with such hostility? All of these changes, AFAIK, are something that we won't have, but what I at least would LIKE TO. I don't think these changes are small enough for a patch, that's true. Starting a new thread for the suggestions was perhaps a bit too much; in the "patch wish list" thread this post was just one amongst many. Many suggestions have been seen before. "Better GUI" or "Improved GUI" are very common, better battle reports as well, and everything in this post was very precisely said. It's much easier to go to the game, check if his point is true and perhaps look for a way to improve than to do it from "GUI could be improved" post. What's wrong with you guys? Really?

[Nerfix]

I think it was kimmitt's, hmmm, how do you say it, way of presenting the things. And suggesting price drop and not knowing the name of the previous game of the serious will gather a wee bit of agro around here.

[Cainehill]

Frankly, I agree with some of what the guy says. Not map generation - that should happen rarely enough that even for SP it should be acceptable (although it seems that more maps shiped for Dom2, and it would have been nice if the _fixed_ versions of the old maps had shipped).

But turn processing : yes, it's okay for MP games, at least for non-blitz games. But if the turn processing gets longer and longer as games go on (and more battles take place with larger armies, etc), the SP game may have yet another nail in its coffin.

Frankly, I'm not sure _why_ it processes turns so much more slowly now - I don't see Dom3 doing much more than Dom2 did in going from turn to turn, except possibly for performing that @#$* aging check. Wouldn't be surprised if updating the graphics isn't the problem : I worked on some map processing software that took as much as 20 minutes to perform one operation, on a multi-processor minicomputer. Discovered that optimizing how the progress bar was drawn allowed me to knock it down to less than a minute, as it was recalculating and redrawing the bar even if the percentage of progress hadn't changed. Hundreds of times a second, it was redrawing an identical progress bar. Looking at the flickering display during turn processing, I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't the same thing. (And the smooth fade-in when viewing battles also gets irritating and time consuming, since there seems to be no way to skip it.)

Then the battle reports : for two years, players have been asking for at least the same battle report on sieges that we get on other battles. No good excuse for the lack of proper reports on them. And people have asked for more detailed reports, since #1, finding out _which_ 5 commanders out of 24 is tiresome yet sometimes vital. #2, finding out which troops died, same issue : it adds a layer of tedium and irritation to the game, since it's often difficult to even remember what troops exactly went into the battle, so looking at what remains isn't always helpful.

And as Endoperez says : the hostility of at least one response seems unwarranted. Maybe he's catching some blowback from the real idiots who were *****ing about the game, but still....

[upstreamedge]

I actually really like his idea about more interesting battle reports. I think that would get tiresome for hardcore players, but now I think I will start posting how I kicked *** in the multi I am playing on the forum! I would like to know which of my commanders died, but I like watching battles, and my commanders don't die much. I think it is really good that the turns take a long time to load because I do my homework while the turns are loading And who cares about how long it takes for a random map to generate? I mean I can generate a medium map in under a min so I see no problem

[dirtywick]

There are some good points there, the map generator is really slow even on my computer. The battle reports could use some work as well in my opinion. Turn generation isn't too bad, maybe you're not sending that many rockets .

About the map, zooming out makes life easier.

[curtadams]

Cainehill said:
But turn processing : yes, it's okay for MP games, at least for non-blitz games. But if the turn processing gets longer and longer as games go on (and more battles take place with larger armies, etc), the SP game may have yet another nail in its coffin.

Frankly, I'm not sure _why_ it processes turns so much more slowly now - I don't see Dom3 doing much more than Dom2 did in going from turn to turn

Probably the spellcasting AI. Man, what an improvement! Casters pitch at the front row of the enemy army - until yours gets close and then they fire one row back. And they sometimes surprise me with spells I wouldn't think useful - but they are. Missle fire has improved, too. That kind of AI takes time and I'm not surprised that battles with a dozen spellcasters and a hundred archers can take, gosh, several seconds.

[DominionsFan]

Lads, some old users here should moderate themselves. I find some replies a bit too harsh. I think that there is a more intelligent way to discuss in this thread.