Vanilla Summon Costs

Sombre · #1 March 10th, 2008, 04:51 PM

The manual is already pretty hopeless. It's been wrong on almost everything I've actually needed/wanted to look up.

Jazzepi · #2 March 10th, 2008, 05:02 PM

Quote:

Sombre said:
The manual is already pretty hopeless. It's been wrong on almost everything I've actually needed/wanted to look up.

I completely agree, and sometimes the spell doesn't even work as described in the manual. Stygian paths, anyone?

In Magic : The Gathering, they've faced this problem for a long time. Since the rules have changed so greatly since the printing of the first sets, they've had to extensively change old cards. For example, there is no longer "interrupts" in magic anymore. Everything is an instant. The important lesson to take away is that they weren't afraid to go back and meddle with older cards to make the game better. Even though it makes it a bit more difficult to pickup old cards and play with them according to the oracle wording (the official text of every card is listed in the oracle), the game is made that much better because old mechanics are fixed, cards are reworded, and things become keywords.

Also, they generally only change things to make them clearer, while preserving as much of the original effect as possible. Lighting Bolt may now be an instant instead of an interrupt, but chances are a player picking one up is going to play it almost exactly the same way as someone might play Shock.

I see a lot of value in gently tweaking these lower level summons. Make them more valuable. Let people use their gems on stuff other than forging, SCs, and magic diversity.

Jazzepi

Endoperez · #3 March 10th, 2008, 05:11 PM

Quote:

Jazzepi said:
I completely agree, and sometimes the spell doesn't even work as described in the manual. Stygian paths, anyone?

What's wrong with it now that the bug has been fixed?

* Caster of Stygian Paths took 1 an dmg for each unit under his command instead of units taking 1 an dmg each
* Stygian Paths reported random number of lost on the way

Manual: Transports the caster and all troops under his command to distant province. En route, all troops are attacked by dmg:1 AN attack and dmg: Death, MR attack. These represent the spirits of the underworld attacking. Stealthy units only have a 20% chance of being hit by the death attack. The caster gains no benefit from stealth.

Gregstrom · #4 March 10th, 2008, 05:33 PM

I too think gentle tweaks would be of value. A bit of a boost to summon numbers or stats, or adding scaling per path level in the right place, would add a lot to some spells. Work like that done to the 'Sleeping in...' spells, adding some scale dependencies or dominion-dependent boosts, could also be a neat solution. Summon Animals might summon bigger, stronger animals in a Growth scale, for instance.

Karlem · #5 March 10th, 2008, 05:55 PM

We have the options at hand:

1.- Make the changes in patches so SP people will not notice if they do not patch.
2.- Add a PDF to the Patch with the modifications done.

This way you can keep the manual as a basic rules book and the PDF file updated to the last changes.

You can also ship the game with the last patch and PDF file and everybody will be happy!

Dedas · #6 March 10th, 2008, 06:06 PM

I think Illwinter should forget an updated manual, at least for the moment. With so many changes and continuous patching I don't see the point, it is just too much work. It would be better to just wait until most bugs and extreme unbalances are fixed, and then release an updated manual in PDF. In the meantime we have the excellent in-game information and this forum to help us.

Endoperez · #7 March 10th, 2008, 06:13 PM

Dedas - scale bug was fixed for 3.14, which introduced a new scale bug. It was fixed in 3.15, but either .14 or .15 introduced "armies not moving" bug. Continuous patches are the result of "most bugs and extreme unbalances" being present, and sometimes being created by the patch.

PDF update to the manual would be really handy, though. That's a really good suggestion.

Dedas · #8 March 10th, 2008, 06:25 PM

I understand why the game needs to be updated regularly, that is natural when you change things in a big game like this one. My point is that it would be a waste of time to release an updated manual with every patch. Updating help texts should have low priority until it is relatively safe that the new features work as intended.
Also, the people that actually notice the different changes (not additions) and discusses them on the forums, aren't exactly newbies, so a manual is not really needed at once.

Another thing to remember is that you don't have to update the game to play and learn the basics as a newbie. I would suggest not to, so that you can use the printed manual as you play. When you feel ready to jump into MP, just download the latest patch and play some SP with a nation you like to get a feel for changes. When that is done you should stand a fair chance in any newbie game.

Twan · #9 March 11th, 2008, 07:27 AM

Quote:

Dedas said:
I think Illwinter should forget an updated manual, at least for the moment.

I think a good in between idea would be to release the spell list part of the manual* in an editable format to some dedicated players. Then a printable version with all the changes can be made by them, keeping the good presentation, for both vanilla game as it evolves and CBM or other spell changing mods.

* The game mechanics part of the manual would stay on paper only of course to avoid to encourage piracy.

B0rsuk · #10 March 11th, 2008, 08:03 AM

I think that NOT including a proper electronic manual is silly. Piracy concerns ? Security through obscurity ?
If it was up to me, there would be either no paper manual or it would only contain general stuff not dependant on patches. I may be strange, but I think listing all summons on inconvenient to use paper pages is waste of time, money, and trees.