what about the future?

[Tim Brooks]

Why is it niche?

- Turn based strategy is niche. Very hard to get a AAA publisher for. (Yeah, I know it is a circle definition, it is niche because the big boys say it is niche). There are very few exceptions, civilization, and some handheld tbs games. And only civ has some depth.
- It has a humongous learning curve. As almost all tbs games have. This makes it hard to pick up and play. Which makes it niche.
- Comparing it to Civ isn't totally fair. Civ is the exception to the rule. You should compare it to other AAA tbs games. Ow wait... these don't really exist... why would that be?
- Would the 14 year old the current halo/gears of war crowd play Dom3? Or women? Would your mom play it? For most of these it would be No. So that makes it kinda niche.

Soyweiser, you got it right. Well done. I started reading this thread last night (started at post #90 so haven't read the whole thread) and thought this morning I might jump in here and post, because so many people posting here have it all wrong. But your post is right on. The two biggest reasons that Dominions 3 is a niche game and these are pretty equal: 1. the learning curve and 2. the graphics.

The whole discussion of pricing is all wrong also. Maybe a post later that explains how and why pricing is as it is would be helpful.

Thanks for contributing.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by Tim Brooks

The whole discussion of pricing is all wrong also. Maybe a post later that explains how and why pricing is as it is would be helpful.

Again?
I can search for

"pricing" CD "Tim Brooks"

showing up together and easily find a chain of posts, interviews, bloggings going back for years. Dom3, Dom2, SEIV, various "about Shrapnel Games" articles and why it was created.

OK there might be some changes.
Maybe you can just dig up some of the old ones and update it.

Wow, Ive been around too long.

[HoneyBadger]

There are things about Dom3 that make it great, that are tradeoffs which naturally reduce the player base (graphics, the learning curve, historical mythology instead of generic fantasy), and then there are things that could be polished (the AI, lack of a single player campaign, the UI, Windows integration, more/less varied music and "smoother" sound (more music to combat repetitiveness, a thorough revising of the sounds in the game to remove any "screeching elephants", etc.), the game manual, balance and more regular "updating" of older Nations), which would appeal to both the current fanbase, and bring in new players, at the same time.

All of these things would take time, but some of them could be done without monetary cost, or attention from the Devs:

While the AI, the UI, and the Windows incompatibility are basically beyond the ability for anyone but the Devs to directly improve, the rest probably wouldn't be impossible for the existing player base to atleast improve, if not completely fix.

A very good map with a lot of attention given to extensive background "flavor" and documentation...well, it won't replace a "proper" campaign, but it might go a long ways towards filling the gap. Done well, though, it could go a long way towards increasing the "roleplaying" aspects of the game, and add some semi-canon, which, if interesting enough, might draw some customers in on it's own merits.

The cost: A huge amount of time and talent, and some consideration towards both an amicable "vanilla" scenario, and towards how even to go about creating such a thing. Also, probably the equivalent of writing atleast one historical fantasy novel...or series...and enough research to choke a Great Sage.

Music's been discussed before, and sounds have already been improved by modders. It would be nice if we could get together some kind of "Forum's Choice" music soundtrack for each existing Nation, drawn from free open sources without legal strings. There's quite a lot of sources for exactly this kind of thing, online. Not only pieces of music, but also sounds. There's even a limited amount of modern music, distributed as free, unlicensed music.

The cost: Time, probably from several individuals, in order for proper perspective and scope, and still more time, to assure that the pieces selected are without legal strings.

The game manual can-and from what I've seen, probably should be-rewritten by (old) players, for (new) players. The better such a thing was written, the more it should (slightly) reduce the learning-curve.

That's not a criticism of the original manual, it's simply a product of years of post-Gold research, and updates to the game. The ability to edit and expand the existing manual to clear up confusion, and correct mistakes/fill in gaps, would be useful, but if a manual needed to be rewritten from the beginning for legal reasons, that would also be possible.

The finished product could then be accessed by PDF or what have you, and downloaded/printed, without publishing costs. This could be separate from, and parallel to, Wiki efforts, since some people like having the information in their physical hand, while others prefer having it at their digital fingertips, via the web/wiki.

The cost: Again, lots of time, good writing/editing skills, more research (I think the manual could be made more "readable" and interesting, and we wouldn't be handcuffed to a page-count, since this would be a PDF), and either permission from Shrapnel Games and Illwinter, or a separate website and a complete rewrite.
A downloaded manual can easily be handed to a friend, who might then read it, and decide to give the game a chance. That could bring in a few customers, here and there.

As per balance: Some Nations are more powerful than others. That's not a bad thing, by itself, and doesn't always need to be excised. That does not mean that the Nations we have can't be better balanced against each other, without making them all the same. This could (and in my opinion, should) be a much larger focus than it currently is, compared to the development of new original Nations. For one thing, the better the existing Nations worked against each other, the more fun it would be to create new Nations to compete with them, and compare them to.

For those who consider the Nations that come with the game to be sacrosanct: As far as I know, none of them are hardcoded into the game, all of them are fully modifiable, and Kristoffer himself (who's admitted he doesn't always fully grasp balancing issues) has modded his own Nations in the past, to make them more playable and/or interesting (Recently, Hinnom and Jomon).

As for making Nations "all the same", this ofcourse isn't a goal, but it has some limited potential. For instance, niefel giants, elephants, dragons, etc. all lack gluttony. If that single factor were made homogenous across all 50+ Nations, it would affect balance enormously, and in many cases for the better.

Units with abilities that can be considered common, and very useful, like assassins, scouts, sailors, and banner units, could be made more commonplace across the board, while still much more expensive and rare for some Nations than others, increasing strategic options and flexibility, especially for weaker Nations, while not destroying balance.

New abilities, such as "Shattered Soul" could be incorporated into existing Nations that were simply created long before the ability was coded. New Heroes/Multiheroes, Summons, and Pretenders could be added, to make existing Nations play in new ways.

There's no reason that independent units need be generically bland. Great citystates, ancient warrior-orders, mysterious ruins (and their occupants) assassin cults, and crumbling empires might exist in many lands where Pretenders simply haven't arisen, and might be interested in getting behind a likely Power.

Independents could be more thoroughly and interestingly developed, in terms of flavour, while removing the most generic independent units that have little usefulness, giving the AI (and the players as well) a small break in the process. This could likely be done more easily than the creation of a new Nation, since consideration of balance and pixel art would be less burdensome.

Making each Nation in the game as balanced as possible, while adding new interest to old ideas, could be expected to net atleast a few new players. The cost: Lots of time, again. Help, if possible, from people who understand balance. Much less graphic intensity than creating new Nations (which should appeal to some people on the Forums).

Dom3 may always remain a "niche game", but it can be made broader simply by removing it's real weaknesses, without compromising it's strengths, even the quirky ones that might be considered "faults" in the eyes of some.

Some of those weaknesses (not all, but some) can be repaired by the "niche players" who love it, despite them. And, in the process, make the game more successful, which we can all be proud of.

[Gandalf Parker]

Ive got a long list of notes for a (never created) blog on Dom3 which would be full of "How can I" questions and their answers. Like switches/config, battle simulator, save/restore, screenshots, uplod battles to youtube, set an alarm, host, notes, notes on map, make a map, make a mod, make an AI (play against myself), change the music, speed up the game, beat the AI, beat Ermor, beat that perfect strategy, bank my money, run a game without leaving my machine up 24/7, run a pbem game, host a blitz game, play xxxxxx nation best, see what the AI is thinking, play on a lan with one copy, play against my bud with us both having the same nation for fairness, run in windows mode, add a title to my gods name, get ALL the titles on my god to ones I like, get a sound or screen change when the turn has processed, how can I get a "take me back into my game" button like other games have, How do I see age, see size, spectate a game like on steam, change sounds my wife hates like elephants and women screams, soften the mouse click, stop the E key from ending my turn, do my MP turn without updating the server, talk voice to people in the game like XBox, set waypoints for my build queues, make maps look hand drawn
and many more.

Alot of my notes are for things that the devs have already fixed such as "how can I have multiple saved gods for the same nation". And now that we have an official wiki I could just do it there. Yeah.. but we all know what Im like about getting things like that done

[HoneyBadger]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Yeah.. but we all know what Im like about getting things like that done

Better than I am!

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

Why is it niche?

- Turn based strategy is niche. Very hard to get a AAA publisher for. (Yeah, I know it is a circle definition, it is niche because the big boys say it is niche). There are very few exceptions, civilization, and some handheld tbs games. And only civ has some depth.

And yet one of the premier CivIV mods was a fantasy mod. There's clearly demand for a 'fantasy Civ' game. I don't think it would be that hard to get a large publisher for one (so long as you had developers willing to actually put the effort in to turn out a first rate product).

- It has a humongous learning curve. As almost all tbs games have. This makes it hard to pick up and play. Which makes it niche.

This is what a tutorial game would be for. No, not something in the manual on paper, a scenario that walked you through playing the first 20 turns or so with pop-ups and scripted events.

Actually, thats the first thing Dom3 would need done to it to be mass-marketable: have hooks in the code to allow scripted events.

- Comparing it to Civ isn't totally fair. Civ is the exception to the rule. You should compare it to other AAA tbs games. Ow wait... these don't really exist... why would that be?

Master of Magic was also tremendously successful. Master of Orion was tremendously successful (1+2, 3 was an abomination and failed not because it was turn based, but because it was a poorly composed set of 'features'). Panzer General was hugely successful, and that franchise is still alive and well (and still turn-based!). Combat Mission was quite successful and spawned two sequels (all 3 within the last decade). Saying TBS is dead seems to show a lack of knowledge.

I can't comment on the success of Elemental (although it seems to have been released as a beta...), but its a fantasy civ game that just got released.

- Would the 14 year old the current halo/gears of war crowd play Dom3? Or women? Would your mom play it? For most of these it would be No. So that makes it kinda niche.

There are women who play dom3. At least 3 of them. If the IRC population is any indication, women make up somewhere on the order of 3-5% of the dom3 player-base. Which for a conflict-driven game is probably pretty good.

My mom wouldn't know how to use a computer game, much less have a desire to play one. The over 60 computer game market is *really* niche.

Why are we trying to compete with the FPS crowd? Those aren't the competition. We should be trying to convince all the people playing FfH2 in Civ4 that what they really want to be doing is playing a TBS game that was *written as fantasy*. And we want to convince the board and war gamers that they could spend some time playing a computer game that has as much depth as the board/war game they like playing. That's your market. Its actually a pretty large market.

Seriously, do you know how many people play Axis and Allies? A lot. The A+A *tournament* at GenCon gets a whole room, and a pretty large one at that, all of which are people who enjoy boardgaming with strategic depth - and that's just one boardgame, and the people who play it seriously enough to compete in a tournament *and* travel to GenCon to do so. Sure, not all of them are necessarily interested in fantasy, but you don't need all of them to be interested. Or we could talk about the success of Battlelore, various LotR strategic boardgames, etc...

Nobody said that fantasy made it a niche game. I think it is the other way around.

And Warhammer and Avalon hill games are also niche. They appeal to a very specific set of people. And this group isn't that large you know.

Warhammer is popular enough that GW runs stores in major cities dedicated solely to Warhammer. Avalon Hill (now defunct of course) produced Axis and Allies, probably the most successful war game ever made after Chess. This group is huge. Clearly you've never been to a gaming convention.

Just compare tbs games with depth to adventure games. Both have great potential. But remain niche.

Already proven TBS is not that niche, see above. Not sure about adventure games - you'd have to define the genre =p. Because I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to in this day and age.

--------
Now, dom3 would certainly need some work if it wasn't going to be niche. But its work that shouldve been done anyway.

I do totally disagree that you need to genericize the fantasy elements, btw. FfH2 has plenty of interesting factions which aren't generic (it has some that are generic, which is unfortunate, but the factions that were included are what the creator chose to include, not what was demanded by the fanbase.) If you offer an even vaguely compelling fantasy world the fanbase will accept it as is.

I mean, hell, you could see Dom3 as just renaming 'generic' fantasy elements into other things, which is so common in fantasy literature these days its a trope unto itself. (Now, dom3 is using the original names, but if someone only knows 'elf' and 'dwarf', they'll see them as renames). I mean, 'sidhe' are elves. Svartalfar are dwarves. And anyone with half a brain can see that. To pretend dom3 doesn't have 'elves and dwarves' is to horribly delude oneself.

[Tim Brooks]

Again?
I can search for
Code:
"pricing" CD "Tim Brooks"showing up together and easily find a chain of posts, interviews, bloggings going back for years. Dom3, Dom2, SEIV, various "about Shrapnel Games" articles and why it was created.

I'm smiling Gandalf. Yea, I've explained it over and over. Although there are even more compelling reasons why we do what we do than ever before. It just amazes me the people who think that mainstream publishers reduce the price of a game bacause they sell tons more doing so. Sigh.

[lch]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

Better than I am!

I never gave up the hope that the waveforms for all these great potential contributions would finally be collapsing into something more material.

And I can honestly say that I really started to wonder what was up with you, HoneyBadger, good to see that you have returned to the forums.

[Zeldor]

Tim Brooks:

I'd like to apologise on behalf of our arrogant community. No one here has idea about conducting anything business-related nor has any experience in production, management or distribution of any kind. You and Shrapnel sound like a very successful company and every indie game developer is aware of your unique and greatly efficient ad campaigns, so they flock to you, hoping that you will pick their game as next release. I hope ad campaign for next IW game will be as awesome as the one that's going on for Dominions 3!

[Valerius]

I'm curious as to the demographics of the TBS market and whether it's an aging audience that was exposed to turn based games when they started playing computer games and maintained an interest in them over time. Do the vast majority of young players today (if they have an interest in strategy games at all) prefer the fast pace of RTS games (something that didn't exist when many older players began with strategy games)?

I also wonder about the overlap between players interested in military simulations and 4X games. The Squad Leader players I've known wouldn't have had any interest in fantasy games...