Incentives to patch the game?

[Edi]

Jourdelune said:
Anyway, my feelings about that dependency of a game manual:

It is mean to put away any people copying the game and playing it without paying for it.

It's like a cd protection system, but without using it.

"Meant to put away" or "Mean to put away"? A fairly big difference between the meanings there. I presume you meant the first option. I don't understand the CD protection comment, since the Dom3 CDs themselves don't have copy protection that I know of.

Jourdelune said:
And some people on this forum, prefer to don't take chance about piracy and refer to the manual the noob on their forum, hurting the general grow of the community.

We've had our share of pirates here and most often they get caught because they ask obvious questions that would have been answered by reading the manual. Manual referrals generally are not mean-spirited here, though sometimes you do get people snapping at you. Especially for obvious things.

Jourdelune said:
When players are put on a negative mold because the dev try to reduce the piracy, it's simply don't make it. Surely, you got less pirate, but you got less players that would have been interested by the game. The negative mold here is go read your manual.

As you said, Dom3 is a niche game. It's not going to get significantly more (in the sense you're talking about) players even with pirates, and pirates also happen to use bandwidth and other resources that somebody (in this case Shrapnel) must pay for if they come to the forums. There's another word for pirate, and that's "parasite". It's a fact of life that people will resent those who just try to sponge off and since most of the pirates who have been caught here have been caught precisely because of the manual or obvious lack of one, "go read the manual" is not in fact a negative answer. Just skimming it can give you a lot of info.

This does not mean that I have something against you. In fact, now that I look back on the thread, I can understand why you felt that way, but the comment about snarling "RTFM" was meant more generally rather than at you specifically. I admit that is not quite clear from the context. Apologies for that.

Jourdelune said:
In Vanguard it was go back to WOW. Those too are niche market game with negative mold to protect something that don't need to be protect. Protection restrict expansions...

Vanguard is irrelevant here. Krisoffer also gave a fairly good direction as to where the game is going. Dom3 expansions are going to happen along with patches (such as 3.10, which added enough content to be an expansion on its own). The protection scheme on Dom3 does not have any problems restricting adding content to the game. It does make life hard for those pirate Dom3.

Jourdelune said:
Galactic Civilization 4 got the same CD-Key restriction by patches but with 0 cd protection software. (same probs, I cannot update it from home, and worse, I need to update it with the computer the game is installed on) So, when I had bought the game and I had no way to patch my game at home, without internet... what I had think about that game? I had been cheated. I had paid for a buggy games that I cannot update because I don't got internet.

What's the relevance here to Dominions 3? This rant in a Dom3 context puzzles me, since updating Dom3 does not require an active internet connection during the process. The patches are simple executable files.

As for the evil plot, I have no experience of GalCiv, but from the sound of it, the patching issue is done differently from Dom3, so is not relevant here. It is a fact of life that the gaming market is mainly aimed at first world countries where internet connections are common and game design decisions can reflect that. It is usually also said on the box if a connection is required rather than just recommended. With Dom3, it is not even required for anything, since patches can be downloaded elsewhere and transported.

[Jourdelune]

Endoperez said:
Jourdeloune, why would you like Dominions 4 to have spesifically great 3d graphics instead of great graphics, leaving the choice of 2d/3d to the developers? The latest Shrapnel Games' FRAG! newsletter (not available online, but I can provide the particular article if you're interested) discussed the necessity of 3d.

In Fantasy General, in battle, you could "possess" unit to do battle!

I know the PBEM status, but the option to have active battle on/off switch is not a problem. ( look at Age of Wonders implementations )

Giving the possibility to take control of a UNIT to do any thing you like in the combat... 3D help terribly. With 3D you got first person / isometric view / top down view without redrawing every sprites you got.

The script then play it, should give new breath to the genre. In that regard, script it and play it give some RTS combat a new feel to the game. A lot of people have bought Total War for the RTS feel of battle and TBS feel of strategic development.

The combat engine could permit it, without redesigning it a lot. (simply adding the "possess" command on a unit choices (commander only or every unit possible).

Now, you can do something new... and less boring! Give unit moves or combo, or a lot of abilities that require skills and timing to be more efficient. (developing a new game in the old one -> Edi )

3D help to for the zoom in and zoom out model. While zooming in, you can see pretty cities and fort and so on, while zooming out we can have our old school strategic map has well.

Dominions got a nice engine (i don't know the code behind it, if it is OO (oriented object) with design pattern, it is simply easy to bring new features) you can add something new for the infinity.

I had played 2 years of Birthright : Gorgon Alliance. It was a blast. A kind of RTS tactical... (yeah it could be possible) with a nice 3D (false 3d, doom like) that give the possibilities to your heroes to do quest and dungeon crawling to get unique artifact.

That was really fun to change of pace of the game... TBS can be boring if they are always the same, night over nights... So, a 2 hours dungeon crawling for the sake of your Kingdom is even better...

And 3D... guess what... unfortunately, the gaming world sell on good looking game.

[Jourdelune]

Edi:

I don't know the difference between meant and mean... :S I should look into it.

To answer all of your questions about my other post:

"Ouf... all those lines simply because I had the feeling to be crush by a "protecting community mold" about a manual not implemented in the game. "

For a newcomer (even if I lurk since June at job downtime), it could be a bit harsh to be welcome with a look into your manuals statement. And my question cannot be answer with that, because the 3.00 version don't come with commanders icon on strat map and my manual is a 3.00 version. I don't think that the manuals got a lot of updated even with all the change since 3.00 to 3.10.

And at that starting "feeling", I had expand a lot about those on the "protective mold" bring with the dependency of the manual to play the game.

While a big manual is always nice to have (a lot of game simply sell their strategic guide separately), it should not be a must to play a game. (even to counter piracy because, a dependency to play a game with a manual affect all your potential users)

It was completely a IMHO post about some incoherence of a community. While I express them, feel free to show me other way to view it, like you had done.

All in all, I don't have bad feeling toward it, since I had express myself and I have not been flame by those different point of view.

Dominions is by far the best Fantasy War Game on the market. But IMHO, it got a lot of flaw that could be addressed to be a better and perfect game that could sell millions of copy.
(control panel for spells that we don't want to be cast by our mages is a really nice features... a lot have been suggest on that forum to bring Dominion to a greater game)

Even if it is not for the money, the desire to expand a successful implementation of a fantasy war game to bring more people into it.

Jourdelune

[Endoperez]

All ideas don't work. I could go into more detail about most of yours, but that doesn't benefit anyone.

1) Player-controlled battles would make multiplayer, except perhaps 1vs1, impossible. If it was a game option, we'd have two entirely different games that couldn't both be balanced. As an example, anything with good range and good precision could be used to kill 2-3 enemy commanders, and BAM you win. White Centaur with its bow and incredible speed, any S3 mage with Mind Burn, commander with flying and 5 flying bodyguards...

2) The graphical detail is in the map image. It doesn't change with seasons, between games, etc. For there to be anything to zoom at, the game would have to use maps that incorporate magic sites, forts, army sizes, events, pillaging, seasons and all that into the map itself. That would be nice, but would mean that maps would need predefined sprites/models, and as such would need a spesific editor, which would make mapmaking harder. (Yes, it would. Illwinter editors are hard to use, and map editors of other games can be used to make Dominions maps. Just add white dots!)

It would be nice to have Dominions with unique, movie-quality 3d models and maps, down to the little C'tissian running lizards moving the tax carts and the immigrants between the massive pine forests of the Jotunlands slowly being turned into mangrove swamps by the Miasma dominion. The battles would look awesome. I doubt Dominions will ever be there, though, and I know it'd make modding almost impossible. How could you add a Vaetti Archer if you'd have to create, texture and rig a 3d model? At the moment, anyone can change the 4-pixel spear into a 4-pixel bow. It won't look good, but it will work.

[Wikd Thots]

3D would put a real kink in the ability to mod. I have games where the next version added 3D and the good of it was way low compared to the modding that it killed.

[CUnknown]

I agree with Endoperez, I remember when I first starting playing Dom2, I was very disappointed about the lack of strategic control over the battles. I was used to Age of Wonders and games like that. But now, I don't miss it at all anymore, and in fact, I think lack of strategic control makes Dominions much better! If there was control over battles, the game would just take forever and balancing the units would be very difficult.

[PashaDawg]

Getting back to the original post... and, perhaps, this is now irrelevant because Jourdelune has perhaps already patched:

I can understand that buying a USB key is a costly solution to allow patching without internet at home. But, I suspect that you (Jourdelune) probably have a friend who already owns a USB key that you could borrow. After all, you only need it for a day. I'd be happy to lend you mine, but you're probably too far away.

[Edi]

Jourdelune said:
I don't know the difference between meant and mean... :S I should look into it.

Oh, sorry. English is not your first language. I tend to forget that with people, probably because it's my second language as well, but I'm as fluent in it as my native language. More so where vocabulary is concerned.

I'll explain:

• The word 'mean' as a verb is the same as 'intend' in some respects, to give meaning in others. E.g. "I mean that you should do <x>" or similar. The word 'meant' is the past tense, i.e. things that have already happened.
• As an adjective, 'mean' is the same as nasty, unpleasant, malicious. E.g. "Cheating on her was a mean thing to do" or similar.

That's actually why I asked about it, because depending on which usage of the word you read into those sentences of yours, the outcome is very, very different. Either "Meant to deter piracy" or "being mean to pirates", and the latter interpretation (which, looking at it now, would obviously be incorrect) would make your words come across as sympathetic toward pirates. This is about as good an example of the pitfalls possible with language barriers.

[lch]

Jourdelune said:
In Fantasy General, in battle, you could "possess" unit to do battle!

That post made me chuckle. Your main interest is probably to give some feedback to improve the game, but you have no idea how much work there is involved to get something like that. Remember that this is, programming-wise, a one man show. Most of the current users would probably not like something like that (which is kinda pointless in a turn-based game, anyway, it's just some gimmick) or even it won't work on their low-end systems, and people that are not users yet still wouldn't care at all. To me, a feature like that has never been real successful, or let's say: useful, in a game. First that comes to mind is Dungeon Keeper. I have recently seen some game where this seems moderately useful, a game which started as some FPS TeamArena clone and then had a RTS game added on top of it ("Commander Mode"). If you want a game like that, I suggest you should try playing it. But the FPS/RTS genre mix always seems lacking to me. Concentrate on your strength instead of producing an undefinable soup.