what about the future?

[Pocus]

Hi,

As an old Dom1-Dom2-Dom3 player who had quitted playing this awesome game since some years already, I wanted to know if there is any plan to have a true scripting language for Dominions,so that people could at last make kind of 'campaigns' scenarios, with triggers and events.

Or is it that dom3 progress is ended, baring bugs? :doh:

[Gandalf Parker]

It seems pretty much ended.
Illwinter is working on a new project (thats all we know other than they ARE working hard on it)

Some creative 3rd party fan work has allowed for games that have triggers and events. But only for server run MP games. Nothing yet that would work for solo play.

[Doo]

The future is bright.

[Pocus]

Thank you Gandalf for taking the time to answer. You truely were and still is instrumental in the success of the Dominions serie, believe me :)

That's a pity really that they never saw the interest a true scripting language could had for their game. It would have enabled the rabid fans here to build whole dynamic worlds, thus enabling Dominions to raise to a new success level.

Perhaps they will revisit the game once their new puppy is out, this is all I can wish.

[Zeldor]

lol

[Gandalf Parker]

A scripting language needs to be built into a game from the beginning IMHO.
I think that we are lucky we are getting as much modding access as we are considering that much of it was added to the game at a late date.

I do have hopes for scripting in their new project.

[DrPraetorious]

The dominions codebase is really neat in a lot of respects - but it also shows it's age. I don't have access to the source code, but just from diving into the built-in tables you can see the accumulated cruft of ages, and a lot of things are hard-coded or messy hacks which will cause accumulated headaches down the line if they try to keep working on it.

That said, it is amazing how extensible and stable it is (and how small a footprint it has, which is really a hallmark of an earlier era), but I can see why they wouldn't want to add true scripting support - either for user-modded events, user-modded maps/scenarios, or user-modded spells.

[lch]

Johan really comes from an earlier era, and it shows in the code, though I have to emphasize that I admire him for actually coding a whole game on his own. You'd weep when I tell you the specifications about the file format for the sprites, and why they are saved in the way they are. The game still is a derivative of an Atari Falcon ST game.

I'm more interested in what this new game that they apparently are working on will look like instead of having unreasonable expectations of big changes like a scripting engine to this one, which already has been asked for over and over again since forever. The refactoring this would require is pretty much insurmountable.

[Grand Stone]

So nobody know anything about the 'new' project? Nothing?

Man, Im currius :)

[Gandalf Parker]

Many know at least some of the new project. But its tightly bound up with NDA's (non-disclosure agreements). Its a tight house.
Even parts of Dom3 and Dom2 are still bound in NDA's

[Grand Stone]

I get the picture.

Still, I'm realy currius about the 'next thing', and asking is not goverened by any NDA's :D

[DrPraetorious]

Oh, this was revealed a while back:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showpost.php?p=539100&postcount=15

[Grand Stone]

I was actually looking for something that was NOT an 1 of april joke...

[Gandalf Parker]

That was one of the better ones though.
There are a number of Dom4 threads that had some very creative guesses.

[DrPraetorious]

Hey! Revealing that info doubtless cost me the opportunity to be a playtester on dominions 4. Show a little gratitude for my sacrifices - I went out and bought an xbox 360 for nothing.

I was actually looking for something that was NOT an 1 of april joke...

[Septimius Severus]

Some creative 3rd party fan work has allowed for games that have triggers and events. But only for server run MP games. Nothing yet that would work for solo play.

Very interesting. Where I can find this fan made 3rd party work? I guess server side scripting of events and triggers huh?

[Stavis_L]

Some creative 3rd party fan work has allowed for games that have triggers and events. But only for server run MP games. Nothing yet that would work for solo play.

Very interesting. Where I can find this fan made 3rd party work? I guess server side scripting of events and triggers huh?

See Illuminated One's Dom 3 Scripting Framework:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43892

[Gandalf Parker]

The "dungeon master" mods were started partly for that purpose. I think it was all discussion until my Watcher mod http://www.dom3minions.com/mods.htm
Now there are a GameMaster, Debug, Pantokrator and some others I cant remember (apologies).

They all are designed to one person, the Game Master if you wish, access to the game in order to do more than just participate. Discussion included
a) enter the game and check on things from the inside
b) enter to get a map view
c) enter to grab an image of the score graphs
d) enter to send messages to everyone in the game such as to add flavor to the game
e) viewing and recording combats without being one of the participants
f) using messages and spells to duplicate and expand on events

Expansion of (f) is these events could use the same settings as present ones but expand them. Such as random numbers, turn counter, scales, terrain, seasons. They could also make use of anything that can be pulled from a games log if debugging is turned on including the taking or using of certain sites, arenas and their results, entry of certain factors into the game.

[NTJedi]

I get the picture.

Still, I'm realy currius about the 'next thing', and asking is not goverened by any NDA's :D

Stardock has done quite the opposite with the game they're currently working. We're talking about a couple developer journals every week with screenshots and game details. This method is generating more talk and discussion about this future game. "WORD OF MOUTH" is one of the main reasons for a successful game... NOT how quiet the developers were able to keep the game unknown. Stardock actually has the smartest move for a successful game as compared with the ultra hush silent treatment which is such a 1990s trend.

[Gandalf Parker]

That would depend on the developers.
Many of the suggestions for Dom3 were killed purely by the way they were discussed. No matter what the logic was, if it was demanded or belittled or sarcasmed then it could die. If Illwinter disclosed the details of their project to this crowd, Id suspect that the fun would go out of the development. Im not sure that it could survive us. Its better to get something than to chance getting nothing.

Everything has its pros and cons.

[das123]

...If Illwinter disclosed the details of their project to this crowd, Id suspect that the fun would go out of the development. Im not sure that it could survive us...

Very very insightful.

You can sometimes see the Stardock frustrations through their Elemental beta process and they obviously have very thick skins. Ultimately, for them, it has been very positive in terms of weeding out the bad concepts and introducing new ones but the frustrations with community expectations do rise to the surface occasionally.

But the Stardock Developer Updates are now coming out every couple of days with YouTube videos showing 'warts and all' testing. Extremely interesting to watch as they find something they don't like.

I must say I've got very high expectations for Elemental. :D

[rdonj]

If Illwinter disclosed the details of their project to this crowd, Id suspect that the fun would go out of the development. Im not sure that it could survive us. Its better to get something than to chance getting nothing.

Everything has its pros and cons.

You know, actually I completely agree with this. I've never seen a game community that wasn't at least *somewhat* hostile to the developers, and this one is no exception. We always think we know better than they do, and are quite willing to say so, loudly ;) I don't mind however JK and KO work on their new project. I'll be content waiting for it to be released, and with any luck, it will give me the years of entertainment playing dom3 has. If they are keeping things on the down low because they don't want us dampening their enthusiasm, well, I don't blame them at all. Instead I will just wish them luck, and hope the new project turns out well.

[LDiCesare]

Stardock's a big company witth full time developpers working on their projects. Illwinter doesn't have these resources, and couldn't interact with the community the way Stardock does.

[NTJedi]

That would depend on the developers.
Many of the suggestions for Dom3 were killed purely by the way they were discussed. No matter what the logic was, if it was demanded or belittled or sarcasmed then it could die.
If a king ignored a way to solve hunger for his kingdom simply because a village bully presented the idea... then the king made an unwise decision due to personal feelings. This reveals a weakness in the kings character.


If Illwinter disclosed the details of their project to this crowd, Id suspect that the fun would go out of the development. Im not sure that it could survive us. Its better to get something than to chance getting nothing.

Everything has its pros and cons.
If the fun of development is surviving primarily on keeping secrets then the project is really on unstable ground. The project should be able to survive based on creative ideas and a vision. I figured the secrets were because the developers had some contract with Shrapnel games involving keeping the game secret or the developers were following a trend from the 1990s and unaware how to protect their intellectual property during game development.
Overall I guess the success of the game doesn't really matter since Illwinter has never been interested in money.

[thejeff]

Or perhaps the fun of development is not based on keeping secrets, but based on not having to defend every step and every idea from naysayers.
They've got a group interested mostly because of dominions. Many of whom want a dominions 4 more than any other project. This may be the wrong audience for a new vision.

[Gandalf Parker]

I do see the points on both sides but logical arguments about what should be is moot now.
Its not as if the devs have to guess. They know what this community is like.
And I have to agree with their choices.

[rdonj]

GP, why is it that in everything you post recently you say something about "both sides"? :)

I miss the days where JK and KO were around more often. I hope we haven't chased them away by making it too unwelcome for them here. But as I said before, I can't really blame them. Even when they do nice things for us recently (like the latest patch) all they ever hear from us is whining and complaining. So it is no wonder if they don't want to have us whining and complaining about their new project. "You're doing THAT instead of making dominions 4?!"

Or they could just be really busy in real life these days, or keeping it a surprise. Who knows? But whatever, they are great guys doing a great job. I don't really care how they do it.

[Ynglaur]

NTJedi - I wonder if we should try to create a Dominions 3 mod for Elemental...

[Doo]

NTJedi - I wonder if we should try to create a Dominions 3 mod for Elemental...

That would take some time, to get the skins for all the different races, beasts and mythical creatures. I'd love to see it though :up:

[lch]

You can sometimes see the Stardock frustrations through their Elemental beta process and they obviously have very thick skins. Ultimately, for them, it has been very positive in terms of weeding out the bad concepts and introducing new ones but the frustrations with community expectations do rise to the surface occasionally.
Yes, weeding out the bad concepts before release is one positive thing that I'd see as well, and why feedback even in the form of criticism isn't bad. Other companies pay a lot of money to do market analysis, they have it as a byproduct.

I must say I've got very high expectations for Elemental. :D
When I first heard about it a year or so ago I was interested, when I first saw what they had this quickly changed. I did complain very loudly one time about a marketing stunt of theirs which resulted in a statement about those claims, where those were watered down as being misunderstood. Overall I'm interested in whatever they come up with as well, though.

Or perhaps the fun of development is not based on keeping secrets, but based on not having to defend every step and every idea from naysayers.
That certainly wouldn't be fun, but it's not like they'd be tailoring the game exactly to the quite probably even changing demands of their audience. It would be advertisement in the form of "look what we did, hot or not?", getting into touch with the potential future customers, instead of just a finished product and one-sided propaganda. Zero feedback would be the worst.

I believe that it's not really about secrets, anyway, but about the fact that for a programmer, and especially for a single working one, documentation is always a very painful thing to do.

Its not as if the devs have to guess. They know what this community is like.
And I have to agree with their choices.
What do the devs think this community is like? I'd like to agree with their choices, too.

I miss the days where JK and KO were around more often. I hope we haven't chased them away by making it too unwelcome for them here.
They never have been unwelcome, they enjoy unquestioned sympathy from the fans. Never mind the front-seat passenger talk - the very first thing I'd bug KO about when I see him here again would be when the map that's never going to be finished is going to be finished. :rolleyes:

[Gandalf Parker]

Oh they love the community in general. As a herd it tends to be wonderful.
But if they were to drop tidbits it would bring out some of the individual bulls which could quite likely knock them off course completely.

[NTJedi]

NTJedi - I wonder if we should try to create a Dominions 3 mod for Elemental...

I agree it's a great idea, especially with all the modding options arriving with the game. It would take a large chunk of time for even the basics such as adding attributes like precision for all current game units.

[Foodstamp]

I've already got some plans for Elemental. I am not looking to do a total conversion, just translate all the nations over as factions (Graphics permitting), and add some of the spells and magic items from dominions, as well as some of the magic sites and the indies (Minor Factions)

I am going to use the existing combat mechanics in Elemental and try to translate the units over as best as I can.

Depending on the difficulty, I would like to make the magic system more like dominions/mom (number of books = access to better spells, add nature, blood) and even add scales to set for each sovereign upon creation.

This is all speculation until beta 4 though :).

[Wrana]

You'd weep when I tell you the specifications about the file format for the sprites, and why they are saved in the way they are. The game still is a derivative of an Atari Falcon ST game.

I cannot guarantee weeping as I am not a programmer, but could you tell it? I like "programming archeology", as Vinge named it. ;)

[Corwin]

The dominions codebase is really neat in a lot of respects - but it also shows it's age. I don't have access to the source code, but just from diving into the built-in tables you can see the accumulated cruft of ages, and a lot of things are hard-coded or messy hacks which will cause accumulated headaches down the line if they try to keep working on it.

That said, it is amazing how extensible and stable it is (and how small a footprint it has, which is really a hallmark of an earlier era), but I can see why they wouldn't want to add true scripting support - either for user-modded events, user-modded maps/scenarios, or user-modded spells.

I agree with what DrPraetorious said. Besides even if you would have an access to script language for the world building, events, et cetera, should you try to create really interesting campaign, I strongly suspect that severe limitations of AI would came forth with vengeance. You would likely require sophisticated dev-built tools to mod AI behavior, something that may be very difficult to retrofit into old clunky Dom3 source code. That's entirely different can of worms, especially for a game with such a complex ruleset as Dom3.


to be able to create really good compaigns,

[Corwin]

That would depend on the developers.
Many of the suggestions for Dom3 were killed purely by the way they were discussed. No matter what the logic was, if it was demanded or belittled or sarcasmed then it could die. If Illwinter disclosed the details of their project to this crowd, Id suspect that the fun would go out of the development. Im not sure that it could survive us. Its better to get something than to chance getting nothing.

Everything has its pros and cons.

You seem to posses some degree of knowledge about this new project. Without revealing any project-related info or encroaching into NDA territory, what are you personal guts feeling - is it something that you think Dom1/2/3 players crowd might enjoy? Or is it so far away from the Dom style of gaming, that you don't think so, or perhaps it is simply too hard to predict?

[Gandalf Parker]

That's entirely different can of worms, especially for a game with such a complex ruleset as Dom3.
BINGO.
Early on I told people that if they wanted to come up with some AI changes they would be looked at. I provided clips of the debug code around ai actions and invited them to come up with some pseudo code. Some of the threads are still probably around. But anyone that tried found out that even the simplest complaint by the players tended to have a dozen IF this or IF that tied to it.

[Gandalf Parker]

You seem to posses some degree of knowledge about this new project. Without revealing any project-related info or encroaching into NDA territory, what are you personal guts feeling - is it something that you think Dom1/2/3 players crowd might enjoy? Or is it so far away from the Dom style of gaming, that you don't think so, or perhaps it is simply too hard to predict?
Sorry. I have nothing to give that can tighten peoples impressions of it. If anything, all I have only increases it.

I would buy it today if it was pre-sold. But then I doubt that information tells anyone anything new :) (see title under login)

[Meglobob]

Have we any timeframe on when Illwinters new project will be completed?

1 year, 2 years, 3 years?!?

[WraithLord]

Funny, the other day I tried some extensive searching for some shred of info on the new project. I found absolutely nothing.

[Gandalf Parker]

If you do EXTENSIVE searching you can find comments by Kristoffer and Johan from years ago where they talk about their favorite types of games, the types they considered doing before settling into the Dominions 3 project, and the way they go about development. All of that can give some idea on why some of the quesswork is probably off the mark but its not likely to actually pin down anything.

Im afraid thats about all anyone can get. There are still NDA's in place for things involving Dom3 beta testing, and even Dom2. Any rock-hard info about the new project can only come from Illwinter or Shrapnel and we will all get it at the same time. Anything else can just be considered people having fun with it.

Its been rumored that the beginning of the end was when Dominions 4 supporting eras up to and including space travel was released as an iPhone/iPad/iPod application. Almost instantly came the collapse of other forms of entertainment and communication. So many people were playing at work that the economy collapsed. So many were playing while walking, riding bikes, and even driving that accidents shot up. Soldiers played and only the poorest of countries won any battles. And from the profits we now hear rumblings of a Dominions 5 which will be written for the new matryx direct interface.People are already volunteering in droves to be sealed into life-support pods so that they never need to leave the game.

[WraithLord]

I read those interviews :)

Your dom IV prophecy prose is great. Are you H3? ;)

[Gandalf Parker]

Heehee. Reminds me of this..
http://www.cafepress.com/oddthotz/5662870
which came from a forum conversation...
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=39216

(:target: dont read)

[Grand Stone]

I remember them talking about a role playing game in the world of dominions, or about a space exploration game (aka Master of orion).

I'm seriusly hoping for the second, but the first will also do...

[Foodstamp]

My guess is a Dominions RPG.

[nordlys]

Dominions in space already exists. It is called VGA Planets (and also Stars!, Galaxy plus; pbem space 4x strategy genre is old as dirt).

Now, a Dominions RPG, if they keep it oldschool, I am sold.

[Gandalf Parker]

I always considered Space Empires IV to be Dominions in Space.
And I always considered Master of Magic to be Dominions with more rpg.

But since we mentioned them...
Stars! is great and I still play it on my machine.

SE-IV is great and I still play it on my machine. SE-V is a great example IMHO of how a great game with a huge modding community can be trashed by taking the game to new sound and 3D graphics.

VGA Planets 3 is fantastic. VGAP4 is in beta and has been for years. Ive had it pre-purchased since 2001. But VGAP4 is too complicated now for anyone to learn or document. I think they will keep adding to it forever and it will never leave beta. But if anyone wants a space game that is too much game, thats a great choice.

[chrispedersen]

I always considered Space Empires IV to be Dominions in Space.
And I always considered Master of Magic to be Dominions with more rpg.

But since we mentioned them...
Stars! is great and I still play it on my machine.

SE-IV is great and I still play it on my machine. SE-V is a great example IMHO of how a great game with a huge modding community can be trashed by taking the game to new sound and 3D graphics.

VGA Planets 3 is fantastic. VGAP4 is in beta and has been for years. Ive had it pre-purchased since 2001. But VGAP4 is too complicated now for anyone to learn or document. I think they will keep adding to it forever and it will never leave beta. But if anyone wants a space game that is too much game, thats a great choice.

wow didn't expect vga planets was still played. Used to love that game. Also stars, se-iv, spaceward ho, the sequel to that whatever it was called.. zombies in space? MoM is still the best tho.

[haileris]

Kind of funny to see Master of Magic described in that way - don't get me wrong Dominions is good but it aint in the same league as MOM (imho of course.)

I just wish Mare Crisium would appear Phoenix like with Stars Supernova ready to run - now that is game worth waiting for!

[WraithLord]

Yes. Dominions RPG with or w/o ASCII mode (ala angband etc) would be awesome. I'll pre-order :)

[Squirrelloid]

WL: Actually, if it has an ASCII mode I'm vastly more likely to be interested...

Yes, I'm weird. I like my rogue-likes with colored letters.

[Wrana]

Yes. Dominions RPG with or w/o ASCII mode (ala angband etc) would be awesome. I'll pre-order :)
I heard somebody tried to make a Dominions Rogue somewhen close to a year ago. Don't know what happened to the project since then, though...

[WraithLord]

Yeah, I d/led and played a bit with it. I don't think anything got update since.

ASCII is awesome, but good old 2d RPG with good artwork and dominions content would be great as well.

IW, throw us a bone will ya now?- Some shred of info on your nemesis project please.
please please? :)

[Fantomen]

I'm pretty sure Kristoffer wouldn't be satisfied with ASCII after all those years of perfecting his sprite making skills.

I'm biased, I can't get into ASCII games.

[lch]

Yes. Dominions RPG with or w/o ASCII mode (ala angband etc) would be awesome. I'll pre-order :)
I heard somebody tried to make a Dominions Rogue somewhen close to a year ago. Don't know what happened to the project since then, though...
That's because the person that worked on this project has been banned on these forums. Twice, actually, he got banned again when he posted about new progress on it under a new login that he registered, since administration found out that it's him with a new account name by that.

I've been bugging him about this for weeks and months, but so far he mostly worked on the libraries that he is going to use for this game. You can follow the development at http://sourceforge.net/users/omnirizon and you can check on the progress and nag him to continue with the Rogue (read: "encourage him to work") at http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=145

[rdonj]

It should be noted that he was banned for a significantly more pathetic reason than the other guys, since basically he was banned for proving that manual piracy exists.

[Fantomen]

...proving that manual piracy exists.

As opposed to automatic piracy?

Omnirizons project looks promising I think, he seems serious about it.

[rdonj]

Yes, I hear omni is biased because he drives a stick.

[NTJedi]

IW, throw us a bone will ya now?- Some shred of info on your nemesis project please.
please please? :)

It would be nice if the community could provide ideas, inspiration and advice so the game can be more successful. I remember Triumph Studios did the same thing and silently created AgeofWonders:ShadowMagic which resulted in the terrifying "surrender" feature. The community had to work together and constantly beg for this "surrender" to be removed. In the end the developers finally agreed to make "surrender" an option and 99.8% remove the surrender option for games. It's not easy for developers to admit and correct bad design... such as pretenders entering the arena death match.
Perhaps Illwinter could release a demo version of the game before releasing the final version thus identify&preventing any terrifying features.

[Gandalf Parker]

You mean for your birthday? (happy birthday)

But thats not really Illwinters style in the past. It will be silence, alpha group, then beta group, then announcement and release. I dont see any likelihood of a change.

Besides, the "share the development" tends to only work for corporations with teams of developers where a developer can be told what to do without getting pissed off.

[Fantomen]

You mean for your birthday? (happy birthday)
Besides, the "share the development" tends to only work for corporations with teams of developers where a developer can be told what to do without getting pissed off.

It might not be the style of Illwinter, and they can do it however they wish, but open development is up and coming. And it works work many kind of teams. Overgrowth and Natural selection are two nice indie titles in open development right now. And they both have small teams working on their own.

I certainly respect if Illwinter wants to play stuff close to the chest, but please don't confuse that with making uneducated generalisations about what works and for whom. There are plenty of good ways to do develop games, and open development is one of them.

[Gandalf Parker]

I agree it was a generalization. But I wouldnt call it uneducated.
Im all for Open Source. I love SourceForge and other project organizing sites.
If you spent some time there you would quickly find out some of the pros and cons of it. A small percentage of open source projects finish. And the ones that do are often very very large projects with many developers coming and going from the pros/cons of open source development :)

Actually Ive been involved with open sourcing for decades. Im presently involved in two (both are games). I wouldnt call it up and coming. On the other hand I make most of my side monies nowadays involved with CrowdSourcing projects which is currently very hot (but beginning to peak).

And btw I definitely am not saying that something like Dom3 cannot be done as an open source project. Just that it wouldnt be done with Johan and even more Kristoffer.

[Eximius Sus]

Man, I'm new here, but it seems you don't say anything without massive backpedaling and extraneous qualifications. Do you actually have solid opinions about anything?

[Gandalf Parker]

Occassionally :) But it would be very rare that you would get to find it out.

For decades its usually been part of my job skills to avoid such. To give everyone in a conversation with some wins and seek to move a conversation further. Other words for such a skill might be mediation, moderating, diplomacy, or if you want to minimum wage it I guess customer support is another example. Particularly if opinions are those of the management.

Its the other side of the coin from people whose job it is to bring a discussion to an end.

[Foodstamp]

Man, I'm new here, but it seems you don't say anything without massive backpedaling and extraneous qualifications. Do you actually have solid opinions about anything?

Somebody got homesick.

[Eximius Sus]

Man, I'm new here, but it seems you don't say anything without massive backpedaling and extraneous qualifications. Do you actually have solid opinions about anything?

Somebody got homesick.

Eh?

[Eximius Sus]

Occassionally :) But it would be very rare that you would get to find it out.

For decades its usually been part of my job skills to avoid such. To give everyone in a conversation with some wins and seek to move a conversation further. Other words for such a skill might be mediation, moderating, diplomacy, or if you want to minimum wage it I guess customer support is another example. Particularly if opinions are those of the management.

Its the other side of the coin from people whose job it is to bring a discussion to an end.

Is this your job? Although I'll admit. My job is usually to win discussions.

[Gandalf Parker]

Not at the moment. But it has been.
Its even been my job here. For Shrapnel.

But not at the moment. Now its just a natural tendency. And no reason to poison the waters as far as resume, referrals, and references.

[Fantomen]

I agree it was a generalization. But I wouldnt call it uneducated.
Im all for Open Source. I love SourceForge and other project organizing sites.
If you spent some time there you would quickly find out some of the pros and cons of it. A small percentage of open source projects finish. And the ones that do are often very very large projects with many developers coming and going from the pros/cons of open source development :)

Actually Ive been involved with open sourcing for decades. Im presently involved in two (both are games). I wouldnt call it up and coming. On the other hand I make most of my side monies nowadays involved with CrowdSourcing projects which is currently very hot (but beginning to peak).

And btw I definitely am not saying that something like Dom3 cannot be done as an open source project. Just that it wouldnt be done with Johan and even more Kristoffer.

Failing to distinguish between the terms "open development" and "open source" seems rather uneducated to me.

[Gandalf Parker]

My apologies. It was an assumption on my part that you had confused the two.
Open Source as something up and coming is a wrong statement, but open development even more so. I was giving you the benefit of a doubt.
My error.

After all, open development is where we started.

[Lizardo]

So, where are we with the Dominions franchise? Johan and Kristoffer still care about it or not?

Reason I ask is that while the game has potential it's still unnecessarily tedious and tiring to play. But why bother making UI suggestions when there there is no further development planned.

Consolidating the lab activities would help a lot. Years ago I suggested that there be a status for commanders for needing new orders, never done.

The most dangerous things my army faces in battle are still my own archers and mages. My battalions still line up horizontally twelve deep on trivial targets instead of attacking the obvious threat just in front. And they all still blithely walk into obvious hazards. There's no point in in vesting in a single shot sure kill weapon when it's used on orcs.

The change in the magic system from Dom1 to Dom2 and retained in Dom3, that is the consolidation of the spell casting types into a global point system really killed the idea of specialized mages. You just throw point at it till you know everything.

I have what I think are thoughtful suggestions on the UI and magic issues but, again, is there anyone there to listen?

Other things I'd like are more fully realized, and growing, independent provinces, a better divine political system than just 'there will be only one', and more ways to develop your kingdom beyond just filling the map with your standard and candles.

Always potentially, a great game. But it's never going to be more than a nitch product until the UI is more responsive to the needs of the player.

[Fantomen]

So, where are we with the Dominions franchise? Johan and Kristoffer still care about it or not?
Yes, they still care. In the sense that they are still patching the game to fix bugs and add new content. They also sometimes make minor improvements to mechanics, like adding new mod commands.

Reason I ask is that while the game has potential it's still unnecessarily tedious and tiring to play. But why bother making UI suggestions when there there is no further development planned.
In this case you are right, there is no use demanding big changes like a revamped UI. The game was essentially finished years ago, and the developers are working at a new game of a different type. (as the rumors go) We will unfortunately have to live with most of the major design flaws.

Consolidating the lab activities would help a lot. Years ago I suggested that there be a status for commanders for needing new orders, never done.
Pressing the N key cycles between idle commanders.

There are other shortcuts and mechanics that help too. Like monthly cast etc. Learning the shortcuts, using F1 for overview and so on makes a big difference.

The most dangerous things my army faces in battle are still my own archers and mages. My battalions still line up horizontally twelve deep on trivial targets instead of attacking the obvious threat just in front. And they all still blithely walk into obvious hazards. There's no point in in vesting in a single shot sure kill weapon when it's used on orcs.
With all due respect. The placement and scripting system is certainly a bit unintuitive, but you CAN do quite a lot with it. It is certainly not impossible to avoid the problems you mention.

The change in the magic system from Dom1 to Dom2 and retained in Dom3, that is the consolidation of the spell casting types into a global point system really killed the idea of specialized mages. You just throw point at it till you know everything.
I don't quite follow here. I find the mages extremely specialized, to the point where most mages are suited for widely different tactics. Some strategies are only possible with a special type of mage. In fact, the highly complex and specialized magic system is what makes the great for me.

I have what I think are thoughtful suggestions on the UI and magic issues but, again, is there anyone there to listen?

Other things I'd like are more fully realized, and growing, independent provinces, a better divine political system than just 'there will be only one', and more ways to develop your kingdom beyond just filling the map with your standard and candles.

Always potentially, a great game. But it's never going to be more than a nitch product until the UI is more responsive to the needs of the player.I'd like those things too, but I wouldn't have high expectations for anything to change in this game. I'm just happy to fit into the niche that loves it.

[Valerius]

I agree with Fantomen that large scale changes in the game are extremely unlikely (I actually can't recall any UI changes since D3 was released). But that doesn't mean feedback isn't good. It may not have any impact on D3 but perhaps it can be incorporated into IW's new project and, who knows, maybe one day there will even be a D4 (I think this thread (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=36323) is a good example such feedback helping other projects).

As far as the devs taking notice, they aren't as active in the forum as they once were but even if they don't see your post I think good ideas might be pointed out to them by some members of the forum that have contact with them.

So, I think you should make your suggestions!

The change in the magic system from Dom1 to Dom2 and retained in Dom3, that is the consolidation of the spell casting types into a global point system really killed the idea of specialized mages. You just throw point at it till you know everything.

Having never played D1 I'm curious what you mean here. How did the magic system used to work?

[WraithLord]

I played D1 quite a lot and not sure I dig what you mean buy that comment.

Bless was different, there were no themes nor eras, maps dynamically changed according to dom effects and the GUI was much more limited. Magic system was more or less the same minus new spells if memory serves.

[HoneyBadger]

For decades its usually been part of my job skills to avoid such. To give everyone in a conversation with some wins and seek to move a conversation further. Other words for such a skill might be mediation, moderating, diplomacy, or if you want to minimum wage it I guess customer support is another example. Particularly if opinions are those of the management.



Gandalf is very good at this, and does deserve a lot of credit for it. It's a lot easier to tear a conversation apart than it is to keep it together, nor is it always very satisfying to maintain
a politic disposition towards someone, or several someones, that don't give you a great many reasons to want to get along with them.

I imagine that it's resulted in more than one emotional sacrifice for him. I can't recall ever witnessing the guy get really angry. As someone with anger issues, I can only suppose he hides it well.

What does that sacrifice get him? Well, on the positive side, the Forum is a more pleasant place than it might otherwise be, especially for new people. Gandalf can also definitely say that he's personally responsible for atleast some of Illwinter's good reputation. And he's got my respect.

I'm not sure it's a trade I'd make, and continue to make on a pretty much daily basis.

[sector24]

I think the problem is that when you become the voice box of "the man" everyone knows that you're just saying what is expected of you. I don't recall anyone having warm feelings for Metatron either, you know?

You also have this consistent habit of playing devil's advocate for inscrutable reasons. I don't think you've ever just agreed with anyone about anything. Kind of makes it hard to be amiable when you always take the opposite point of view just because.

I intend no offense, I just think that Gandalf's online personality is not a great match with your average opinionated passionate forum visitor. Possibly others feel the same, although I don't want to speak for them.

[Zeldor]

I agree, it's hard to talk much about Gandalf and be polite.

[Gandalf Parker]

I agree, it's hard to talk much about Gandalf and be polite.
LLOL
Literally Laughed Out Loud

[Lizardo]

Pressing the N key cycles between idle commanders.
No, it cycles between commanders defending. If there are 40 defending commanders and another 40 doing something else but only 10 you want to give new orders you still have to find and look at all 80 of them unless you can keep track of them in your head from turn to turn or start up the next day. There is no dedicated status to indicate which ones YOU want to give orders to next. This is a non issue, for decades of development, in all other games, I can't even begin to understand why it's a problem here.

I don't quite follow here. I find the mages extremely specialized, ... In fact, the highly complex and specialized magic system is what makes the (it) great for me.
In Dom1 the Mages had to be individually targeted on each spell casting method. But instead of evolving to where the mages had to learn the methods individually (like the gem stuff) the method mutated into a general pool of point buckets when everyone instantly learned everything. Have your mage farm fill the buckets to level 9 and you get to do everything.

Yes there are existing some specialized mages and early in the game they make a difference but the most common thing to do is make rainbow mages.

There is no advantage to specialize. There are no real difficult choices when you can just research a method and all you mages can use it instantly.

The opportunity was to make the mages learn the methods individually even as you acquire the technology. The second thing to have done was to give mages who specialize in, method and gem, special related abilities and titles, which go away if they stray from the path. Getting a new, meaningful, title for your commander would be interesting.

Going further you could have specialized labs for, say, researching 'Alteration' or making potions or items.

Doing this give the player exclusive choices, which makes the choices both difficult and meaningful. It makes the 'rainbow' mage far less powerful and more difficult to come by.

Yes there is complexity, but it lacks an 'economy', rules that force choices. I want mages that learn and act like mages not magic mushrooms.

There are other shortcuts and mechanics that help too. Like monthly ..
I know all those. It doesn't substitute for poor design. Keeping all relevant information and actions together is what the design philosophy should be. But even in something as simple as casting a spell the amount of gems scrolls up out of sight as you scroll down the spell list.

Often, when doing something magical, you need to do some alchemy but then you have to back out of the lab and re-enter it to do that. Or put some rock in some mage's pocket to help with the lab activity.

The Gem information, Alchemy, Spell Casting, Item Production and list of available mages should all be right there. Available mages includes ALL mages with Lab access, not just the ones in the province.

Then you can do everything you need to do very quickly without jumping in and out of screens each and very time for each and every step of each and every activity.

For that matter, there's no reason why something the Alchemy Stone has to leave to lab to function as all alchemy occurs within the player turn.

With all due respect. The placement and scripting system is certainly a bit unintuitive, ..
I understand placement and scripting well. What happens is that if an orc runs up to my commanders on the right side of the field my mage on the left side of the field drops a nuke on them to kill the orc. And usually misses the orc while he blows up everyone else. Instead of aiming at the mass of archers far in the rear of the front line he drops bombs on the guys in melee. Which would be not horrible if he would center of the rear so undershoots don't wipe out the line. And there is no script that tells troops not to stack up.

There's a Paradox game, Chariots of War, which also does program resolved battles that you set up. Their algorithms don't exhibit this behavior, it it is possible to do.

----

There have been some minor tweaks to the GUI from D2 to D3, including making the background dark so un-highlighted units fade into it but it hasn't really changed in a way that makes communicating with the program less difficult. It was behind the times when it was originally written and it's ten years older.

---
Misc.
Have the ability to tell commanders how many gems they should be carrying and let them pick up or drop gems based upon that.

This is the idea of 'automating' micromanagement. Same with the build queues, state how many of what should be in production and for how long.

Allow complex plotting of movement, beyond one turn. As a good example HoI2 AoD, or Trade Empires. Those are RTS but it should be simple to do in a TBS.
---

I love the complexity but there has to be a way to manage it without burn out. And complexity alone doesn't give you the kind of meaningful choices that are needed.

The game isn't nitch because it is complex, it is nitch because the interface discourages participation by all but the most dedicated and pain tolerant.

Solving these problems instead of excusing them will make the difference between the effort being a hobby and something that can earn money for the authors.

[Gregstrom]

Pressing the N key cycles between idle commanders.
No, it cycles between commanders defending. If there are 40 defending commanders and another 40 doing something else but only 10 you want to give new orders you still have to find and look at all 80 of them unless you can keep track of them in your head from turn to turn or start up the next day. There is no dedicated status to indicate which ones YOU want to give orders to next.


Sorry, I'm missing something here. You have 80 commanders. 40 are idle (because defend=idle - defend is the default behaviour for commanders with no orders) and 40 are following orders already. Do you want to assign new orders to 10 of the 80, or just 10 of the 40 who are otherwise unassigned?

Either way, this 'I want to give this commander orders' status is a little confusing to me. Is it something you set manually?

[Lizardo]

If it's any help on the combat, here's an interesting discussion of AI development (http://christophermpark.blogspot.com/2009/06/designing-emergent-ai-part-1.html).

[Lizardo]

10 of the 80.

"Defend" is an activity. And in a province with a castle it is a choice between patrol the province or sit in the keep. So it really isn't indicative of whether you want that commander to continue doing what he's doing or not.

There's a monthly command for the mages casting, that's it. You can't say cast 'x' for ten months and wave at me for new instructions.

I need to mark those commanders who need orders next turn. And I need to find them too.

Again, whether a commander is defending or not, has nothing to do with if he needs a new order. That may be his order. That may be exactly what he should be doing.

I need to find the guys who need orders. Next turn or next week.

The 'I need attention' status could be manual or a default status at the end of some directed activity such as spell casting. You could even specify when it is the default. It is a status, not an activity. Defending is an activity.

You could search for other status's too, like find all commanders with a disease. Etc.

[Gregstrom]

So... you want to manually specify 10 of the 80 one turn in advance? I like the idea that it could occur at the end of a fixed-duration activity though.

[thejeff]

I have to agree on the Next commander thing. Commanders on defend, siege and hide stay in the rotation, which is good because those are the default orders in their situation, but it's bad because when you have a lot who should be doing that it makes it hard to find the ones who should be doing something else. Scouts are the one that drive me crazy. It would be nice to have a way to specify, "I'm done with this guy. I want him to stay hiding/defending/seiging and not show up again." Even if it's just for a turn. That way I know I haven't missed anyone when 'n' doesn't cycle anymore, not when I think there isn't anyone in the cycle but the ~50 scouts.

As for individual mage research, that sounds neat but ridiculously complex. In a good size game, you may have hundreds of mages, with dozens of different path combinations. You want to have each of them learn spells individually? And keep track of who knows what when you're sending armies out? And new summoned uber-mages have to spend months studying before they can cast anything useful? Was Dom1 really like that? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Most of the other micro issues are well known and generally agreed on. The game is micro hell.

[sansanjuan]

I have to agree on the Next commander thing. Commanders on defend, siege and hide stay in the rotation, which is good because those are the default orders in their situation, but it's bad because when you have a lot who should be doing that it makes it hard to find the ones who should be doing something else. Scouts are the one that drive me crazy. It would be nice to have a way to specify, "I'm done with this guy. I want him to stay hiding/defending/seiging and not show up again." Even if it's just for a turn. That way I know I haven't missed anyone when 'n' doesn't cycle anymore, not when I think there isn't anyone in the cycle but the ~50 scouts.

As for individual mage research, that sounds neat but ridiculously complex. In a good size game, you may have hundreds of mages, with dozens of different path combinations. You want to have each of them learn spells individually? And keep track of who knows what when you're sending armies out? And new summoned uber-mages have to spend months studying before they can cast anything useful? Was Dom1 really like that? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Most of the other micro issues are well known and generally agreed on. The game is micro hell.

I propose a lvl 10 blood ritual called "micro hell" that disables cntl-n, f1 and other key shortcuts for the other players.
ssj

[Graeme Dice]

In Dom1 the Mages had to be individually targeted on each spell casting method.

No they didn't. The magic system hasn't changed a bit from Dominions 1. Every mage has always had access to every spell your nation has researched.

[Lizardo]

What they did (in D1) was contribute research points individually to the types of casting method rather than pool the points.

----

Having the mages have to learn to cast and having reasons not to multi-train will mean more complexity, and choices. But this isn't an RTS. And yes, it means not having 'do everything/anything' mages. It makes finding those special mages really valuable.

[Graeme Dice]

What they did (in D1) was contribute research points individually to the types of casting method rather than pool the points.

And? The result is the same, and the micromanagement is less.

Having the mages have to learn to cast and having reasons not to multi-train will mean more complexity, and choices. But this isn't an RTS. And yes, it means not having 'do everything/anything' mages. It makes finding those special mages really valuable.

This isn't a feasible game design decision (ie the resulting mess would be unplayable) unless you are going to limit players to about ten or twenty mages per game.

[Gandalf Parker]

I know all those. It doesn't substitute for poor design. Keeping all relevant information and actions together is what the design philosophy should be.

Solving these problems instead of excusing them will make the difference between the effort being a hobby and something that can earn money for the authors.

Couple of small points.
The game wasnt designed. It evolved gradually. From a BASIC game on an Atari, thru C on Unix, thru C+ on Linux. For that its not a bad result. Some "design flaws" have been acknowledged by the devs as items which would require a complete rewrite.

And, the goal here was never to move from hobby to money-maker. That does have a part in understanding why some things got fixed and others didnt.

[Amhazair]

I know all those. It doesn't substitute for poor design. Keeping all relevant information and actions together is what the design philosophy should be.

Solving these problems instead of excusing them will make the difference between the effort being a hobby and something that can earn money for the authors.

Couple of small points.
The game wasnt designed. It evolved gradually. From a BASIC game on an Atari, thru C on Unix, thru C+ on Linux. For that its not a bad result. Some "design flaws" have been acknowledged by the devs as items which would require a complete rewrite.

And, the goal here was never to move from hobby to money-maker. That does have a part in understanding why some things got fixed and others didnt.

If I'm not mistaken that is in fact one of the (main?) reasons Illwinter aren't actively planning on making a Dom4: They feel they have taken the current system as far as it can go, and improving it - amongst other things with various of the suggestions you make - would pretty much require them to rewrite the entire code from the ground up. Something they have no intrest in doing, since it isn't "fun" to remake something they have already made once before.

Unfortunately for us, of course...

[Lizardo]

How much time is necessary for the program to evolve? It's been ten years.

And, the goal here was never to move from hobby to money-maker. That mean I get my 50 back?

Besides money, how can I motivate a change to the UI to make it less painful and more helpful?

---

If they are not interested in evolving a D4, would they turn it over to another development group?

---

This isn't a feasible game design decision (ie the resulting mess ...
That's an exaggeration. Mages would be more focused, but more effective in their specialty.

---

How far is their office from the Paradox office?

[Zeldor]

I don't think they have any offices.

50 bucks is because of Shrapnel, they are morons and know **** about doing business.

You don't have to motivate - Amhazair is right, not much can be done to dom3 without writing it from scratch. And tbh there are many things devs have no idea about and I've heard code is not documented and is quite chaotic.

And no, don't count on them parting with rights, so a community can make dom4 [even though it'd be great]. At least not any time soon.

[Gandalf Parker]

How much time is necessary for the program to evolve? It's been ten years.
I think it evolved great. Your little personal gripes seem very minor compared to where it came from. Also keep in mind that it goes real job, family, self time, hobby work on little game thing. :)

And, the goal here was never to move from hobby to money-maker. That mean I get my 50 back?Well they are giving away their first game for free now. Which isnt really a bad little time killer. But no I think that the cost of outsourcing limited pressings has the cost of Dom3 fairly frozen.

Besides money, how can I motivate a change to the UI to make it less painful and more helpful?3rd party programs, macro recorders, etc.

Or if you mean getting Illwinter to break off of their latest fun project to drudge back into the Dom3 code, didnt your mommy ever teach you about please and thank you? Some people here have a knack for reviving the devs love for certain nations or game aspects and then casually mention a slight irritation while praising most of the game. Others have a habit of insulting the game, the developers, the publishers, and then whining about things dont ever get changed. Its not too hard to trace back thru the games progress page and compare it to the threads that got things done to see.

If they are not interested in evolving a D4, would they turn it over to another development group?Im not sure why they would want to do that. Generally that creates a bad taste to the original developers or authors when they see what a new company does with it.

But we arent sure they arent interested in a D4. Maybe the new project is one (I personally doubt it) or maybe they will swing back that direction down the road.

How far is their office from the Paradox office?Illwinters? No real "offices" but it operates mostly in Lund, Sweden

[theenemy]

If they are not interested in evolving a D4, would they turn it over to another development group?


No real need for that. Someone could just make a dom-like(but improved) game, change a few things here and there and call it something else. Just a thought.

Also could someone link me to the thread where that guy(who got banned) proved that "manual piracy"(whatever that is) exists?

[Valerius]

This isn't a feasible game design decision (ie the resulting mess ...
That's an exaggeration. Mages would be more focused, but more effective in their specialty.

Actually, this seems quite fun to me. Maybe somewhat more than 10-20 mages, but not too much. I find that adding mages and troops adds to my enjoyment of the game up until somewhere in the midgame. At that point, each additional unit detracts from my enjoyment - more micromanagement, less fun. But I can see how some people would find this too small a scale: more like bickering petty kingdoms than vast empires battling to decide the next pantokrator.

But I think this touches on a key issue relating to micromanagement: that as the number of units and resources you need to manage grows, so does the micro. A good UI is of course very helpful (especially when it comes to streamlining how resources are handled) but I don't think you can get around this fact.

Ideally I'd like to see a system that reduced the escalation in the number of units in play. So instead of having a hundred times more units in the end game you'd have ten times more. And of course ideally this would be adjustable so that people who enjoy (or at least can tolerate) managing huge numbers of units would have that option.

[Squirrelloid]

But no I think that the cost of outsourcing limited pressings has the cost of Dom3 fairly frozen.

.... what?

Cost of the disc: <10 cents. Ok, its probably ~1 cent (a disc is a disc, they can buy in bulk and use them for multiple different titles) but we might assume they don't order enough discs total to get quite that good a price. But *I* can buy writeable discs for <10 cents, so a game publisher certainly can.

Which leaves the manual, which honestly, they could just put the pdf on the disc and reduce their materials cost/unit to the cost of the disc. However, the manual itself can't cost them more than a few bucks to print.

Most of a cost for a game is to account for development time. After a while (usually a year or less for computer games) the price starts dropping because the publisher understands that if more units move, then they'll see more total income and thus more profits, since the development cost/unit is not a fixed amount. (Rather, its a total that needs to be made up by all sales). Basic economics teaches us that reducing price increases sales.

That dom3's price hasn't moved is pure stupidity on Shrapnel's part.

----------------------

Re: "Dom 4". Now, IANAL, but, at least in the US, game mechanics aren't copyrightable or patentable. The description of the mechanics (in the manual or game help) is copyrightable, but not the mechanics themselves. So if someone wanted to make a Dominions 3 clone, they very well could. Of course, the creative content that is original to Dom3 is all copyrightable, so that couldn't be reproduced, but since much of the source material is mythological, factions derived from the same source material are perfectly permissible.

Of course, you wouldn't even want to use Dom3's exact mechanics, since that's where a lot of the problems are. So what you end up with is a game that's inspired by Dom3. What you lose is the factions that have the most creative work put into them - Abysia and Agartha (not the names, but the nature of the factions) for example. Other factions are pretty much straight up conversions of myth to faction, so while there would be changes, a Vanir inspired faction would still be recognizably Vanheim for example. And various gradations in-between.

The magic system's divisions are, for the most part, stolen straight from D+D (1st/2nd ed. AD+D specifically), so that's not a problem. The gem spending mechanic seems to be derivative of MoM in form (which would be the only arguably 'creative' aspect - function being the mechanic itself which is not copyrightable). The actual spells would need changing in many cases (although 'fireball' is certainly not intellectual property, some of them certainly are).

Not that Dom3 is without legal problems of its own... (Illithids and Aboleths are WotC's intellectual property, and used without permission afaict.)

Now, obviously it couldn't be *called* dom4...

[Valerius]

Re: "Dom 4". Now, IANAL, but, at least in the US, game mechanics aren't copyrightable or patentable. The description of the mechanics (in the manual or game help) is copyrightable, but not the mechanics themselves. So if someone wanted to make a Dominions 3 clone, they very well could. Of course, the creative content that is original to Dom3 is all copyrightable, so that couldn't be reproduced, but since much of the source material is mythological, factions derived from the same source material are perfectly permissible.

Of course, you wouldn't even want to use Dom3's exact mechanics, since that's where a lot of the problems are. So what you end up with is a game that's inspired by Dom3. What you lose is the factions that have the most creative work put into them - Abysia and Agartha (not the names, but the nature of the factions) for example.

Yes, I've got to think that would be the point of purchasing the rights to Dominions, since it is always mentioned that the code will be rewritten. But I wonder how long it would be before TNN would be changed to elves, Ulm to dwarves, etc. I like traditional fantasy but one of the things I like about Dominions is that it takes a different approach. It seems to me you could make a good argument that you'd sell more copies if you changed nations to the archetypes most people would expect. And while that argument might not do much to sway IW (something I've always liked about them) I would expect for most developers that would, understandably, be a big factor. In short, I wonder if Dominions would retain its spirit with IW out of the picture.

The magic system's divisions are, for the most part, stolen straight from D+D (1st/2nd ed. AD+D specifically), so that's not a problem. The gem spending mechanic seems to be derivative of MoM in form (which would be the only arguably 'creative' aspect - function being the mechanic itself which is not copyrightable).

I recall reading that Ars Magica, an RPG with a wonderfully realized medieval setting, was an influence on the magic system.

[Squirrelloid]

TNN/Eriu *is* elves. Or at least one version of elves. (Arguably Vanheim is also elves). Its just that IW has retained the mythological rather than fantasy pop-cultural envisioning of them. (Also, we have dwarves. They're just called Svartalfar - literally 'dark elf', but elves and dwarves are kind of indistinguishable in norse mythology...).

[Doo]

NO!

No bloody elves,
No blooming dwarves,
The game is so much richer for it.

[Soyweiser]

Cost of the disc: <10 cents. Ok, its probably ~1 cent (a disc is a disc, they can buy in bulk and use them for multiple different titles) but we might assume they don't order enough discs total to get quite that good a price. But *I* can buy writeable discs for <10 cents, so a game publisher certainly can.
...
That dom3's price hasn't moved is pure stupidity on Shrapnel's part.


I think professional discs are a bit more expensive. Iirc you need to make a master disc, and make professional copies from that one. For both you need specialized equipment. Which tend to be expensive. Sure the costs of one disc is cheap. But the whole setup tends to have large costs up front. Sure, after a certain amound of games sold you get the expense back. But still.

(And lets not forget that when buying a game you normally not only pay for the physical disk, you also pay for development, tech support, shipping, housing, websites, shrapnel also wants to eat, etc). People tend to forget these costs, which usually amount to a lot.

And while I personally think 50$ is still a bit much. I doubt more sales would be made if the price is lower. (I think the specials do improve sales, but that has to do with buyers psychology). Dom3 isn't a real impulse buy kind of game. It is a niche game, those tend to be more expensive. (And tend to draw a more 'select' crowd).

[Soyweiser]

It seems to me you could make a good argument that you'd sell more copies if you changed nations to the archetypes most people would expect.

Buying the IP, and then throwing it out. Now that would be a design mistake. **** the code, the IP from dominions is worth the money. (With IP, I mean the backstory of the nations, the different nations themselves, the different sites, the magic system (spell names and effects), the images etc).

And why? Because with the IP comes a community of fans. (Yippy, that is you and me!).

[Squirrelloid]

Cost of the disc: <10 cents. Ok, its probably ~1 cent (a disc is a disc, they can buy in bulk and use them for multiple different titles) but we might assume they don't order enough discs total to get quite that good a price. But *I* can buy writeable discs for <10 cents, so a game publisher certainly can.
...
That dom3's price hasn't moved is pure stupidity on Shrapnel's part.


I think professional discs are a bit more expensive. Iirc you need to make a master disc, and make professional copies from that one. For both you need specialized equipment. Which tend to be expensive. Sure the costs of one disc is cheap. But the whole setup tends to have large costs up front. Sure, after a certain amound of games sold you get the expense back. But still.


I'll note that large capital investments like that are tax deductible for corporations.

Also, Dom3 is not the only game Shrapnel produces, and should not be expected to make up the cost of said equipment on its own. Realistically, the cost of said equipment per disc sold across all their games is probably less than a dollar, but I can't swear to that one.

Its certainly not a material cost for the game. Its a capital investment, and is accounted differently.


(And lets not forget that when buying a game you normally not only pay for the physical disk, you also pay for development, tech support, shipping, housing, websites, shrapnel also wants to eat, etc). People tend to forget these costs, which usually amount to a lot.

I believe that shipping is paid for separately from that price tag =p

They shouldn't need to do that much warehousing just for Dom3, so storage costs are presumably low, especially on a per unit basis.

They run a single website which accomodates all their games. Like capital investments, its not dom3's job to pay for that on its own, and the actual cost per disc shipped is probably under a dollar.

Actually, most of these things are kind of like capital investments in that its not dom3's job to pay for all of it. (Except development, which I already talked about at length, and that should have been paid off already). I agree these are legitimate expenses. Selling an old game at $50 does not help pay for these things. No sale is no money made at all.


And while I personally think 50$ is still a bit much. I doubt more sales would be made if the price is lower. (I think the specials do improve sales, but that has to do with buyers psychology). Dom3 isn't a real impulse buy kind of game. It is a niche game, those tend to be more expensive. (And tend to draw a more 'select' crowd).

I might argue that dominions3 is such a niche game because the price is so high. I mean, dom3 has a lot of boardgame and wargame type appeal. There are (at least) millions of boardgamers and hundreds of thousands of wargamers out there. The niche doesn't have to be as small as it is. Part of this is probably a failure of advertising (or lack thereof). But part of this is almost certainly the large price tag on an old game - why pay $50 for dom3 when you could pay about the same for something brand new with killer graphics? At $20/unit you still see something like $18 gross profits (price - material cost) which can go towards salaries, paying off capital investments, etc... And you'll probably move a lot more units. For every person who buys it at $50, there's probably 10 who would try it at $15-20. And since the only real cost per unit is the materials cost, well, you do the math.

[Gandalf Parker]

Your math is great. But alot of the info seems based on the larger game corps. The advertise and shelfware groups. Thats a very different business plan involving large contracts, advanced monies, spending on ads, bulk purchasing, 3rd party sales, etc. Its a gamble on future sales.

Nothing is wrong with that. But if you read the history of Shrapnel thats kindof what Shrapnel was created to offer an alternative to. Instead of years of payback for advanced outlay before the devs see any profit checks; Shrapnel sticks to low outlay, publicity instead of advertising, distribution instead of shelfware. It allows them to take chances on games that the other guys wouldnt touch. Shrapnel is here for niche non-shelfware games.

Thats only some of it. Not really my area. Maybe you want to say that Illwinter should move to a mainstream game company, not that Shrapnel should become one. If you look at the entire game list, I dont think most of those would be here under that arrangment. But everyone involved seem happy. Ive only known of 2 developers to leave. One to try it on his own, and one to try the bigboys (after one game he came back)

[Soyweiser]

I believe that shipping is paid for separately from that price tag =p


Damn you are right there. I think I was more thinking along the lines of the constant costs for shipping each product. (The packaging, the guy putting the stuff in the packaging etc, which is part of the shipping costs, but I don't think that is paid from the additional shipping expenses (Or at least that is what I think)). But you are still right :). My bad.

According to: http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=827

You also pay something like 10% payment processing, 20% tax (at least in the UK, don't know in the US (shrapnel is US right?)). So that is an additional 30% of each sale that will not be profit. (Sure, the 30% remains constant if you sell your game for 1$ or 50$. But still).

Ps: Totally unrelated, but cliffski is great. I wish more small developers released their sales stats.


For every person who buys it at $50, there's probably 10 who would try it at $15-20.


This I doubt. I read a large blogpost by some indy dev a while ago who very eloquently wrote why this isn't always true, and the process of gradually lowering the prices doesn't always lead to more sales. Sadly I cannot find it. :). But this remains a matter of opinion. Only shrapnel can try to test this theory.


Why pay $50 for dom3 when you could pay about the same for something brand new with killer graphics?

Because Dom3 has the depth other new killer graphics games lack. It is rather unique in it's scope and type of gameplay.

[Gandalf Parker]

Buying the IP, and then throwing it out. Now that would be a design mistake. **** the code, the IP from dominions is worth the money. (With IP, I mean the backstory of the nations, the different nations themselves, the different sites, the magic system (spell names and effects), the images etc).

And why? Because with the IP comes a community of fans. (Yippy, that is you and me!).

I totally agree. Dominions is the fun-time project of one creative programmer, and one creative teacher of ReligioMythos. I think anyone would be hard stretched to pick it up and expand it without falling back on old standards that we have all seen 100's of times in other games.

[Soyweiser]

I read a large blogpost by some indy dev a while ago who very eloquently wrote why this isn't always true, and the process of gradually lowering the prices doesn't always lead to more sales.

I think it was Jeff Vogel. At least this what I could find regarding the subject doing a quick search.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/04/indie-games-should-cost-more-pt-1.html


"Back then, new games sold for $50. So Exile was $25, which was a very common price for shareware games back then.

A few years later, I started sending the registered version on a CD (instead of E-mailing a registration code). I charged $30 for a CD. Sales changed very little.

Two years later, I went back to an E-mailed code system and lowered the price back down to $25. Sales changed very little.

Three years ago, I looked at all of our expenses (credit card fees, postage, insurance, etc) and went "Holy crap! We need to raise prices to account for this." We raised our price to $28 (still about half the price of comparable products on store shelves). Since then, our money intake has actually increased. We're doing quite well now."


True, Jeff makes very niche games. SP RPG's, with substandard graphics, but I think his type of audience is comparable to the Dom3 crowd.

And you could argue that Jeff releases a new game every few years, and thus the comparison isn't totally correct. (And I would have to agree with you there).

I just don't think that reducing the price by two thirds would really increase the amount of sales ten-fold.

I doubt I'm allowed to say this, but I'm actually sad that popular bittorrent sites don't keep good logs of the amount of times the torrents are downloaded. It would make it easier to determine the pirate popularity of Dom3. World of Goo had a 90% piracy rate, in that case it was possible that a increase in sales by lowering the price. Don't know about Dom3.

[Gandalf Parker]

My online sales experience is more in areas like posters and tshirts and ebooks. But there are some very interesting psych studies, and reports by biz majors, about pricing. In some cases, raising the price of an item actually amounted in more sales. And why certain numbers actually work better than others for prices (just based on peoples preferences). Im not sure it applies here, but the discussions there are great about the real world vs what you think SHOULD happen when dealing with the mass public. The same occurs in those forums with things like art vs scribbles, cute vs shock, sites with many offerings or just a few.

What people think should work, doesnt always.
(isnt there a Spock quote for that?)

[Gandalf Parker]

I doubt I'm allowed to say this, but I'm actually sad that popular bittorrent sites don't keep good logs of the amount of times the torrents are downloaded. It would make it easier to determine the pirate popularity of Dom3. World of Goo had a 90% piracy rate, in that case it was possible that a increase in sales by lowering the price. Don't know about Dom3.

That slightly steps into an area I actually voiced an opinion but didnt win out.
I wanted the protection of Dom3 to follow the protection of Dom1. Full game with a ceiling.

It would have allowed review sites to distribute the game, torrent sites to distribute the game, fans to distribute the game. Then Shrapnel would be able to offer online ordering of the unlock codes with very little overhead.

There are many many pros/cons to that and I agree with the way they went (at that time way back then). But Id be willing to pitch it again with some of the new changes to the online world.

[Soyweiser]

I wanted the protection of Dom3 to follow the protection of Dom1. Full game with a ceiling.


Damn, at the risk of sounding like a fanboy (which I ain't, I just read his blog). But apparently that is what Jeff (Spiderweb software) does. See: http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2010/08/being-nice-is-good-business.html.


Then Shrapnel would be able to offer online ordering of the unlock codes with very little overhead.


This would also work to a degree. The current copy protection tends to go off if people are using the same key across different pcs. (Right? That is what I recall). So as one of the large appeals of Dom3 is the multiplayer. This would stop people from easily sharing their keys.

[Valerius]

It seems to me you could make a good argument that you'd sell more copies if you changed nations to the archetypes most people would expect.

Buying the IP, and then throwing it out. Now that would be a design mistake. **** the code, the IP from dominions is worth the money. (With IP, I mean the backstory of the nations, the different nations themselves, the different sites, the magic system (spell names and effects), the images etc).

And why? Because with the IP comes a community of fans. (Yippy, that is you and me!).

It doesn't seem a stretch to me to imagine someone buying the IP with the intention of staying true to the game but then asking how to expand beyond a loyal, but niche, audience. Perhaps a few changes here and there to the nations might give a broader audience something they can immediately recognize and relate to. And what about that overly complex magic system - how about if that is trimmed down to make it more accessible. And if those changes succeeded in gaining them more sales than they lost from alienated players of D3 then it would make sense.

This is pure speculation of course and it's possible this wouldn't happen but think about various game franchises and how some installments of those franchises are viewed negatively. Perhaps because of changes in game mechanics, or UI, or the intangible "feel" of the game. I might be more surprised if a new version of Dominions by a different developer maintained the spirit of the game than if it didn't.

[Zeldor]

Dominions is an old niche game with ugly graphics. You can try convincing someone to it, but price tag is just stupid. Especially for digital copy.

It's not like there are any ads for dom [well, there are, but we all wish there weren't]. They have digital download, they can as well make it .torrent link and sell cd-key. Manual is on torrents too. So their costs here are around $0. All they need is to pay IW smth [but we can't know for sure what's the deal], and it's certainly is not $40+ per copy.

So it's all just down to IW that does not care about proper distribution [so they are a bit rude and arrogant towards clients/players] and Shrapnel, which has no idea about doing business or treating people [but it's so common in business, even huge companies like Dell or HP].

And I have bad feeling next IW's game will be released by Shrapnel too :( It'd be nice to never see them again.

[Gandalf Parker]

This is pure speculation of course and it's possible this wouldn't happen but think about various game franchises and how some installments of those franchises are viewed negatively. Perhaps because of changes in game mechanics, or UI, or the intangible "feel" of the game. I might be more surprised if a new version of Dominions by a different developer maintained the spirit of the game than if it didn't.

A marketing move would be to
A) simplify it for the masses
B) make it a Windows game which would automatically fix lots of ui complaints
C) make it 3D graphics and upgrade the sound

Malfador would be a good example. His low-graphics high strategy game of Space Empires IV on Shrapnel became a hi-res candied shelfware SEV thru Strategy First. And then became a stripped down FaceBook app game.

[Soyweiser]

His low-graphics high strategy game of Space Empires IV on Shrapnel became a hi-res candied shelfware SEV thru Strategy First.

This actually made it a lot harder to play at my machine. Somehow the 3d-stuff gave me horrible frame rates, didn't work on my multi core machine etc. Eventually I just gave up...

[Gandalf Parker]

His low-graphics high strategy game of Space Empires IV on Shrapnel became a hi-res candied shelfware SEV thru Strategy First.

This actually made it a lot harder to play at my machine. Somehow the 3d-stuff gave me horrible frame rates, didn't work on my multi core machine etc. Eventually I just gave up...
I wasnt thrilled either. The game ended up in sales bins, and the modding community never did catch up to what SEIV had. I own it but I still play SEIV and have deleted SEV from my machines.

It was also rather a setup. Malfador is beta testing his next game called World Supremacy and will be offering it thru Shrapnel Games Inc

[Squirrelloid]

I'm not sure why everyone is so convinced a game like dom3 needs to be a niche game. Admittedly, it doesn't follow the *current* trends in *computer* games (which seems to be going more and more in the overly clicky direction) - although the Civ series remains tremendously successful and arguably Dom3 is, like MoM, Civ-with-magic.

But it also appeals to other types of gamers (such as Warhammer players or Avalon Hill boardgame players). Surely many of these people own computers and might even be tempted to play a computer game that appeals to their style of gameplay.

If dom3 got half the advertising Civ IV had gotten, it could have been a big hit. Ok, it would probably have wanted to actually rework the base code and improve the AI for that kind of advertising effort. But still, turn-based strategy is hardly a dead genre, or even an unpopular one. There's nothing niche about it.

And in a world where Lord of the Rings had 3 blockbuster movies, Harry Potter is looking to go the distance with all 7 (?) books as movies, and who knows how many other major fantasy motion pictures coming out, to pretend that the game being fantasy would limit its appeal is ridiculous. One of the most popular Civ IV mods was a fantasy mod (FfH2).

So why is this necessarily a niche game?

[13lackGu4rd]

it is a niche game simply because it is created by a very niche company: Illwinter, and published by another niche company: Shrapnel. if Dominions3 was created and published by a large company such as Sid Meier's(Civilization series), EA(well, you all know them...), Blizzard, Westwood Studios(C&C series, Red Alert, etc), etc than Dominions3 wouldn't have been a niche game.

[Soyweiser]

So why is this necessarily a niche game?

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.

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.

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


If dom3 got half the advertising Civ IV had gotten ...

And if the GUI had been fixed, the graphics polished, the micro fixed, the AI better, A single player campaign included etc...

13lackGu4rd, if a AAA publisher would have developed the game they would have thrown a lot of the depth of the game out of it. They are looking to reach a max amount of players. (So the game is less 'nichey'). So sure, it wouldn't be a niche game if it was developed by Blizzard for example. But it also wouldn't be Dom3.

But I agree, it is niche because it has a niche developer. But that is what makes Dom3, Dom3.

Edit: Just fyi, but I think hardcore gamers have become a niche.

[Soyweiser]

More reasons:

- It is 'Original' fantasy. No easily recognizable fantasy stereotypes. (Such as elves, dwarves, orcs etc).
- You don't fight your own battles, you just give orders.

[Doo]

Its niche because it comes with a sticker on the box...

Warning: Contains Serious Micromanagement

Brain requirements:

If you go to the shops and forget what you intended to buy, purchase a chocolate bar and upon returning home remember what you were supposed to get, then it is advised not to play. Upgrade your cerebellum first.

[Gregstrom]

If you go to the shops and forget what you intended to buy, purchase a chocolate bar and upon returning home remember what you were supposed to get, then it is advised not to play. Upgrade your cerebellum first.

I'm just off to bin my CD. See you guys later.

[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]

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. :D

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 :target:

[HoneyBadger]

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

Better than I am!

[Squirrelloid]

So why is this necessarily a niche game?

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]

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

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. :rolleyes:

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...

[Soyweiser]

I don't think it would be that hard to get a large publisher for one.


"Publishers run a mile from anything with turn-based mechanics - it is regarded as too niche." - Julian Gollop Creator of X-Com. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/5987/putting_the_xcom_in_xcom.php#comment61000


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.


Dom3 is a bit to complex to explain just in the tutorial. (Which Dom3 has actually).

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.


Master of Magic - 1994
MOO - 1993, 2 - 1996
Both not the best examples. I'm talking about the current market here.
Combat mission I never heard of before. So I don't know how popular it is. And isn't doing that good (according to 5 minutes of wiki searching: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Mission:_Shock_Force#Reception).
Yeah, panzer general is doing good. (The fact that you yourself mention that the whole series is still turn based, as if it is an accomplishment is a clear sign.)

When I said other AAA games, I meant other current AAA games. There aren't that many left. Sure there used to be big AAA games, but the gaming world has moved on. TBS has become a nice in which only a small amount of big titles can survive. (Currently only CIV). And most of them aren't innovative anymore. HOMM? Just play HOMM3, it is the best one of the series.

The main point remains that the market has little room for a lot of big AAA TBS games. Only a few of the very large amount that used to be created remain.


There are women who play dom3. At least 3 of them.


*Laughs* ...

But that is the whole definition of a niche game. Only a select group of people play it. It has little appeal to women, young 14 year olds etc. So it is a niche game! Of you want it to get out of the niche, you must convince other types of people to play. This was the main point of the discussion. Is Dom3/TBS niche or not? If only a select group of males plays it, it is a niche game.


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...


Yeah, but do you know what stratigic depth boardgame players are? A niche group. Sure there is a lot of action at GenCon. But that is like saying that the Amish aren't a small religion because the Amish churches are allways full.


Warhammer is popular enough that GW runs stores in major cities dedicated solely to Warhammer.


Mostly only in the UK. Stores in other European countries constantly close. Warhammer is also getting more and more expensive. They tend to increase prices fairly often. (I personally think because they need more and more money to keep the business afloat). And warhammer, and most miniature painting and combat games do have a niche appeal. It is also the only business to be able to do this. Which makes for a bad comparison. Never compare the best game or business with the normal businesses. That makes a crooked comparison. All the other games businesses who tried to create dedicated stores have failed.


Clearly you've never been to a gaming convention.

Ad hominem, and not relevant.

A gaming convention is a gathering place of very hardcore gamers. Just like Moss Eisley is a hive of scum and villany. GenCon is a hive of hardcore and geeky gamers. Both niche.


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.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_games

You know, infocom, SCUMM etc stuff. No recent big hits there. Sure some resurrections of old games. (Yeahh... a Monkey Island remake... yawn...)

But we are getting a bit offtopic. I think the main problem is that my definition of niche is a bit broader than yours.

But can Dom3 get more players, sure, a lot can be fixed. (Just compare it to Dwarf Fortress, a game which could be vastly improved by upgrading the UI. (See: Goblin Camp) getting a lot more players (and donations)).

But could it ever appeal to a large group of players like a game like Diablo or Halo does. I don't think so. To niche appeal.

[Soyweiser]

your unique and greatly efficient ad campaigns

I see what you did there.

I'm actually a bit interested, Dom3 seems to be on sale fairly recent right? But only for a small amount (like 10%). Does this bring in more sales?

I keep forgetting Dom3 has music. I was bothered so much by it that I turned it off. I do like Dominions III though. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKa2MzIgRqI

[Gandalf Parker]

your unique and greatly efficient ad campaigns

I see what you did there.


Actually he showed that he is still missing some major points. Advertising/shelfware vs publicity/distribution. Everything has its pros and cons but the advertising route is not great for indies and niche.

I'm actually a bit interested, Dom3 seems to be on sale fairly recent right? But only for a small amount (like 10%). Does this bring in more sales?They have said in the past that it didnt. Or at least not nearly like people think it might.
They also offer other price breaks which can be used in connection with sales. Such as for American military (which I use often) or for students worldwide. Both of those allow another 10% break.

I keep forgetting Dom3 has music. I was bothered so much by it that I turned it off.Any music can get old. Ive had Dom3 since mid-2004 and play it often. Nothing could survive that!

Except (as I often mention in beta and game programming groups) new games should take a look at Fractal Music. Very little programming overhead and each nation, player, style, and time into each game could have its own musical flavor. Some musician/programmer should get good at that and start joining beta groups!

[J Henry Waugh]

I would love to see Dom 3 engine on a "Evolution of Civilizations" model/theme (inspired from Carroll Quigley, google it, you can find PDF of the book available).

And instead of magic / religion / military, a 6 tiered model on

Military - armies, navies,
Political
Economic - depending on terrain, broken into agriculture, mining, commerce and as evolved, fabricated production
Social
Religious
Intellectual - science

Each of the 6 axis influencing the civ, i.e., religion affecting population, social affecting "happiness"/culture/"dominion" spread, military the act of "manual" conquest, economic the output of food and resources, intellectual for technology breakthroughs, etc...

Sounds like a lot Civilization series, but I like the Dom 3 "province" model much better.

[Squirrelloid]

Apparently all games are niche games by Soyweiser's metric. Hell, even WoW is a niche game. Damn, if niches are that big, what's the point of calling things niche games.

Soyweiser, i tip my hat to you, you managed to take all meaning out of the word niche.


----------------------
Regarding TBS being niche - yes, X-Com had a hard time of it because squad-level TBS is pretty much dead (no matter how much I'd love to see a good squad-level TBS game personally). Grand Strategy and 4X games, on the other hand, are still the domain of TBS, because its too hard for a person to play such a game run in 'real time' *and* have the game go anywhere. (ie, massive time compression is necessary for there to be any development, and the scope is so large that it just explodes in your face if its on a timer). Basically, once you get to operational level and above, all military games need to be turn based to be playable by people.

Anyway, the proof is in the pudding here. FfH2 is a hugely successful mod in CivIV. It exists because there is no high-quality fantasy civ-like game, and the following for it demonstrates the existence of a large market for a 4X fantasy game. Now someone just needs to release one that people actually know about and is polished, neither of which really describes Dom3. (Heck, I think more people are aware of DF than Dom3...)

---------
Re: Combat Mission
Yes, critical reviews weren't that great. But it spawned 2 sequels over the course of 4 years. Since the thing companies are really concerned with is sales, that suggests that there is definitely a market out there. That people obviously bought something that the critics didn't like much means either (1) critics are biased against TBS games to the point they can't get a fair review (so critical reception is a worthless metric) or (2) people who want a TBS game are so starved for games that they're willing to buy something even with bad reviews.

I haven't found actual sales figures yet. But 2 sequels does say something.

[Tim Brooks]

Zeldor:

I'd like to apologise on behalf of our arrogant community.

Oh, I don't feel the community is arrogant. Did I say that?

No one here has idea about conducting anything business-related nor has any experience in production, management or distribution of any kind.

I think you are mistaken. There are several knowledgable people here who seem to have a great understanding of the niche gaming industry. The sad thing is that there are those here that have no idea what they are talking about, spouting off as if they do, but others may not know that.

You and Shrapnel sound like a very successful company.

Thanks!


your unique and greatly efficient ad campaigns

Glad you like them. They sure have worked for us.

[Tim Brooks]

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)?

Yes, the TBS market reached its peak in the mid-1990s. Since then it has been shrinking as those who grew up with no other strategy gaming form are dying off. Don't get me wrong, there are new converts, but not at a rate that replaces the aging market.

And of course, there are always exceptions, though few and far between. A game comes along every once in a while, that the non-TBS market falls in love with. But because you buy one TBS game in 10 years doesn't make you a TBS gamer. And it doesn't change the TBS market into mainstream gaming.

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...

I think that more and more, TBS gamers are willing to cross into other genres, just because there are so few good TBS games. But you are also right, there are those that will only play one genre.

[Zeldor]

I am really curious about HoMM5 income and HoMM6 business plan. They ruined great series and I wonder if it's financially viable for them. Pretty much 90% of core players left, I wonder if they managed to attract new people by stripping most of fun and replacing nations with generic fantasy [and adding lots of almost-nude chicks].

[Tim Brooks]

I'm actually a bit interested, Dom3 seems to be on sale fairly recent right? But only for a small amount (like 10%). Does this bring in more sales?

It is really interesting how sales in a niche market seem to work for us. Our best results are with sales of 10-15%. This brings in enough unit sales to make up for the lost revenue from the discount. Not enough to make more money (more units, same income). What doesn't work is large sales say 20% or more. You sell more units, but not enough to make up for the lost revenue from the discount (more units, less income).

[Soyweiser]

Hell, even WoW is a niche game.

In pure player numbers it is. Farmville wins. 80 mil vs 10 mil (And WoW is actually one of the biggest non-facebook games out there, the whole growth of silly facebook games has taken a lot of developers by surprise. Kind of a repeat of the gigantic growth of the casual games market a few years back). :D. Stupid simple games are bigger than more complex games.

But just to play with the MMORPGers a bit more. In the MMORPGers world most are actually niche games, at least compared to WoW. Eve online? 300k players. Small amount compared to the 10 Mil of WoW. So Eve Online is a niche in the MMORPG world. It targets a specific group of players who want SF space combat, and large scale corporate shenanigans. And still, shrapnel/IW would be very happy if Dom3 sold 300k copies. I think even half that would be great. :). So yeah, niches can look very big, but it is still a small part of a larger market.

Damn, if niches are that big, what's the point of calling things niche games.


If the niche is that big, why do board game stores have such a hard time staying profitable? Why do almost all the large RPG/boardgame publishers go bankrupt or get taken over by a the giants? Why is it so hard for normal boardgames to stay in production?

Sure you can get The Settlers of Catan everywhere. But that is simple low strategy board game. Now try to buy Shogun/Samurai Swords somewhere. Big strategy board games get out of print often. Why? Because eventually the market is saturated. The avid war/boardgamers all have a copy. And the group of these is rather small so it doesn't really pay off to keep copies laying around for the small amount of sales you get. While Settlers still sells regular. Why? Because difficult board games are a niche, and settlers has a broad appeal.


Now someone just needs to release one that people actually know about and is polished, neither of which really describes Dom3.

Something like Age of Wonders Shadow magic perhaps? or Disciples III? Or HOMM? The games do excist, but somehow they are never as complex and interesting as Dom3.

Sure, the fantasy mod is popular. But if released as a stand alone game would it also sell? (Like the Jason Engle art btw)

But why are we still arguing if TBS games are niche or not? In the last 15 years TBS games have always been outsold by RTS and FPS games.

The focus should be on how do we get Dom3 to all the TBS players who currently don't own it. (Which is actually out of the question as development on Dom3 has halted, and IW is working on a non-Dom project. (If my information is correct)). Not, how do we increase the amount of players in the TBS games niche. (Which would be nice, but is difficult to do. I think the handheld TBS games have helped a lot, how is the one called with the little red and blue(?) tanks and soldiers?).

[Soyweiser]

It is really interesting how sales in a niche market seem to work for us. Our best results are with sales of 10-15%. This brings in enough unit sales to make up for the lost revenue from the discount. Not enough to make more money (more units, same income). What doesn't work is large sales say 20% or more. You sell more units, but not enough to make up for the lost revenue from the discount (more units, less income).

Is this for all games? Or just for Dom3?

[Squirrelloid]

FWIW: http://www.next-gen.biz/features/valve-are-games-too-expensive

"Discounting games does not only increase unit sales--it increases actual revenues. During the 16-day sale window over the holidays, third-parties were given a choice as to how severely they would discount their games. Those that discounted their games by 10 percent saw a 35% uptick in sales--that's dollars, not units. A 25 percent discount meant a 245 percent increase in sales. Dropping the price by 50 percent meant a sales increase of 320 percent. And a 75 percent decrease in the price point generated a 1,470 percent increase in sales."

Of course, it helps if people actually know you exist, (ie, Steam has a much higher profile than Shrapnel) - that's where advertising comes in.

[Tim Brooks]

Is this for all games? Or just for Dom3?

Pretty much across the board.

[Tim Brooks]

Discounting games does not only increase unit sales--it increases actual revenues.

I know that article. It is from Valve. Be careful wth broad statements like that. The game they talk about had increased sales, but it came with an announcement of upcoming additional content. That alone would have increased sales. We announce a patch and our sales jump by those kind of percentages.

Also, these games were featured on their front page. What they don't say is that any game on their front page does great. That when it drops from the front page, its sales are much, much weaker.

So was it the sale, the announcement of upgrade, or the front page?

[Squirrelloid]

Damn, if niches are that big, what's the point of calling things niche games.


If the niche is that big, why do board game stores have such a hard time staying profitable? Why do almost all the large RPG/boardgame publishers go bankrupt or get taken over by a the giants? Why is it so hard for normal boardgames to stay in production?

Sure you can get The Settlers of Catan everywhere. But that is simple low strategy board game. Now try to buy Shogun/Samurai Swords somewhere. Big strategy board games get out of print often. Why? Because eventually the market is saturated. The avid war/boardgamers all have a copy. And the group of these is rather small so it doesn't really pay off to keep copies laying around for the small amount of sales you get. While Settlers still sells regular. Why? Because difficult board games are a niche, and settlers has a broad appeal.

Here's the thing you're neglecting - the lifespan of a game. One title cannot stay in print forever, you're right. And it shouldn't. Publishers need to release a steady stream of titles in order to stay in business. And this is even more true for computer games where changing technology obsoletes old games. (Don't get me wrong, I still love playing games from the 90s, but i probably won't even be able to run them after my next (imminent) hardware upgrade.)

A computer game's lifespan is 5 years at the most. Only the most exceptional games hit 10+ (eg, Starcraft). So when you start off by asking questions like 'Why is it so hard for normal boardgames to stay in production' or 'why do RPG companies go out of business', you're asking entirely the wrong questions. You need to keep producing new products that will bring back older customers as well as be accessible to new customers. This explains why Magic the Gathering is still going strong some 17 years after starting. Or why WotC chose the publication structure it did for D+D 4e (every year sees a new set of core books), and why a 5th edition is inevitable.

Dom3 is already past the expected lifetime. It shouldn't be expected to generate any sales at all, especially at full price, and that it does should be regarded as miraculous.

[Soyweiser]

FWIW: http://www.next-gen.biz/features/valve-are-games-too-expensive

"Discounting games does not only increase unit sales--it increases actual revenues. During the 16-day sale window over the holidays, third-parties were given a choice as to how severely they would discount their games. Those that discounted their games by 10 percent saw a 35% uptick in sales--that's dollars, not units. A 25 percent discount meant a 245 percent increase in sales. Dropping the price by 50 percent meant a sales increase of 320 percent. And a 75 percent decrease in the price point generated a 1,470 percent increase in sales."

Of course, it helps if people actually know you exist, (ie, Steam has a much higher profile than Shrapnel) - that's where advertising comes in.

One of the biggest developers does this and gets LOADS of press, for games that already are hugely popular before. Valve and L4D are huge, both in PR and amount of gamers who like it. (And zombies always sell of course ;) ).

Question is, does the lower price help? Or the fact that it was expensive before and is now on sale?

What works for Valve doesn't have to work for a small developer. You can only do this if your potential consumer base is already large enough. Advertisement is pretty hard you know.

Ps, incoming Jeff Vogel fanboyism :D
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/10/world-of-goos-big-sale.html
"So the only real moral of the story is that people like sales. Not a shock."

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/04/indie-games-should-cost-more-pt-2.html
""If You Charged Less, You Would Sell More Copies"

This is true. The problem is that I won't sell enough more to justify the lower prices.

Microeconomics tells us that as we charge less, we sell more, but we make less per sale. At some point, there is a best price, a point where (number of sales) * (profit per sale) is at its maximum. The question is, where is it? Based on my experiences shifting prices up and down, I think I'm actually at the sweet spot."

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/04/indie-games-should-cost-more-pt-1.html
"Now don't get me wrong. Some games (casual quickies, simple puzzle games) should be inexpensive. But everyone (retailers, reviewers, customers) is enabling a mindset where all games, even the niche products and larger, deeper, less casual titles, are expected to be desperately cheap. This is not going to help developers stay in business. This is not how a healthy industry is maintained."

[Soyweiser]

Is this for all games? Or just for Dom3?

Pretty much across the board.

Interesting. Thanks for the information.

[Gandalf Parker]

Publicity is free (except of course for having a publicist to do it). Dom3 and new Shrapnel games appear in nearly every online gaming magazine or review site almost instantly.

Advertising costs money. Someones money. Usually the publisher. Thats one of the complaints of indies who leave big publishers for smaller ones. The advertising and other fancy features put them in a hole. It can take 1 or 2 years to payback the startup costs and start seeing profit as actual paychecks. Not to mention the so often mentioned "sales bins" that many of the pushers for the Shrapnel going the other way tend to add as something they would wait for. Those are efforts of the distributor and sometimes the publisher to recoup their costs and break even. Often happening before the profit point which means the devs see nothing.

ONE of the apparent advantages of Shrapnel to indy developers is almost instantly splitting sales. Ive seen some of the developers do ads for their own games but generally Im not sure where you would do it for Dom3. If you can think of one, let me know. Id be willing to look into it.
(But Im still holding out for a tshirt concession)

[Soyweiser]

Here's the thing you're neglecting - the lifespan of a game.


That is true.


And this is even more true for computer games where changing technology obsoletes old games.

And that is the problem. Dom3 isn't obsolete. There is no replacement.


So when you start off by asking questions like 'Why is it so hard for normal boardgames to stay in production' or 'why do RPG companies go out of business', you're asking entirely the wrong questions. You need to keep producing new products that will bring back older customers as well as be accessible to new customers.


But a lot of RPG and boardgame publishers did just that, and still went out of business because the niche for boardgames and rpgs was shrinking. Sure the large ones like MtG and WotC survive. But the small ones die, or downsize.

Unrelated, how is dnd 4ed selling?


A computer game's lifespan is 5 years at the most.
...
Dom3 is already past the expected lifetime. It shouldn't be expected to generate any sales at all, especially at full price, and that it does should be regarded as miraculous.


Only if there is a better version. Only if there is something new and shiny comparable out. Especially for a certain type of niche. (Starting to really dislike the word niche btw, used it a bit to much).

Otherwise where is nothing in conventional economics saying why prices should drop. Sure there is a method to slowly get the most out of the costumers by gradually dropping the prices, but that only works in certain situations, cant recall which exactly, and to lazy to look it up in my economy books. But supply vs demand doesn't apply in this case, as supply is rather infinite.

Boardgames also don't gradually drop in prices, and when they do, it is because the shops need the shelve space.

The idea that games should drop in prices is because you expect them to do, because it is supposed to be normal. Not because it makes economic sense.

Ps: regarding the lower prices. Never forget that this could be a business ploy. Lower pricing to drive the competition with lesser deep pockets out of business. (I'm paranoid anti-corporate, it is my Shadowrun heritage). Valve playing themselves off as the less greedy friendly corp, while crushing the competition.


---
Edit:
Perhaps there now is a better version, if Elements gets improved.
Edit2:
I think the economics theory is related to different adopters of products. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations#Adopter_categories

[Soyweiser]

Gandalf, that is why Indies have created other ways of creating buzz and publicity. Such as blogs etc.

See: http://www.pixelprospector.com/indev/2010/08/the-big-list-of-indie-marketing-and-business-tips/

[Gandalf Parker]

Gandalf, that is why Indies have created other ways of creating buzz and publicity. Such as blogs etc.

See: http://www.pixelprospector.com/indev/2010/08/the-big-list-of-indie-marketing-and-business-tips/

Heehee. Yes that, and other methods, were covered a while ago at this site....
http://cafethotz.blogspot.com/
abit less general than the site you posted but more personal :)

[Soyweiser]

Heehee. Yes that, and other methods, were covered a while ago at this site....
http://cafethotz.blogspot.com/

"In forums for PoDs"

There is a forum for the prince of death? :D

--
Edit
Stealth advertisment methods also sometimes fail if you are discovered. (Recently a certain dutch sales website was discovered to use dummy accounts to increase the ratings on their own products. (The idiots used the same account to buy multiple television sets and washing machines, of which you only need one :)).

[Squirrelloid]

I don't particularly know how well D+D 4e is doing since i disconnected from the game about when 4e was released. The internet seems to think its doing quite well as an RPG, but not necessarily very well compared to the 3E release (which was off-the-charts good). No idea how 4E's initial release compares to 4Es 2nd wave of core books.

------------
Re: boardgames vs. Computer games.

Boardgames have a large material cost. Especially as games with a higher toy value appeal more to a larger audience, and that toy value costs money in production.

The difference is that computer games have very little material cost, so there is profit to be made all the way down, as it were. My guess is that boardgames don't have too far to go down before they lose profitability, especially as unit sales for boardgames are typically lower than for computer games of equal popularity, since only one person needs to own a boardgame for many to play.

[HoneyBadger]

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

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. :rolleyes:

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.

I died and got raised as a demi-lich.

[13lackGu4rd]

Otherwise where is nothing in conventional economics saying why prices should drop. Sure there is a method to slowly get the most out of the costumers by gradually dropping the prices, but that only works in certain situations, cant recall which exactly, and to lazy to look it up in my economy books. But supply vs demand doesn't apply in this case, as supply is rather infinite.

actually, it makes perfect sense economically... your problem is that you're dismissing the supply vs demand issue on "infinite supply" of computer games. not only is this false in reality(they still take money to produce, even though it's much cheaper than say board games), supply is not just about the actual making of the game but also about the competition.

moreover, time is also a crucial factor that you don't really address in your own economical equations. there's a reason why "we expect" prices to go down over time, it's only sensible even under economical logic. why do car prices go down every year? why do pretty much any other products go down in prices over the years? the older a product is, the further way the company gets from the "cover their expenses" stage to the "pure profit" stage. when all the expenses have been covered the company should logically start reducing their prices, or else they're just overly greedy and will usually be unsuccessful in the long run. even giant corporations like Blizzard lowered the prices of their games, as well as make gold editions(for example Starcraft+Broodwars expansion) which costs just a bit over original Starcraft when it was released, but now you also get the expansion with it.

Boardgames also don't gradually drop in prices, and when they do, it is because the shops need the shelve space.

false again. board games also drop in price, it's just that they drop less because they have far less to drop into, due to increased expenses over computer games.

The idea that games should drop in prices is because you expect them to do, because it is supposed to be normal. Not because it makes economic sense.

false, as I've started saying above. also keep in mind that new products are valued higher than old products, and it doesn't matter whether you're talking about cars, furniture, computer games, computers(as in hardware), TVs, or whatever else you want. of course there are exceptions, such as classic models or antiquities(mainly in furniture) but every rule(logic, etc) has exceptions...

Ps: regarding the lower prices. Never forget that this could be a business ploy. Lower pricing to drive the competition with lesser deep pockets out of business. (I'm paranoid anti-corporate, it is my Shadowrun heritage). Valve playing themselves off as the less greedy friendly corp, while crushing the competition.

you're mixing 2 different things here. companies that lower prices in order to destroy the competition, don't do it over the years, they do it mainly with their new products. moreover they sell their items in loss prices for a limited amount of time, in order to crush the competition. than when the competition is destroyed they raise their prices considerably, and of course release other products and product lines in full prices, now that they have no competition remaining. this method is now illegal by the way, but it's still being used due to the hardship of actually proving the existence of loss prices.

[fantasma]

I am probably am very niche here, having bought two games of which I only play dom3 (maybe a third from a bin).

That said, we are facing an audience for this game that does not have the luxury to select between a dozen products, I have not seen anything comparable to dom3 for years, have you?

This is vastly different to most of the examples (TVs, cars, etc.) where development is extremely fast, meaning a product is outdated upon introduction. This is not the case for dom3 after so many years. If you have not understood, this game lives because it wraps up mythology from the whole planet packages that into a $50 product and let you play god! WTF about graphics, sound, UI, AI, I think it is a great deal.

Sure everything could be better, but you know, I still enjoy fending off impossible AIs, and I would enjoy multiplayer much more if I had the time on a regular basis. Of course I am annoyed by transferring blood slaves one by one and the like.

I think dom3 is a product that attracts certain people and there are not many competitors. You could increase sales mainly by increasing the number of people who have heard about it, but that is easier said than done.

I think sales are important since they create the incentive to actually buy the product instead of pondering for another six months, not creating more customers.

In short, supply and demand is not applicable because demand is limited, supply not. But demand is limited in the sense that you either want it or not want it, pricing is mostly irrelevant in this target group, as long as it stays reasonable.

[thejeff]

Many products don't drop in price over time, if we're talking about product lines as opposed to actual things. Sure, two year old cars are cheaper than this year's model, but that's because the actual thing is two years old and used and thus is not likely to last as long. If they just keep making them to the same design the price doesn't drop.

Clearance sales and discontinued products aside, furniture stays at about the same price as long as it's being produced. Chairs that were designed 2 years ago aren't half the price of this year's chairs.

Electronics are a special case. The same specs do keep getting cheaper, but that's because the tech keeps getting better. Not only do higher performance versions keep coming out, but it gets cheaper to make the lower performance hardware. Software often follows this pattern, since new versions keep being made to exploit the new hardware.

[Gandalf Parker]

Also, these examples tend to things that you can advertise pretty much anywhere.

Saying "advertise and you will sell more" is a general truth, but when you get to something like Dom3.. where would you advertise? General, or targetted? And again we are back to talking niche.

I have a few ideas (and have used some) but what would someone recommend? True, when you search in google for Dominions 3 you dont get an ad at the side for where to buy Dom3. But since Shrapnel comes out top in the search, why would you pay for that?

Forums where potential dom3 players hang out? Find one. Its either so general that the result is likely to be small, or its so specific that Dom3 is already well known and brought up in conversations. You can boost those for free without paying to add a pop-ad to the site.

Game magazines in the real world? Do you really think the amount of money that costs is worth the gamble? Easy to say with someone elses money. If someone is so sure Id recommend they go for it.

[13lackGu4rd]

fantasma, first of all I was replying on the reduction of computer game prices in general, not specifically about Dominions3. hence many of the examples I gave don't apply to Dominions3, being in the very niche category that it is in... with that being said, you're still wrong on several accounts.

That said, we are facing an audience for this game that does not have the luxury to select between a dozen products, I have not seen anything comparable to dom3 for years, have you?

wrong, the audience you're talking about is a very very small group. Dominions3 doesn't rely on the audience you're referring to, or else it would still be losing money over the production fees, sallies, etc... dominions3 targets quite a variety of people, here are a few examples:
1. hardcore TBS freaks
2. casual games who don't have a lot of time on their hands for long multiplayer sessions, yet still enjoy multiplayer a lot more than mindless battles against crappy AIs
3. strategy freaks in general(both RTS and TBS) who can appreciate good games despite having bad graphics, sound, UI, etc
4. older people, many with families already, that are not your typical "gamers".
5. people who utterly dislike the whole "click fest" of most modern games(no matter the genre).

these are just examples, there are more, and obviously some(or even most) people fall into more than 1 category.

This is vastly different to most of the examples (TVs, cars, etc.) where development is extremely fast, meaning a product is outdated upon introduction. This is not the case for dom3 after so many years. If you have not understood, this game lives because it wraps up mythology from the whole planet packages that into a $50 product and let you play god! WTF about graphics, sound, UI, AI, I think it is a great deal.

no offense, but this was just pathetic fanboy material... Dominions3 was very much outdated even on its release date on 2004. it has awful graphics(compared to other games in 2004), unimaginative sound, very bad UI, etc. heck, just look at how little Dominions3 taxes your hardware to notice that it's very much outdated.

Dominions3 is appealing because of its concept, and because it aims for populations that don't care much about high end graphics and sound, which are the focus of most modern games. Dominions3 cares about the quality of its content instead, which is too rare these days :(

with that being said, there are still other game companies that also try to live up to the same standards as Shrapnel. the Civilization series is a good example, Stardock(and the now infamous Elemental) is another. there are still innovations even within this very limited concept, so Shrapnel just can't afford to keep Dominions3 at the same price it was on release, when for the same money you can get newer games that are a lot more appealing in many ways.

Sure everything could be better, but you know, I still enjoy fending off impossible AIs, and I would enjoy multiplayer much more if I had the time on a regular basis. Of course I am annoyed by transferring blood slaves one by one and the like.

well, good for you. but most people don't enjoy fending off hordes of mindless AI that you can easily destroy with a few Earthquakes, Rain of Stones, etc. the real challenge lies within multiplayer, and the deficiencies of Dominions3 are certainly annoying(mainly the bad UI) but we still like this game because despite of them it's still a great game.

I think dom3 is a product that attracts certain people and there are not many competitors. You could increase sales mainly by increasing the number of people who have heard about it, but that is easier said than done.

I partially agree with you here, but only partially. at 55$(the price I bought it for just a few months before they finally released the digital download) the price of Dominions3 is way too high, heck new "standard" games go for 30-50$, and these have a lot more expenses than Dominions3 had(massive game engine, state of the art graphics, better sound and UI, etc), not to mention they're new(max 1-2 year old), not 6 years old. moreover there are people, that Dominions3 appeals to, that spending 55$ on an old computer game is just too much, but they would have bought it for less. moreover the people interested in this genre have mostly heard about Dominions3 already, from various sources, it's not like Dominions3 doesn't have any publicity/public awareness...

I think sales are important since they create the incentive to actually buy the product instead of pondering for another six months, not creating more customers.

totally agree with you, but I ask you to take it a step further. instead of inducing sales they should just lower the price globally, to get the same effect, just more powerful.

In short, supply and demand is not applicable because demand is limited, supply not. But demand is limited in the sense that you either want it or not want it, pricing is mostly irrelevant in this target group, as long as it stays reasonable.

in short, supply and demand is still very much relevant. the people you imply this concept doesn't imply to are a minority within the total customer base of Dominions3. the majority of the customer base do have alternatives.

Many products don't drop in price over time, if we're talking about product lines as opposed to actual things. Sure, two year old cars are cheaper than this year's model, but that's because the actual thing is two years old and used and thus is not likely to last as long. If they just keep making them to the same design the price doesn't drop.

first of all we're talking about actual products here, in this case dominions3. not the whole product line, which in this case would be all of Shrapnel's games, all TBS games, etc. second of all, even for product lines, there are still innovations that are made every day which eventually impact the line, sometimes it takes more than a few years but it does happen. again, classic models and antiquities aside...

lets take a basic example you claim stays steady, furniture: say you got an office chair from 5 years ago. today you have office chairs which are a lot more comfortable, have better angles, better back padding, handles, etc. why would you still buy the lesser chair from 5 years ago instead of a new chair? the only reason you'd do so is if the 5 year old office chair is significantly cheaper than a new office chair. now, how will the price be significantly lower? line production fees, raw materials, salaries, etc haven't increased over the years, the only field in which an increase in producing cost would be in engineering innovations, but those are not nearly enough to justify a significantly higher price than a state of the art office chair of 5 years ago.

Clearance sales and discontinued products aside, furniture stays at about the same price as long as it's being produced. Chairs that were designed 2 years ago aren't half the price of this year's chairs.

maybe not half the price, and maybe a bit more than 2 year difference, but saying furniture prices stay the same is just false. refer to example above.

Electronics are a special case. The same specs do keep getting cheaper, but that's because the tech keeps getting better. Not only do higher performance versions keep coming out, but it gets cheaper to make the lower performance hardware. Software often follows this pattern, since new versions keep being made to exploit the new hardware.

electronics is not a special case, it's simply the extreme side of the phenomenon. technology advancements usually make all production lines cheaper, the only difference is how much cheaper they become and how much better they allow the final product to be. heck, the whole point of technological progress is to make production as a whole cheaper, otherwise there would be no economical logic behind investing money in making better technologies in the first place...

[Soyweiser]

Office chair example

Now you are making a little mistake here imho. You take furniture in general, and pick one example of a high end product, for which there are replacements etc. And try to invalidate his whole claim. But it was about furniture in general. Not the high end products. A simple folding chair which costs 5 bucks 10 years ago, still costs 5 bucks now. (Modulo, inflation, costs of plastics etc). A piece of high grade wooden furniture to (to let your grandchildren inherit) still costs the same now as it did 10 years ago. In general furniture prices stay the same. (Sure high end innovative stuff such as expensive office chairs is a counter example. Or fasionable furniture (don't know how people call the furniture fasion industry). But all of these invalidate the previous generation. So that is why the previous generation drops in price).

Heck, the whole point of technological progress is to make production as a whole cheaper, otherwise there would be no economical logic behind investing money in making better technologies in the first place...

There are loads of different reasons to improve technology, making production cheaper is one of them. Radical innovation (which tends to make new products more expensive) is another one. Gradual innovation tends to either make products more affordable, or better. Sometimes companies just create new products because a "New" sticker on the product increases sales. (That is why shampoo bottles tend to chance colors and bottle types every few years. Most of it is just marketing. If anybody is interested, I have recent story about this (about shampoo :))).

----
Just FYI, I also think Dom3 is a bit to expensive. But according to Tim (don't mind if I call you Tim?). It makes little difference if it sold cheaper. And I assume that he has done the numbers. I don't think he would mind more money.

[thejeff]

Even in the office chairs the reason you don't buy the 5 year old chair, is that they don't make it anymore. You don't get to choose between the most recent high-end design and the high-end design from 5 years ago. You choose between this year's top end and this year's middle or low end.

[Zeldor]

Why are you guys comparing it to different stuff? Furniture, electronics etc have high fixed costs. They can be lowered, but still take high %.

When it comes to software, fixed costs are very low. Maybe 10% tops. Other things are labour/marketing/desired income. Sure, it has to be divided between many people, but just selling a game does not take much time or money. You just sacrifice small fixed part. Rest is pure profit - costs of obtaining it depend on how good you are at doing business. If Shrapnel says they cannot lower it much [but Amazon can still sell it for $50 and free shipping] it just means their business model sucks and their costs are way too high.

[Soyweiser]

[but Amazon can still sell it for $50 and free shipping]

Amazon has a tendency to cap prices and sell stuff for a loss just to get market share. They also have a highly automated sales process (benefit of scale). So they tend to do stuff cheaper.

(Not saying that perhaps Shrapnel should take a look at their costs and in that way make the games cheaper (If they can reduce their constant costs of each sale by 10% a 10% reduction of price would increase the sales numbers) but there are two sides to the story).

[13lackGu4rd]

Office chair example

Now you are making a little mistake here imho. You take furniture in general, and pick one example of a high end product, for which there are replacements etc. And try to invalidate his whole claim. But it was about furniture in general. Not the high end products. A simple folding chair which costs 5 bucks 10 years ago, still costs 5 bucks now. (Modulo, inflation, costs of plastics etc). A piece of high grade wooden furniture to (to let your grandchildren inherit) still costs the same now as it did 10 years ago. In general furniture prices stay the same. (Sure high end innovative stuff such as expensive office chairs is a counter example. Or fasionable furniture (don't know how people call the furniture fasion industry). But all of these invalidate the previous generation. So that is why the previous generation drops in price).

mistake? I was simply giving an example, obviously 1 example can't count an entire field, but it doesn't make it any less valid. moreover, office chairs, a high end product? am I missing something here...? but if you insist, you can pick regular(as in kitchen) chairs, desks, tables, even outdoors furniture, whatever you want... even your example of a simple 5$ folding chair(outdoors furniture) can be made from better materials, have better axises, have longer longevity, etc. not that you can go much lower than 5$ but you can make the old 5$ chairs irrelevant by offering much better products for the same 5$s. you were just looking at my example, not my entire reasoning before that example, which was your main mistake.

Heck, the whole point of technological progress is to make production as a whole cheaper, otherwise there would be no economical logic behind investing money in making better technologies in the first place...

There are loads of different reasons to improve technology, making production cheaper is one of them. Radical innovation (which tends to make new products more expensive) is another one. Gradual innovation tends to either make products more affordable, or better. Sometimes companies just create new products because a "New" sticker on the product increases sales. (That is why shampoo bottles tend to chance colors and bottle types every few years. Most of it is just marketing).[/QUOTE]

I wouldn't call "radical innovation" as "technological progress". radical innovations is mainly in the realm of theories. if engineers or whoever else actually find useful products to be made out of these radical innovations than they usually try to make them with current technologies. it is rare for technological progress to happen on the basis of some crazy theory.

keep in mind that technological progress is not usually done by universities or other research institutions, unless said institutions found some miraculous break through. technological progress is normally done by corporations, and to a lesser extent smaller companies, as in the private sector. the private sector thinks economically, so if a technological progress doesn't improve their production lines in any way than they just won't bother with it.

[Soyweiser]

I wouldn't call "radical innovation" as "technological progress". radical innovations is mainly in the realm of theories. if engineers or whoever else actually find useful products to be made out of these radical innovations than they usually try to make them with current technologies. it is rare for technological progress to happen on the basis of some crazy theory.

keep in mind that technological progress is not usually done by universities or other research institutions, unless said institutions found some miraculous break through. technological progress is normally done by corporations, and to a lesser extent smaller companies, as in the private sector. the private sector thinks economically, so if a technological progress doesn't improve their production lines in any way than they just won't bother with it.

Radical innovation is a term used in economics. Radical innovation creates new types of products, new markets, and doesn't happen all that often. It is more than just thinking about a new crazy theory in a ivory tower.

Incremental innovation tends to increase already existing products. Example: New types of screens, lighter products, small feature increases.

For example, transistors, personal computers, creation of the internet, working strong AI are all examples of radical innovations. They created whole new product and markets lines where none where there before.

While for example all the recent products Apple released are just gradual innovations. (The power of Apple, or at least Steve, is to make them look like radical).

You are utterly wrong about the source of radical innovation btw. Both types of innovation are done in the private sector and by universities. Private sectors do it to try to keep ahead of the competition, if your competition is ahead with developing something radical, they have a huge competitive advantage. (Sorry if my tone is a bit off here, but I did a minor in technological management, which spend a lot of time discussing innovation, different types of innovation, economics etc).

[fantasma]

Zeldor, I think they could lower the price but lack the incentive to do so because lowering would not increase sales to any significant amount. That is my guess, and, as far as I can tell, theirs as well.

I think there are two completely different aspects about dom3, games in general, let's leave out the chairs, please:

1. the idea, concept, depth, content and whatever else makes for a high replay value. Dominions is top in this category, IMHO, there are few others, sure, but few. And this does not change or lose value over time.

2. The other thing is graphics, the UI, the sound, all that can be summed up as technology and markup, and here dom3 is getting old, I agree, it was so even when it was released. This is the part of the game that gets obsolete, that demands a discount because it is far behind the standard.

That said, my opinion is that I bite the bullet of mediocre usability and arts for a high replay value, and that comes from depth and content. And if others hadn't made pledges for improvements I for sure would have. I own this game for two years at least and have maybe played have the nations beyond expansion.

Sure, I want a better graphics and especially better interface to handle micro, but I also understand why a two man developer team has better things to do than keep a running game updated, I mean in a big way, they still do minor tweaks, anyways. And I can very much understand that they have bad feelings about giving away their code to others to work on.

I forgot what the original point of the thread was, but I doubt reducing price will increase sales significantly and I tried to argue why. I wonder how much in total went to Illwinter over the years, I doubt it has accumulated to a decent wage considering the effort and knowledge put into the game. And then it is a top seller for an indy project, no?

[13lackGu4rd]

Soyweiser, while all of you're examples were indeed made by the private sector, you're missing the main point. those are actually technological improvements, not radical innovations. radical innovations were the steps prior to the actual products, in the case of the transistor for example, the radical innovation was the whole concept of semiconductors. Transistors were 1 of the first technological usages of the radical innovation called semi conductors. sure, the transistor was an entirely new product and the begining of the major field called consumer electronics today. however it is also a technological improvement to what was available before it, for example, the previously available larger radios instead of pocket/mobile radios available with the transistor. same deal goes for personal computers and all your other examples. while they were major breakthroughs they were still technological implementations of radical innovations, not the radical innovations themselves.

radical innovations have nothing to do with products, at least not at their first phase. radical innovations that prove to be useful and profitable tend to become the begining of entire product lines if not entire product fields, however not all radical innovations prove to be useful to the private sector, and remain in the theory field or in the research institutions in which they were founded.


fantasma, you're problem is that you're only taking your own opinion into your equation. however you're in a vast minority here, the majority of the Dominions3 consumers are very much different from yourself. so basing an argument on a very limited minority, or even worst, your own personal experience alone, is just plain wrong.

[thejeff]

Really? The vast majority of Dominions3 consumers prefer "graphics, the UI, the sound" over the "idea, concept, depth, content and whatever else makes for a high replay value"?

What the hell are they doing here then?

I'll grant you, you'd get more customers if you prioritized the first over the second. That's what the mainstream games do. But the result wouldn't be Dominions. And I probably wouldn't be playing it.

[Tim Brooks]

Let me ask one question. If you were starting a business and you were told that you could either:

1) sell 100,000 units of your product at $10.00 each (Gross $1,000,000) but you would have to hire 50 people to support that effort or

2) you could sell 1 unit of your product at $1,000,000 and you wouldn't have to hire anyone, you could do all the work yourself,

which would you do?

[13lackGu4rd]

quite an easy question in my opinion Tim Brooks, obviously the first. the reason is also simple. sure, you will need to pay salaries for 50 people, netting in less net income than if you do all the work yourself. however it also opens up the ability to manufacture more products, which in turn will increase your net income by a lot more than what you would have otherwise saved in salary fees. moreover, time equals money, even your own, so by letting other people work for you, you free your own time to do other things. those things can result in a higher income if that's what you wish, or they can be spending more time with your family, etc. it's your freedom to decide what to do with your time, and that can be worth a lot more than 50 salaries.

[Fantomen]

Well, assuming it was a game and I was the developer, I'd sure as hell rather have 10000 people playing it than 1. So in that case 1.

But assuming I'm in it for the money and pure profit is the only value? Sure then 2, or...

...you also have to take into account the value of fame. Having a big title that many people play is a whole lot of money saved on free advertising next time I release something. And then those 50 people could help me supporting the company further, being friends, providing a wide slate of competence, contact network, internal feedback, idea generating, and in general enabling the business to grow and develop into something I could be proud of every day.

Nice rhetorical question. Is it fair? Are you in it just for the money? Is that why you're in the business of distributing niche TBS games?

Life is a bit like that choice isn't it? People choosing 2 are the ones speculating in land or currency, risk investment, weapon export, drugs, fast food chains and so on. Or just doing well paid jobs just for the money, or fail and do soulless ****jobs for the ones who succeeded.

People choosing 1 are ones who care. Nurses, NGO workers, artists, scientists, teachers and an endless row of others. Not the least indie game developers.

I'm an independent filmmaker, you can say I choose 1 every day. I hire loads of people to help me realize creative visions without even knowing if I'll break even. Is it worth it? Hell yeah!

Did that answer your question?

[13lackGu4rd]

I think you're a bit confused Fantomen.
Well, assuming it was a game and I was the developer, I'd sure as hell rather have 10000 people playing it than 1. So in that case 2.

I thought you meant 1, cause 2 would be a single unit(hence a single player) costing 1mil$...

But assuming I'm in it for the money and pure profit is the only value? Sure then 1, or...

actually, in his example 2 would give the most pure profit, as you're saving the 50 salaries you pay in 1 to reach the same profit of 1mil$. but it's true that 1 gives a lot more potential income.

...you also have to take into account the value of fame. Having a big title that many people play is a whole lot of money saved on free advertising next time I release something. And then those 50 people could help me supporting the company further, being friends, providing a wide slate of competence, contact network, internal feedback, idea generating, and in general enabling the business to grow and develop into something I could be proud of every day.

sure, free advertisement is always nice, but that's not the main point. being proud of your business sort of contradicts what you're saying later, but it's an emotional reason not logical. now, whether you make decisions based on logic or ratio is entirely up to you(or well, any individual) but that's an entirely different subject.

Nice rhetorical question. Is it fair? Are you in it just for the money? Is that why you're in the business of distributing niche TBS games?

totally irrelevant to his example Imho. to be precise it's more about "the big score" vs being there over time, short term vs long term if you will.

Life is a bit like that choice isn't it? People choosing 1 are the ones speculating in land or currency, risk investment, weapon export, drugs, fast food chains and so on. Or just doing well paid jobs just for the money, or fail and do soulless ****jobs for the ones who succeeded.

I think you missed the point entirely. people who choose 1 are the people who made companies and corporations, what makes the modern world work... being a lazy bum or a mediocre(or worst) employee isn't in the discussion, he's talking about working alone or starting a company, not about being a salaryman or being independent...

People choosing 2 are ones who care. Nurses, NGO workers, artists, scientists, teachers and an endless row of others. Not the least indie game developers.

again, completely irrelevant to his example Imho.

I'm an independent filmmaker, you can say I choose 2 every day. I hire loads of people to help me realize creative visions without even knowing if I'll break even. Is it worth it? Hell yeah!

Did that answer your question?

the bold part means you chose 1 not 2, does it not...? and no, you probably didn't answer his question, I think you got confused by it.

[Fantomen]

So I accidentally switched the alternatives? Big deal.

I fixed it, makes sense now?

I think my answer is very relevant. I didn't get confused by the question but I refuse to fall down into that level of debate. What is actually irrelevant is asking rhetorical questions where you try to lure other debaters into a purified logic which doesn't account for even a fraction of the real context.

On one hand Shrapnel has reasons to set the prices they do, that's a fact. On the other hand lot's of people think dom3 is terribly overpriced for what you get, feeling that it's simply a lot of money to invest in a computer game. That's a fact too.

Shrapnel wants to make money, but the customer obviously don't care about that. The customer wants a lower price, but Shrapnel obviously don't care about that. They prefer fewer customers who pay more, if I'm understanding Tim right.

So we have two angles of debate who doesn't give a **** about each others arguments. It's the worst possible climate of discussion, and indeed the amount of hostility and chest thumping fill the air with fumes of testosterone.

At least the representatives of Shrapnel are consequent in their approach to critics and perceived dissidents of the community, arrogant and repressive.

[13lackGu4rd]

no, you didn't just switch the alternatives, you were talking about completely different things... you were mainly talking about being a salaryman vs an independent, he was talking about working as an individual or starting a company(of more than a 1 man show that is). you were trying to light up 1 of the options as positive and the other as negative, when it's not about good vs bad at all, it's merely about making logical vs emotional decisions.

the people who would choose 2 in his example are the people who feel sentimental value for their work, don't trust others' work but only their own, etc. well, I guess there are also those who can't manage other people yet still wish to remain independent, hence they end up working alone, or those that are just looking for the big score than moving onto the next gamble. you know, people who like living on the edge(economically speaking, not physically as in life or death). but neither of these groups form the majority of any modern society. so for most people, who are in the position to actually make the choice between those 2 alternatives, the clear answer would be 1.

[Fantomen]

Am I obliged to limit my response to a model of inscrutable logic? Just because someone is throwing rhetoric questions around?

And Tim asked if you'd rather sell 1 expensive unit yourself or many units with more effort. That question spurs a lot more than just individual vs. company. Or logic vs. emotion. That's also profit vs. availability and customer friendliness. Or in other words, what is it worth to have an audience?

Besides, you don't ask rhetorical question because you want an answer, so why give one? Better to use the opportunity to really say something you think has meaning.

[Squirrelloid]

Let me ask one question. If you were starting a business and you were told that you could either:

1) sell 100,000 units of your product at $10.00 each (Gross $1,000,000) but you would have to hire 50 people to support that effort or

2) you could sell 1 unit of your product at $1,000,000 and you wouldn't have to hire anyone, you could do all the work yourself,

which would you do?

This is a totally false dichotomy for so many reasons, and that fact should be patently obvious. Such as

-the nature of things that sell for $10 is totally different than the nature of things that sell for $1mil. Assuming you were starting a business with a product in mind (ie, you're sensible), you don't have a choice.

-There's no way it takes 50 people to sell 100,000 of anything digital. The top watched youtube video has 253 million views. Now, granted, it took a production team to make it (but that's your 1 unit you're making in the other case too - people needed to make it are set before you start moving product), but it only took a single person to upload it to youtube.

Now, i grant its not a sold product, but it only takes one person to make a webpage and write a little code to e-mail a game key automatically with game purchase, or whatever code you feel like writing to handle digital distribution of a game. It probably took more people than that to create the game. Heck, that code already exists.

So, necessary costs to selling a game in this day and age of digital distribution:
-game development
-bandwidth
-advertising

Where are these 50 people getting involved in any way that's germain to your question and this topic? The actual process of selling the game? Requires like an hour or two of one person's time to write the necessary code, assuming you want to do so from scratch.

I could go on, but its obvious the question is pointless. Hypotheticals that will never occur aren't relevant.

------------
Regarding depth vs. graphics. I don't see why there can't be both. I mean, a dom4 that was simply code-cleaning and graphics overhaul would be worthwhile. And I don't even care about graphics personally, but I do think there would be a positive impact on the size of the community because lots of people do.

[Foodstamp]

What's the most watched youtube video?

[Squirrelloid]

What's the most watched youtube video?

Some music video by Bieber.

Here's the top 10 of all time as of a month ago:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070430123849.htm

[Foodstamp]

We should build a turtle fence.

[Tim Brooks]

Let me ask one question. If you were starting a business and you were told that you could either:

1) sell 100,000 units of your product at $10.00 each (Gross $1,000,000) but you would have to hire 50 people to support that effort or

2) you could sell 1 unit of your product at $1,000,000 and you wouldn't have to hire anyone, you could do all the work yourself,

which would you do?

This is a hypthetical. It is actually a question asked on one of my business course tests in college.

According to the professor, the correct answer is: You do not have enough information to answer this question.

My point: These conversations about what price we should charge, how many more sales we would get, how successful the game would be if we did x, y, or z, are not relevant. You don't have the information to make the call. They may be fun for you and go ahead, have the conversation, but what do you actually know about our business? What was our bestselling game of all time? What was its price point? How many units did we sell? How much profit did we earn? In what year did we earn the most income? How much income? What was our most profitable year? Did we sell more units of Dominions 3 last year than we did the year before? Are we on track to sell more this year than last year? How many games have we dropped the price on? What did that do to our sales for that game? How many people bought the game at the new price point that never would have at its original price? How large is the TBS game market? Is it growing or shrinking? By what percentage did it shrink/grow last year? What is the cost to us of finding out that information? What is the average cost of a customer support ticket? How many support tickets do we process in a year, month, day? What is the cost of maintaining these forums? How many spammers do we get to these forums each day? What is the cost of keeping those spammers out of here? What is the cost of keeping a database driven server up and running? How many times a day do we get crash warnings on our servers? How many hours do we spend keeping the servers running in a year?

I have the answers to all of those questions and many, many more. I also have the answer to questions you haven't even considered when it comes to pricing and what that can ultimately do to your image... and your costs. At what price point does the general public, not the niche gamer, buy your product(s), hate them, and then go around the internet bad mouthing your game(s)? How many more support requests do you get as the price of the game drops (because you now sell games to people who really don't get it)? What is the cost of these extra support requests?

So go ahead tell us how terrible we are. We're pretty used to it. But pardon me if I don't take the conversation all that seriously.

[13lackGu4rd]

Tim Brooks, while all this information is obviously hidden from us, the public, it's still false to discount everything on the basis of "lack of information". experience also counts, and can help fill some of the gap created by the lack of information you're describing. moreover, we're part of your customer base, so we know what we want personally, as well as what we like and dislike about Dominions3 and everything related to it that we're exposed to.

so sure, in a university course the obvious answer would be "can't answer, not enough information". but in life you can never have enough information, yet you must make decisions. thus you make decisions without adequate information.

with that being said, not everything we say about Shrapnel is bad, heck personally I haven't said anything bad about you guys(at least not in this thread, can't bother with digging up all my posts around here for this...) and others too. the simple(yet often overlooked) fact that we're still here, 6 years after the original release of Dominions3 should tell you a lot about your game. most games don't last this long, only truly exceptional games do, so there were many things done right in Dominions3.

but like everything else in life, each coin has 2 sides. there are the good things and the bad things. the wisdom is not to eliminate them, cause that's impossible, it's to emphasize the good and try to hide the bad as well as you can.

as for actual marketing techniques. right now it seems like you're trying to fight the community to prove a certain point, instead of actually trying to listen and filter out the useful information we give you from all the background rants. this thread, as well as other threads around here, have offer you(as Shrapnel) as well as Illwinter with some very useful information, masked with endless rants and spam. if you can filter out the useful information you'll have a lot of new material to work with, which can greatly improve your game as well as your marketing, which of course will in the end lead to higher profits.

[Eximius Sus]

Shrapnel sucks. Discuss?

PS: Of course this is a banning offence.

[Eximius Sus]

So go ahead tell us how terrible we are. We're pretty used to it. But pardon me if I don't take the conversation all that seriously.

You replied. You generally don't react to most of the drivel posted on this forum. Clearly you care. I'd say you take this quite seriously. I mean let's face facts. Sales is your life blood. If you don't sell you die. Simple enough.

[Eximius Sus]

I thought about this some more. The price of Dom3 is a smoke screen. If it sells then you win. If it doesn't discount. Who gives a crap about the AAA results. Dom3 isn't AAA material. You can make the decision on what price point works. Cliffski has it right. What makes nerds like me pay for a game? Content and challenge. Simple enough. Provide enough content and enough challenge and grognards will buy.

Then you have the tough part. How do you keep the grognards playing? Clearly it's not by kicking their asses when they tell you that you got it wrong.

[Eximius Sus]

Grognards are simple. If you have the best game they will pay for it. Dom3 is pretty much the best game going.

[Fantomen]

You do not have enough information to answer this question.

We do have this information:

We know how you treat your customers.

We know how other game distrubutors treat their customers.

We know the difference.

[Tim Brooks]

I'm sorry you thought that I was attacking you. My bad. It wasn't meant as an attack, it was meant to impart my thoughts on the whole issue. Sorry for getting involved.

[Foodstamp]

Shrapnel sucks. Discuss?

PS: Of course this is a banning offence.

The guy has already been banned once. :rolleyes:

[thejeff]

And then of course there's the meta question of whether you make more people angry by responding and explaining why you won't change your marketing strategy based on forum comments or by ignoring them.

And whether anyone will actually be annoyed enough to not buy further Shrapnel games or talk the company down to other potential customers.

Thanks for explaining some of your reasoning.

[Tim Brooks]

And then of course there's the meta question of whether you make more people angry by responding and explaining why you won't change your marketing strategy based on forum comments or by ignoring them.

And whether anyone will actually be annoyed enough to not buy further Shrapnel games or talk the company down to other potential customers.

Thanks for explaining some of your reasoning.

I always consider this, especially in this forum. Alot of passionate gamers here. I was surprised that my post was thought of as an attack though. Thanks for the post.

[Zeldor]

I think that Shrapnel insulted Dom3 community so many times, that only few people would consider buying anything else from them [unless it's IW stuff, we'd only curse at them for choosing Shrapnel again].

Tim Brooks really tries hard to get the image of arrogant distributor that thinks his customers are enemies. But why would anyone here want to harm Shrapnel? All we want is to enjoy the game. But Shrapnel insists on making this experience less pleasant.

People are giving advices and criticism cause they love good complicated games. And all ideas are towards getting more of them at higher quality - and also bigger community, people we could enjoy the game with.

But Shrapnel knows better - that people are maybe on some mad quest to take down Shrapnel? Maybe you should barricade your buildings, just in case? I have better idea - learn from mistakes. See Elemental? They totally ignored any feedback from beta and lost all trust. They listen only to fanboys, fanboys that got their agreement to mock and insult all that dare to criticise. How is situation here different? You have unknown mods, that just ban community legends, you have *deleted* who should have been banned many times already, you have one of the worst ad campaign [those drug-addicted girls], you screwed us with forum transfer, you insult us with digital download price [it costs you more than burning cd and printing manual? really?] and now you try to insult us here, in that thread.

So how about you use some money you earned on us, hire a consultant to make an audit, see why your costs are so high and also send someone [like yourself] to get some proper course on marketing and advertisement? Some training in customer relations for all your staff wouldn't hurt either.

[Valerius]

Grognards are simple. If you have the best game they will pay for it. Dom3 is pretty much the best game going.

This is why, for me, Dominions is the best value I've gotten in gaming - my cost per hour played is pennies. Beats MOO, Doom, Unreal Tournament, and Halo (pistol sniping ftw!). Of course if you buy the game and don't like it, it hurts more than if you picked up a game at the bargain bin. This is why, unless they are price insensitive, I would always recommend prospective players try out the demo first. You can play enough turns to decide if the game is to your liking (and you avoid late game micro ;)).

[Foodstamp]

Grognards are simple. If you have the best game they will pay for it. Dom3 is pretty much the best game going.

This is why, for me, Dominions is the best value I've gotten in gaming - my cost per hour played is pennies. Beats MOO, Doom, Unreal Tournament, and Halo (pistol sniping ftw!). Of course if you buy the game and don't like it, it hurts more than if you picked up a game at the bargain bin. This is why, unless they are price insensitive, I would always recommend prospective players try out the demo first. You can play enough turns to decide if the game is to your liking (and you avoid late game micro ;)).

What this guy said. I did a break down of my average time playing and modding Dominions and it is one of the best values for my dollar I have ever gotten out of a PC game second only to Master of Magic.

[Soyweiser]

radical innovations have nothing to do with products, at least not at their first phase.


Nevermind that semiconductors where around 50 years before transistors where developed. But whatever, just ignore the definitions about radical innovations made by the textbooks, and the definitions made by the universities. I'm sorry but you are wrong. Personal computers are a radical innovation. Ivory tower research is not the only source of radical innovations. Both private and public sector R&D can provide both types of innovations.

You include the lack of products in your definition. Which is simply not true. But don't believe me, just get a innovation textbook. (Might I suggest one, Managing Innovation, by Joe Tidd et all).

--
The first part of this thread is also pretty interesting btw. Strange that a lot of development for the new IW project is done in secret. (Creating blogs, and regular updates is a great way to start buzz and pr).

Edit2:
A dom3 roguelike? Interesting, how is that supposed to work?

[Annette]

We've insulted you, Zeldor? In this thread alone you have said this about us:

[If Shrapnel says they cannot lower it much [but Amazon can still sell it for $50 and free shipping] it just means their business model sucks and their costs are way too high.

Dominions is an old niche game with ugly graphics. You can try convincing someone to it, but price tag is just stupid. Especially for digital copy.

50 bucks is because of Shrapnel, they are morons and know **** about doing business.


Seriously, how can coming to our forums appeal to you when you hate us this much?

[HoneyBadger]

I don't know if this is meant to be a serious statement, but I've never felt to be "insulted" by Shrapnel Games, and that's coming from someone who's a pretty touchy guy, without a lot of shiny happy feelings towards game companies, in general. Particularly game distributors. I've purchased two games from them, paid a price I considered to be fair (and still do), and haven't had any serious complaints.

$50 isn't bad at all for Dom3. That's roughly an average 8 hour day's work. Maybe 2 days, back when I was bagging groceries as a teenager, and a third of one now.

Regardless of whatever profit Shrapnel and Illwinter may make per unit, this isn't a major release by a major distributor. You can't find it at Walmart. So, I consider it to be similar to purchasing any other specialty item. Yeah, it's expensive, and yeah it would probably be possible to price individual units lower and still clear a profit on individual units, but it's unrealistic to expect them to charge less than they have to.

[Fantomen]

Seriously, how can coming to our forums appeal to you when you hate us this much?

I may not agree with Zeldor all the way, but this question is easy to answer.

The Dom3 community and Shrapnel are separate things. That's it.

Edit: Whenever you discuss things in the dom3 fora, you also have to remember that the community has been split and severely hurt by the debacle around sombres ban. There has been a very noticable decrease of new games started, and having to monitor and post game threads in two forums is a hassle. Newbies get confused by this and get less help than they used to. Key contributors got bitter and more or less stopped posting. The community is all in all in pretty bad shape. You simply have to accept that there is a lot of bitterness against Shrapnel over this, and I think this damage is more or less permanent. That is why threads like this one are so hostile, large portions of the community simply wish you'd stay away. Sad but true.

[Tim Brooks]

You simply have to accept that there is a lot of bitterness against Shrapnel over this, and I think this damage is more or less permanent. That is why threads like this one are so hostile, large portions of the community simply wish you'd stay away. Sad but true.

Yes. We are aware of this and we try to be understanding. But this is our home. We don't mind criticism or even discussion of our business practices. What we can't tolerate are the attacks against us.

You know, I thought the whole sombre side was starting their own forums. Whatever happened to that? Just go over there and attack us. Or choose one of the other popular Dominions 3 forums - there are several.

Is it unreasonable to ask for people to act with a little restraint in our own home?

[Foodstamp]

This thread is not delivering. For the first time, I am really feeling the absence of the "Sombre Crew".

[lch]

What this guy said. I did a break down of my average time playing and modding Dominions and it is one of the best values for my dollar I have ever gotten out of a PC game second only to Master of Magic.
Same here. Like many others, I only noticed Dominions because I was looking for a replacement for MoM. I'm still looking for something that's closer to MoM, but up to date. Elemental promised that it would be that game, but from what I read here my doubts about these assertions have been justified.

This thread is not delivering. For the first time, I am really feeling the absence of the "Sombre Crew".
That's because he is banned, as well as a couple of other guys, though I don't know who you'd count as "Sombre Crew", I only see individuals. What's missing for you?

[Fantomen]

Yes. We are aware of this and we try to be understanding. But this is our home. We don't mind criticism or even discussion of our business practices. What we can't tolerate are the attacks against us.

You know, I thought the whole sombre side was starting their own forums. Whatever happened to that? Just go over there and attack us. Or choose one of the other popular Dominions 3 forums - there are several.

Is it unreasonable to ask for people to act with a little restraint in our own home?

No, it's not unreasonable perhaps. But the "sombre side" isn't so homogen either. There is another forum started, yes. But that forum is fairly small, and not (yet at least) big enough to support it's own gaming community. Only a few hardcore veterans have switched over completely.

So it's dependent on this forum to keep connected with the multiplayer crowd. Most people who are there are also here, and most people who got angry over the sombre ban but didn't get banned themselves are still only here.

The function of the dom3mods fora is for THIS community to stay in touch with members it cannot afford to lose. It's an attempt to patch up the wound, how long will that work? Plus being a safe haven for pirates, nicely welded into the community here (nice side effect, huh?)

It's too late to try and create a community for this game from scratch, so we have to hold on to what there is. That is what the bitterness is about, not about the specific things you or Anette posted anywhere (you're kinda nice usually), it's about the DAMAGE. It's about not having what we had before, it's about wishing that thing never happened.

For good or bad, new players who come here sooner or later hear the story, on IRC or the dom3mods fora, and make their conclusions. It's not two "sides", it's a general change of attitude in large parts of the community.

Your home? I guess we're your dysfunctional traumatized kids then. :p

[Soyweiser]

This thread is not delivering. For the first time, I am really feeling the absence of the "Sombre Crew".
That's because he is banned, as well as a couple of other guys, though I don't know who you'd count as "Sombre Crew", I only see individuals. What's missing for you?

I think he is missing the lulz. :)

[Fantomen]

Or choose one of the other popular Dominions 3 forums - there are several.

Oh yes, I wanted to reply to this as well. It's not the first time I hear this kind of reference to "other" dominions forums, usually by Gandalf Parker. But there is never any links or specific names of those forums.

I usually dismiss most that he says as either exaggerations based of miniscule evidence or rhetorics to boost his own perceived importance, but since you are now saying this as well I have to seriously ask what the hell am I missing?

Either it's just not true, or I'm having a really hard time finding them. I'd like to, having alternate places to arrange games would be really nice.

But all I can find are general gaming forums with a few dom3 threads in them. Mixed up with all kinds of other threads. Usually the activity is low. Examples of this are quarter to three, rpg codex etc. Quite many. But no real dom3 forums, no.

The only proper dedicated, structured(with subsections for multiplayer and mods etc) and active dom3 community apart from this that I could find was a Japanese one and the dom3mods fora (which is really a part of this one) , unfortunately I don't know much Japanese which would interfere with the experience a bit so I count that out.

So WHERE are all these "several" alternative dominions 3 communities?

I'd love a proper response with links and names in it if that's ok.

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually Im sorry Ive ever mentioned such forums. And conversations like this make me ever less likely to tell you where they are. I know others feel that way also since I can see multiple people on this forum and on Sombres who know of them. If you dont believe me, then great. Thanks for that. Lets keep it that way. :)

As for the discussions about Shrapnel, some points surprise me.

A) Comments about never buying another game from Shrapnel surprises me. I always got the impression that some of the loudest people along those lines had no clue that Shrapnel even sold other games. I have half a dozen or so, and demos of 4 others (altho truthfully I only regularly play 2 of the games)

B) Comments about Shrapnel being clueless seem like they can generally be disregarded if those people dont seem to know why Shrapnel exists. Where it came from, what its mission is, and how well it has done that.

C) Comments about do or die seem too black and white fanatical for real discussion. There is always grey zone. In a purely make money and get big scenario some things would be true that wouldnt seem to apply here. Some publishers (and developers) gladly fall more into the make less but do it the way you want category. I think that both Shrapnel and Illwinter fall in there and Im surprised if thats still unclear to people who have been around for a long time.


And tho Im not paid to moderate here I will again try to point out that the MODE of "suggesting" can create the opposite effect than desired. In a small company (publisher or developer) some of your "flawless logic" can poison the waters to being considered or accepted. If anyone REALLY WANTED such companies to change their viewpoint then I have to feel that they wouldnt possibly word it the way I see it worded in threads like this. Such an action wouldnt make sense.

[Soyweiser]

Actually Im sorry Ive ever mentioned such forums. And conversations like this make me ever less likely to tell you where they are. I know others feel that way also since I can see multiple people on this forum and on Sombres who know of them. If you dont believe me, then great. Thanks for that. Lets keep it that way. :)

Wow... this reply is ... a bit childish. You really disappoint me here GD. Multiple 'secret' places where Dom3 is discussed is bad for the game you know.

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually Im sorry Ive ever mentioned such forums. And conversations like this make me ever less likely to tell you where they are. I know others feel that way also since I can see multiple people on this forum and on Sombres who know of them. If you dont believe me, then great. Thanks for that. Lets keep it that way. :)

Wow... this reply is ... a bit childish. You really disappoint me here GD. Multiple 'secret' places where Dom3 is discussed is bad for the game you know.

I do feel bad about it. Its definitely not my usual style.
But Gandalf Parker is NOT going to be the one to publish the path to Shangri-La. Sorry about that.

I pay for that, but Im used to it. NDA's, Beta agreements, non-public forums, regular contact away from this site with Shrapnel and Illwinter staff. I often have to check my sources and back off because its something not public to this forum.

[Squirrelloid]

Wait, the names of other forums, presumably open to whomever wants to join, is somehow secret? lol.

[thejeff]

And they're Shangri-La. The secret heavenly forums.

Well, I'd hate to corrupt that with us common folk. Good job keeping it secret, Gandalf.

[Gandalf Parker]

Wait, the names of other forums, presumably open to whomever wants to join, is somehow secret? lol.

Secret? no.
Really nice places and not eager to invite people on this forum to them? yes.
Does this thread not make this clear?

[Tim Brooks]

Your home? I guess we're your dysfunctional traumatized kids then.

Yes, maybe, but I don't even allow my child to talk to me this way. Next week we will start rewriting some of the forum rules here. These forums (our home) will be a kinder, gentler place.

We have never had this kind of discourse in our forums until Dominions 3. We realize this is a small group out of the many thousands that visit here each year. We don't understand it. But we won't put up with it anymore. You are more than welcome to disagree with us, to discuss what you think of our policies. To have intelligent debates. You just won't be allowed to attack us (or others) here. This will be a kinder, gentler place.

It's too late to try and create a community for this game from scratch

Why so? 2010 is shaping up to bring more members to our community than any year since release. The Dominions 3 crowd is growing, not shrinking. Since the sombre ban, we have added more new members than any 6 month period since game release. And that includes a 3 week period when new members were not being let in due to a coding error.

The only proper dedicated, structured(with subsections for multiplayer and mods etc) and active dom3 community apart from this that I could find was a Japanese one and the dom3mods fora (which is really a part of this one)

If you are looking for a site that will dedicate the bandwidth we do to one game, well, that probably doesn't exist. But there are other Dominions communities. Europe has three (try Cyberstratege in France). The Quarter-to-Three forums has several ongoing threads of dedicated Dominions 3 multiplayer gamers. But no, probably no forum that compares to here (We thought that was the sombre plan. And we were all for it.).

[Annette]

Not really a "community", I guess, but there is an active game matching service at http://dom3.matryx.org.uk/ Anyone without a valid key need not bother, though. The administrators will verify your purchase with us.

[Gandalf Parker]

Not really a "community", I guess, but there is an active game matching service at http://dom3.matryx.org.uk/ Anyone without a valid key need not bother, though. The administrators will verify your purchase with us.

Actually there is a forum, and a channel. But the forum costs money to join.
And the maytrix site requires that I believe.

But it is a wonderful server. I think we could really use one of our own like that

[Soyweiser]

Something Awful?

[rdonj]

Your home? I guess we're your dysfunctional traumatized kids then.

Yes, maybe, but I don't even allow my child to talk to me this way. Next week we will start rewriting some of the forum rules here. These forums (our home) will be a kinder, gentler place.

We have never had this kind of discourse in our forums until Dominions 3. We realize this is a small group out of the many thousands that visit here each year. We don't understand it. But we won't put up with it anymore.

Lol. I had already pretty much left this site, but this takes the cake. Well done sir. Well done. You know, I really don't even agree with a lot of the comments posters make about shrapnel on this forum, but are you kidding me? The above is the dumbest thing I have ever seen you post. Nothing good can come of this move. Why don't you just stop reading this forum? It'll get the desired effect, and not create any more ill will towards you than you've already created with your insanely terrible past decisions on how to handle us. How can you keep making mistake after mistake and not learn from it?

So here is what I think of your new policy: It's a bad idea. You are going to make everyone angry and even more people will quit this forum. Yes, a number of these will be fairly outspoken people you don't really want to have around anyway disturbing your harmoniousness. Some will not be. There will likely be another rebellion and another round of bans, and much ill temper. But if you want to deal with all that nonsense all over again, please. Go right ahead.

It's too late to try and create a community for this game from scratch

Why so? 2010 is shaping up to bring more members to our community than any year since release. The Dominions 3 crowd is growing, not shrinking. Since the sombre ban, we have added more new members than any 6 month period since game release. And that includes a 3 week period when new members were not being let in due to a coding error.[/QUOTE]

I wonder if the immense and disappointing failure that has been Elemental might have slightly more to do with more new people showing up than Sombre's disappearance. Could it... possibly make any sort of sense?

[rdonj]

Something Awful?

That's where that's hosted, yes. Something Awful has always seemed like a terrible forum to me. You have to pay to join? And then wade through a gigantic megathread for everything dominions-related? What a nightmare, to have all your game conversation and newbie questions all mixed together.

[13lackGu4rd]

Something Awful?

no... they're dom3 crowd is horrible, and their multiplayer games are full of leavers and wankers... this goes without saying but subs are completely out of the question over there, same goes with fighting until the end.

[RPZip]

Yes, the Something Awful forum is a terrible place and nobody posting in this thread should ever go there. Ever.

It's for your own good, really.

[darkchampion3d]

Something Awful?

That's where that's hosted, yes. Something Awful has always seemed like a terrible forum to me. You have to pay to join? And then wade through a gigantic megathread for everything dominions-related? What a nightmare, to have all your game conversation and newbie questions all mixed together.

Yes Something Awful is terrible. The megathread is a terrible idea and all of the posters are bad posters.

Something Awful?

no... they're dom3 crowd is horrible, and their multiplayer games are full of leavers and wankers... this goes without saying but subs are completely out of the question over there, same goes with fighting until the end.

Yeah there is basically an agreement over there that whoever loses a battle goes AI immediately and may not ask for a sub. Also they are literally wankers and will talk about it in their chat along with hyperbuttes and being terrible at everything, especially dom3.

[Soyweiser]

Yes, the Something Awful forum is a terrible place and nobody posting in this thread should ever go there. Ever.

It's for your own good, really.

So what is your nick on SA? ;)

[Matryx]

Not really a "community", I guess, but there is an active game matching service at http://dom3.matryx.org.uk/ Anyone without a valid key need not bother, though. The administrators will verify your purchase with us.

Most of what you say is correct :)
I run this tracker service, on behalf of our community within the Something Awful forums - there's no link back to the forums from the tracker because everyone on the tracker already knows where they are. Yes I do validate purchases before you can sign up for the tracker, but more importantly this site was set up primarily for myself and my friends and are not generally open to the public so you also need to be verified as a forum member over there.
If anyone did decide to pay and join the forums (yes, I said 'pay' - helps keep the bad eggs out as your account is literally worth something and bans are bans), then get to know us and you'll be welcomed in assuming you're not a troublemaker or a jerk. Anyway, yes - nice healthy community. Over 300 people registered on just my tracker site within that community, and scores of games active at any one time.
Not really sure what point I was trying to make, but perhaps just to serve as an example of a relatively recent community set up from scratch?

I do understand arguments against the megathread approach, but the forums themselves cover too much ground to have a subforum for every single topic anyone wants to talk about.

As for in-game policy re: leaving - there's nothing against getting subs in at all - happens all the time. I should know - I administrate swapping the players over on the trackers so passwords and email alerts for new turns go smoothly.
Equally, there's a general standing rule that if you're not having fun, you shouldn't have to play. Not all games are run like this - some specifically say if you go AI you're not welcome in another game run by that host. It's all specific to the individual.
Don't let a few poor assumptions and your own short sightedness cut you off from good opponents.

[toasterbot]

Yes, the Something Awful forum is a terrible place and nobody posting in this thread should ever go there. Ever.

It's for your own good, really.

So what is your nick on SA? ;)

Everyone goes AI on turn 2 of a something awful game, it is an agreement they have.

[Soyweiser]

Don't let a few poor assumptions and your own short sightedness cut you off from good opponents.

Could we all please stop with the constant hostility towards each other?

---
Edit about the quitting after losing one big battle, that is partly true. It was even mentioned in Lets Play Dom3 somewhere on the SA forum.

Edit2:
Lets plays are great btw. Love that part of SA.

[Soyweiser]

Yes, the Something Awful forum is a terrible place and nobody posting in this thread should ever go there. Ever.

It's for your own good, really.

So what is your nick on SA? ;)

Everyone goes AI on turn 2 of a something awful game, it is an agreement they have.

Sorry what?

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually a number of the Something Awful games have the "no AI" rule enforced.
Going AI is automatically backed out and notifies the person running the game so they can decide to let it go thru or look for a sub. But Id chalk up the recent flood of going AI mostly to the recent flood of new players getting into MP too soon IMHO

In general, the most serious games by the most serious gamers for Dom3 are found on Sombers forum and irc channel. Thats a good place to find such games.

[darkchampion3d]

So what is your nick on SA? ;)

Everyone goes AI on turn 2 of a something awful game, it is an agreement they have.

Sorry what?

Right. Then whoever's AI lasts the longest is considered the winner.

[rdonj]

Something Awful?

That's where that's hosted, yes. Something Awful has always seemed like a terrible forum to me. You have to pay to join? And then wade through a gigantic megathread for everything dominions-related? What a nightmare, to have all your game conversation and newbie questions all mixed together.

Yes Something Awful is terrible. The megathread is a terrible idea and all of the posters are bad posters.

Something Awful?

no... they're dom3 crowd is horrible, and their multiplayer games are full of leavers and wankers... this goes without saying but subs are completely out of the question over there, same goes with fighting until the end.

Yeah there is basically an agreement over there that whoever loses a battle goes AI immediately and may not ask for a sub. Also they are literally wankers and will talk about it in their chat along with hyperbuttes and being terrible at everything, especially dom3.

Mm... all I was commenting on was the megathread, not the actual players. Personally, I need more organization than that. I can imagine what it would be like refreshing this forum when I woke up and finding I had 10 new pages to read through, with who knows how many of them I'd find having anything I was interested in reading about. And I admin lots of games so that would get trying very quickly. I'm not quite sure why you took that as an attack on your community over there. I am not so shortsighted as to attack people I've never met or spoken to about the game. The only person I've spoken to from SA is TheDemon, and he seems a decent enough player. So... yeah, I have no idea where this post is coming from, sorry.

[Fantomen]

Yes, maybe, but I don't even allow my child to talk to me this way. Next week we will start rewriting some of the forum rules here. These forums (our home) will be a kinder, gentler place.

We have never had this kind of discourse in our forums until Dominions 3. We realize this is a small group out of the many thousands that visit here each year. We don't understand it. But we won't put up with it anymore. You are more than welcome to disagree with us, to discuss what you think of our policies. To have intelligent debates. You just won't be allowed to attack us (or others) here. This will be a kinder, gentler place.

And here I was trying to actually be nice, going out of my way trying to be honest while at the same time dodging that unpredictable banhammer with toungue twisting cunning linguistics. :(

Repression got you into this situation, more repression will make it worse.

Not only because banning one member upsets others, but also because banning a member here doesn't really remove that person from the community unless the community at large supports the decision (like norfleet etc). If you don't have that support, your ban will just be a minor nuisance when communicating and organizing games. You'll achieve close to nothing, but take the full hit from the anger it causes. Every single person you banned along with sombre is still part of this community, still play in games organized here, still takes part in discussions etc. Either through IRC or dom3mods.

Why so? 2010 is shaping up to bring more members to our community than any year since release. The Dominions 3 crowd is growing, not shrinking. Since the sombre ban, we have added more new members than any 6 month period since game release. And that includes a 3 week period when new members were not being let in due to a coding error.

That is great news. I didn't know that, but then I guess there is a recruitment base for the dom3mods fora so might be hope for it to survive. I'll stay around here too if you don't mind, I love the crowd here.

If you are looking for a site that will dedicate the bandwidth we do to one game, well, that probably doesn't exist. But there are other Dominions communities. Europe has three (try Cyberstratege in France). The Quarter-to-Three forums has several ongoing threads of dedicated Dominions 3 multiplayer gamers. But no, probably no forum that compares to here (We thought that was the sombre plan. And we were all for it.).

Yes I was looking for a forum with a comparable structure and knowledge base. But I'm glad you are positive to Sombres forum complementing this one, that makes things a lot easier.

[HoneyBadger]

I don't see a problem with having rules about how to act in a social Forum. I also don't see a problem with banning someone who doesn't follow those rules, or acts in a harmful fashion. It's the Internet, and because of the anonymity that offers, social norms require enforcing--the difference between this and real life, is just that it's much easier to enforce them.

This is a gaming Forum, after all--it's not a revolution, or an oppressive regime.
So there's no real emphasis on "charging up Bull Run" in defense of idealogy, on a gaming Forum.

Either one acts in a way that is socially acceptible, and according to the terms of use, or one is penalized for not following through on what they've agreed to do. It's an offered service, after all, rather than being, for instance, a land war, political campaign, or something of moral imperative.

If it really were all that "repressive", I'd have been banned myself, a long time ago.

[Gandalf Parker]

Thats right. Internet has room for everyone.

Im thrilled that the Sombre forum exists. Now instead of a "change" war, we can have 2 happy sites. This "kinder and gentler place" where new people can ask questions and discuss the game. Play in some fun games.

And Sombre's where serious players can have more serious discussions and play in more serious competitive ladder style games.

As long as everyone has their option for the type of forum they prefer then everything is great.

[Squirrelloid]

Thats right. Internet has room for everyone.

Im thrilled that the Sombre forum exists. Now instead of a "change" war, we can have 2 happy sites. This "kinder and gentler place" where new people can ask questions and discuss the game. Play in some fun games.

And Sombre's where serious players can have more serious discussions and play in more serious competitive ladder style games.

As long as everyone has their option for the type of forum they prefer then everything is great.

Err... False dichotomy.

The difference is that on dom3mods, people can say what they mean and not have to worry about the niceness police descending on them. Enforcing 'niceness' rules encourages all sorts of destructive passive-aggressive behavior that is openly nice but the impact is anything but, and this can only be stopped by letting people call BS when they see it. Ie, a community is perfectly capable of enforcing its own standards of behavior, and indeed, when the rules come down against the community, the community will logically feel attacked.

Regardless, dom3mods engages in all the sorts of activity you attribute as being the sole province of this forum. New players can still ask questions (and do, although much of that happens on IRC instead). Fun games still happen (eg, Nostalgia). And non-serious discussion certainly occurs (there's an entire subforum dedicated to it!). The difference is that on the one forum the community determines acceptable behavior, while on the other acceptable behavior is declared from on high.

[HoneyBadger]

I don't know what the argument is. You've got a Forum, and that's great. The whole "but it's got this, and this, and this" effort is starting to sound just a tiny bit insecure at this point, however, especially since noone's really disagreeing.

[rdonj]

I don't know what the argument is. You've got a Forum, and that's great. The whole "but it's got this, and this, and this" effort is starting to sound just a tiny bit insecure at this point, however, especially since noone's really disagreeing.

Well, when gandalf continually implies otherwise, there's a certain point to bringing it up, isn't there? But thanks for that. It's good to know that we dysfunctional children have a counselor ready to help us with our issues.

[Foodstamp]

Thats right. Internet has room for everyone.

Im thrilled that the Sombre forum exists. Now instead of a "change" war, we can have 2 happy sites. This "kinder and gentler place" where new people can ask questions and discuss the game. Play in some fun games.

And Sombre's where serious players can have more serious discussions and play in more serious competitive ladder style games.

As long as everyone has their option for the type of forum they prefer then everything is great.

Err... False dichotomy.

The difference is that on dom3mods, people can say what they mean and not have to worry about the niceness police descending on them. Enforcing 'niceness' rules encourages all sorts of destructive passive-aggressive behavior that is openly nice but the impact is anything but, and this can only be stopped by letting people call BS when they see it. Ie, a community is perfectly capable of enforcing its own standards of behavior, and indeed, when the rules come down against the community, the community will logically feel attacked.

Regardless, dom3mods engages in all the sorts of activity you attribute as being the sole province of this forum. New players can still ask questions (and do, although much of that happens on IRC instead). Fun games still happen (eg, Nostalgia). And non-serious discussion certainly occurs (there's an entire subforum dedicated to it!). The difference is that on the one forum the community determines acceptable behavior, while on the other acceptable behavior is declared from on high.

Wow, where to start?

The bans were handed out for breaking forum rules. It wasn't a matter of correcting people for being wrong about the nuisances of the game. Your master harassed new players, he insulted other members of the community on a daily basis for little to no reason, he was an all around pretty rotten guy to everyone except for your little group. The bans that came after his were delivered because the people wanted to be banned.

A community with rules does not promote passive-aggressive behavior. In this particular case, it ensured that people were treated equally on the forums. Shrapnel has a obligation to its customers to provide a forum that allows for all people to participate without worrying about intimidation from other forum goers.

You tout your new forum as being free, but really it is not that much different than this one. Instead of a handful of moderators making the rules, you have a handful of people who got banned from here. To say that your whole forum decides the rules is absurd, there is little chance that you could get everyone to participate in such decisions which means that the core members of the forums will decide what happens.

Finally, Shrapnel's forum rules are pretty standard as far as forums go; so drop the forum nazi crap. The only thing that is different here is your disbelief that a heavily active modder could be punished for being a douche bag.

[HoneyBadger]

rdonj, you're welcome to beat your point into the ground as thoroughly as the ground will stand it.

And I very much agree with the naivete involved in assuming any online Forum is somehow going to either "work", or remain, as a benevolent anarchy.

[rdonj]

It's funny, I come into this thread to tell one person I think he's making a mistake and that there's going to be more political fallout... and apparently I'm getting on everyone's hit list BUT the one guy I took issue with. You people are driving me crazy, and I feel no need to defend myself against things I never did. I don't appreciate those arguments, they are a waste of my time and energy. However, in the interests of being technically correct, I would like to point out that fantomen and I are most definitely not the same person.

On a completely unrelated note, the characterization of Sombre as our master was hilarious. Thanks for that one stampy.

[Wrana]

I played D1 quite a lot and not sure I dig what you mean buy that comment.

Bless was different, there were no themes nor eras, maps dynamically changed according to dom effects and the GUI was much more limited. Magic system was more or less the same minus new spells if memory serves.

I think maps dynamically changing was a great thing thematically. Maybe it made actual multiplay somewhat less balanced, but I personally could easily live with it!
From Dom 2 to Dom 3 at least 1 spell - Astral Weapon was also removed. Maybe some were from Dom 1 to Dom 2, too.

[HoneyBadger]

Yeah, that did catch my eye, Wrana. I wonder what it was like? I imagine something like desert areas transforming into forests or swamps, which would be pretty neat.

Especially with things like "stronger in mountains/forests" abilities, and certain spells, now that I think about it...

[Tim Brooks]

Repression got you into this situation, more repression will make it worse.

See, and I think 'repression' (your word, not mine) got us out of a bad situation. People were leaving the forums, and new registrations were way down. Now things are turning around.

Not only because banning one member upsets others, but also because banning a member here doesn't really remove that person from the community...

I'll settle for them being removed from our forums. I don't want them to stop being a part of the community at large, I don't want them to stop playing Dominions. Anyone is welcome here if they can live with the rules. If they can't they aren't wlecome here.

You'll achieve close to nothing, but take the full hit from the anger it causes.

You assume we will let that anger be conveyed here. As I have already said, we are through allowing that kind of behavior here.

Every single person you banned along with sombre is still part of this community, still play in games organized here, still takes part in discussions etc. Either through IRC or dom3mods.

Okay, that is a good thing, right?

I'll stay around here too if you don't mind, I love the crowd here.

Your more than welcome here. We are not trying to turn this into a forum where everyone has to agree with us. We<b> will</b> turn it into a forum where everyone will, at least here, show us and the community here, common courtesy.

[Squirrelloid]

Thats right. Internet has room for everyone.

Im thrilled that the Sombre forum exists. Now instead of a "change" war, we can have 2 happy sites. This "kinder and gentler place" where new people can ask questions and discuss the game. Play in some fun games.

And Sombre's where serious players can have more serious discussions and play in more serious competitive ladder style games.

As long as everyone has their option for the type of forum they prefer then everything is great.

Err... False dichotomy.

The difference is that on dom3mods, people can say what they mean and not have to worry about the niceness police descending on them. Enforcing 'niceness' rules encourages all sorts of destructive passive-aggressive behavior that is openly nice but the impact is anything but, and this can only be stopped by letting people call BS when they see it. Ie, a community is perfectly capable of enforcing its own standards of behavior, and indeed, when the rules come down against the community, the community will logically feel attacked.

Regardless, dom3mods engages in all the sorts of activity you attribute as being the sole province of this forum. New players can still ask questions (and do, although much of that happens on IRC instead). Fun games still happen (eg, Nostalgia). And non-serious discussion certainly occurs (there's an entire subforum dedicated to it!). The difference is that on the one forum the community determines acceptable behavior, while on the other acceptable behavior is declared from on high.

Wow, where to start?

The bans were handed out for breaking forum rules. It wasn't a matter of correcting people for being wrong about the nuisances of the game.

Um. What? When did I *ever* say that. I think you need your eyes examined, since you clearly didn't read the post you were replying to.

I'm talking about the difference in 'rules' of community behavior being established and enforced by the community vs. being established and enforced by someone outside the community. I don't know what you're talking about.


Your master harassed new players, he insulted other members of the community on a daily basis for little to no reason, he was an all around pretty rotten guy to everyone except for your little group. The bans that came after his were delivered because the people wanted to be banned.

lol, master. Hilarious. Because having my own thoughts that are different from yours clearly means i must be in thrall to someone you dislike.

Maybe you should look at the thread which actually led to him getting banned. He was harassing someone for a pretty good reason, and that someone was engaging in a *lot* of passive-aggressive behavior. (That of course was only the ultimate cause. The proximate cause was declaring the initial penalty was laughable, which had nothing to do with anything he did in public).


A community with rules does not promote passive-aggressive behavior. In this particular case, it ensured that people were treated equally on the forums. Shrapnel has a obligation to its customers to provide a forum that allows for all people to participate without worrying about intimidation from other forum goers.

Ah, naivete.

All communities have rules. Communities encourage desired modes of behavior and discourage undesired modes of behavior by engaging in discouraging or reinforcing behavior. It doesn't require forum rules with moderators enforcing them for a community to have rules of behavior. Thus all forums (and all communities) also engage in intimidation to some degree to enforce their notion of what is proper. There is no such place as an intimidation-free community.

And not all rules encourage passive-aggressive behavior. But rules which discourage conflict do, because passive-aggressive behavior is all about provoking conflict without appearing to be engaging in conflict yourself.


You tout your new forum as being free, but really it is not that much different than this one. Instead of a handful of moderators making the rules, you have a handful of people who got banned from here.

err.. and why is that a relevant juxtaposition? Unrelated statements are unrelated.


To say that your whole forum decides the rules is absurd, there is little chance that you could get everyone to participate in such decisions which means that the core members of the forums will decide what happens.

No, I didn't say the whole forum decides. I said the community decides. Being part of the community requires active participation. And it isn't necessarily (or even likely to be) something the community actively decides, its something that the behavior of members of the community decides.


Finally, Shrapnel's forum rules are pretty standard as far as forums go; so drop the forum nazi crap. The only thing that is different here is your disbelief that a heavily active modder could be punished for being a douche bag.

Seriously, did you actually read my post? I'd like to read the post you did read, because it sounds way more fanciful and entertaining than what I wrote.

(most importantly, i didn't pass judgement on either forum, i just pointed out what the consequences of enforcing 'niceness' rules is. And there is passive-aggressive behavior on this forum that would not be tolerated on the other one.)

[Gandalf Parker]

Sheesh I was was just trying to be diplomatic. Of course any forum CAN be anything. I was just trying to paint a picture of both forums using terms inoffensive to both sides. Instead you want to paint a picture that your forum does not offend anyone and this one is all wrong (there isnt really a majority agreement on either of those).

I think most regulars know that my personal description of the other forum and the people on it are nothing close to what I posted. But to say so, I would have to go there (yes I fully understand that is one of your selling points). I happen to recognize that such a post would not fit the environment desired here.

And I agree with that. New people here do not need a double barrel of my opinion on what some of you are posting. I dont have to live here and demand a right to vent. There are other forums for that.

[WraithLord]

I played D1 quite a lot and not sure I dig what you mean by that comment.

Bless was different, there were no themes nor eras, maps dynamically changed according to dom effects and the GUI was much more limited. Magic system was more or less the same minus new spells if memory serves.

I think maps dynamically changing was a great thing thematically. Maybe it made actual multiplay somewhat less balanced, but I personally could easily live with it!
From Dom 2 to Dom 3 at least 1 spell - Astral Weapon was also removed. Maybe some were from Dom 1 to Dom 2, too.
That feature was great. I really loved it. I asked IW to keep for dom-II but they took a whole different approach to maps. So now maps are, generally, better looking but don't change dynamically.

I also like Astral Weapon. Why did they choose to remove it anyway?

[WraithLord]

Guys, re. the game price sub discussion: I respect your opinions, intelligence and good intentions and I’m a player, so we’re on the same side, but with all due respect, let the man run his business. You can make all the analytical observations in the world, make suggestions, good or bad, that makes lot’s of sense or little - at the end of the day it’s his livelihood that’s at stake, not yours. Good or bad, this is the sales strategy Shrapnel feels comfortable with. That doesn’t mean they can’t adapt/improve listen to good suggestions but it does mean that the criticism must take into account who’s risking what.

As for the latest bad vibes comments and counter comments. I'm also upset by past mods decisions but it's all said and done. Don't forget or don't forgive but really, there's not much sense in investing energy in re-opening old wounds.

IMHO, taking into acct past debacles, these forums here host the "best" community for dominions. I for one wouldn't want to see them shrink, close, or lose any more members.

[Squirrelloid]

Sheesh I was was just trying to be diplomatic. Of course any forum CAN be anything. I was just trying to paint a picture of both forums using terms inoffensive to both sides. Instead you want to paint a picture that your forum does not offend anyone and this one is all wrong (there isnt really a majority agreement on either of those).

I wouldn't call my picture of the other forum totally rosy. Implicit in being able to say what you mean is accepting other people will to. People who don't follow community standards will be ostracized by the community. Its the way communities work. The only counterpoint is that rules which try to control that merely change who is ostracized, not that some people are. And its important to realize that. No community can be everything to everybody.

Now, i certainly did imply that I find passive-aggressive behavior more annoying than combative behavior.

And you're engaging in passive-aggressive behavior in that post GP. If you think I'm wrong you can just tell me I'm wrong, you're not going to hurt my feelings.

[Dimaz]

Zeldor, Squirreloid, you are good players and I don't want you to disappear from this forum as I have no time nor desire to participate in the second one. Please, try to relax a bit. I understand why you're angry; however please try to relax a bit and stop getting into position where permaban is the only reasonable choice for forum administration. This will be bad for the community and you know it.

[Foodstamp]

Sheesh I was was just trying to be diplomatic. Of course any forum CAN be anything. I was just trying to paint a picture of both forums using terms inoffensive to both sides. Instead you want to paint a picture that your forum does not offend anyone and this one is all wrong (there isnt really a majority agreement on either of those).

I wouldn't call my picture of the other forum totally rosy. Implicit in being able to say what you mean is accepting other people will to. People who don't follow community standards will be ostracized by the community. Its the way communities work. The only counterpoint is that rules which try to control that merely change who is ostracized, not that some people are. And its important to realize that. No community can be everything to everybody.

Now, i certainly did imply that I find passive-aggressive behavior more annoying than combative behavior.

And you're engaging in passive-aggressive behavior in that post GP. If you think I'm wrong you can just tell me I'm wrong, you're not going to hurt my feelings.

I heard the other forum has half off cherry limeades between 2 to 4 pm; Can you confirm or deny this?

[Calahan]

Sheesh I was was just trying to be diplomatic. Of course any forum CAN be anything. I was just trying to paint a picture of both forums using terms inoffensive to both sides. Instead you want to paint a picture that your forum does not offend anyone and this one is all wrong (there isnt really a majority agreement on either of those).

I wouldn't call my picture of the other forum totally rosy. Implicit in being able to say what you mean is accepting other people will to. People who don't follow community standards will be ostracized by the community. Its the way communities work. The only counterpoint is that rules which try to control that merely change who is ostracized, not that some people are. And its important to realize that. No community can be everything to everybody.

Now, i certainly did imply that I find passive-aggressive behavior more annoying than combative behavior.

And you're engaging in passive-aggressive behavior in that post GP. If you think I'm wrong you can just tell me I'm wrong, you're not going to hurt my feelings.

I heard the other forum has half off cherry limeades between 2 to 4 pm; Can you confirm or deny this?
You've been mis-informed Foodstamp. The offer is on peach schnapps between 6-8pm, every Tuesday to Thursday. Although you do have to defeat a Markata in 1-on-1 combat to be eligible for the offer.

[Foodstamp]

I could only hope to be so powerful, witness the power of the markata:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbTSeJu7QaA

[thejeff]

I heard the other forum has half off cherry limeades between 2 to 4 pm; Can you confirm or deny this?
You've been mis-informed Foodstamp. The offer is on peach schnapps between 6-8pm, every Tuesday to Thursday. Although you do have to defeat a Markata in 1-on-1 combat to be eligible for the offer.

That's unfair!. Only another Markata would be able to accomplish such a feat.
So typical of that other forum. Lure you in with special deals and then snatch them away. No wonder they were all banned here.

[Knai]

But that is the whole definition of a niche game. Only a select group of people play it. It has little appeal to women, young 14 year olds etc. So it is a niche game! Of you want it to get out of the niche, you must convince other types of people to play. This was the main point of the discussion. Is Dom3/TBS niche or not? If only a select group of males plays it, it is a niche game.

No, few of them find it and purchase it. That is very different from appeal, as there is a huge difference between the group of people who would like the game if you put it in front of them and had them play it, and the people who would find and purchase it. Locally, the median age of Dominions 3 players is probably around 13.

[HoneyBadger]

13? I kind of doubt that...I'm in my 30's (I'm quickly losing my hair, have a wife, a mortgage, gallstones, arthritis, the whole bit), and a lot of the players I know are older than I am.