The next patch

[Stormbinder]

What I would love to see is some way of selecting which players you want to send message to. (like to everybody other than Ermor ). It is huge pain in the butt to typ the same long message 15 times, especially since there there are no "copy and paste" function avalable.


It's not only ermor of course, you often have few allies and you oftten want to send them similar messadge. as it is you have to type it again and again, which is vert frustrating and discourages dimplomacy in the game, unless you have unlimited time to retype your Messages.

Also as me and many other players have noticed, currently by the end of every medium and long MP games 99% of gem income comes from not from your provinces , but from stacked hundreds and hundreds of clams and fever fetishes. Many players myslef included think it is not how this game was intended to be played, with all these nice magic gem-producing sites , eetc. IMHO magic shold mostly come from the magical lands you control, not from 500 clams that give you astral to alchemy into everything else (mostly into water to make more clams). It would be great if the cost of clams would be increased to 15 or 20 and their would be moved to con6. That would still make them avalaible to people who really wants but it would make end game much more fun and strategic than current clam hording. Same (although to slighly lesser degree goes for fever fetishes). Btw the desease cost of them is not really a disadvantage, since you can just give two fetishes to the cheapest undeads asiting in your fort and and forget about them, since undeads have no deseases.


Also I wanted to say that despite this the game is really fantastic and obviously work of love for developers, as well as pretty well balanced, I am enjoying it more than any otehr games during Last few years. That's why I am posting this - because I would love to see it a bit more balanced in the area where in my and many other MP players opinions it is still unfortuantly not very balanced.

With best regards,
Stormbinder

That's an interesting way of saying you and other people define something a certain way without having them speak for themselves.. I personally think the game is extremely balanced.

It has slight issues, most of which stem from certain nations but "not very balanced" is what I would consider an innaccurate statement.

[Alexander Seil]

Negative feedback in this case is simply ridiculous...this game is the FIRST game that beat Master of Magic. I didn't expect much when I downloaded the demo, but once I actually started playing and saw the sheer depth and detail of this masterpiece, I realized it was a MoM-killer. This is the end of the fantasy strategy genre...there's nothing else to make now

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Zen:
That's an interesting way of saying you and other people define something a certain way without having them speak for themselves.. I personally think the game is extremely balanced.

I am glad that you feel this way. However, I never said I speak for *you* Zen, so your sarcasm is misplaced. I only said that me and many other players, with whom I've spoken about it, feel this way, and this is true. If you don't like this statement, there is nothing I can do to help it.

It has slight issues, most of which stem from certain nations but "not very balanced" is what I would consider an innaccurate statement. [/QB]

Me too. However this is not what I said. If you read my post carefully, you'll find out that I've said quite opposite, that the game is "well balanced". However it doesn't mean it is perfectly balanced. And the point of my post was to try to bring attention to the particular areas, where I feel there is opportunity for improvement, like messaging system and Clams-hording.

Like I said, I am deeply in love with this game. However it doesn't turn me into "fanboy" who would say that everything is absolutely perfect in the game and there is no need to change or improve anything.

With deep regards,
Stormbinder

[ March 25, 2004, 04:53: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Alexander Seil:
...this game is the FIRST game that beat Master of Magic.

I agree. I didn't expect this to happen in my lifetime, but it is true nevertheless.

This is the end of the fantasy strategy genre...there's nothing else to make now [/QB]

Not even Dominions 3?

[Argitoth]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Also as me and many other players have noticed, currently by the end of every medium and long MP games 99% of gem income comes from not from your provinces , but from stacked hundreds and hundreds of clams and fever fetishes. Many players myslef included think it is not how this game was intended to be played, with all these nice magic gem-producing sites , eetc. IMHO magic shold mostly come from the magical lands you control, not from 500 clams that give you astral to alchemy into everything else

500 clams is 5000 water gems!!! I've never seen, in all my gaming experience, someone abuse those types of items.

[quote]Originally posted by Stormbinder:

Originally posted by Alexander Seil:
[qb] ...this game is the FIRST game that beat Master of Magic.

I never played MoM, but I never thought it was that great. (hence i never played it)

[ March 25, 2004, 06:10: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

I'd give the game more of a chance in "MP" me and people I play "MP" with think "this".

Truth be told, this game is massive. The level of depth requires alot to be known about it to even place a judgement of balance or what any ramifications mean.

Just as the "Clam" debate. Some feel it is overpowered, others do not, you have to take the full impact of what it does. What nations rely on the Clams before a 'hoarding' phase and if they are taken or switched, will they be 'in balance' as they were. Atlantis is a good example of this.

Just because you think something is 'out of balance' doesn't mean it is. And if you are still even learning the game what is your perspective of balance going to be? Someone uses something against you and you can't for some reason defeat it, suddenly it's imbalanced? If that is the criteria of balance then I'd much rather have the developers deciding balance. Just because I feel the developers have a pretty savvy grasp on the balance because they got it to this point doesn't make me any more of a fanboi, it does however stand to reason that if they see it pointed out enough they might have reason to look at it more. Try searching for Clams or SoS for an example.

This is especially true of what I consider a minor 'balance' issue as these.

Also messaging UI is covered by the general feeling of the current Developers willingness to do UI. That is not to say it is/will/willnot happen, but the priority of it and desire for it is probably low.

[ March 25, 2004, 06:32: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Yossar]

Originally posted by Zen:
Also messaging UI is covered by the general feeling of the current Developers willingness to do UI. That is not to say it is/will/willnot happen, but the priority of it and desire for it is probably low.

It's not my top priority but being able to send Messages to multiple people (not all) is something I also would really like to see.

Originally posted by Yossar:
It's not my top priority but being able to send Messages to multiple people (not all) is something I also would really like to see.

I wasn't saying it wasn't a part of the player's desire or priority. I was speaking of Illwinter's desire. I tried to hunt down the thread where JO put it very simply but I haven't been able to find it. Needless to say for those who do not already know, UI is not a favorite thing to program and thus has less importance to IW because it's not enjoyable for them to program. And being as IW doesn't have the resources to make programming their only endeavor, they are much likely to program what they enjoy programming as opposed to what they don't enjoy.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Zen:


Just because you think something is 'out of balance' doesn't mean it is. And if you are still even learning the game what is your perspective of balance going to be? Someone uses something against you and you can't for some reason defeat it, suddenly it's imbalanced? If that is the criteria of balance then I'd much rather have the developers deciding balance.

No, it is not my criteria. In fact I am hoarding clams myslef in my current games. I am doing it because I have to do it to stay competitive in the long run in economic/gem race, but I don't like it. My main criteria as I said before is that I feel that the situation when 99% gem income by the end of the game comes from clams is not exactly what develepers had in mind when they designed this game. I may be wrong here of course, since I can't read developers mind, but based upon the fact that they put so much efforts into designing all these nice gem-prodicing sites and mechanism for searching for them, I don't believe that it was intended mostly for the begining and middle of the game, to jump-start mass clam-production.

Just as the "Clam" debate. Some feel it is overpowered, others do not, you have to take the full impact of what it does. What nations rely on the Clams before a 'hoarding' phase and if they are taken or switched, will they be 'in balance' as they were. Atlantis is a good example of this.

Sure, some nations are relying on clams more than others, but I've noticed that almost any nation once they get semi-decent water or astral income as soon as they able to start making as much clams as they can, using alchemy if they have too. At least this was the case in all MP games that I've played so far. I am sure you have seen it more than me, so I don't really have to tell you this.

Just because I feel the developers have a pretty savvy grasp on the balance because they got it to this point doesn't make me any more of a fanboi, it does however stand to reason that if they see it pointed out enough they might have reason to look at it more.

I agree. That's what I am trying to do here - to politely point out to the issue of massive clam hoarding, which I think is a bit unbalanced as of now, and expalining why I think so. To do something about it or not is of course for the developers to decide, based upon thier own judgement.