Dominions 5- Warriors of the Faith

Started by Moreb, September 12, 2017, 12:46:31 AM

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Nefaro

Quote from: ghostryder on September 12, 2017, 12:56:35 PM
Dominions IV was basically a map upgrade while at the same time leaving out a great deal that was in Dominions 3---I bought 4 but content wise--including map downloads- IV never did catch up. It really got no CBM either.



Leaving out a great deal?

I'm guessing you're talking about user-created mods for it?

Yskonyn

I dont agree with everything Ghost mentions.

-The thrones and disciples mode was fresh and new.

But yes, it remains dominions and so will 5. There are only 2 guys working on the game and their support is continuous: fixes, balancing, new content. There are little projects I know that give this to players almost 4 years after release, not being an MMO.

The new game will bring in a new wave of cash for them while enabling us to get a game that is iterated over and expanded upon more and more.

Some features are pioneered in the one version which might be dropped the next, sure.
I am happy Dominions keeps evolving while keeping the core experience intact.

Paying 35 euros every 4 years or so seems to be a great deal and one I'll happily take.
"Pilots do not get paid for what they do daily, but they get paid for what they are capable of doing.
However, if pilots would need to do daily what they are capable of doing, nobody would dare to fly anymore."

ghostryder

#18
Quote from: Nefaro on September 13, 2017, 08:25:35 AM
Quote from: ghostryder on September 12, 2017, 12:56:35 PM
Dominions IV was basically a map upgrade while at the same time leaving out a great deal that was in Dominions 3---I bought 4 but content wise--including map downloads- IV never did catch up. It really got no CBM either.



Leaving out a great deal?

I'm guessing you're talking about user-created mods for it?

If you doubt this then you do not understand the game. You have to look at the 3 eras and how research works, gems , clams (not in DomIV) and the changes done to the effects of the 3 eras. stating DomIII as an example is a much larger strategic game is spot on because magic paths are so nerfed in certain eras of DomIV. This is especially true in MP where most play the game--and I may say is exactly why if you do play MP your find almost all veterans play DOMIII playing through the 3 eras. The problem with DomIV is some magic paths are head and shoulders above others.  Nature was the path to have absolutely, but the vine ogre have been nerfed and are less useful. Death is powerful because of the fact that all living things are subjugated by it. Demons, magical beings (astral), they all die. Death does in fact allow you to cheat death (Twiceborn, lichcraft, life after death), and it lets you access the secrets, magic, and legions of the dead. Undead generals, mages, Gods, and their accompanying secrets of magic. However literally 0 nations in Late Age have neither Astral, Death or Blood.

So you see all nations have at least 2 paths but certain combinations become useless- as one example that I know of that suffers badly is Water and Nature. The path balances have changed due to altered forging costs for certain items as well as altered construction levels and then the research scaling. Astral's been dead as reliable endgame path since the removal of clams. gemgens are gone in dom4, that's frankly enough to make Wish extremely difficult. You're left with Master Enslave and fueling Wish by Nexus, which isn't very practical. Blood sac gets halved by killing the 2-slaves bug, blood hunting becomes an order of magnitude more difficult by killing tax management, and they're still competing over unique SCs. Fairly big nerfs there. Note also that army upkeep is a significantly greater constraint on mage recruitment in Dom4 than in Dom3 because transitioning to entirely summoned or otherwise upkeep free armies is more difficult and the upkeep eats into the gold available for mages.

All in all as I mentioned they went in a made a bunch of changes to mix things up but they were unbalanced leaving roughly half the dominions/races unplayable as a viable option through the 3 ages. With no CBM to balance what they neglected what players ended up doing was just to simply go back to DomIII because frankly- the changes were not all that and the added GUI things- nice- but didn't warrant the loss of of the strategic choices.
If you want depth and a much more strategic game I'll repeat-- DomIV is but a shadow of what DomIII offers. The devs are going entirely in the wrong direction in my view- shaking the game up in ways none of the veteran players (it's core audience) want to play. Single player A.I. remains a walk in the park so any good game you want can only be had in MP- and any good MP game can only be had in DOMIII.



Tpek

WHEN? WHEN? WHEN? WHEN? WHEN? WHEN? WHEN? WHEN?  :crazy2:

airboy

I mostly agree with Ghostryder's opinions.

The hardest thing to learn in the game is the magic system and how item creation/gems works with the magic system.  Then how your god creation interacts with the magic system and locating gems.  Aside from Ermor (the undead horde), most of the nations follow the magic system in a relatively specific way maximizing the magic system to their god design and nation stats.

That being said, the magic system and god design interaction is so deep that learning how that interacts is a big time investment.  Just learning how one of the stealth nations like Pangea is optimized is a big time commitment.  I've played D3 for around 10+years.  I do not consider myself anything except close to average.  I've learned how to play one nation (T'Chien) reasonably well.  But the interaction of the magic system versus how other people are running their bless/magic effects and how to counter-act their strategies is an amazing depth of play.

Real experts in this game can clobber most everyone.  But even against the AI this is a really interesting solo game.

I strongly agree with Ghostryder that a RTS does not make sense with the basic game design.

ghostryder

#21
All this talk of dominions wants me to fire it back up but I'm midway through an XCOM campaign lol.

As airboy mentioned most players lean towards a favorite race and God (you create these Gods yourself BTW) and end up playing them game to game. If your race ends up being nerfed to unviable---your not wanna play DomIV--and that's what happened to most players. Map availability had a part in it to- but the devs being unfocused to balanced-which they were for a decade in DomIII was really a kick in the arse as well. these things were never addressed--and here they are again with RTS? WTF!

ghostryder

#22
Quote from: Yskonyn on September 13, 2017, 09:19:31 AM
I dont agree with everything Ghost mentions.

-The thrones and disciples mode was fresh and new.

But yes, it remains dominions and so will 5. There are only 2 guys working on the game and their support is continuous: fixes, balancing, new content. There are little projects I know that give this to players almost 4 years after release, not being an MMO.

The new game will bring in a new wave of cash for them while enabling us to get a game that is iterated over and expanded upon more and more.

Some features are pioneered in the one version which might be dropped the next, sure.
I am happy Dominions keeps evolving while keeping the core experience intact.

Paying 35 euros every 4 years or so seems to be a great deal and one I'll happily take.

This is an angle I do not fully am against but the approach garners in one thing devs have a habit of doing- over engineering. And over engineering have spoiled more than one series of games. CA seems to do it repeatedly with the Total war series---Age of wonders III left out all that good in shadow magic- hence no decent mods ever were released and to this day i perfer the older title.

Howevever I do not think the problem here is so much over engineering the gameplay but rather an attempt to attract players on steam. How else is anyone else explain the RTS battles? Does the title really need any of that for it's core base?  That will likely soar that base-as it certainly soars me--and i've been a core player for God knows how long? Way back when you had to pay close to $60 on the sharpnel site for a version. Tweaking the map is also aimed at the A.D.D. player on steam. They are hoping (and I think wrongly) that RTS and a prettier map will get a buy.

I'll argue however re-engineering the game part is a huge mistake. There's absolutely nothing wrong with any of it and it was nearly perfectly balanced after years of parches in DomIII. All that was really needed was player aid and ease of use upgrades. That equals redoing a GUI for easier use and information feedback to the player and making the art functional---and they've pretty much stayed clear of either. About the only thing we ever got was an abiltity to que building troops- but at a tremendous cost of them actually breaking the gameplay in key areas while poorly implementing another unneeded victory condition---which I'll argue was again aimed at an audience outside the core players the game already enjoyed.

Such roads traveled have killed many a series. Might & Magic. Trying to redo Master of magic has failed in every attempt. Does anyone anywhere even speak of Warlords? Or is the only thing you remember is the RTS title Warlords battlecry? That marked that series death.

If you got a near perfect game system why screw with it? Rather make it accessible. that is what is needed here. And don't waste valuable time and resources on additions until you've made the title accessible. and when you do add that addition don't just drop it in to unbalance the game--if it does perhaps it doesn't belong. Devs are so tied to their ideas they are often blinded to the fact many don't work.

If these two guys don't know how to do decent GUI's bring someone in that does or spend your time and learn how to do one.It can be learned. If you need to farm out the sprites there's enough talented players and fans of the game that would likely provide tons at no cost.

You may need an engine switch. some older engines make good GUI design impossible -- and some really can't display decent sprites. This is likely why they resist so stuburnly but in the end support for this title may twindle so much there's no correcting any of it. You can only ignore your base so long before they become disgusted.

I'll also add to chase the preconcieved notion of what a typical steam player wants is a myth. and that myth says he's lazy and wants instant gratification. The truth however is every gamer is a steam player. Baldur's gate enhanced didn't need a quicker and simpler battle system to sell. It didn't need quest pointers. Nor did Baulur's Gate II enhanced or Icewind dale enhanced or planescape torment enhanced. It just needed more functional graphics and ease of use tweaks in the GUI.

There's enough of us old dogs on steam in fact to allow Pillars of Eternity to sell very well- in fact it has pretty much resurrected the idea players don't want dumb downs at all. They don't want re-engineered gameplay--they want a better presentation first and foremost -- and demand you leave the game mechanics alone. This has been seen time and time again. Screw with the gameplay itself fails-stay true to it and succeed.


sum1won

#23
Hi.  I'm on the beta for dom5.  Let me know if you have any questions.

I have been playing since dom2, and can assure you that this is by far the biggest change between iterations of the game.  The three big reworks are:

1.) New bless system.

2.) New map-movement system.  (More granular)

3.) Simultaneous combat resolution.  People have been calling it "RTS."  It's not an RTS.  Instead of the battles proceeding with everyone on one side casting, and then moving+ attacking, and then the other, it proceeds by ticks.  The biggest effect this has had is removing the turn0 advantage which defined competitive multiplayer.  There are still defensive movement advantages, but they are less concrete.  Scripting for the battle in advance and watching it play out is still how it works, though there are some very welcome improvements to scripting.

I also disagree with some of the assessments of dom4 - from balance, to depth, to the allegedly shrinking dom4 community, to what verterans play, to the lack of mods - but that is not the game I am here to talk about.

That said, in terms of graphics:  The random map generator produces much more attractive maps, but I will freely admit that the sprites are not improved across the board.  Some have been updated (some were updated in patches to dom4, too), but some are still eyesores.

ghostryder

What do you mean 'people' have been calling the combat RTS? The product page calls it that.

sum1won

#25
Excellent point.  I'll note in the beta form that the use of "real time" to describe combat is inaccurate, since it gives the impression of live control.

Once I have permission to release a video, I'll provide one that shows what I mean.

Yskonyn

#26
I do not share Ghosts's assessment of less depth and strategic options in Dom 4 either. The game surely is different, but I would define it as a little more streamlined and less bloated with mechanics that arguably didn't work well.
The hammer spam of vanilla Dom 3 comes to mind.

As for less nations, I am not sure what you mean? Modded ones, added by the community? Indeed, there seem to be less additional nations for Dom4, but the vanilla game offers more nations to Dom 3 vanilla, does it not?
At any rate, the life cycle of Dom 3 has been quite a bit longer than 4 to 5, if I am not mistaken. That's probably another reason why 3 seems to have more stuff than 4.

I also still see many of the same old faces posting on the Dom 4 section of the invisionfree forums.  :nerd:

Anyway, 5 seems to incorporate some interesting new changes, but I agree with Ghost that using the RTS phrase is badly chosen. :)
"Pilots do not get paid for what they do daily, but they get paid for what they are capable of doing.
However, if pilots would need to do daily what they are capable of doing, nobody would dare to fly anymore."

ghostryder

#27
Quote from: Yskonyn on September 15, 2017, 09:00:51 AM
I do not share Ghosts's assessment of less depth and strategic options in Dom 4 either. The game surely is different, but I would define it as a little more streamlined and less bloated with mechanics that arguably didn't work well.
The hammer spam of vanilla Dom 3 comes to mind.

As for less nations, I am not sure what you mean? Modded ones, added by the community? Indeed, there seem to be less additional nations for Dom4, but the vanilla game offers more nations to Dom 3 vanilla, does it not?
At any rate, the life cycle of Dom 3 has been quite a bit longer than 4 to 5, if I am not mistaken. That's probably another reason why 3 seems to have more stuff than 4.

I also still see many of the same old faces posting on the Dom 4 section of the invisionfree forums.  :nerd:

Anyway, 5 seems to incorporate some interesting new changes, but I agree with Ghost that using the RTS phrase is badly chosen. :)

The changes I noted in my examples not only included modded nations. The lack of Blood, death or astral effects all nations the way the eras were implemented. As were the effects of nature and water- the tinkering of research, gems, taxes and so on. And those were just a small spotlight of issues I mentioned. i could go on for some time and list all of them- but it's probably easier to just say every title has a camp of players where "The Emperor has no clothes" is an issue.  And DoM certainly has that going on. However as a player and a fan- and as people certainly know of me- I call them as I see them.

My fear is now they are introducing two more large changes that present embalance issues. If combat for example is a youGo Igo-- then initiative better be addressed or nations like Helheim - already suffering many nerfs in DomIV- may suffer even more. Then we how to see how it plays in MP. Tinkering with how bless works adds even more areas of concern. Many more. It may compound the problem or solve others.

The map issue to me is unimportant. We got prettier maps in DomIV as well-- and the same seems the same here- irregardless your still not be able to tell a swordsman from a pikeman-- the unit sprites remain unfunctional. in the end- like DomIV how many hand made maps is the telling in the pudding and all one has to do is look at either list in the mods and see all pale in comparison to DOMIII. Next is to ask why so few were converted? Was it lack of need?

So yes indeed the long cycle DomIII is certainly a factor--I'll agree- but to say some things removed or changed didn't work? I listed examples. List yours  :crazy2:

Only playing the new title once released- and for some time- will answer many of these concerns. I'll certainly be posting my thoughts when that happens- and if the emperor's wing wang is blowing in the breeze your know it  8) Or if I'm wrong about my concerns-and I have been before- your know that too  :uglystupid2:

Moreb

Maybe Simultaneous Turn Resolution is more appropriate?  I am continuing to get my feet wet with dominions 4. People talk about it's dated Graphics a lot and while I cannot disagree, I have a ton of current new releases with bleeding edge graphics. What I'm looking for, and I think dominions provides, is a deep and rich fantasy strategy game.

Just for my consumption, what other games offer as deep of play but with better graphics? Are there any examples I may look at?
When dongles fly? - mirth

ghostryder

Good question. The most recent along the lines of fantasy would be Total War: Warhammer. You could call it large---I doubt anyone would call it "deep". For deep the next 2 up would be the Master of Magic wannabe Worlds of Magic---enough gameplay was 'cough' :Re-engineered" that one can easily say...it really isn't-- and it has mixed reviews. Next- deep in options and suffering 2 highly failed editions the third is at least playable without game ending crashes and bugs---and one can say the list of options offered up is a dream come true of any player of the gendre- Elemental: Fallen Enchantress-- and although this is just my opinion non of it really translates into what I would call "fun". the combat certainly isn't. The World is bland, generic and about as interesting as watching a snail race. It is also marred by the closure of Impulse and the move to steam-where many players who were burned on the first release fell through the cracks and could never enjoy that free copy of a working title. Today the cost is low so you can take a stab at it reasonably without breaking the bank--some players enjoy it--I'm just not one of them.

How much you lean on fantasy as opposed to history - note Dominion races are very much based on historical races and their believed Gods of the time. . while the remaining basically from H.P. Lovecraft ect- so there's some pretty good historical strategy games that might wet the urge---dare I say a modded CK2? Game of Thrones. That's certainly deep.