Suggestions After Playing a Season

[Aikamun]

I now have the complete Version of the game and am loving it.

Suggestion: All warriors should be trainable, including your primary. Should be able to pick priorities for training funds available at turn end, i.e. Top Priority, Middle Priority, and Low Priority.

Suggestion: Don't think I made any money by winning the tournament. You should make money by appearing in the championship and more for making the finals or winning.

Bug: If you quit a previously saved game, without saving again, you lose your original saved game file.

Bug: Was not allowed to choose strategies or advertising before each tournament match. Was given the option to change strategy at the twenty willpower level. Am assuming the program had used a normal tactic as default.

Bug: Lost the ability to sell or release players in the second year. These were players I had signed to multi-year contracts or from the War Academy. Am assuming this is a bug because you should always be able to release by eating the contract.

Observation: No gladiators with a winning record made it to the tournament. Longevity was the deciding factor. Only played one season, so info may not be accurate over time.

My previous thread, Suggestions from a Demo User, still applies.

Thanks again for a very fun game.

Aikamun

[ January 21, 2004, 08:04: Message edited by: Aikamun ]

[StormcloudCreations]

Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it. The new patch (1.5) is under testing and should be released shortly.

#1: I deliberately made your primary warrior not trainable, so that you have to make a choice as to using a young pup early on and training your stud warrior to get even better, or using your best current warrior and building up that young pup for the future. It forces you to set priorities.

#2: I've gone round and round about the tournament paying you money. The patch will now pay you 250 Gold for making the playoffs, and 500 Gold if you win the title.

#3: Not a bug, but in the design. It prevents the save-reload-reload-reload shuffle. In this game, decisions and events are pretty much permanent. I've added some text in the exit button for the patch that reminds you to save the game or you may lose your data.

#4: Yes, it uses normal tactics by default. It does not allow you to choose starting strategies.
Warriors are carefully supervised once you reach the playoffs, and you are allowed very little contact with them.

#5: You should be able to release them, but you need to have the money to eat their whole contract (amount X years; for example if you sign them to a 5 year deal for 200 per year, you have to pay 800 gold to be able to auction or release them, the current year is already paid for).

Thanks for your comments!

[Saxon]

I got the game two days ago and took some time off from Dominions to give it a whirl. I thought I would put down some of my thoughts here, as some of them may make their way to a patch.

To start out with, I installed at lunch time, planning just to have a look at the game. I ended up getting back to work late, so I was pulled into the game. When I got home I fired it up and played another couple of hours. I had a positive experience and like the game. As such, I wanted to say thanks for all the hard work that went into it and throw in some ideas to make things stronger.

When the match is over, you have to click to exit. You then have to immediately click again. There is no reason to click twice. If it can not be avoided, the button you press should not require you to move the mouse up the screen and hit a windows style button.

The game buttons are graphically nice. However, a few times you get a windows style button which is ugly and makes you remember you are playing a computer game. Notably, damage from potions is very ugly and the disease button could be nicer.

The graphics generally beat the other Shrapnel products hands down. Nice work.

The season is very long, a shorter one would build the pace of things. Right now, I put one old, good stats guy to fight and leave a young guy to train. I do not even remember who the young one is or worry about him. I played for about three hours Last night on the standard settings and did not finish a second season. I eventually moved to one second delay, but it still takes a long time to get anywhere.

May I suggest that you have one more option for the fights? Allow me to sim my match just as fast as the computer ones.

There is no reason to win! I am serious and this is the thing that had me playing Dominions before the night ended. You fight all these matches and get nothing. As far as I can tell from the documentation and experience, your warrior does not gain a thing from fighting, other than the risk of injury. You gain nothing if you win or lose. As far as it goes, the only in game rewards are from advertising and betting. Those are nice, but it is a fighter management game! Sure, you have the championship at the end of a very long season, but even that does not give you cash or skills. There need to be more in game reasons to fight to win. Right now I could get the worst warrior, run him in fights, then make my money on betting and ads. If I ran the best warrior around, I would still make my money on betting and ads, it feels exactly the same.

One of the text that come when you lose a match states something to the effect of “Your man slumps down, all out of power. He has won the match.” If Derek could check his list of winning texts, I am sure it would show up and he could change “won” to “lost.”

My next point is a personal style thing, so take it as you will. Too much is hidden. I like the idea of having some intangibles, but I found there to be too little feedback to work with this. Only a couple of stats matter in a fight, a few more would have been nice. Similarly, the only guidance I can give a warrior in the fight is one of three levels. I just do not feel that involved, the managing is almost as simple as the advertising.

I used to play Duelmasters, a very similar PBM game. It included a skills system for the warriors. They had different styles and could learn a set of skills such as Parry, Feint, Lunge and so forth. This was on top of their base statistics. I think that the Coliseum stats system is much better, but think that the additional depth created by a skills system would be welcome.

In summary, I have had fun with the game, but as it stands right now, I do not know how long it will hold me. Perhaps it is too subtle and I am to impatient, but I seem to have limited control over things and my warriors performance seems to have little impact on the game.