How would you patch this game?

[HotNifeThruButr]

Simple, if you were allowed to make a new patch, what would it be like? I would make the following:

-Fix Atlantian Scout description. I know it says "no description available" for the R'lyehan kind, so I'd change that to the standard slave description.

-Raise Royal Guard and Centaur Warrior cost by 7 gold a man

-Fix the bugged Lord of Fertility and Mother Earth (her name escapes me at the moment, you know, the fat tree that tramples people) site, and fix the LoF's graphics.

- Make Crystal and Garnet amazons appear more often

- Make number of events dependant on the number of provinces you own

- This might sound crazy, but I would make all javelins armor piercing, and have -2 damage

- tack 5 more water gems onto the cost for calms

- change Centaur Cataphract hp to 17, after all, they've abandoned the savagery that gave them power

-Jotun Woodsmen are now 40 gold a man, like Jotun Hirdmen

-Jotun Hirdmen have +1 morale

That's everything I want to change about this game that I can think of right now. Do any of you have any ideas?

[Zapmeister]

The first thing I would do is gather a heap of data about which pretenders, spells, items and troops are used by players all the time, and which ones are never used.

Then I'd enhance or nerf as necessary to create greater diversity in the usage of these game elements.

[Burkhard]

I'd add an icon for the astrology skill.

[Anglachel]

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
The first thing I would do is gather a heap of data about which pretenders, spells, items and troops are used by players all the time, and which ones are never used.

Then I'd enhance or nerf as necessary to create greater diversity in the usage of these game elements.

I thought about this for a while and it seems like this would tend to homogenize the game rather than diversify. Think about it, take all the elements, cut down what you percieve as powerful and lift up what you percieve as weak. What is the end result? Things are all the same. Does this seem like a situation that would be diverse?

I understand you stress diversity of "usage" but what exactly is it in your experience that has lead you to the conclusion that there is a lack of diversity of usage and have you compared notes with a variety of other players on this to find commonality? I just don't understand why you would want to have the above course followed in the pursuit of "diversity".

Honestly curious.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Anglachel:
I thought about this for a while and it seems like this would tend to homogenize the game rather than diversify. Think about it, take all the elements, cut down what you percieve as powerful and lift up what you percieve as weak. What is the end result? Things are all the same. Does this seem like a situation that would be diverse?

It's rather ironic that homogeneity is the ultimate result of trying to forcibly promote diversity. I'm sure there's a moral in this somewhere. As the saying goes, "You are unique, just like everyone else."

I understand you stress diversity of "usage" but what exactly is it in your experience that has lead you to the conclusion that there is a lack of diversity of usage and have you compared notes with a variety of other players on this to find commonality? I just don't understand why you would want to have the above course followed in the pursuit of "diversity".

Some of the more shrill elements of the populace would have you believe that anything which catches on as popular, I.E., "Flavor-of-the Week", is automatically overpowered, and as such, they scream for a nerf. This is generally around the time our flavor of the week becomes "whine du jour". They neglect the fact that people are sheep, and will follow whoever currently appears to be the leader. The approach Zap here would advocate trades the flavor-of-the-week for "All Options Suck". Sure, this is certainly balanced, but "Everything is equally useless" is not a very entertaining form of play! What's the point in trying to think of anything new to combine, when everything either is, or will be, made equally useless?

However, he does nonetheless have a point that certain things are basically never used. Many of these things fall into non-use because of either their cost relative to other things that serve the same role, or simply because they don't fill any niche that isn't already filled better or more cheaply by something else. Others go undiscovered until they explode into the whine-du-jour: The Vampire Queen, believe it or not, was once unpopular and viewed as a weak chassis commonly ignored in favor of beefier ones. Obviously, this thinking has been greatly revised since then. So perhaps these "useless" options are simply diamonds in the rough, waiting to be discovered (and whined about). Then again, maybe they're just worthless rocks.

This is can be seen as either good or bad. On one hand, they're clearly "useless", so to speak, and nobody uses them. As such, they're a waste of space. On the other hand, the existence of useless options does give the game a bit of flavor: If everything was equally useful(or useless), then a blind baboon could play the game, which doesn't tend to lend it much depth. The fact that there are traps and pitfalls to be avoided makes things interesting. Besides, it's humorously sadistic in many ways: On one hand, a grossly inferior option serves as a sadistic trap for the unwary. On the other hand, the same option serves as an avenue to humiliate one's opponents by beating them with it. If everything was equally valid, where would the fun be?

[Gandalf Parker]

I consider the thread topic insulting. Just my opinion.

Besides, nearly everything mentioned works just as well if you said "How would you MOD this game?". And MODding have already been put into the game at players request.

And while I think the most used and least used is worth looking at, I understand that the wonderful balance of this game is NOT from equalizing things. The extreme of that route would be Chess. The balance of this game is closer to the National Football League

[ June 17, 2004, 13:32: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Blitz]

Norfleet is also more correct than he sounds when he talks about game balance. Reading his post, he sounded a lot like Mark Rosewater in one of his columns about designing Magic: the Gathering; specifically, the one entitled, "Why do we make bad cards?" One of the main arguments that Mr. Rosewater puts forward is that recognizing what is good and what is not-so-good in a game is part of learning the game, and without less-than-optimal game parts, there's nothing to separate good players from bad players. There's also the fact that if you don't have bad cards, you can't have good cards. The article isn't totally applicable to Dominions, but in the main holds true.

With all due respect to Mark, who I met a few times back in the day... I'm not sure I completely believe his explanation. I've heard that question answered other ways from other people. Balance testing MP games is not easy. It's got to be even harder when you are a two-man company trying to deal with the expectations of gamers used to dealing with larger companies. Frankly I'm astounded that there aren't more glaring problems in this game. Obviously this is a testament to their skill... although I'm betting Dominions I had a LOT more problems.

The facts are that even with a large testing staff, certian imbalances are inevitably going to happen. We've seen this happen in every single Online game since the beginning of time. Monks in Everquest (sucked, then too powerful, then nerfed 10 times, etc)... Huntresses in Warcraft 3, anyone remember those? Every game played Online is going to be an evolving work. I have no doubt that in time most of the weaker pretender chassis will be improved. Unfortunately the nature of the beast is that overpowered, unbalancing problems have to be dealt with first. Fixing the Lord of the Gates is going to have to wait. Giving me a reason to play Golden Age as a MP race can wait. Hopefully these and other "bad" choices will be fixed in time.

However, I refuse to believe that Golden Age Arcoscephale is crappy to trick bad players into using it. This race was the first I latched onto with this game, and in time I came to realize that it pretty much stunk. Hopefully it's dealt with at some point, because I love the concept... but I find it very hard to believe that it was intentionaly made bad to reward players for not playing it

I consider the thread topic insulting. Just my opinion.

Besides, nearly everything mentioned works just as well if you said "How would you MOD this game?". And MODding have already ben put into the game at players request.

Reminds me of the PC folks in the media deciding what might offend certian people. I'm sure our devs have better things to worry about than how a thread is worded in their forums.

[ June 17, 2004, 13:30: Message edited by: Blitz ]

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Blitz:
However, I refuse to believe that Golden Age Arcoscephale is crappy to trick bad players into using it. This race was the first I latched onto with this game, and in time I came to realize that it pretty much stunk. Hopefully it's dealt with at some point, because I love the concept... but I find it very hard to believe that it was intentionaly made bad to reward players for not playing it

Odd that you find Golden Era Arco so bad. I like playing them quite a bit. My only 'beef' with it is that you can't play Golem Cult with them.

Reminds me of the PC folks in the media deciding what might offend certian people. I'm sure our devs have better things to worry about than how a thread is worded in their forums.

That's a rather cavalier attitude you have towards the developers. Just remember about honey and vinegar and all that.

I'm certainly glad that certain people are not the ones who patch the game. And until such time as the people who are insulting put out a mod of their 'balance' to try see public reaction (as opposed to their own mind which always says they are right) you don't have a leg to stand on. For the others who would patch the game while still retaining their human courtesy, thank you for your input and I hope to see a mod of your own idea of "balance" whenever you complete it.

[ June 17, 2004, 13:46: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Esben Mose Hansen]

In the best Monty tradition, I would do four things:

1. Add item modding (perhaps just disabling, maybe change cost)
2. Add castle modding (ditto)
3. Enable mods on text servers
4. Tell people to mods instead of complaining.
5. Make a mod reducing the cost of light infantry to 1/10 of the current cost. Then get seriously beaten by the AI.

I would like to invite everyone to find at least 2 internal inconstencies in the above proposal