dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
I find a lot of people have a great imagination, and can usually come up with something that sounds cool enough that they'd get at least a FEW other people saying "hell yeah! I want that too!"
But adding something can have a real danger. There seems to be two main problems when it comes to adding stuff:
1) OVERCOMPLEXITY: people add something that's much like a game in of itself. They imagine a whole new system with dozens of buttons, and complex interacting rules, with another dozen exceptions where the rules don't apply. This might be fun and it might even work, but it's so brutally complex that you'll never make it. Or if you do, you'll end up with something that only the most hardcore of players will have the patience to learn and thus enjoy.
2) FUNCTIONLESS FLUFF: Sometimes people add a feature that really does nothing to the actual *game*. Let's say someone adds a 'crime' element to the game, with a random 'criminal' unit popping up that you need to kill from time to time. What's one criminal unit going to do? Maybe pillage a tile before the player takes care of it. This doesn't add a new strategy or choice to the game. It adds fluff in the name of realism.
One of the most insightful things I heard about Civ 4 is that it's a series of extremely simple systems that interact to create a complex game. In this new SDK era of modding, I think people have to keep that in mind. You should be able to explain the basic system in but one or two sentences: Religion spreads from city to city via trade routes and missionaries. The owner of the Holy City gets more gold the more that the religion spreads. Or Specialists and Wonders generate Great People Points. When a threshold of GPP is reached, a Great Person pops out capable of researching a tech or giving some other special bonus. If it's easy to explain, then it's probably easy to implement, balance, and understand.
But adding something can have a real danger. There seems to be two main problems when it comes to adding stuff:
1) OVERCOMPLEXITY: people add something that's much like a game in of itself. They imagine a whole new system with dozens of buttons, and complex interacting rules, with another dozen exceptions where the rules don't apply. This might be fun and it might even work, but it's so brutally complex that you'll never make it. Or if you do, you'll end up with something that only the most hardcore of players will have the patience to learn and thus enjoy.
2) FUNCTIONLESS FLUFF: Sometimes people add a feature that really does nothing to the actual *game*. Let's say someone adds a 'crime' element to the game, with a random 'criminal' unit popping up that you need to kill from time to time. What's one criminal unit going to do? Maybe pillage a tile before the player takes care of it. This doesn't add a new strategy or choice to the game. It adds fluff in the name of realism.
One of the most insightful things I heard about Civ 4 is that it's a series of extremely simple systems that interact to create a complex game. In this new SDK era of modding, I think people have to keep that in mind. You should be able to explain the basic system in but one or two sentences: Religion spreads from city to city via trade routes and missionaries. The owner of the Holy City gets more gold the more that the religion spreads. Or Specialists and Wonders generate Great People Points. When a threshold of GPP is reached, a Great Person pops out capable of researching a tech or giving some other special bonus. If it's easy to explain, then it's probably easy to implement, balance, and understand.