Fallen Enchantress

[Akka]

I'm sorry that you didn't enjoy Civ 5. Every project has different high-level goals that help shape the final outcome. Additionally, the approach taken by a designer evolves over time. I don't know if you've played Civ 3, Spore or the Dragon Age Legends Facebook game, but those were all very different experiences despite being designed at least in part by the same person (Soren Johnson).

They are also very different style of games from different franchises, and as such are much less comparable.
Civ5 and FE are from different franchises, but much closer in term of style.

Anyways, all I can say is that every game is different. It's perfectly fine to dislike something for what it is, but if you let past experience permanently sour you then you might miss out on something that's a lot of fun.

It's more a point of being cautious. Every single company always promise how they put all their hard work and soul in every single game released. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not, and even if true or not it doesn't necessarily impact the actual quality of the game in the same way.
I just consider past actions speaking much louder and clearer than all the words and promises. Though to be fair, FE is already free for me, so it's not like I'm taking a big risk by giving it its chance.

Yes, yes, I'm here. FE does not use Steam (unless, of course, you bought it from Steam).

That is a great news on the other hand

im not jon shafer lawyer but seriously HOW the hell can you judge a man that worked at a game where there were maybe other 15 20 ppl ???
and not knowing a thing about how the teamwork is there and who takes the decisions
not counting the malus for the many flaws the software house showed in the past years

i dunno really i want to buy the crystal sphere you are using

It's called "being the lead designer". It means that you're supposed to give the main direction of the design, and to validate what is actually done. Responsability and all that.

I'm pretty aware of the difference between theory and practice, but the "Civ5 is a big kiss to all the fan of the franchise" while delivering an utterly dumbed-down and boring game for a franchise which prided itself on being for intelligent folks, is something that I never quite swallowed.

 

[sumodaz]

I've been playing the series for the last 15 years and i have to say i love Civ V and know many people who do. I've put more hours into this game than any other civ game and think the changes to the game are for the better... so as there are not really any occasions that i get to thank the lead designer on a game which you have put over 1000 hours into.. so i'll use this opportunity..
Thanks Jon.
+ Looking forward to Fallen Enchantress..

 

[Jon Shafer]

I've been playing the series for the last 15 years and i have to say i love Civ V and know many people who do. I've put more hours into this game than any other civ game and think the changes to the game are for the better... so as there are not really any occasions that i get to thank the lead designer on a game which you have put over 1000 hours into.. so i'll use this opportunity..
Thanks Jon.
+ Looking forward to Fallen Enchantress..

Thanks for your kind words sumodaz, very happy to hear you've enjoyed the game. Hopefully you have just as much fun playing FE!

- Jon

 

[Takhisis]

Sorry, not sure. Derek would have a better idea about what's going on with that sort of thing. Heck, for all I know he may have decided to use Steam right after I said we weren't.

- Jon

Nooooooooo!

We needs demoz.

 

[The_J]

FE does not use Steam (unless, of course, you bought it from Steam).

...phew, good to hear.
-> that puts it again on my shopping list.

 

[Dreadnought]

Hey guys,

I just saw this thread, and the game looks really cool! However, I'm skeptical to pre-order it (though, in all honesty, I'm skeptical to pre-order any game I don't know much about).

Anyone have some non-stereotypical advice? Should I take the plunge or wait for more definitive praise of the game before pulling the trigger?

 

[AlpsStranger]

...phew, good to hear.
-> that puts it again on my shopping list.

The anti-Steam angst is cute. Really it is.

 

[Rub'Rum]

From what I understand from this, the game will be available on Steam but is not Steamworks and doesn't require it. My understanding.

It'd be cool to close the Steam and/or Civ 5 cans of worms. There are fifty other threads to talk about that.

 

[Takhisis]

Since the Steam issue is kinda settled, what features does the game have? That should be the point of this thread.

And what hardware requirements does it have?

 

[Simplicity4]

I've been playing the series for the last 15 years and i have to say i love Civ V and know many people who do. I've put more hours into this game than any other civ game and think the changes to the game are for the better... so as there are not really any occasions that i get to thank the lead designer on a game which you have put over 1000 hours into.. so i'll use this opportunity..
Thanks Jon.
+ Looking forward to Fallen Enchantress..

And I've put over 300 hours into it as well. I think Civ V is a great game. Does it have aspects that stick in my craw? Sure. So does every Civ game I've ever played. And I started with the first.

 

[Heathcliff]

Kael:
1. Did you consider calling the game Fall from Heaven 3?
You already have so many of names and lore for Fall From Heaven.

2. What's your plan to limit outpost and city expansion early game, having the map crowded isn't very fantasy-ish.

 

[ddd123]

It's called "being the lead designer". It means that you're supposed to give the main direction of the design, and to validate what is actually done. Responsability and all that.

dunno about you but im not a judge and im not in a tribunal
its not like we have to find the responsible and the top manager has to get the full responsability, man
i mean, he can get it but its not necessarily his
there are things even the top manager can not decide
think about a sport team and his coach, he may want to do some particular tactic but not have any player able to do it

even in a game a person may be able to take all the decisions but sometimes he gets proposed with A and B while maybe C is the best thing and no one is able to do it
or sometimes no one even thinks about C, its not like a single man che solve EVERY problem alone

and btw there are things definitely improved in civ 5, how can you know he is responsable of those?

 

[ddd123]

And what hardware requirements does it have?

works well enough in my core2 8400 and 2 ram
i remember brad suggesting something more a few time ago though

 

[GlobularFoody]

Will there be a demo available for FE?

And, I love the Shafer abuse going on. Wasn't Shafer the lead designer on Civ 4 Beyond the Sword, the game all the Civ 5 haters think is so great? Yeah..

 

[Goodwill]

I'm going to go with Shafer on this. Different games are different experiences, and each is an original work by a group of artists. Not everything is going to be up your alley but it doesn't mean that the artist's other games aren't good.

It would be like a heavy metal fan hating metallica because they wrote some ballads. It doesn't mean their other material won't be a favorite. You can't please everyone all the time. There are different songs for different people, and different games.

Civ 5 wasn't a favorite for me either, but I did appreciate that it was different from its predecessors, and a new experience. I was pretty disappointed with starcraft 2, because it basically felt like starcraft 1 with a few tweaks. Civ 5, love it or hate it, was original and different.

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. Artists often make new things differently each time. Games are made by teams of artists. I do think music is an excellent metaphor. For every favorite song you have, there's probably a song on the album you didn't like. Someone did, it just wasn't you. Yet you still like the other music they did.

This game might not be it for you. Maybe it is. If you had to throw out the album of every music group you owned that had a song on it you didn't love, well how silly would that be? I just hate narrowmindedness and wanted to point this out. I can think of lots of other examples, but look, I've said my piece. Each to his own then, but the authors of these kinds of arguments just sound silly - kind of xenophobic really.

 

[jacyp]

Will there be a demo available for FE?

And, I love the Shafer abuse going on. Wasn't Shafer the lead designer on Civ 4 Beyond the Sword, the game all the Civ 5 haters think is so great? Yeah..

No, he wasn't. It was Alex Mantzaris. Shafer was co-lead designer.

And no, it's not the same thing.

About FE: Sorry, but I have to either play it through demo or watch at least 2 hours of gameplay vid to have some hope about the game.

I love Derek's work in FFH, but seeing how Brad Wardell has handled this ridiculous fiasco called Elemental: War of Magic, banning everybody from Stardock's forum that didn't like the game and blamed on him (which was funny, since after a week or two, he also took the blame on himself, without saying sorry to those he banned, though), he won't see my money just to play a beta where player's opinions and feedback doesn't matter, which happened with the first Elemental.

It happened once, thanks to the company's CEO, it can happen again, cos the CEO hasn't changed.

But I can only hope this game can give us the fun we want to have with the genre, since Civ 5 and E:WoM failed to deliver. Miserably.

 

[Ozbenno]

I've jumped in and I'm playing the beta (mainly because I loved FfH so much). So far so good. Plenty of room for improvement but the game is developing nicely through Beta 2 to Beta 3.

 

[Beefers]

Really excited to give this a try, however it continually crashes on start-up, guess I will have to wait for a future patch =/

 

[Ozbenno]

Really excited to give this a try, however it continually crashes on start-up, guess I will have to wait for a future patch =/

Do you have Beta 3? I had some crash issues in Beta 2 (although not at startup). You should post in the forum to get some help.

 

[Kael]

Hmm. I wasn't expecting this, but it looks like a worthy successor to Fall from Heaven, which I played far, far more than vanilla cIV. Vanilla got kind of boring for me after a while, so I looked for mods. I found FfH (this is back before I had BtS), and that was all it took . That, and RFC, were my major timesinks. If I may ask, Kael; what prompted you to design this as a stand-alone game, and not create an FfH spiritual sequel as a Civ V mod? Just curious.

I created FfH in my spare time, while working a full time job. It took 3 years, and it was a lot of work. I love it, and I'm incrediably proud of it, but when someone offers you the opportunity to do what you love so much that you dedicated 3 years to doing it for free, you say yes.

Also, has Civ5 released their source code? FfH wouldn't have been possible without the ability to write the code ourselves, and a mod like FfH isn't possible on Civ5 without it.

Finally, and what is honestly the biggest reason, I get to work with talented people that I learn new things from every day. I work a lot of hours, I always have, but Brad Wardell is the hardest working person I have ever met. He is constantly creating, it's a little scary, I don't think he's quite human. But almost every day we talk about strategy games, we talk about the games we want to play and then we go make them. I have the best job in the world.

Kael:
1. Did you consider calling the game Fall from Heaven 3?
You already have so many of names and lore for Fall From Heaven.

No. I am having a lot of fun with Fallen Enchantress, but its a different game than Fall from Heaven. Fallen Enchantress is a 4x game in a role playing world. We really try to draw on that D&D feel to everything. Anytime I can find a way to incorporate an RPG mechanic that works in Fallen Enchantress I go for it.

Fall from Heaven may use RPG conventions, but its really about a war of ideologies. I looked for mechanics there that allowed those ideologies to play out in the 4x game.

2. What's your plan to limit outpost and city expansion early game, having the map crowded isn't very fantasy-ish.

Beta 4 is all about the cities, so we will have lots to talk about when that comes. We know its a weak point in the game right now and we have a plan to address it, but Im not ready to talk about it publically yet.