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I was quite surprised to see such an oversight 4 months after launch as well. I am glad I could help to fix it, however!
I've just read the post-mortem report and I would like to make a short comment, so as not to waste too much of your time:
1. Faction imbalance
While the factions are morally ambiguous from the standpoint of the story, they certainly are not from the point of the main character. This really did disappoint me as the Wulframite path felt more like a path for deliberate contrarians. There wasn't a proper set-up and the MC is essentially betraying his friends or even lovers.
2. Too much branching
I do think that it would have been better to tell a more concise story, to cut off a few branches to make sure that the other ones can grow a bit taller. I greatly enjoyed managing the estate. However, the game overall felt too short.
These were the main issues in my opinion.
Farewell and good luck with other works!
Spectral Pontifex
I'm not going to lie, the Wulframite path was actually something of an afterthought in the grand scheme of the series. The original plan (as of when I started the series in 2012) was to have Lords just be the Royalist Path and maybe do a game for the Wulframite one later on. That changed sometime in the leadup to doing Lords of Infinity, which meant that I didn't really have the lead-time to properly "distribute" the characters already introduced. That makes up for most of the imbalance imo.
As for the branching issue, I think that has a lot to do with a degree of feature creep which led me to thinking I should create something like a vertical slice of all of Tierran aristocratic society in a single game. Unfortunately, a lot of those aspects ended up being mutually exclusive or difficult to access, which leads to the current state of affairs.
But this is all stuff I'm keeping in mind for Wars of Infinity, which will probably be more constrained - even with two initial narrative paths - now that the protagonist is once again under military discipline, with fixed objectives and clearly defined areas of operation.
Indeed. You would have had to spend a considerable amount of time introducing Wulframite characters at the beginning of Lords to make them known to every MC and even then it would be very hard to rival characters established from two previous titles.
In hindsight, I think the best option would have been to introduce some kind of rivalry within the royalist faction itself, among known characters, and introduce Wulfram as an outside force and antagonist.
No worries though, at least we know these issues won't happen again in your future work. Sometimes it's better to consciously learn and avoid mistakes than to rely on the fortune of fate alone. For all you know, you would make such a mistake in Wars or Masters instead. In the grand scheme of things, it's only the intermediary game after all.
The funny thing is, every time I finish a project and do a post-mortem, I think to myself how next time I'll avoid all the mistakes I've made this time around. By the time I finish that next project, it feels like I've only managed to fix half the things I wanted, while creating a whole bunch of new problems further down the line.
It's an iterative process, I guess. Wars of Infinity will be better than Lords of Infinity, and so on.
fyi, you don't need to tell me about the RPGCodex LP. I've been lurking that forum intermittently for years.
I was obviously not being serious but that's hilarious and endearing.
EDIT: honestly tho, I wish he did not admit to it. The CoG crowd seems militant enough to take offence. At least he is not an incognito poster on this website.... Or is he!?!?!?
Also this revelation puts additional pressure on me to make sure the wife breeding scene omake I'd like to write for the LP is really top-notch.
You know, we wouldn't mind if you registered an account. Though from what I've seen, you aren't even particularly active on the Choice of Games forum itself. Still, the admins would slap a nice developer tag on your profile, just saying.
Most of my activity on the CoG forums is in a subforum which I think gets hidden to people without forum accounts. It's not ideal, but it does kinda keep discussion from sprawling out into the other categories.
Honestly, I'm tempted to make an account, but I don't want to commit to too many online communities at a time, especially since I'm gearing up for my next project (on a different IP) and I can't afford to get *too* side-tracked.
Terrible idea and I mean that unironically. Unless he goes 100% incognito. I don't think destroying his career for the memes is going to be worth it.
EDIT: there was? (can't find account for some reason, HMM) another CoG dev on here I used to chat with, and I recall him getting some shit from CoG for PC reasons, but I don't recall whether it was connected to his presence on the site. Regardless, series is too good to risk IMO.
Re: there was? (can't find account for some reason, HMM) another CoG dev on here I used to chat with, and I recall him getting some shit from CoG for PC reasons, but I don't recall whether it was connected to his presence on the site. Regardless, series is too good to risk IMO.
EDIT: honestly tho, I wish he did not admit to it. The CoG crowd seems militant enough to take offence. At least he is not an incognito poster on this website.... Or is he!?!?!?
I can't believe you would risk the future of what might be the dankest (not to mention the dopest) CYOA series out there solely for the meme factor of seeing the dudeman shitpost alongside us mortals. You guys should consider the greater good and the man's financial well-being first. See, this is why I should the First Apostle. I am selfless. I would deny myself the presence of him in my life just to improve his chances of success. As long as I act as a disciple of His virtue, I am content merely knowing of Him in His wake, and bear this thorn-in-the-flesh of denial, just as apostle Paul-
Wait a second. Maybe its the other way around. I mean, the name, it just fits, right? Perhaps it is he with the thorn in the flesh and I with the cross to bear. It is he who is the mere apostle, and I the messiah. Is the LP merely consequent of the game - or was his work but a prelude for the whole of my glory to be revealed in an interactive form? Aye, for I have come not to destroy his intellectual property, but to fulfill it; verily, the wife breeding omake shall be our new covenant.
Anyway, you guys should have a little humility is all I'm saying.
Alright, I yield, you filthy Wulframite. Ultimately it's up to the hypothetical Paul that is hypothetically reading this thread to decide. He should know what his hypothetical overlords hypothetically allow or don't.
Then again, I am speaking about Paul of Tarsus the whole time, so I am a little bit confused about what you are talking about.
Went royalist on my first run. I did sympathise with some of Wulfram's aims, but his methods and the timing of the civil war... Admittedly I have some IRL bias towards monarchy over parliamentary republics which helped.
Apparently I'm better at getting the main character a wife than estate management, too In fact, I think the character writing is better than the story so far. Lords has far too many branches and as a result events don't have enough build-up (eg too much time passes between choices for the "stay at home" branch).
Character writing did noticeably improve in Lords though I think it was always a low-key decent quality of the series. The strong characterization of Caz and Elson in Book 1 was memorable but a little forced to my taste, meanwhile characters in Lords came across to me very naturally, sort of like meeting old friends after some time apart. Even the more out-there storylines like the unlikely Katarina romance is grounded with such infuriatingly relatable things as relationship limbo and trust issues.
Recently completed a Royalist run, went against Wulfram faction's because of their callous use of Hunter to promote their cause disgusted me.
Ended up as full Royalist so got "promotion" to Earl of Castermaine, I guess the Royalist target of the next book will be Castermaine's fief.
Will enjoy fucking that bastard up since he's the one who pushed for the Hunter BS, according to the fluff on Paul's website/blog.
Did anyone went for the full Estate path?
Other than being able to build the Major Projects, I feel most of the stuff for Estate path is sort of superfluous?
Karol of Loch does a good enough job as my estate manager that I never felt that the MC actually needs to go back.
And the sudden appearance of a "fiancée" despite I believe no mention of such in the first 2 books.
Did anyone went for the full Estate path?
Other than being able to build the Major Projects, I feel most of the stuff for Estate path is sort of superfluous?
It's been a while since I've played but I assume that whatever you build is going to help you in the next installment, rather than providing anything practical now.
One of my runs I reached the end absolutely flush with money and it didn't really have much of an impact.
Went with the Wulfram faction in my first playthrough but was equally disgusted with the abuse of Hunter's cause which caused me to distance myself from it which in turn netted me negative reputation IIRC. Also married the girl who was waiting for me which turned out to be a bad decision due to Welles showing up (despite giving her the middle finger) and them both ranting feminist garbage.
In general, the games have become worse in that regard over time. The German Imperial Elves turned out to also be Japanese, sex "equality", utterly degenerate (see the former ambassador's comments about it) actual Americans (under Jewish control) who push their thinking, policies and degeneracy upon others. The Skeleton Queen's inner circle is completely feminist and "cringey". The first game was fine, the second game was rather questionable, the third game was way worse.
The choice of love interests lies between a somewhat feminist, a hardcore feminist and a psychopath, great.
There is also the "funny" thing where if you choose that you only wanted to get the girl into bed and refuse marriage, she and her brothers blame it 100% on you, despite her obviously displaying whorish behavior. Yet, at no point and from no character is any blame put on her, despite her obviously being involved. At that point I have to feel sorry for the brothers who try to defend her honour (of which she has none), only to end up dead (well, one of them at least in that chapter).
There are other issues like the Antari-not-respecting-customs one where one tries to go for a girl and is put in his place by her brother who is her "guardian" at the event. Despite him being in the right (albeit a bit too violent about it), the objectively best choice is to punish him...which contrasts with the stuff in the spoiler. So there is a very clear bias about certain issues in the game which causes inconsistencies which is bad. There are more problems with the game of course but eh, not gonna bother.
Went with the Wulfram faction in my first playthrough but was equally disgusted with the abuse of Hunter's cause which caused me to distance myself from it which in turn netted me negative reputation IIRC. Also married the girl who was waiting for me which turned out to be a bad decision due to Welles showing up (despite giving her the middle finger) and them both ranting feminist garbage.
In general, the games have become worse in that regard over time. The German Imperial Elves turned out to also be Japanese, sex "equality", utterly degenerate (see the former ambassador's comments about it) actual Americans (under Jewish control) who push their thinking, policies and degeneracy upon others. The Skeleton Queen's inner circle is completely feminist and "cringey". The first game was fine, the second game was rather questionable, the third game was way worse.
The choice of love interests lies between a somewhat feminist, a hardcore feminist and a psychopath, great.
There is also the "funny" thing where if you choose that you only wanted to get the girl into bed and refuse marriage, she and her brothers blame it 100% on you, despite her obviously displaying whorish behavior. Yet, at no point and from no character is any blame put on her, despite her obviously being involved. At that point I have to feel sorry for the brothers who try to defend her honour (of which she has none), only to end up dead (well, one of them at least in that chapter).
There are other issues like the Antari-not-respecting-customs one where one tries to go for a girl and is put in his place by her brother who is her "guardian" at the event. Despite him being in the right (albeit a bit too violent about it), the objectively best choice is to punish him...which contrasts with the stuff in the spoiler. So there is a very clear bias about certain issues in the game which causes inconsistencies which is bad. There are more problems with the game of course but eh, not gonna bother.
I am not like the other boys, I wish to see more feminist tripe.
I don't mind this issue at all. It just makes the story more interesting as far as I am concerned. Besides, it's not exactly a stereotypical portrayal of feminism. In this setting, the feminists are aristocrats and monarchists. The communist horde of Wulfram is actually the more patriarchal faction here. I very much like what Paul Wang has wrote so far, and I am not afraid of the series becoming an ideological parody. I would be disappointed if the whole story was nothing but a meager allegory for modern worldviews (or rather their stereotypes).
Already in ancient Persia, women were free to own businesses and hold military positions.
In fact, I think the character writing is better than the story so far. Lords has far too many branches and as a result events don't have enough build-up (eg too much time passes between choices for the "stay at home" branch).
