You can say what you want about the game, but I really dig the art style.
To be honest, I'm sort of torn about this game.
However, there are still many, many things that should be changed or improved. The problem is, most of them probably won't, as Stardock thinks that balance and polish are the only things lacking. Of course, this is completely wrong and will cost them a lot.
Magic right now is bullshit, totally. Access to spells is based on heroes' school levels, which are given at random on levelups. You might play as a magical faction and get only fighting skills on your sovereign. But even when you get those magic levels, you only get a few new spells. Spellpower is not changed by it at all - you must control shards. If those spawn on your enemies' territory - tough luck.
And then there are the spells themselves - each of the six realms has, like, 10-12 spells OVERALL. And half of them is useless to boot. City enchantments are a no-brainer OP - you'll always want to cast as many of them as you can, making essence mandatory. They don't even cost any upkeep. On the other side there's summoning. It's unplayable at best, which is even more funny when you consider that two of starting eight sovereigns have "summoner" as their class. You have maybe six summoning spells IN GAME, and you can have only one summoned creature of the same type at times. Remember conjuring in Mom? Hah, you'd better forget.
All spells are cast instantaneous, and you can spend four thousand mana in a turn if you want. Maybe these are artificial restrictions, but I really liked how had to pump up spell skill to cast quicker in MoM.
Combat also could be better, and it results part from being very straightforward and part from horrid balancing. Currently, you don't have to train any units AT ALL - your first two champions, and maybe one more recruited on the way, will kill each and every enemy they face. XP flows like butthurt on watchwitz, and after spending some time killing mobs heroes are nigh unbeatable. Units don't stand a chance, even (or especially) those late game - mainly because experience is everything.
Then there's the case of HP bloat and defence. Currently, defense >>>> attack; armor beats the shit out of same tier weapons, and with hp bloat battles are turning into slog fests.
There are many more gripes, like pioneer spam, pussy monsters, lack of any differences between factions.
I really want to like this game, but I fear that without excessive modding that will overhaul the game's mechanics, it will end like War of Magic. And will such mods be makeable at all?
Obviously I want a second MoM, it's probably my favourite game of all. All MoM needs is an overhaul with better graphics, a few new features added, much better balance, and of course a working AI. It shouldn't come as a surprise I compare all the games that clearly want to be its successor, now should it? The potential is sure there in FE, but then it was in ToEE too.You make some good points, but the problem is that you want a second MoM; well this isn't and it won't be MoM. It's in the same vein for sure, but that's it. It offers a lot of improvements over Elemental, but it needs some tweaking. The potential is very much there.
Random traits on level-up wouldn't bother me if all your magic power didn't depend on them. If your spell mastery grew alongside, say every few levels, I'd be OK with this. But if there's something that really needs MAJOR work, it's the magic system.The randomness of the traits can be annoying, but wasn't really a game breaking thing for me so far. Even when selecting Path of the Warrior, I get the option to upgrade my Magic Skills. I partially agree on the spell choices; it's somewhat unbalanced, but some spells only come into their own in specific circumstances. It really depends on your style of play. I'm really not very much into summoning myself so I cannot judge on that, but I prefer buffing magic and the occasional neat spell (Cloud Walking). Some spells are limited in my experience; the beforementioned Cloud Walking spell can only be cast once a day per spellcaster.
Problem is, the three resources aren't balanced at all. 3/3/2 is vastly better than 4/2/2, not to mention 4/4/0 or even 4/4/1. Essence > materials >>>> grain.Essence was introduced in the latest beta series and limits the number of spells per city and also makes it another trade-off when selecting a square to found a new city. In general you lose some resources if you select a square with more essence (4/4/0 versus 4/2/2 or 3/3/2). So it's not that straightforward.
Making pioneers cost much more production and some 40-50 population will make spam impossible, simply because you'll run out of population soon enough.The pioneer spam is annoying indeed, but it has been a feature of other games as well (Civilization comes to mind as well); I'm not sure what the best way to fix this would be. Halting growth temporarily or costing food while they're in play might be options.
I agree that a careful balance is needed. But if I bounce around two groups of wolves with pioneers for several turns and only then are they attacking me, something is definitely wrong.Pussy monsters is a question of balance I guess; in one of the earlier builds monsters were very aggressive and this completely changed the game. If some high-level mob was close to your settlements you were toast. This is quite delicate, maybe it should be a configurable setting.
That's the big problem of customizability vs uniqueness. Stardock bet on the former - you can make your own sov, faction and units. However, I am definitely the proponent of the latter, because as it shows, customization paradoxically makes everything look almost the same.The lack of difference between factions is a big gripe of a number of people, but personally I'm more interested in trying different strategies with any faction. You have some limited customization using the custom factions and custom heroes which offers a number of options already. I'm guessing it's relatively costly (from a design point of view) to create wholly different factions.
When you have two heroes from the start, and they can easily level up to high heavens on pitiful mobs (and even defeat is not really costly), then what do you need armies for? Sorry, but for me it's gamebreaking. There should not be another champ nearby, and the early monster should not be easily defeated by a single sovereign. There you go, units needed.That heroes negate units is mostly caused by the fact that initially, your units are extremely shitty. If you manage to level and buff your heroe(s) properly you hardly need any units. But that's strategy as well. I think, currently the research tree takes too long to make units viable. By the time they become interesting, you hardly need them anymore. And still they're very weak (HP wise) initially.
Me and a few other guys are fighting the good fight on the elemental forums, but except for a few popamole apologists, there's no response. I really doubt anything major will be changed.Man, they spent so much time on it, already had engine and some assets, and it still is not really good. I guess I'll have to try it at least. Don't they have feedback on those things that hoverdog and drexciya mentioned? I remember those things being criticized a few months back (pioneer spamming etc.).
I want MOM 2 in competent hands that don't don't want to make the game nexgen, popamole or accessible (similar to new X-com). Beauty of MOM is that it really is simple and intuitive even after all these years. Add some fun and interesting things and expand gameplay and voila. Problem is a game like that probably isn't profitable enough to be made.
I hope your thread won't be obscured by all the Age of Decadence LPs.Estimated Beta 5 release date: thursday