I don't know where you got this presumption.

The opposite would be true.

I vote for focusing resources toward fully fleshed out canon factions and their corresponding races.

I whole-heartedly vote on fully fleshed out Factions, no looking back, even if I'll have to wait years and years for any sort of complex custom-race maker.

Its better to do the best with something you can only do once, than to make room for something you can do a thousand times. (My $0.02)

Ah, I see that I misunderstood your previous journal now. I thought you meant getting rid of current factions all-together, and replacing them with just two factions, corresponding to human and fallen races.

I am a little bit conflicted on this. On the one hand, it would be pretty awkward to have all the Fallen factions represented as a single race in the game, but as different races in the actual lore and book. Generating lore for a game and then contradicting that lore in the game itself doesn't seem like a good route to take.

In the end, I think I'd favor focusing on the canon factions/races, and either give us only minimal race-customization or postpone race customization for an expansion.

Alternatively, what about allowing us to create our own custom race by mixing the art assets of a stock race with racial bonuses/weaknesses? In the end the custom race would look just like a stock race, but would be functionally different which is the most important thing. Each canon race (including sub-races) would have preset racial bonuses/weaknesses/talents, and creating a custom race could just entail mixing a stock race's art assets with bonuses/weaknesses/talents chosen from that whole pool. Admittedly that could result in some weird mixes (fast-traveling ironeers, lol), but that's not really so terrible.

That doesn't seem like it would add a great deal of extra work, and would allow you to give us very well developed stock races, as well as a fairly powerful custom-race/faction builder. Anyone who wants to go the extra mile would have to make a genuine mod, and if it becomes popular enough then more involved race customization could be provided in an expansion.

I won't rehash what I have already said from the last thread, but here is my thoughts on the priorties here and what I would like to see in the Faction / Race system, in #48 in case anyone is interested:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/381206/page/2/#2604905

If it comes down to it, my first priority is to have a good solid game out of the box. If we can have a deep game with multiple fully developed Factions, Races, and Sovereigns, with many of the gameplay features that so many people seem to want (detailed cities with multiracial populations, multiracial armies, etc.), then I am 100% for saving further customization for an expansion pack. If Elemental has the level of customization seen in Gal Civ II + Expansions out of the box along with the deep gameplay features I and many others are hoping for, then I don't see anything to complain about. I will have a great time playing with the cool, developed factions, races, etc. in the base game, and when the 'customize' expansion hits, it will be a chance to have tons of new things to explore in a game that I am already familiar with.  

If the gameplay is deep and has lots of meaningful options built in as part of the game (ie: do I enslave the population of this city to make slave soldiers out of the pathetic human citizens, or do I exterminate them and take everything over with my superior Fallen population? Do I build up as a military powerhouse or a peaceful pacifist community?), then there will be plenty of options and customization inherent in the gameplay.

1st Priority: A great game out of the box that anyone can pick up and play with deep gameplay systems that force meaningful choices and reward strategy, with fully developed factions and lore with meaningful gameeplay impact.

2nd Priority: Full customization of everything fully supported  within the game, including custom factions, races, sovereigns, etc.

I won't go that far, but there is a lot to be said for, say, Lords of Magic's faction names - Life, Death, Chaos, Earth, Air, Fire, etc.  They may all have been men, but when I fought air, I knew I had to deal with flying opponents, Air Giants, and lots of storm spells.  And when it was Death's turn, my heart skipped a beat.

Now, take a look at the Civ series.  Sure, you may only have a few little differences between playable nations, but because we have mental images of China, Russia, and the Aztec Empire, we didn't need too much extra stuff on top.

That having been said, I really like the concepts behind the Elemental backstory, and am looking forward to the book.  And after that, the factions should all click into place.

I think you should have both. Having races allows to define common apparence, bonus or weakness between factions. It can also help to set a starting point for relation between factions, as well as a starting point for handling conquered cities and associated unrest.

For example, if someone decide to mod a race of sentient spiders, and set that the men race distrust fully this new race, all men based factions will have this distrust WITHOUT having to specify the comportement of each faction.

And generally, one distrusts someone who is too different (too alien).

For the TL;DR people, this post is not for you. Move along.

Exactly. Don't dumb down modding for some people not interested in its possibilities. (What? If you use a double edged sword...)

I don't think that the modding capabilities of Gal Civ 2 could ever compare to those of Elemental. Not even in dreams. Maybe most won't care. Many will wait for others to create the mod they want to play. And a few, from the vast number of players, will be wasting their precious life time creating content for others, to enhance their experience of the game if they desire to do so (or mod for fun as I do).

And not all modding suppose to code thousands of lines, retexturing, creating new models... One of the modding part that Elemental is to have is using simple in game tools to create new content (new items, new sovereigns, new maps...). As far as I understand all this whole debate, this is the kind of modding we are actually talking about: i.e. go to your race editor and create a kenku. (things like flying, modding the model because you want to polish it... those are details that go beyond that)

Huge question.

Choosing a faction only means who you are at the beginning, not what you could potentially achieve during the game. That said, playing without restriction/penalties the other races, especially those "opposed", would seem silly and not just because you could feel that have already experienced everything.

I think it's correct to assume people will use mods. Many don't.

But others do. Hell, some people only buy some games for their mods. That's a fact. Oh, they are not so many but they do exist. The same as the people who will only buy the game because it has multiplayer.

Although I agree with you, I must say that because modders are supposed to exist it doesn't mean that some initial help/encouragement shouldn't be given to them. That includes people who isn't modder but that potentially could be (without being some kind of pro, just enough to tweak the game a bit if they feel like it).

John Doe that wanted elves in his game and doesn't want to bother online except for official patches from Impulse, isn't going to like that he isn't getting any in base Elemental. And even if there were 1,045,304 elven model mods out there, he may not want to use mods for different reasons (like the models not being visually the same style as the canon game). So for him to find that using the easy tools from the game, he can create elves because there are alrady some art assests for such task, would result in a happy John Doe.

It's not asking (at least not I) that in the base game we get assests for draconians, tarrasques, Na'vi, displacer beasts,... But some base adding the potentially more known and similar races would be a nice touch. Elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins... They could be easy to add (supposing that the canon faction provide similar models that require not too much tweaking), not as canon factions but as art assests easy to use by players in the editors. Or I think so as I'm speaking from the ignorance. The rest, the bulk of serious race modding can be done in expansion packs.

We are not the squeaky wheels that so many non modders seem to be, so it is easy to overlook us. This should NOT be considered an attack on non modders. I am simply stating that there is a group of gamers who want to make a purchase and play the game [as is AND/OR tweaked], and it would be nice to have a game to really dig into.

Codes? Barcodes? Barcode battler?

Previously, on Lost...

I like how in games like HoMM you got penalties in your army if you were to mix too different types. I'd hope for something similar in Elemental to happen.

It'll increase longevity of the game. It'll allow players to "fix" things even if Stardock went "Puff!" any time after release. If you have skills, it allows you to create a game of different genre if you must really do that.

It doesn't obligue you to mod. It gives you the chance of adding things or change the ones you don't want. The level of skill required and tools would then depend on your interests.

It's soooooooo easy to say: "you can either use some of the stock models or download the models that someone else makes". Really. If Stardock doesn't offer Marilith models, you cannot use them. And that attitude of hoping to find a random modeler to fix your needs is a totally weak excuse. At best. I'll concede that modelling human models by Stardock to create elves would be at least "easy" due to similarities. As long as you get into some serious modding and modeling (because it's not like we are getting Spore's creature creator in Elemental... so it's not just change some text in a XML).

Yes, there will be modders. Yes, that will include modelers. Yes, eventually you will get all type of content and get elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, gnolls, draconians, bugbears, owlbears, little green men, na'vi, smurfs, slaan,... Let modders be the ones who expose code to Phyton too instead of wasting time/resources from Stardock during a whole beta phase.

Don't get me wrong. I trust Stardock and their ability to offer great products (and improve them later). I know that I'm going to be happy no matter what decide about this or anything else (and modding potential makes sure than anything that I don't like could be potentially removed if I'm in for the effort). From that point of view, unlike most of you, I'm lucky.

But if Stardock uses (and they do) modding as something very important to the game (not core, mind you, but yes important) so players can create spells, weapons, races... Well, they need to back those claims. And considering how many people already cries wolf because there are only "humans and fallen" (some don't even care if they play totally different, go figure), it's not crazy to suppose that not offering some non-human/non-fallen art assests (i.e. the cliché elves) so players can recreate with a few clicks their stardard expectations in fantasy (the easiest at least.. save things for expansion packs anyway), would be bad. Jus tease them and don't leave them waiting for modders to have to add things from the get go. Sounds like "Day 0 patching" but by fans.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for lore and solid races/factions, just in case any of you got the wrong idea. But unless Stardock convices me otherwise (money is by itself argument enough, you know, but it always is), I think that some seeds and basic support to what is supposed to be modding material would be nice and somehow a must have. Up to which point? Haha, lucky me that I don't work in the "Sausage factory" and don't have even to speculate about that. I throw the stone and... miss! (damn low Dex)

As you Frogboy stated, you get to do the built-in races only once but you can add customization options with expansions. I would love having both. However, even with the new customizable stuff, I would prefer having some sort of a backstory tied in to the lore. This backs up your idea of releasing the added customization options later on with expansions, giving you time to write additional lore for them.

Some criticism on the lore of the game though. To describe myself, I'm not that familiar with the lore, but I've been around and read a lot of the journal entries and read the lore page. I think in my current state I would go pretty closely as a relatively casual game playing the game. As that, I'm completely at a loss of how the race/faction/empire system works. I don't really understand which level is higher and which lower. Are there Empires within Factions of Factions within Empires? Do Empires consist of one Race or are there a couple of factions for each race and race is the topmost determinant? In other words, the hierarchy of your system is very confusing. I hope it is somehow much clearer in the actual game than it is on paper.

Having a really cool and varied 'new race' system seems like endless fun, and casual gamers and hardcore players alike love spending time on the character customization screen. But these custom races need to somehow feel like they fit in the Elemental world. With your current lore there doesn't seem that much room for Ents and Elves and whatnot, so creating one that battles 7 opponents of men/fallen actually feels quite out of place.

Just so there's more than one Stardockian posting in this thread, I'm throwing my hat in the ring as being 87% in favor of putting our efforts towards polishing up the current factions and adding the extra customization later.

Most of my thinking actually comes from an old penny arcade post (http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/3/13/) where Tycho rearks on the Fall from Heaven 2 mod, and the ejoyment he got out of just reading the manual. If we can pack in the cool faction lore that our writers have been working on, and combine it with truly unique ways to have the game play out, I think that will get us more milelage than additional customization, IMHO.

I would be just happy with Stardock releasing Elemental with only humans (as long as they are culturally, and somehow physically, different). I don't need Fallen, Risen, elves, proto-elves, dwarves with fake scottish accent... No matter if they are given by Stardock or modders. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to sometimes throw some "alien" into the game. Flying draconians, from the flying mechanic point of view, could be one... adding wings to humans could serve too though, as angels are more cool than anything else. In the end, many of the "alien" game mechanics can be replicated with just mutant humans and/or evolved humans.

But I'm just myself and if you read some of the threads here, you will get a good sample of what it's to come in player reactions. Elemental being already really restrictive in it's setting doesn't help (mod for death of Sovereign not being game over and using a succession system in 3... 2... 1...). Not offering some extra art assests in race department seems like a bad idea as race/faction (man, lost again) is the thing that will attrack more (making new spells and such not so much).

And yeah, I'd like some kind of tiger-like race somewhere just because I love the tiger skin. Maybe a tribe of tattooed humans would do it.

Maybe I should bother reading the Fall from Heaven 2 manual. Surely the mod is high quality but I prefer lots more the vanilla game. Nothing can compete with my Isabella kicking ass of anyone who dares to cross her path. (in Civ IV engine)

Needless to say, I vote for distinct and well developed factions and races. => Diversity should be important in a game like this Froggie.

Agreed Boogie. Basically this is what I was talking about as well in my reply yesterday.

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Off-topic, but..... ->

Indeed, this is a huge question. It would be good to know the answer.  Let's hope that they will "mold", else we will have to create new armor models for the new races as well.....now that means: TONS of work.

First a proposal, followed by some more lengthy comments (wall of text ):

Compromise solution:

First of all, please use well fleshed-out, unique factions respecting the lore of E. (If it’s possible without going against the lore, these could even be simplified into only 2 races, in 10 factions).

But at the same time, add several fully fleshed out factions built on several fleshed out races, which are officially outside the canon Elemental lore. So no, they would not be in the Campaign, but they would be there for sandbox mode, and not the least, as basis for player customization for their own games and campaigns (and mods). (There would of course also still be a really good customization engine for the player.)

This would mean you are not going against the lore and the Elemental novel, but you can still present E as THE new fantasy strategy game, inheriting the Crown from MM. I’m not anymore sure you could do that if you stick only to the canon E lore. With such a compromise solution you would have: unique factions giving the game a soul and drawing any player in, also the casual ones. But also: unique races that a lot of players will love to play with in sandbox, and as basis for their own games later on when you have already played the Campaign. You could make the canon game as simple and easy to understand as you want (within the lore), and add complexity and variety as a bonus for those players who crave it. 

It seems such a solution is the only realistic way to give the player a decent option of creating his own races. Ticking in some plusses and minuses and changing a colour will not be enough. In /re/-creating a race, I think you will need to choose one of the by SD fully developed races/factions as basis (the one which is closest to the new race you are trying to /re/create), and then work from that. Starting with just a general template will be too little, too unspecific. I cannot underline this fact strongly enough. It will not be enough to add and subtract in a list of abilities, however long. The only way is to have a wide variety of unique races and factions as basis, professionally done by SD. Then you can start messing around and have fun.

In expansions, it would then also be easy for SD to add any number of races and factions, some within the official lore, others outside the official Elemental novel lore, for sandbox and as basis for further player customization. A win-win situation.

I don’t think most players would find such a division shocking or confusing. Because the division between Official Elemental-world canon material and extra factions is very clear-cut. If you’re a new player without much knowledge I think you would start with the Campaign (incl. tutorial if there will be one) and only then start to mess around with your own stuff, once you know the game. And for those who want to make everything up themselves and won’t even play the campaign, they will easily be able to use the factions and races proposed as basis, canon or not.

In fact, I think today’s problem and complexity rather comes from the E lore itself. The divisions within the current lore (Empires and Kingdoms, special definition of what race mean, who can be good and evil, life magic and death magic, all mixed up with different factions …) are not easy to understand. I must admit that even after years on the forum I still must make an effort to really “grasp” this complex structure. And it doesn’t sound immediately appealing as presented (but could be brilliant once we know it in detail, and in action, still to be seen).

The reason behind including non-lore factions is that I feel we are running a risk with Elemental as it has been conceived. I don’t want to complain on the present factions or on the quality of the Lore, because we haven’t been introduced to it yet. But that is also the problem and the big risk. The way the game has been conceived, by doing the lore first and then trying to make the best possible game using that lore, is risky in the sense that if the players won’t like that Lore the whole game will suffer (badly). On the other hand, there is no way to do the game without a strong dose of lore at its core.

For me, I don’t know anymore if I like the direction the game is taking, because it will all depend on whether we will love the Lore or not. If I find the canon factions bland and boring, then this would be a huge, huge letdown. By including non-canon races and factions, the game would still be saved. And if the lore is brilliant, all the better. Extra races and factions outside the official lore will not ruin the gaming experience for those who hate lizardmen, elves or dwarves. But it will save the game for those who love lizardmen and also for those who might happen not to love (or even care about) the lore proposed.   

For example, if you like the lore and play the Campaign and also sandbox with only the canon factions, I don’t see why you would mind there being also a lizardmen faction included in the game as an option for sandbox. Yes, it takes some resources to programme, but hey, I think we all want a successful game that is liked by as many as possible.   

It will take some more work for SD, yes, but I believe this is the most crucial issue discussed yet on the forum for how the game will be perceived. And for how long it will be interesting and fun to play it, years from now.

Let’s go back one small step towards the roots of MM and AoW, while still including all the new and hopefully exciting Elemental lore at the core of the game.