Sovereign Selection Screen Needs Work

from Elemental Forums

The sovereign selection screen is uninformative and a new player may find it very confusing. For instance, I don't know what each sovereign specializes in. Is Porcipinee a caster or warrior? The stats may give some clue as to where a sovereign's strengh lies but that's a lot of mouse-over work that needs to be done by the player. Anyone looking through the list of sovereigns should have a rough idea of what kind of playstyle they require. If there were a few windows that provide the player with some additional information (a la World of Warcraft character selection screen) it would help a lot.

This goes for the spell books as well. It is not immediately obvious what 'Mobility', 'Enchantment' or 'Terraforming' does exactly. One way to address this issue is to create spell book categories and group them according to function (damage dealing, buffing, strategic etc...). After that a short summary of how that spell book helps the player should be provided as well. Also, I would suggest creating new icons for the spellbooks and have the picture show what each spell book does. So for mobility you could have a picture of a foot or something. The Elemental symbols that are in place now are meaningless and don't provide any information to the player.

Ideally when you click a sovereign you'll have a few windows that describe the sovereign's "class" (wizard, warrior or rogue type for example), give a general idea of what their spellbooks do and provide any other miscellaneous info that may be helpful to the player (a description of their perks/talents).

elemental
7,714 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

One change I would make is allow to buy your soverign equipment by deducting from your starting gold instead of your "creation" points.  To me Those spellbook names make perfect sense.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I'd add review the available equipment during creation too, War Staff is 8 points the same as a normal staff but gives attack 15.

I'd add the spellbook names make sense to me too but being able to get expo on what am option means would be good.

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

One change I would make is allow to buy your soverign equipment by deducting from your starting gold instead of your "creation" points.

End of quote

In its current implementation I think SD should do away with buying equipment altogether. The gear you buy at the start will be replaced very quickly so there's no need to spend gildar on it...especially at the beginning of the game when you are gildar-starved.

Also, there is a very subtle design flaw with spending gildar (or any kind of currency that will be used later in the game) on starting equipment and it has to do with scaling. Let's say a player has a choice of either buying starter equipment or saving it and buying something else once the game starts. The problem is that it is immediately obvious to the player which choice they should make. Starter equipment does not scale as time goes by. Therefore that investment of 20 gildar (or however much you spent on the equipment) has a constant return. If the player were to instead save these 20 gildar and spend it on an NPC that provides a 10% boost to food production, the return is much higher and more importantly it scales as your city grows. As you can see this is a a huge balance problem. Either the whole system of choosing starter equipment needs to be reworked or it needs to be scrapped altogether.

To me Those spellbook names make perfect sense.

End of quote

They do indeed make sense however the difference between the spell books and how they influence gameplay is not clear. Under what circumstances should I pick the Enchantment spell book over the Mobility spell book? If I like to have a good economy at the beginning of the game which spell book do I pick? etc...

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

In its current implementation I think SD should do away with buying equipment altogether. The gear you buy at the start will be replaced very quickly so there's no need to spend gildar on it...especially at the beginning of the game when you are gildar-starved.
End of quote

Not my war staff it normally takes a good while to improve on that in game, several tech levels.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting greggbert, reply 1
One change I would make is allow to buy your soverign equipment by deducting from your starting gold instead of your "creation" points.  To me Those spellbook names make perfect sense.
End of greggbert's quote

this.

there is a valid reason to invest in an item or two at the beginning of the game; it allows you to start levelling earlier and grab those handy goodie huts before others, so i won't dismiss the idea completely. however, i will admit that much the same ends could be achieved by doing away with equipment buying at creation altogether and just giving every sov a free basic staff and be done with it.