Sale on Steam? Probably not what most of us iOS gamers wanted to hear.....'Update released!' would have been more warmly received considering we paid for the game a while ago and we're still waiting to have it fixed whilst PC players seem to be revelling in fairly consistent support. Just saying.
Just on a previous page I wrote that we are going to release an update before the Christmas holidays.
Go back to the beginning of this thread. Scan forward. Note how much Doomtrader (and sometimes Edwin) posted. They did a great job here after PQ launch. Not to mention that we did get quite a few updates, too. Sure, I'd like to see some more bugfixes and updates too. Don't care for the balance updates and nerfs I read about, quite a few of the Steam folks are pansies like that guy who insisted that you cannot win against 7 AI on a single Plane on hardest difficulty without Merchant and Alchemy. Sure you can But it's perfectly normal to move focus to the next platform you release on. And porting changes over isn't as easy as clicking a "publish on iOS" button. So we had to wait half a year for the next major update? Ja, and? Cut the guys some slack. Sidenote: reminds me that I wanted to write/rant about said balance changes...
It seems we are almost ready, so if nothing really bad happen we are going to push it to publisher next week.
@doomtrader: If you can still squeeze that in, please add an option to play "old style", i.e. without all those silly balance adjustments. I read most of the stuff on Steam, and "not well thought out" is the most positive thing I can say about the balance changes I found mentioned. Most likely I'm wrong, but I got the strong impression that just because some pansies () cried wolf, you toned things down a few notches. Like that one guy who insisted it's not possible to win an Archmage difficulty game without Merchant and Alchemy: of course it is, and not even difficult. Best example: -3 tohit chance for all ranged units. Oh boy... The problem isn't that they hit too much, the problem is the damage they do. And that mostly comes from the lots of crits they score (feels much higher than what they should get, more like a 30%+ chance than the 5% or 10% the numbers say - crit on nat.roll of 19+ or 20) . That this makes units like the Myrodant Slingers or Draconian Javelineers even more useless is just the icing on the cake. Some units will always be stronger than others, and during different parts of a game. Sure, Rangeds (especially those pesky Elf Archers) dominate the early game. That they are not the be-all end-all is proven by the fact that you can win an Archmage game with using Orcs only. But if they aren't pretty useless against what you have late mid-game, you are doing it wrong. Late mid-game and endgame powerful melee units and powerful spellcasters are the way to go, Archers just don't cut it anymore then. That guy on Steam who wrote a post about counters to everything got it right: XY is not unbalanced, just because you don't know how to deal with it. There is a counter-strategy for almost everything. On balance in general: I understand perfectly that you want a balanced game for multiplayer. But let's put it bluntly: Not possible. PQ is so huge, with so many units, spells, and items; not to mention the vast amount of different approaches/playstyles you can choose from. Balancing that for a "fair multiplayer" will not be possible, ever. Also, some of the game mechanics are not well-suited for balanced multiplayer, foremost: 1) Non-mirrored maps. E.g. Starbase Orion does that: Every player gets the exact same slice of the map, with I believe a few very small variations. Only the center part of a map is random and not identical, differences depending on from which direction you arrive. Mirrored maps go a long way towards making MP balanced. 2) Random rewards: This ties in with the mirrored maps above: in Starbase Orion, afair everyone gets the same rewards from their "mirror planets" as everyone else: each Planet Randoma gives an "Improved Stardrive" as reward, and each player has it in the same spot relative to their homeworld. The random range for what rewards you get (and what opposition you need to fight for it) in PQ currently is way too large to even remotely resemble anything like a balanced MP game. A single good find early on due to a lucky roll can completely make or break a match. My opinion: Stay away from balance changes unless a bunch of top players agree on them. I highly recommend you read Sirlin on the subject: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-1-definitions Focus on making the game more fun instead
Almost forgot. To illustrate what I am talking about, here's something I consider unbalanced, and why: The Archmage and Omniscient traits. Archmage gives you +10 Spellcraft from the get-go, and a 50% bonus to all Power spent on Spellcraft. For an excellent point cost of 2. For comparison: The most expensive trait that is not a Spellschool Mastery is Omniscient: costs 4 points, and needs a total of 3 points as prerequisite (Cartographer + Planar Cartographer). While Cartographer is really worth the 1pt - even more so for certain playstyles, the rewards dimish rapidly: Planar Cartographer is worth it if you get a Gate you can conquer early on. Easily remedied in later stages by swarming a new Plane with Magic Spirits. Omniscient itself lets you see everything on all Planes all the time. But how often do you really need that? In my opinion, it has a very hard time to earn back the immense point cost for it. I won't go into details for Omniscient here, or the post will get even longer. Suffice it to say that I think it would be better placed at a 3pt cost, and even that might be too expensive (still 6pt total cost, you can do a lot with those). Explanation and reasoning for Archmage: 1) Point cost. I cannot think of any other trait that gives you more bang for the buck overall. Same, I don't even see any other trait that is similarly powerful, even without taking point costs into account. With the possible exception of the current Alchemy (1pt). But since I think Alchemy only gives you a functionality that should be default (swapping Gold and Mana without loss; you are one of the most powerful Mages around after all, not some dabbling runt-of-the-litter dirty backyard Alchemist trying to turn frogs into gold or somesuch ), I think the 1pt cost for it is perfectly fine and really just an inconvenience. --- Addendum/sidenote: I think increasing the cost to 3pt like they did on Steam already is utter bollocks, and that's being generous in my judgement. --- Sure, e.g. Warlord only costs 1 point and is excellent for some/most playstyles and longer games. But a) you need time to get your units to max. level (casting Heroism like crazy to synergise with it is another story, and - while very powerful - has its own drawbacks). And b) it is not very useful in short games, see #a) . 2) Archmage is valid and valuable throughout the whole game, and in almost every situation. Other traits a) only really shine in longer games, e.g. above-mentioned Warlord. b) are more situational, like Battlecaster (also 2pt) or Gatemaster (1pt). c) are geared to a certain playstyle (e.g. Pious, 2pt). d) are more random in their result (Mentor, again 2pt). e) lose power over time, e.g. Enlightened or Expansionist. f) are simply not as valuable overall. E.g. Pillager + Geologist also costs 2pt together, but cannot hold a candle to Archmage. 3) Of course, you can spend the points for another trait or combination. But I'd love to hear if there is anything better for that point cost. For reasons, see #2. 4) #2 above gives evidence that other traits - even at the same point cost - provide less of a benefit overall. 5) Very powerful effect, and always valuable: a) +10 Spellcraft is a huge boon from the start, and will remain so for a long time (at least till early endgame). A player without Archmage needs a long time to catch up on the Spellcraft value, if at all possible. And pumping Spellcraft has drawbacks in other areas, same as neglecting it in favour of e.g. Mana income. b) The +50% bonus to Spellcraft Power is highly valuable throughout the whole game, and gives you more flexibility: e.g. invest more into it, to get an even bigger lead on your opponent. Invest less since you are ahead already and focus on other stuff. c) Spellcraft directly affects several areas: Amount of Mana you can cast overland each turn, same for combat casting. And the amount you can spend on Crafting per turn. d) Due to the above, a player with Archmage has more options right out the Gate: Want a certain spell sooner? Put more Power into Research. Need to cast more Magic Spirits? Reduce Spellcraft Power, put more into Mana. Etc. 5) The above provides a lot of evidence that you will be hard-pressed to find a better trait - or combination thereof - even at higher point costs. In summary, I put the Archmage trait firmly into Tier 1 / top-tier territory ; and very close to the top of it, if not giving it prime spot outright. I am still reluctant to do the latter, though: as there might be better ones - or combinations of traits - and I am simply not aware of their proper usage. Possible solutions: 1) Do we need one? Or can we just accept that Archmage is a great trait, like I am inclined to do? There'll always be unbalance, so why start meddling around? 2) Make it the default for everyone. But careful, this has quite a few implications: it will open up all the benefits I listed for every player. 3) Increase the point cost a bit, and see how things go during playtesting. I think Archmage would still be excellent at a 3pt cost, and most likely still worth it at 4pt. 4) Split the benefit into 2 traits. E.g. Archmage for 1pt gives you the +10 Spellcraft bonus. And a new trait - Grand Wizard - for another 2pt gives you the 50% bonus for Power spent on Spellcraft, with Archmage as prerequisite. Has the added bonus that it gives you some more options for building your Sorcerer Lord. 5) Scrap the trait completely: Hhmm ... no. Just putting it up here for sake of completeness. 6) Reduce the boni: E.g. only +5 Spellcraft and/or 25% bonus to Power spent. I don't know what the "best" numbers would be, but it's definitely worth exploring further. I consider a combination of #4 and #6 the best possible approach. But of course I'd like to see that verified through a lot of playtesting. P.S.: Decided to remove some closure rant. If you want to see it, holler and I'll put it back in
Nullzone, I've had Planar Conquest sitting in a folder pretty much since release (so much backlog...). Just wanted to know if you are suggesting we just ignore the update when it drops in a few days? Am I letting myself in for a less enjoyable game?
@orangutan: In all honesty, I don't know. I cannot look into your head, so I can only speak for myself. At first glance it looks to me(!) as if Wasteland did some balance changes that are ... questionable. I also read most of the Steam balance discussions, and my professional opinion as a longtime gamer is: a lot of people cry wolf because they get their butt kicked or consider something "too good", only viewing it as a singularity and not in the greater overall game context. And then call for toning down this or that. I did that too, and more than once, when I was younger and less experienced, and knew little about what is quite a complex subject. In hindsight, I am glad that most of the times developers didn't listen to me Only a handful of people come across as high-level players who really know what they are talking about. Best example: calling for a nerf on Weavers. Sure, they deal damage like it's going out of style. But there are counters to them, so for a top-tier unit they are very much fine in my book. None of the Steam people that seem high-level players to me supported that (toning them down, I mean). And while I for sure do not expect Norbert Newbie or Carla Casual to figure it out, any top-tier - hell, even a solid good player (what I consider myself, I am certainly not top notch) - should find counters to anything thrown at him with eyes closed. Game balance is a delicate flower and as much an art as a craft and a (proto-)science. If you want to see a point of view and take on the subject I very much agree with, I point you up a few posts to Sirlin's articles I linked. Even if you don't agree with him, they make for a great read. If I have time, I want to go over the changelogs and leave my usual smartassy comments on them Addendum: even with those changes in effect, I dare say PQ will still be a very enjoyable game. Go forth and multip... start playing, I mean
Balance Patch feedback upcoming So I just went over the big Steam balance patch, 1.3.1c here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/449300/discussions/0/350542683196077028/ In short: No, not going to upgrade. Over 1/3 of the balance changes I consider at least questionable, and about the same number is in the "don't do that" category. I'll try to write detailed feedback, but that'll take me a few days at least. @Wasteland: Please at least consider removing all the balance patches, and get your top-tier players to hash out something better. And go slower next time: introducing that many changes at once makes it impossible to qualify and quantify the effects of any single change. The change number is so high even that I have a very hard time to consider synergies and impact on game balance as a whole - impossible without a detailed analysis both for each single change, synergies, and overall impact. That's three huge tasks people need to tackle through playtesting. From professional experience I can tell you that even one of that magnitude is a Herculean task for a 50+ people fulltime highly experienced team. Ok, in our case we can reduce the team size by the coders, and remain only with testers, subject experts, and game designers of various specialities. Still ... for comparison: a QA testing team I know is 15+ people *alone*, fulltime all. And they only do manual functional testing and test automation, not sanity checks etc. That equates to how many part-time game testers? 45 at least, and that's assuming a consistent output of 1/3 of a fulltime employee - 40/3=13.3 hours per week, quite the high mark for a hobby.
Addendum to my last post There's one example where I think balance discussions are held on an extremely high level, and in extreme detail and completeness: Battle for Wesnoth. Going into details - or even giving a few examples only - would be a very lengthy task. And I need to sleep So I'll just present the place, and you see for yourself if you are so inclined: https://forums.wesnoth.org I just checked, and I cannot find the old balance threads anymore, so I cannot point you in the right direction.
Question about iOS AI boni @doomtrader: This Steam thread http://steamcommunity.com/app/449300/discussions/0/360671727318675935/ mentions that the AI gets extra units for free each turn. Question: Is that already the case in the current 1.2.5 iOS version? Cause if yes, I never really noticed, rolling over them easily on Archmage
Myrodant Archmage game For fun, I started a game with Myrodants on Archmage, with some restrictions: - Only Bugs. Everything else gets razed. - non-Bug units from Inns, rewards and Summons are ok. - no Heroes. I might revoke that rule if I see an interesting Champion I never used before. - no Crafting. Even if I revoke the "no Heroes" rule, I don't want to go overboard. - Biomancy + B. Mastery only; plus some stuff like Warlord. I never used a pure Biomancy Lord before. Highly interesting. Not having the usual enchantments (both for towns and units), Summons, and combat spells makes the game harder. But I still don't feel challenged, we need a higher difficulty setting I already ran out of spells to cast on turn 10 or so. So I started spamming Magic Spirits for scouting (opened a Gate to the 2nd Plane really early). And I stocked a few Quicksilver and Chaos Channels each, for the bigger units coming later. For fun, I cast Strands of Power on my Capital - which is still my only city on turn 20, need to build a Settler next - and used Wetlands and Raise Terrain to get more out of it. Nice, but needs a long time to earn back the investment (50 turns or so). I already produce Myrmidons from turn 15 onwards. Another 5 turns or so of focused building, and I can crank out the big Siege Bugs. But my economy does not carry that, razing all non-Myrodant towns *really* hurts in that area. Need at least one more town first. In hindsight, I made a mistake there. I should have done a few Settlers first, and not go for better units immediately. But it's only 20 turns in, so I am confident I can make up for it. On the plus side, I researched Mother's Resolve. That should shoot population growth through the roof. No Myrodants on my homeplane so far, so looks like I need to settle it all on my own. But there seems to be an enemy Bug Lord on the other Plane. Going after him once I wiped out the closest AI Lord in a few turns. Heretic trait works ok with the Bugs. They have almost no Mana buildings, so the loss isn't too great. I have to rely on getting Mana from Dungeons and melting Artifacts for now. Which brings me back to "a single good find can make or break a game". I got a few items from dungeons that each gave 400+ Mana. The rewards are still way too random in my opinion. Especially with an eye toward Multiplayer, this should be changed.
After new year we are planning to keep updating the game. It should be much easier to keep PC and mobile more consistent now, and I assume that every two months there will be some balancing made. In the long run I can imagine that the hardest difficulty will become more and more hardcore.
Thanks for the news ! Like nullzone balance changes i dont care much about, i want bugfixes so that all spells work, thats the important point to me ! Edit : As soon as the update lands im updating my rating to 5 stars again. And yeah, I think beamdog with BGI are even worse than what ive seen here
Unfortunate Game Balance Changes I very much agree with @Nullzone's post - the PC version of this game has been overly nerfed based on the input of some, but not all, players. This is a big mistake. At release this game was great fun: there were all sorts of different challanges. However, there were ways of overcoming them if you stuck with the game and learned. Too many 4X games are nerfed to the point that all units, etc are essentially equal: there are no real challanges. MOM was not a highly balanced game but it was a lot of fun because of the fact that it was not all bland sameness. Planar Conquest started out that way but the PC version is now well on its way to losing its edge. Please rethink the current strategy of nerfing the game because a few players do not want to spend the time to learn how to overcome a difficult challange. Or, as suggested by @Nullzone, at least give us the option to select the original game unit strength, spells, etc during setup.
Do you have patch notes for 1.3.1e so I can see what's coming? I don't suppose units show multiple figures for smaller creatures in the iOS version yet?
@4X: First, thanks for tooting the same horn Now, I'd like to clarify something: "...input of all players". I honestly do not care if it's 2 or 20 people who hash out balance in a game (ok, two might be a tad too few). Since I very much agree that Sirlin got things right on how to balance a game (see the earlier link), I actually think it should specifically NOT be all players. But only the, let's say for PQ, 20 top-tier players. He makes an excellent point about some balance issues taking years to be discovered by even those top players. Look at Chess and Go for examples: these two games have a few thousand years of history, and thus are scrutinised and measured down to the most minor detail. Noone would listen to me if I came around and said "the Queen is too powerful, half her movement range". And for a good reason: I suck at Chess (and can't play Go at all). But everyone and their dog thinks just because they once played Risk as a toddler, they are experts on balancing incredibly complex games. I most certainly am not (while I freely admit I have a huge ego , I also know where my limits are). Oha, that came off way more ranty than I intended. I better stop here. No personal attack or somesuch intended, just wanted to state my counter opinion. My argument is: Never let all players decide on balance, particularly for the hardest difficulty you offer. Ask for their opinion, sure. But when it comes down to it, only the top-notch folks should have a say in it. And funny enough, most of the time that does NOT include the developers themselves; because they are, you know, *developing*, and don't have the time to play their own game for hundreds of hours. Oh, and for the record: I DO think that PQ needs a good working-over balance-wise, especially for multiplayer. Only the way Wasteland went is the wrong approach. That wasn't balancing, that was carpet-bombing with the nerf bat
