Another incomprehensible response. Why in the world would different damage types force you to make identical spells of each type but now that it is all one damage type you can focus damage into one school? I'm not being stupid here, for those that would like to jump on this and maybe poke a little fun. Think it thru and if you think you can break it down for me how this makes any sense, please take your best shot.

Come on guys, lets keep it civil huh I'm seriously hoping either Brad or Scott will answer this one when they get into the office.

COULD does not mean WILL, that is exactly what Raven is getting at.

With the removal of different damage types, what will the meaningful differences be between damage spells of different "schools"?

Yeah, I guess we are too dumb to figure out that damage equals loss of hit points no matter how it came about. All of your yammering about making "fire attributes" and certain armor or creatures being resistant to damage spells with said attribute - Damn I get tired of explaining it, but the public skools are more than one person can overcome - this is exactly WHAT THEY ARE SAYING NO TO. It is not how they get at the end result that they reject, it is the gameplay itself that they are saying they don't consider fun. Now they may change positions on this, but that is what I understand they have been saying. Now the ideas like fire doing additional damage over time, and frost spells slowing a unit down - I think that is on the table still. But damage types and resistances, makes no never mind HOW you achieve the result by code, the entire concept has been rejected.

Are people just in denial or stupid. It reminds me of when Froggy came out with Channeler death = Game Over, and people continued to theorize about how theyc ould continue playing the game as a descendant or whatever.

Let me break it down for the slow students; if you give a spell a certain flag, attribute or anything else that specifies it as "fire" and then you in any way adjust a units damage taken based on that flag or attribute, then from a gameplay perspective you have created a damage type and a resistance. You can come right out and call it a damage type and a resistance, or you can hide it all in a black box. Other than the interface, with respect to GAMEPLY it is the same thing and this is what they have said no to.

Get over your denial phase of grief, get thru the anger and get to acceptance and move on.

I am with Raven X though, as long as there are different effects, it can still be pretty cool. Unlike Raven, I have to believe that different types of effects is a given, or you will have the most retarded spellbook in the history of fantasy gaming.

I don't think there's anything wrong with two damage types (physical & arcane). Sure, we could add some new types, e.g. poison or sonic, but turning arcane into 4 elements initially sounds fun, alas it would turn the game into more and more attack vs. resistance types, which we don't want. I am MUCH happier if instead of damage types, they would include the additional effects, as THAT make the attack types special.

Providing fire will deal DOT, water will slow, wind will have a chance of double hit and earth will paralyze, no one should feel bad about lack of complexity/tactics in the game.

Well thanks for asking. Actually it has been more like a rough 3 months. Yes I realize the quality of my posts is terrible and I often hesitate to hit the enter key because of the level of vitriol, and the I say "ah &^%* it" and hit enter anyway.

Since you seem to think it matters I will divulge that I am 46 years old, full time job, married with two sons, aged 15 and 12. My wife has had back problems for about a year and a half that we have spent thousands of dollars and nothing has helped, and she is in almost constant pain to the point that she has developed a jaw problem due to gritting her teeth so much. She is going in for surgery this Friday and will be completely bedridden for three weeks and full recovery ~ 3 months, and this is about the fourth procedure that has been tried to resolve the problem. Also, I keep a good eye on what is happening in politics and the world, have done so for the last 20+ years and quite sincerely and honestly feel that the world in general and the U.S. in particular are circling the drain. On a happy not I got out of the market back when it was still around 12.5 K on the DOW, so being informed has some small benefits, even as I watch most people be suckered into believing that we are in recovery mode and I know full well and know the people that are "selling the recovery" also know full well that we are still a long way from the bottom. So yes, sometimes ignorance is bliss.

To put it lightly I am acquainted with stress, and I apologize to everyone that sometimes I just vent a lot of frustration here. That being said, I feel that even my attitude serves a valuable purpose to StarDock.

I feel that about 80% (if not more) of the posters here take a very sychophantic posture toward Frogboy in particular and the devs in general. While I try to keep my tone polite when addressing them, I think I am one of the few that will give them my straight opinion. In some cases that means I defend their decisions against ideas that I don't like, i.e. I was pretty vocal IN FAVOR of sovereign death = game over. However, I also am pretty blunt when I don't like a direction they take. Basically, I have huge hopes for this game, I want it to be something people will still be playing 10 years from now, and I want it to be benchmark that all future 4xstrategy games are measured against. I think Brad's a big boy and can handle direct criticism, and I also think the "honeyed words" of fanboi's and yes men are a dime a dozen. I understand he has been getting feedback from other forums that the hardcore are going to make the game unplayable, my counter concerns is that the casual gamer is going to neuter it. Some examples:

The idea that each city generates a small amount of raw materials - I can almost guarantee you that someone shined that "oh noes, what if the RNG does not put  materials that I need to build x within easy access!" and so to make sure that you could at least have some of each resource they made each town auto-generate it. I think it would have been much better to force you to change plans, expand to gain some territory that has the resource, or trade for it. On a positive note, the amount generated is so small that I think it will be negligible. On the negative side, the casuals have their foot in the door so to speak, and during beta will now be able to say "the auto-generated amount of materials is too small, it is worth next to nothing" and with a small coding change the amount will be increased.

Example 2: The 4 camps of resources - again they went with pretty much the most simplistic and abstract option when polling and even a casual reading of the thread discussion showed it to be the least popular option. Maybe the other sites where Brad hangs out with the casual fans that was not the case, but it was overwhelmingly the least popular choice here.

What has been frustrating with the current issue also has been Raven X has been seeking further clarification on exactly what this latest change entails, and it seems like from the Dev side that that conversation is closed. Either that or possibly they are trying to do some damage control and come up with a compromise that will not raise the ire of the casuals but possibly still throw a bone to the hardcore (although I frankly don't consider it a hardcore request). SD seemed to be taking the approach that you would need to completely re-equip an army each time you faced a different type of army, I was always assuming that equipment might play a small part but buff spells and such that you could do on the fly would play a larger role. And I do agree with some of what you and Kellendunk said - effects could still play a role, and if so that might be the saving grace. However, the various ideas proposed about flagging a spell as "category: fire" and then somehow tweaking the targets arcane resistance based on the spell type - I'm sorry this is where I start getting ruder than I should be because in my not so humble opinion, and with a good number of years of coding experience, this is precisely what they are saying no to. You are jsut proposing a different coding method of implementing a gameply feature that has been deemed unfun. And then I read post's like Climber's (and I like Climber by the way) but where somehow he ahd interpretted damage types to mean there would be hit point pools for each element - I honestly don't know how to phrase it politely, and in Climber's defense I think he is a foreign speaker and I 100% understand how something like that could get lost in translation so this is not a slam on Climber. Anyway..

So there you have it - "Why I am a prick" in 1,000 words (OK I didn't count). Hope you enjoyed it.

I'm no fan of hot language when typing amongst strangers, but I'm very sympathetic to both Denryu's bleak view of the world at the moment and his concerns that over-valuing the "casual gamer" POV could do more harm than good to the Elemental project.

That said, even though I'm not a coder, I've known a few personally and earned my living mostly by explaining software to folks who need to use it or might want to buy it. I'm not at all sure that even the 'binary damage types' is a done deal at this point. Like many (most?) people who type on boards like this, Brad tends to use terms that sound rather absolute even when he might be more or less thinking out loud. For example, back in April '07, Brad was typing about Elemental at QuarterToThree and in a line about recruiting heroes, he said "...and there's no Inn." We have Inns at the moment in the beta. He could have changed his mind during the interim, or he could have unintentionally been making a work-in-progress design parameter sound like a locked-down decision.

I'm also pretty sure that the devs appreciate the Hero System RPG rules, which also have a binary distinction at the base of their damage system. But the Hero rules are all about adding nuance so that characters/units fit well in a story and are more fun precisely because of added detail that fits logically on top of the simple base. I accept your assertion that there's a significant code challenge involved here, but I'm skeptical that the particular task is what the devs might be shy of. I want them to surprise themselves and us by being able to, ahem, balance their concerns about reaching the casual player audience with the long-term value of building an open system that can handle steadily increasing complexity based on the tastes of individual players.

p.s. For those curious about Denryu's last reference, I'm pretty sure he's talking about Brad's reply 157 in his Random Elemental Journal December 2009. Not sure whether I should feel pushy, half-clever, or something in between about what I typed above...

Denryu,

I think part of the problem here is that I was a little behind in my reading, like I said I don't have so much time to read everything.  I have now caught up in reading that entire thread.  When I made my post about attributes, I had not read the argument that ensued over the weekend with Brad's clarification posts and your responses.  I can see your level of frustration after I had posted something similar to what was discussed a couple of days ago, but you could have just said 'see X post' vs. 'you just don't get it'.  Anyway glad to see Brad's last post, that makes me feel better.  I also agree that equiping a bunch of different resist this or that on each solider would be a pain.  I was more concerned with spells and magic creatures.

Believe me, that happens to people who work in the industry as well. Back in the day I saw a fellow Origin employee get fired for stalking a girls player character on UO, it even made it into the papers.

I agree with this a lot. Personally, I want something similar to MoM 2, not an excel spreadsheet with 3D graphics. If this game is going to be similar to MoM 2, there has to be taken into account that MoM was a pretty simple game (because of design intent or because of technical limitations, no idea) and that in paper Elemental is already a ton more complicated than MoM: trading and resources, designing custom units, sovereigns and family trees, quests, scientific research,...

Nearly in every front Elemental has more features than MoM, which is good in some ways, but is also worrying because the game may be so complicated that ends becoming boring (for some people, others would surely love it).

Chill out.

That's precisely the point. None of these games follow Elemental's approach to unit design, hence, what works for them might not work for elemental.

Solar,

So please correct me if I am wrong but you are essentially saying the answer to improving the long mop up phase is to extend it? Since what you are proposing, from your own description makes it more interesting for the loser because he has a better chance of a comeback and "more interesting" for the winner because he hasn't really gained much advantage and thus he needs to continue to play carefully.

You say that you hate the boring mop up stage and then cheer for something that by your own admission extends it. And you wonder why you get insulted? Also, "loser only has one 'o', I would think you would know.

Also it sounds as if there will be damage types within the spell system, just not within the unit creation phase. this is awesome because then it won't be about scouting ahead so much as having the right spells learned.