General rant ...

Goddamn apologists.

Yeah, because threads like this one are silly casual gamer's pleas.

Stardock fucked up War of Magic. Badly. That's a fact. Experienced, dedicated and professional game designers that have worked on the game for several months did. Why? Partly because they did not listen to feedback. Because they had the very same stance - "what do they know, they haven't made any games themselves, those fans". 

Truthfully, Stardock did learn something from their mistakes. For me, not enough, but still, the game looks much better. However, writing "they are the devs, they can do no wrong" returns us to the starting point. 

Most suggestions don't take in the scope of what they propose.

Anyway, the game is more or less "feature-complete" at this point. Bug-fixing, polishing, a bit of content, and balancing remains. Everyone should remember that.

I have a suggestion that I repeat as much as possible, and is well within the scope

Please let us have a slider from docile to nasty for monster aggressiveness. The game is too tame for me now.

Ins2, you have just motivated me to write a long post suggesting a GREAT SWEEPING CHANGE TO GAME MECHANICS (TM)

I think the devs are capable of filtering the good and 'bad' ideas. In general, I'm sure this beta feedback has been useful to them.

Thank you ins2, for telling all those enthusiastic people to STFU and GTFO. They should have realised that these forums are only for people who think this game is (nearly) perfect as is, and only small incremental changes can be discussed.

There is no harm in discussing big changes, even if they never will be implemented as FE is apparently feature complete. Having followed these forums for over 4 years now, I can tell you that discussions about great sweeping changes are a lot more interesting than a discussion about, say, if horses should give +1 or +2 initiative (not saying that those discussions aren't necessary). Even if depressingly little is done with them, those type of threads that you seem to think are unproductive produce some far more creative solutions to issues than the '+1 ...' type.

Although there certainly are some posts that could have been thought through a bit more, in my experience most people here take their time to think about the suggestions they make. I find your qualifying all of them as just a brain fart more than a little offensive. Especially when it is coming from some apologist fanboy who apparently thinks of himself as some sort of authority figure.

I'd like to thank stardock for making the beta fun. It was nice to see them turn the game around into something so much better than before. Since the game is mostly feature locked and the devs have had a strange method of giving feedback to the forum beta testers (right or wrong I do understand why they gave little in the way of forum feedback.) I so have a great many ideas of how the game could be improved further, but is one main reason why i stopped putting them forward. I personally lack the ability to get people in the forums to agree on anything. All i can do is write a sentence or do to start people talking on a topic, maybe direct the conversation the way i want it to go and then cross my fingers that the devs are paying attention, since i know they wont make too much of a fuss of an idea in the public arena)

Thank you for reminding us of malsqueaks post, he is indeed a note of sanity here. (uh i think its a guy, never paid too much attenion to that lol )

I'm a big fan of using an actual picture of yourself rather than an avatar shrug.

That being said, I did decide to write a game from scratch. I made a list of everything i like and hate about this game, and others. I have thought about populour games in the past and why they succeeded, and theni crawled into a corner and wept at the amount of work i'm about to put myself through. But it will be worth it it the end.

I hate the way people abuse each other in forums. It is much tamer here than other places but conversations still devolve into i'm right, your wrong, stick it in your ear. I hate it and i have said so in private to the devs. They are very nice chatty people. There are limits to what they can and can't do, but i am grateful for conversations I have had with them. I have seen little things in the game that have been slightly influenced by things i have suggested. I will always be a fan of the 3x3 tile footprint land spells .

~nuff said, i have little to add from here on out.

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(that would be hitting the nail with a hammer)

edit: hmm the spell checker failed me bigtime, maybe it was busy playing games on facebook...)

Oh I don't know, alot of my ideas come from those casual commenters and their ridiculous ideas. Compared to the massive level of borderline troll suggestions we had in beta 2, I am pretty happy with the random suggestions we have in beta 4. So, just ignore the ideas you don't like or find annoying. Posting about it will only make things worse.

What is the point of the beta?  I thought it was to get feedback from players, of all levels.

lol

Makes me envision Dr. Evil putting his pinky to corner of mouth...

I have a GREAT idea for ONE SIMPLE change to this post to make it much, much better.

Now if I could just find ONE GREAT SWEEPING CHANGE TO GAME MECHANICS (TM) that would fix everything... Wait, what are we fixing everything for again?

      I think I am going to name my next Custom Sovereign:  " General Rant " ...

           You just never really know where you are going to find a great idea ...      

In beta 5' FE becomes a first person shooter.

Cover me! I'm going in!

I have some ideas for the cover system. Let's release on Dreamcast and then port it over to PC.

It fixes EVERYTHING! Why didn't I think of that SWEEPING GENERALIZATION THAT FIXES EVERYTHING (TM)?

We can call it Battlefield of Modern Honor. It will be a combination between company of heroes, battlefield 3 and Call of Duty. Everyone will love it.

Make it a pet rock simulator.

have the art department make 3000 different stimulating skin variations.

(see i still have a sense of humour)