Oh I think there will be different effects, such as what you were saying before - an ice spell might slow movement, a fire spell might do additional damage for the next couple of turns. But in the example you gave in the "if you want to get fancy" paragraph, you are talking about a fire elemental essentially having its resistance to arcane raised "on the fly" when it was being attacked by a fire spell (so it would take little or no damage). This is what I am referring to as having damage types and achieving it through reverse-Polish notation. If you are going to do that it is much more straight forward to say "fireballs do 5 points of fire damage" and "fire elementals have a high resistance to fire damage" - we all realize that at the end of the day hit points is hit points and those 5 points of damage (if they hit) are 5 points subtracted from hit points.

What I thought had pretty clearly been stated is the fire elemental is going to be just as suceptible to a fire bolt as an ice spear. They didnt want different damage types because equipping your army to fight lava men, and then having to re-equip them with different gear to fight ice trolls was no fun. The point being is that type of gear swaps in a RPG IS FUN, but doing it x10,000 troops is NOT FUN and I AGREE! So I don;t think it should be based on equipment, I think it should be based on combat spells and also possible long term spells that require maintenance. So you fight your lava men, and at the beginning of the fight you cast "fire resist 1" on all your armies in that battle (or at least on your front lines). Oh and you have a fire immunity spell that can only be cast on one unit at a time so you cast that on your hero in this fight. Great! They are all doing well against the lava men!

Then you get attacked by the ice trolls, and &^*( it, you don't have any ice resistance spells learned yet! So you have to muck it out as best you can with no resistance to ice. But without specific damage types and resistances, this type of thing is not going to be in the game. See in my opinion they looked at the problem as needing to re-equip the army, determined that was not fun, and threw the baby out with the bath water - (in this case damage types and resistances) rather than saying Wow! this opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities and straegic choices as far as what spells they choose to research (also provides a big variety of spells, and in my book, a huge spell book is a fun spell book).

Now if I am completely wrong and that is NOT all gone bye bye, then by all means Brad, Boogie, or somebody, set me back on the straight and narrow path of understanding. And i will still say, if somehow they are only having the two damage types but then ARE going to "adjust resistance" based on what school of magic the spell is coming from - well i will be glad it's in, but it sure is a counterintuitive and overly complex way to get there.

Having read the OP again it is not explicitly stated that what you propose is not in there. I am taking the post that says there is no longer fire or frost damage but combined into arcane damage and arcane resistance to say that. If you are saying that arcance resistance might be 5 when being attacked by fire but for the same unit the arcane resistance might be 2 for frost, then i am saying for all intents and purposes you have fire and frost damage and fire and frost resistance, you have just found the most uninutitive and complicated way of implimenting it imaginable. From a coding perspective why in the HELL would you do that when you could just have a fire resistance of 5 and a frost resistance of 2, and you apply the frost spell against the frost resistance to determine how many HP your army lost? again as someone with some programming experience I can tell you no one codes that way. And I welcome comments from the dev's correcting me.

Yes and it could just be that how I envisioned different damage types and resistances is much less complex than what The Team had tried to implement and did not like for complexity reasons.

But the fairly simple system I have talked about in my last two posts - when I hear they are being dumped for complexity reasons and because of feears expressed by casaul players.... it makes me think OK that proves it, the Dumbing Down of America has been signed, sealed and delivered. I mean, unfun, OK that's valid, but that because having damage types and resistance for each element is TOO TAXING FOR THEIR POOR LITTLE BWAINS TO PWOCESS!

I swear to God it reminds me of being on the Vanguard beta team and they were going to make a more hardcore, "difficult to master" MMORPG and the handwringers came in and by God if there is not a mini map, learning to triangulate with a compass and coordinates is too hard, I won;t play such a game! And the Dev team caved time and again even though early on they had explicitly stated they were going to do it one way, in EVERY instance they caved to the whiners and you essentially got EverQuest 2 with better looking graphics...

And it is not like I am even really wanting terribly hardcore stuff. I think "easy to learn, difficult to master" is the key. And nobody wants to be beaten solely by the Random Number Generator HOWEVER, I do think that the RNG should have enough effect to make some games go quite a bit easier if you are lucky, and sometimes "shit happens" and you might have a rough go of it based solely on a streak of bad luck. Othewise you have no variety, the game becomes repetitive and formulaic, I want to be playing my hundredth game of elemental and get blindsided by something cool and something that makes me say Crap! What am I going to do about THAT?!?

Anyway, guess we will see what happens.

I wasn't over reacting - I was saying IF the mechanic was removed because it was overly complex for the casual gamer (i.e. if people could not comprehend and deal with different damage types) then indeed, America has been dumbed down. There are certainly a lot more serious issues out there that demonstrate it, somebody with no accomplishments to speak of getting elected as president on a three word motto ranking high on the list.

Yes, point taken though - pointing to a minor subsystem in a game being taken out as an indication of a widespread phenomenon is pretty silly.

All we need is some words from Frogboy saying "Don't worry, there will be effects (aka stats (HP/attacks/defence/spedd/etc.) changing spells) in the final game. And a fire elemental will be hitted hard by an iceblast even if he has a high magical resistance versus fire."

And a lot of people here have programing knowledge, even game programing knowledge. But we're not discussing implementation, we're discussing "what will be able to do in the game ?"

So, will a fireball be the same as an iceblast gameplay-wise ? That is the only concern. Please tell us there will be a way to "flag" magical damage to know where it comes from.

I think in this case they haven't said anything because spells with effects is a given. If you are going to have a "slow" spell, having a damage spell that also slows comes for free.

They didn't say anywhere that magic Would have any different Effects. If they say combat spells will have Different Effects then I'll be ecstatic. They haven't said that though and for me, I assume the worst. They got rid of damage types so they probably got rid of the Effects those types would produce as well, like burning or freezing or poisoning which could all do damage over time plus have varying effects.

As it is right now the only difference I'm expecting in spells that do damage is the animation and maybe amount of damage that's dealt. I'm hoping and praying to the computer gods that they use spell effects, but seeing as how that's just another system that will need balancing and defended against, I'm expecting them to not use any effects for damage type spells. Sure some spells will have obvious effects, like "Sleep" or "Slow", but neither of those do damage. When it comes to damage I'm expecting a 3 Arcane Damage fire spell to be exactly the same as a 3 Arcane Damage ice spell only colored different with a different animation....

Hope for the best.....expect the worst.

*crosses fingers*

Note: I started another thread in the Genral Elemental section where I Directly Ask Them if we'll have spell effects of any kind for damage type spells. If you think the damage spells should have various effects, please show your support in that thread Here.

Awesome....I'll get my game, open it eagerly, put it into the disk drive on my machine....and then Immediately Start Working on my Mod so I can attempt to enjoy my purchase....

That doesn't sound fun to me....at all.

Granted I'm very happy the game will be highly moddable. So happy, in-fact, that I'm already planning a Mod. That doesn't mean I want to start modding in things they left out on the very same day I get the damn thing though. It's much easier to try to talk them into doing things right the first time around to save a whole lot of modders a lot of work. I think it's pretty safe to say at this point that "Damage Types" and "Effects" will be the first things people start modding into the game after more Races.

What saddens me though is that's something that shouldn't have to be "modded in" to try to enjoy the game.

Know what I mean?

Another thing that saddens me is that there are Already a ton of Fantasy War Games out there that cater to the "Carebear" crowd. Heroes of M&M, Warlord, Warcraft, hell even Spore, just to name a few (yes I know Spore isn't a War Game but it has wars in it and it's Incredibly dumbed down). Do they really need to ruin Elemental for those of us who wanted a "Serious" Fantasy War game? Now the "Don't Complicate Me" carebears have struck again in a preemptive strike to destroy the fun of Elemental before the company is even done making it.

If I marched a army across a continent only to find out my enemy has armor that protects him from my weapons, I'd blame my-self for not doing the propper reconnaissance on my enemy before going to war, I wouldn't blame the people who made the game I'm playing. To them I'd just be thankful that kind of Depth was included in the game.

So, HoI3 sold more than its predecesors because it was more complex? Because you could turn the complexity off? Because it improved the mistakes of the other HoI? Because it was prettier? Because it was better known? Because Paradox spent more money on marketing?

This is how you would like Elemental to work.

Is not that some part of the population is "stupid" to understand really complex systems, is more that they don't enjoy over-complexity. For you, simplicity kills the game, for other people, complexity produces the same result.

He isn't the only one who would like it to work like that.

If Elemental is as simple as a board game, I'd just assume play a board game with my friends. I love Arkham Horror, Runebound, look forward to Runewars, etc (and some of those aren't super simple like Arkham).

I want the computer to make playing a complex game fun!

*twitches*

Make your own game.

First, one thing: I don't care about modding, never modded anything, never applied a mod, don't want to fiddle into a game's files. The most I do is patching, and downloading a scenario from someone. I'm a computer nut, Ok, and I buy games to play them, no to redesign them. I don't care about modding, I don't care about multiplayer and I play on computer because it can take something complex and let me play without it be complicated.

The casual players. What do they think?

The casual players will know this game will be some 4X fantasy game so "the casual players" are "the casual 4X players", which is much less than the casual players of WoW, RTS, RPGs, ...

Then, if they want to buy Elemental, they probably knew/played the other games of fantasy.

Now, WHAT will they think, those casual 4X fantasy players?

- "YEAH, I want to play Dark Elves, they are so cool! I want to crush those Dwarfs in their fortresses, and the Hobbits!" Then they get told: sorry, no fantasy races to play with; you have to mod them or wait until someone do.

- "YEAH, I like going into those strange alternate underground/underwater/astral planes as in MoM or AoW. I want to create a mighty Kingdom of Moria or Kazad-Dum or Menzoberanzan, and then go conquer the surface world!" Then they get told: sorry, no alternate plans.

- "YEAH, tactical combat with magic, I love it: heroes with protective armors and artifacts, troops with special abilities and resistances against fire/cold/lightning/poison/physical damages like in AoW and Dominions, that makes for strategic and epic battles." then they get told: sorry, all magic spells/weapons do the same kind of damage.

After that, what will be the reaction of your casual player? "Gneuh, that's lame, they told us it would be like MoM2 and we end with Medieval Civ and a few good-looking spells." So I wouldn't read too much into what they say on other forums. If they wanted to be heard, they would come here to tell it.

Well I understand why they are not going that route - they are making it so even equiping a decent sized army with decent mundane weapons and armor is a huge accomplishment. If they make it so that your army is hauling around multiple sets of gear, with different strengths and weaknesses, that definitely doesn't fit in with that vision.