Elemental: Fallen Enchantress Q&A - Building a Bigger World

GS: What other lessons from the development and release of War of Magic are you bringing to the development of the new game?

This beast may be ferocious, but it has a serious acne problem.

DP: We touched on this in the first answer, but to expand on a couple tangible areas that directly affect the players, the UI and tech trees are two really good examples. When you look at the options, features, and sheer amount of data in War of Magic from a player perspective, it can be quite confusing to newcomers…what they should be paying attention to. When we revamped the UI, we only provided necessary information. It's definitely a more intuitive experience and one that was born from lessons learned from War of Magic.

And, if you look at the tech trees in War of Magic, they work for that game. But when we set out to restructure the player progression in Fallen Enchantress, the old system just didn't work. So we completely overhauled that system to better match what we were making.

GS: What are the most commonly cited community requests for War of Magic? How will Fallen Enchantress address those?

DP: The most common [request] is more interesting spells. Because we believe this is critical both to War of Magic and Fallen Enchantress, the War of Magic post-release patches have dramatically improved the spells the game offers. Fallen Enchantress goes far beyond what War of Magic offers, with new spells, new types of spells and it's all built to be easily modable.

The second most common request is to make the world more interesting. Without variety, risks, and rewards, it feels very similar and bland. In Fallen Enchantress, the player's first challenge is to conquer and civilize the world around his starting area. Send out scouts to explore the world. Many may not return, but those that do may bring back valuable knowledge, experience, and treasures.

GS: After meeting with Stardock at GDC, we got the distinct impression that Fallen Enchantress will follow closely in the footsteps of the cult-classic modification, Fall From Heaven 2. This includes the insanely powerful stationary monsters and a deadlier world overall in which early scouts pretty much never survive their initial recon missions. Is it fair to say that Fallen Enchantress will basically be a spiritual successor to that mod? Any other returning features from that project appearing in the new game?

DP: The real influence for Fallen Enchantress was Master of Magic. There are some touches that are similar to Fall From Heaven, but the game manual I always have in my laptop bag and the design I return to when I consider going down path A or path B is Master of Magic. That doesn't mean that I always do what Master of Magic did; we have to do what's best for Fallen Enchantress. But Master of Magic remains the real inspiration behind the game.

GS: Given that Elemental was a game with its own systems and complexity, and given that Fallen Enchantress will be making sweeping changes, what will the new game do to help new players get started?

DP: We do have some context-based walkthroughs planned. That work hasn't been done yet. Creating tutorial/walkthrough/manual while the game is in flux is like running on a treadmill without the aerobic benefit. But the big change is in the UI; making sure that the player has all the relevant data available where he needs it, that tool tips describe what that data is, and that the heirgamenon answers the bigger questions about the way systems work.

Part of the confusion in War of Magic isn't that the information isn't available; it's that critical information is displayed together with low-priority information. How is the casual player supposed to know what to watch and what to be concerned about…which is a lot of what we gain by focusing the game. If some information isn't critical, isn't strategic…we have to ask ourselves if it's needed at all.

GS: Is there anything else you would like to add that we haven't touched on already?

There are plenty more terrifying creatures still to come in Elemental: Fallen Enchantress.

DP: I would like to express how committed Stardock is to making this game great. I came to Stardock three months after War of Magic was released and largely because they stood behind their game. They have made the organizational changes required to make Fallen Enchantress a success. They have kept developers and designers working on War of Magic well after release. And [they] have offered a free copy of Fallen Enchantress to anyone that purchased War of Magic before December 31, 2010, so that those that bought because they trusted the Stardock name and history will be rewarded for their loyalty.

GS: Thank you for your time.