Tactical Combat and Special Abilities

Forum poster Kenata was able to come to the office last week and spend a day with us.  We talked about War of Magic, Fallen Enchantress, modding and what makes games great.  My favorite moment was when Toby commented that Kenata and Jon should just marry each other after listening to Kenata praise the virtues of Chronotrigger (one of Jon's favorite games).

We got some work done too.  Kenata was peppered with lots of questions about what he would change in War of Magic, what he liked, what he didn't like, etc.  I know it's all stuff we already chat about on the forums, and Kenata and I had shared PM's and ideas along these topics before.  But it's more fun in person.

The thing Kenata most wanted to change was tactical combat.  Which isn't a surprising answer.  But I was surprised that he didn't think it would take much to make great (especially since we have been working very hard to accomplish that).  He suggested that tactical combat could go from being so-so to great just by adding more special abilities to combat.  In his opinion the biggest issue with tactical combat was that there weren't many options.  Given more things to do, combat becomes more interesting and more strategic.

I don't think anyone will argue the point.  Having a some options beyond move and attack does help.  But finding the right options and balance is always tricky.  Creating a new attack that is always better than the normal attack doesn't make it an option, just a replacement of the old attack.  Options have to be balanced against each other, and against abilities that come later in the game.

But Kenata had some cool ideas.  My favorite was his throwing knives ability.  Just a small 3 range attack he gives to bandits in his Update Weapons mod (https://forums.elementalgame.com/400876).  It's not a replacement for bows, but it allows bandits to close on you and attack before they are in melee range.  If you are used to sitting back and waiting for the AI to come to you in tactical combat, throwing knives puts a kink in your plan.

Kenata's whole mod is worth checking out, he has put special abilities on most of the weapons in the game.  On the design side we have been working on adding abilities to units and monsters (more about that soon), but Kenata gave us some new ideas on how to make things even better.  And I wouldn't be surprised to see some throwing knives in Fallen Enchantress.