Game News Might & Magic X Update: First official patch released, adds four new classes

[Infinitron]

Tags: Limbic Entertainment; Might & Magic X: Legacy; Ubisoft

Today's update to the Might & Magic X Legacy open development blog announces that the game's Early Access release has finally received its first official update. Here's an overview of the changes:

We have the pleasure to announce you the release of the first official patch for Might & Magic X – Legacy. Thanks to your feedback and active participation in the Early Access program we’ve been consistently improving the game with new features and bug fixes.

It’s been more than a month since the Early Access version of Might & Magic X – Legacy was released. In this time we’ve read a huge number of comments from you guys on your desires and expectations, and we hope you'll like what has been achieved.

Here are the 5 things to know about this update:

• 4 brand new classes are now playable: Scout, Druid, Mercenary and Shaman.
• As decided in the “What to patch next” poll, the “item comparator” feature has been added to the game. You will now be able to compare a selected item with the currently equipped one from your inventory or merchants’ shops.
• Many of you asked for it, thus the day and night cycle has been extended.
• 2 additional languages have been added: Chinese and Japanese.
• More than 100 bugs have been fixed based on your feedback.

This patch will automatically download when running Steam Client (whether you activated the Beta mode or not). For all other users, you just need to launch the game in order to download & patch.​

Among other things, the patch implements daily shop restocking and fixes the item break chance, two issues that were particularly problematic in the original release. Check out the full update to see the complete list of new features and bug fixes. We've also received word from Ubisoft that a second official patch will be released by the end of the year, which will be dedicated to the game's modding kit.

 

[Infinitron]

Here's the FAQ that Ubi sent us:

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Why did you propose an Early Access program for MMX? And why not a beta?

[Gary Paulini] The Might & Magic team has a strong desire to create games that are both fun to play and that please fans of the series. Early Access is the perfect fit combining instant access and constant improvement according to player feedback, allowing us to provide them with the game they really want.

A lot of players are getting used to the name “Early Access” thanks to the fact Steam is also using this nomenclature, and the fact many crowdfunded projects have gone this route.

How have the players reacted so far?

[Irina Kassina] A lot of players have been waiting a long time for a Might & Magic comeback. The unexpected release of this Early Access program gathered mostly positive feedback overall. Beyond the warm welcome, we noticed a great commitment from the whole Might & Magic community. A lot of players have participated in the process, providing the development team with steady feedback on their experiences and expectations. As one example among many, there were a lot of comments concerning the general lighting of the game's environment so we quickly focused on improving this aspect of the game.

How do you plan to integrate this feedback? Any update for the game?

[Gary Paulini] The development team worked on Beta patches available shortly after the Early Access release. Deploying Beta patches before the official ones allows us to quickly respond to the players' wishes, and to give them the opportunity to test some new features early on. Because we take into consideration our fans’ feedback very seriously, we will continue to publish several unofficial updates that will both fix various bugs and add features to the game.

But of course we will also prepare official updates. The first one will add 4 additional classes to the game and will be released early October. The second one is to be published by the end of year will be dedicated to the modding kit.

What about Might & Magic's original creators? What is their opinion regarding Might & Magic X?

[Gary Paulini] While he works on other projects nowadays, we have always stayed in touch with Jon Van Caneghem, the legendary creator of the Might & Magic and Heroes game series. He made a visit to our booth during Gamescom so we could show him a demo of Might & Magic X, and fortunately he seemed pretty happy to see how we had strived to stick with the essence of the original games. Later on he kindly accepted an invitation to answer some questions for our Open Dev Blog.

We have also been in contact with several other former developers of the series, such as Neal Hallford (writer and designer on Might & Magic III), Phelan Sykes (graphic designer on Might & Magic VI to VIII), and video game legend John Romero (who did the Commodore 64 port of Might & Magic II back in the day). You can find these Q&As on the Open Dev Blog as well.

How far will you be able to improve / update the game?

[Gary Paulini] We posted a special note about this question shortly after the Early Access release. We basically stated that core features that are part of Might & Magic X - Legacy design shall and will remain as they are to preserve the game DNA. However we will definitely try to incorporate some of the features requested by the community. We recently proposed through the Open Dev Blog a vote regarding a bonus feature to be incorporated in the first official patch, on top off all the other fixes and planned updates.

Did you think about Mac and Linux players?

[Gary Paulini] We are definitely looking into these opportunities as we think those operating system are becoming more and more popular in the PC gaming industry. Might & Magic X - Legacy will probably be released for Mac if our testing process goes well. Regarding Linux it is still in discussion internally. We will keep you posted about these topics as soon as we have more news to share.

What is the release date of Might & Magic X – Legacy?

[Gary Paulini] Might & Magic X – Legacy release date is set for early 2014. If you need more info about the game’s development and a more accurate release date please follow us on the Open Dev Blog in the coming months.

Do you want a DRM or always-online copy protection in Might & Magic X?

[Irina Kassina] We are aware DRM is a big concern for all gamers playing on PC. As a consequence we have tried to limit it as much as possible. Yes, Uplay will be there since it is part of Ubisoft's corporate policy, but we will let you choose how you want to use it. If you want Uplay to be as discrete as possible, just activate your game online with Uplay ONCE (the first time you run the game) and then you can play in offline mode if you wish!

Gary Paulini - Ubisoft Senior Producer
Irina Kassina - Senior Community Developer

 

[Infinitron]

Here's the "item comparator" interface:

and some concept art of the Mercenary:

We'll see more of him this week, I assume.

 

[Wizfall]

I have not tried the demo.
The party creation system (class associate to race) kind of kill my enthusiasm. It feels like you are choosing pre made characters instead of creating your own party. Not fun for me.
Going to buy the game though if i heard good things about it (the activate ONCE is great and a fair process in general , would not even think of buying it otherwise)

 

[SuicideBunny]

it's funny how they make uplay more and more like steam.

 

[sser]

UPlay isn't that bad, in my experiences, it's just completely unnecessary and really goofy when you launch a game through Steam, and then it launches UPlay, where it finally launches the game. It's like a scene out of Brazil or something.

 

[Dorateen]

Do we really need an Item Comparator in order to judge the worth/value/effectiveness of the Radiant Great Axe agianst the Tribal Axe?

Also, the racial affininity with class selection isn't wonderful, but it's not the first time race has been tied to profession. If it was good enough for Realms of Arkania, it should be good enough for Legacy. What they ought to have done was apply a bonus if the character takes the preferred class progression of its race, but not restrict it to others. In fact, that's the direction I thought they were heading. But no Elven freemages, oh well.

 

[SuicideBunny]

UPlay isn't that bad, in my experiences, it's just completely unnecessary and really goofy when you launch a game through Steam, and then it launches UPlay, where it finally launches the game. It's like a scene out of Brazil or something.

well, there is that shitty rewards mechanic where you earn uplay points for certain achievements and can spend them on any games' special rewards.

 

[sser]

UPlay isn't that bad, in my experiences, it's just completely unnecessary and really goofy when you launch a game through Steam, and then it launches UPlay, where it finally launches the game. It's like a scene out of Brazil or something.

well, there is that shitty rewards mechanic where you earn uplay points for certain achievements and can spend them on any games' special rewards.

Yeah I don't know what that stuff is, to be honest. But the system is still alright for what it is (discounting that 'what it is' is an unnecessary piece of software, of course).

 

[Zeriel]

The "rewards" part of Uplay tends to be utterly pointless out-of-game stuff like wallpapers, or at most portrait icons. Nothing I saw in Heroes 6 rewards from Uplay was worth striving for. So it's really not something to be that bothered by.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

I have not tried the demo.
The party creation system (class associate to race) kind of kill my enthusiasm. It feels like you are choosing pre made characters instead of creating your own party. Not fun for me.
Going to buy the game though if i heard good things about it (the activate ONCE is great and a fair process in general , would not even think of buying it otherwise)

The way I see it, MM10 is a game with 12 classes, and race is purely cosmetic. This isn't much different from the other MM games. Those games had 6-10 classes each, and race made a very minor difference, just a step above being cosmetic.

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, and there's a lot of variety in what the skills actually do. I mean, not gonna lie, I don't see this game as quite on the scale of M&M 6 in terms of the character development, but it still has a lot of concrete choices and systems. Certainly miles above nonsense like Grimrock.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Do we really need an Item Comparator in order to judge the worth/value/effectiveness of the Radiant Great Axe agianst the Tribal Axe?

It'll be a nice convenience later on when you're comparing seven different weapons with twelve different statistics each.

 

[Magellan]

I have not tried the demo.
The party creation system (class associate to race) kind of kill my enthusiasm. It feels like you are choosing pre made characters instead of creating your own party. Not fun for me.
Going to buy the game though if i heard good things about it (the activate ONCE is great and a fair process in general , would not even think of buying it otherwise)

I agree that it seems lame in theory. But in practice I don't think it's all that bad. You still have an Orc fighter (it's just called barbarian), you still have a Dwarf fighter (defender), you still have a human fighter (mercenary) etc. Now if race and class were tied to each other 1=1 that would really blow, and seem like a action RPG style (like the only fighter is a dwarf, the only mage is an elf, etc.).

 

[Zeriel]

They are actually differentiated in more ways than Fighter/Mage/Rogue. While I agree the obvious intent was that people wouldn't feel like they couldn't have, say, an Elven Fighter, the elven fighter is very different in terms of GM skills from the orc fighter. I think this is a good thing--it encourages you to think about party composition, and provides a metagame motivation to have a racially balanced party (which seems to be the basic assumption of most fantasy narratives).

 

[Cyberarmy]

I wonder if they fixed that codec problem... I can play this on my most ancient PCs (with horrible performance ofc) but not on my high end PC :/

 

[Dorateen]

Do we really need an Item Comparator in order to judge the worth/value/effectiveness of the Radiant Great Axe agianst the Tribal Axe?

It'll be a nice convenience later on when you're comparing seven different weapons with twelve different statistics each.

I thought about this some more, and what I don't like is that it's a tool of convenience. It automates something that should be dependent upon the player's intellect and judgment.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

But it doesn't take intellect and judgement to manually hover over pieces of equipment which have all their stats proudly displayed for the world to see. The tool just allows you to compare a single weapon to others in the inventory without having to move the cursor back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and

 

[Dorateen]

I was thinking of it as a utility that reduces an item's attributes to an easily quantifiable statistic and then tells the player which one is better, has more "dps", that sort of thing. Isn't such a feature common in modern diablo-like games?

 

[Infinitron]

I was thinking of it as a utility that reduces an item's attributes to an easily quantifiable statistic and then tells the player which one is better, has more "dps", that sort of thing. Isn't such a feature common in modern diablo-like games?

If you look at the image of the comparator I posted above, that's obviously not what this is.

(That said, it's worth noting that I found that I could use the PRICE of an item in World of Xeen as precisely such an "easily quantifiable statistic". I'd just keep the most expensive items.)

 

[Dorateen]

I'm naturally suspicious of any new-fangled features I have never seen before in classic computer-role-playing games.

 

[tuluse]

I'm naturally suspicious of any new-fangled features I have never seen before in classic computer-role-playing games.

It's common in JRPGs where each stat on new weapons would be colored green/red/white if it was better/worse/same as the weapon the current character is holding.

It works pretty well and it doesn't have to be popamole.

 

[Luzur]

(That said, it's worth noting that I found that I could use the PRICE of an item in World of Xeen as precisely such an "easily quantifiable statistic". I'd just keep the most expensive items.)

ive been doing that for years.

 

[Dorateen]

I'm naturally suspicious of any new-fangled features I have never seen before in classic computer-role-playing games.

It's common in JRPGs where each stat on new weapons would be colored green/red/white if it was better/worse/same as the weapon the current character is holding.

That's exactly what I'm grumbling about... why is any game telegraphing to the player which weapon, or stats on a weapon, is more effective? That should be for the player to discover and reach such a conclusion on their own.

But if Legacy's Comparator doesn't do this, then I guess it's OK.

 

[tuluse]

If the stats are clearly shown anyways, pointing out which ones are higher or lower than the weapon your currently holding doesn't seem like it's bad thing.

The only way it would be bad is if weapon stats are obscured.