Master of Magic remake from Thea developers and Slitherine

[Blake00]

Why the hell no multiplayer.

Probably because Slitherine gave MuHa a small budget.

 

[Norfleet]

That, and because multiplayer would be pretty poisonous to the game. I mean, part of what made Master of Magic great was that it WASN'T really balanced. Multiplayer, necessarily, would demand balance. Also, the very nature of the game is fundamentally clunky to multiplayer, since you'd spend most of your time waiting for the other player to take his turn. You could change how this works, but then would it really be Master of Magic anymore? HOW would you change it? A kind of free-for-all where everyone is taking their turn? What happens if a battle starts? Do you gut the tactical combat? What happens if people are fighting a battle while someone else moves and they attack one or more of them? It'd be a huge mess. You'd have to completely change how the game plays for this.

 

[Nahel]

Multiplayer does not always have to be balanced in that sort of game.

For competitive game for sure. But those sort of game are usually played with friends of really different levels

And Civ has the same problems for turn

 

[Hobo Elf]

Multiplayer does not always have to be balanced in that sort of game.

For competitive game for sure. But those sort of game are usually played with friends of really different levels

If the MoM remake had multiplayer then it would have to be balanced around it because Slitherine hosts multiplayer tournaments for their games and there's no way they wouldn't demand that from the devs. It's what happened with Battlesector. That game would've been way better without MP and now the devs have to focus on that instead of adding to the already lacklustre single player campaign.

 

[Incantatar]

Pixel art can't be improved, it's its own style. If you want to make new art it has to stand on its own as great fantasy art. Unfortunately most fantasy art is absolute shit, even from relatively famous artists. And things are much worse now than 30 years ago.

The only aspects of MoM that can be improved are related to gameplay. Caster of Magic goes in the right direction but also deviates from the original formula significantly (opting for balance above everything else). An improved MoM would keep cheesy gameplay which the player would have the choice to abuse or not, and significantly improve the AI (world, diplomacy and combat), as well as add some new mechanics to keep the game fresh and varied.

Completely broken strategies and great AI. You can't add 1+1? This means the AI will use these strategies against you and all can do is use them all the time, which makes for an extremely narrow and dull gameplay. You sound like you're butthurt, you had to lower the difficulty in CoM. I can assure you, (almost) everyone had to do that.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't know who finds taking 11 Death books and annihilating everything with wraiths at the start compelling gameplay. Balance is important for replayability as well. Balance doesn't mean there wouldn't be optimal strategies, but that the unoptimal ones are also viable and fun, as opposed to tedious and a compromise.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Completely broken strategies and great AI. You can't add 1+1? This means the AI will use these strategies against you and all can do is use them all the time, which makes for an extremely narrow and dull gameplay. You sound like you're butthurt, you had to lower the difficulty in CoM. I can assure you, (almost) everyone had to do that.

It's easy to have the AI not use very specific strategies that are known to be broken, or to include them only in some hardcore difficulty setting. The tough part is making good AI.

I don't remember what difficulty setting I used in CoM. Either the first or second after Normal. Although it's better than in the original game, everyone can wipe the floor with the AI unless it benefits from ridiculous bonuses.

I don't know who finds taking 11 Death books and annihilating everything with wraiths at the start compelling gameplay. Balance is important for replayability as well. Balance doesn't mean there wouldn't be optimal strategies, but that the unoptimal ones are also viable and fun, as opposed to tedious and a compromise.

Balance is good, yes, but one thing about MoM is that you could do crazy things like taking all the Death books and investing in a very specific strategy with a high pay-off. Most games think that it's wrong to be powerful in the beginning of the game and that you must grind for technology, because in their mind that's just how things are supposed to work.

Now I think it's possible to have the best of both worlds, but it's a very delicate balance. I'd rather think of strategies in terms of risk, rather than have optimal and sub-optimal strategies by default. Going for a risky strategy should leave you exposed, and should not guarantee victory even if you employ it correctly. I think MoM just needs a little finetuning, rather than renouncing its most unique elements.

 

[Lacrymas]

The problem is that there is no real counter to the wraith spam. At least no AI in the game can counter it. Why include this if you are going to utilize it once because it's actually boring to not be challenged? Just balance it and make it a viable choice in more complex strategies.

 

[Nahel]

If the MoM remake had multiplayer then it would have to be balanced around it because Slitherine hosts multiplayer tournaments for their games and there's no way they wouldn't demand that from the devs. It's what happened with Battlesector. That game would've been way better without MP and now the devs have to focus on that instead of adding to the already lacklustre single player campaign.

Those competitive fags are so annoying. In HOMM factions were not balanced but it was still fun. You may be right but it is sad

 

[Old One]

The existence of the whole 11-Black-Books-Wraith-Summoning tactic is not a problem. I mean, you do it once (maybe twice) and it's fun, and you move on. You don't have to play that way if you don't want to. I don't know why people can't get over it. I guess their willpower is too weak to resist the easiest possible path.

There are much more interesting strategies anyway, even just with Black. I'm a fan of Black, Trolls, Warlord, and Alchemist. You start spamming War Trolls ASAP, cast Black Channels on them, and you have a super tough army of undead War Trolls that regenerates to full strength instantly after every battle, as long as you don't lose. Way more fun, but it's still "overpowered," whatever that means.

This is one of the main reasons no one seems to be able to make a successful MoM clone or remake: it's the crazy stuff that makes it great.

 

[mastroego]

I remember in MoM you'd face (or have) invisible units that you couldn't fucking SEE, unless you had specific means like a spell of True Sight.
I argued once upon a time, in Stardock's forums during the development of Elemental, that nowadays "invisibility" would mean something like +2% Evasion, or some shit like that, because "balance".

Not to mention all the debates around here on Sawyerism and such.
What can I say? Developers.

 

[Norfleet]

The pinnacle of invisible units you couldn't see was the Invisible Flying Warship. You can't see it, you probably can't even attack it even if you CAN see it, even if you CAN see AND attack it, it is probably way faster than you are so you can't even catch it...

 

[Old One]

I like Sky Drakes. They don't need invisibility.

 

[Norfleet]

Those come as part of the build, too. Of course, SkyDrakes take attrition damage and IFWs don't.

 

[Infinitron]

http://muhagames.com/mom-dev-diary-6-december-2021/

MoM Dev Diary #6 December 2021


Community month continued
As a continuation from last week’s community led Q&A, I will talk a little about community feedback and how we try to balance it as we develop the remake. We’ll also share a few pictures of our own improvements and try to explain the process behind it all.

So, the general rule here at MuHa is that we do our best to read the feedback and keep up to date with community discussions. We then take note of any points that we either find particularly interesting, or pressing, and we try our best to get them into the game.

It is also important to note here, that we have read and continue to read the community forums and wiki as we build our design doc. As such, a lot of our base design choices were already built on your feedback and hard work.

Colour saturation on Wizard art.
Some of our lovely and creative community members have played with the idea of increasing the colour saturation and contrast on the Wizard art. And you know what, we liked what we saw and have implemented a similar change. We felt the more vibrant vibe went well with the high fantasy theme. All of our Wizards got the colour treatment, and while for some, the change is very subtle, we still feel it was a worthwhile improvement.


Lo Pan: bottom image shows the older, more subdued version, while top image shows the progression to the current WIP selection screen.

Sharee with the top image shows the more vibrant version.

Spoiler

Town names

Work In Progress city screen, showing a selection of lizardmen towns.

We had some people discussing the original town names for Master of Magic and they expressed that the real world names can have a negative effect on immersion. We’ve then had a chat on the various Discord channels and indeed the consensus was reached that the naming conventions could be changed and maybe we wouldn’t get our heads bitten off…

In the original, you could encounter cities like, Banbury, Hannover, Stetin or Oxford, so in our remake, we tweaked such names in two ways. First was to make them similar but not the same as the real world places. Second, was to create a more unified naming convention for each race, so that you could guess the city’s inhabitants even by looking at the name plate above the town you are approaching. These are of course small changes, but we felt they would work a little better with the fantasy immersion.

With that in mind here are a few of the new town names.


These are obviously only a few small things that we were able to add or tweak with our community in mind, but as we push closer and closer towards a beta build, we will of course continue to listen to our fans.

Wizard gallery
Although most Wizards have now been seen in one way or another via various snapshots of the game, here are some more who did not yet get the old/new comparison. Enjoy.


Freya

Oberic

Jafar

And since this is the season to be jolly, we wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm still not convinced of the art style. It doesn't scream Master of Magic to me at all.

 

[Burning Bridges]

It isn't "art".

Just the product of someone messing with photoshop, with no apparent talent whatsover.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Pixel art can't be improved, it's its own style. If you want to make new art it has to stand on its own as great fantasy art. Unfortunately most fantasy art is absolute shit, even from relatively famous artists. And things are much worse now than 30 years ago.

In that respect gaming comes over 100 years too late. I love books from pre-1920 and marvel at the illustrations. Those guys could still draw. In the times before photography ruined everything drawing had been an entire industry. People learned it from the ground up, and some became to sgood that it looked better than photography, which is the whole point of drawing. If your drawings look shit you can just as well take a photograph.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

I don't think the art is bad, it's just generic. Nothing in particular reminds me of Master of Magic. The subtle humor of the pixel characters, how they were drawn and how they talked, is most certainly gone... but for what? Among other things, this ruins the tone of the diplomatic interactions, which are supposed to be somewhat comical in context.

Moreover, this tells me they misunderstand the game in more fundamental ways. Wizards being awe-inspiring demigods is only one half of their character, they're also insufferable blowhards with a superiority complex and it's your job to put them in their place. They're your rivals and colleagues, not distant, mythical beings. Not to mention they're obviously a collection of stereotypes (tastefully done, all that matters), which couldn't be intended as anything more serious than what it looked like at the time. The change of tone/perspective simply doesn't make sense.

 

[Magnum]

The man who got me interested in computers and games used to quote this all the time, watched this new trailer and find it awful, fey and offensive.

 

[Blake00]

Heh that's something I've been wondering. After fan outcry they've fixed boy band Tauron and gave him his beard back in the wizard portrait but what about that intro.. they'll have to go fix that now lol... and fix it they should lol.

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EDIT: Oh and if it's of interest to people Implode has finally just released version 1.0 of his Master of Magic HD multiplayer rebuild MoM-IME. Have posted about it over in the regular MoM thread here:
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/the-master-of-magic-thread.31046/page-6#post-7661827

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[Blake00]

Seventh MuHa dev diary has arrived. This one covers all the work they've been doing with Diplomacy and Combat. I like the item trading addition. Artificers can probably create freaky expensive items and sell them to the AIs lol.

http://muhagames.com/master-of-magic-dev-diary-7-january-2022/

 

[Old One]

I liked the Thea games, so I'm not going to assume this will be garbage.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's going to be MoM with a very questionable art style, that's it.

 

[Blake00]

Slitherine have done some more 'Tea Time' youtube streams and revealed some more MoM screens. I've snapped them and stuck them on reddit if anyone wants to see them:
https://www.reddit.com/r/masterofmagic/comments/skcdw4/slitherine_tea_time_master_of_magic_remake/

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