Warlock Master of the Arcane - Fantasy Civ5 clone from Paradox

[tiagocc0]

I think it's fun, but there are a few details that... kind of spoil it:

1) When someone wins the game, it doesn't say through which victory condition. I had a CPU win a game just now and it only said something like "someone has won the game! - Exit Game".​

2) No score screens. No stats. No timelines. Straight back to menu when the game is over.​

3) Severe lack of information regarding what's required for units and other stuff. Needs an encyclopedia badly.​

4) Only basic interaction with other factions, and they never take any initiatives. You must contact them.​

When you spend 2 hours or more on a game (in my case more like 5), this simply isn't acceptable.

This looks exactly like a company that hired another to do it's evil coding and none of them cared.
The one who hired didn't bother checking the game up because they thought everything was explained in the documentz.
The one who was hired didn't bother making the game fun, just barely playable because they probably feel they didn't get paid enough and/or didn't have enough time.
In the end it's an unfinished product that nobody gave a second thought about how to make it special/fun or at least bug free.

 

[pipka]

Oh and also, here's a fun bug for you. If you enter ai diplomacy and declare war, the AI is (presumably) scripted to always accept, even if the deal is "Give away all your money and your mana for the privilege of going to war"

Hilarious, that they released a product so raw.

 

[rashiakas]

You can also "dismiss" enemy debuffs on your units by right clicking on the icons.

 

[Running Fox]

Shit, I've been on a gaming run lately, Demonworld, tried Risen 2 that piece of shit and now this garbage...

Played a custom necro, with the Summon Skeletons spell as starting equip.
Middle-sized map, 3 opponents, Challenging.
Bum rushed first in the very beginning.
Fought a double front war later.
It was reasonably tight for a few turns, bled out all my money and mana but the AI blacked out at a critical poing and fell back instead of finishing the job.

Engine is well done, performes well, pretty.
Sound is decent too.
Interface is ok.
AI is dumb just like MoM.
Cant do diplomacy in any way that makes sense.
It does finish your units off really well though. Really well! Much better than MoM.
Spells are all over the place just like MoM.
I fought mostly random neutral spawns...
City spamming, yeah...

Banal, broken, boring if I am feeling generous, for the well done presentation and the AI that does everything to kill the wounded.
Waste of time for a human with half a brain. Wont be playing that again.
Well I might try a different approach when I am dead drunk.

 

[curry]

But of course it's broken. It's a Paradox game and they are never playable until like 5 patches.

 

[Mortmal]

Ok ill keep my money, i dont read anything positive about it . I guess fallen enchantress beta is better than this ?

 

[sser]

Neither will blow you away; both are flawed, but good IMO.

EDIT: The game is simple fun in comparison to the epic, almost ponderous nature of Fallen Enchantress.

Right now, the game works, and it works well. There are no glaring gameplay issues a la Civilization 5, so that is good. It just mechanically works. I think the game would be excellent in multiplayer. Right now, playing against the AI is fun, but something of a wash. All the diplomatic maneuvering is geared towards war, so make of that what you will.

I find the alternate dimensions almost impossible to get into, but maybe that's just me. I scouted one with a bat and there were fire elementals everywhere, nevermind other even nastier creatures. It's cool that there are so many dimensions, but at the same time I can't help but think it's an entire aspect of the game that is largely going to go untouched. The general build up of troops over the course of a game is pretty cool. I'm around turn 80 in a super large, condensed map and a lot of units running around now are very tough compared to their starting selves.

 

[Angthoron]

Started a game yesterday, lucked out on my very first encampment clearing and got Noble Werewolves (+8 regen, 23 damage, shitton of movement), took over a bunch of neutral cities with just that one fucker, then ran into 3 ogres, and the game decided to have a lulz so it spawned a 4th right next to the werewolves for a quest. Barely got away from that, then got my Demonic Advisor raped by 4 or 5 spawns in the middle of nowhere, exploring. Seems fun so far.

 

[Berekän]

Don't buy it right now, the game is fun, has potential, but needs a lot of changes before being genuinely good. At this point you're just buying a beta, just take a look at the paradox forums:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?607014-End-screen-with-statistics

End statistics will be added. We are working on it. Thanks for helping prioritise

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...-victory-conditions-are-currently-implemented

Conquest. The developers have said multiple winning conditions were not implemented, but will be added by a patch when multiplayer is added. And that's expected in August.

Game's been rushed to release, and they aren't hiding it.

 

[Angthoron]

Why the hell do they cripple their own sales and reputation with this kind of behaviour?

 

[Malakal]

They need money? This is NOT Paradox, Pdox only publishes them, developers are a separate studio. Somehow it became acceptable for indie and semi indie developers to push out unfinished games. Blame Minecraft.

 

[Spectacle]

The publisher has the final word on when the game is released, and this isn't going to help Paradox's already spotty reputation for quality control.

 

[rashiakas]

On the plus side, it only costs 20 € - you could pretend it's a kickstarter with a huge demo.

 

[Norfleet]

Oh and also, here's a fun bug for you. If you enter ai diplomacy and declare war, the AI is (presumably) scripted to always accept, even if the deal is "Give away all your money and your mana for the privilege of going to war"

You'd think such a deal would translate as "Give me all your money and mana or else I'll attack you", so that accepting the deal would mean he gives you the money, and you don't go to war, and refusing means you get nothing and now you're at war.

I find the alternate dimensions almost impossible to get into, but maybe that's just me. I scouted one with a bat and there were fire elementals everywhere, nevermind other even nastier creatures. It's cool that there are so many dimensions, but at the same time I can't help but think it's an entire aspect of the game that is largely going to go untouched. The general build up of troops over the course of a game is pretty cool. I'm around turn 80 in a super large, condensed map and a lot of units running around now are very tough compared to their starting selves.

Maybe it's time to send them to the realm where everything is on fire?

 

[Malakal]

The publisher has the final word on when the game is released, and this isn't going to help Paradox's already spotty reputation for quality control.

Dunno man after CK2 release that was almost bugfree their reputation for ingame titles increased. At least for me and Pdox forum goers that posted their feedback - overwhelmingly positive.

 

[Running Fox]

oh wow i just lost a game... well, i quit actually...
huge map, 4 opponents, challenging, no city spamming for me
took out the first two alright and then the neutral spawns started fucking me up but i managed
met the other two suckers who spawned gigantic armies inside their borders, not all low quality either, and they started pouring all of it on me
i figure i could have made it if i fell back and defended but the micro got to me... its just too much clikcing

 

[Metro]

Part of me wants to say buy this because with more money maybe they will fix these issues and add some actual good content. The other part of me says run away, run far away and preserve your precious monies.

I said that about Dungeon Siege 3 and ultimately bought it at $5~

 

[sser]

Those neutral spawns start to get nasty as the game goes on. I had assassins and paladins showing up inside my borders after awhile.

 

[Jaedar]

Yeah... monsters spawning inside your borders is kind of low.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Part of me wants to say buy this because with more money maybe they will fix these issues and add some actual good content. The other part of me says run away, run far away and preserve your precious monies.

I said that about Dungeon Siege 3 and ultimately bought it at $5~

You said that about DS3 before you bought it, but ultimately bought it?

How is that the same thing as this? I bought the game, I'm saying don't buy it, at least right now, which is another thing DS3 was NOT. Not buggy that is. Warlock is buggy. I mean CRAZY buggy read these posts here.

Anyway, glad you bought it! DS3 that is, not Warlock.

 

[rashiakas]

You exaggerate a bit here Anthony. The game sure has some bugs, but it could be much worse. The question is, is it worth 20 bucks? Maybe, maybe not. There is always the "demo". But the game sure has some potential.

 

[sser]

I'm enjoying a lot and feel it's worth $20. That said it is not a must buy, but I do think multiplayer will make this game pretty awesome.

 

[SCO]

Hey Anthony Davis. How do game companies feel about crash reporters?
You know like Arx Liberatis included in the open source Arx fatalis, crash, start a debugger, search for duplicates and phone home a bug report with the trace.

They seem extremely useful for QA and continued support. I really don't understand why this technology hasn't spread like a STD.

 

[Anthony Davis]

You exaggerate a bit here Anthony. The game sure has some bugs, but it could be much worse. The question is, is it worth 20 bucks? Maybe, maybe not. There is always the "demo". But the game sure has some potential.

I've definitely had worse, that's true.

I guess part of my frustration is that this is EXACTLY the type of game I want. I got burned on Elemental and I feel like I got burned again - though this time for only 20$.

I still paid for it and I still check Steam to see if it has downloaded a patch for it. I also feel really bad because I talked a few people at work into buying it... you lose 1d6 face among your peers.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Hey Anthony Davis. How do game companies feel about crash reporters?
You know like Arx Liberatis included in the open source Arx fatalis, crash, start a debugger, search for duplicates and phone home a bug report with the trace.

They seem extremely useful for QA and continued support. I really don't understand why this technology hasn't spread like a STD.

I would assume they like them and use them, at least during testing. We did at Obsidian, we do at TimeGate. Usually though when you release the game, its a FINAL build, not debug, not release with symbols, so there is very little information to be gained from a crash report because very little information is generated with Final Builds. I would probably assume if a game company releases a game with a functioning Crash Reporter that is MORE than just "type in what you were doing", ie. stack dumps and crash logs, that the game is NOT a Final build.

For example, I had Starcraft 2 crash on me once, it fired off some sort of report mechanism but it was relying on me to describe what I was doing because it probably wasn't able to get much information.

Does that make sense?