Elemental: Fallen Enchantress Beta FAQ
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Q: How much will the final game be different from the current game?
A: Probably quite a bit. We get into a lot of debates on this subject with beta testers because there is often a disconnect between what is part of Fallen Enchantress's design principles versus what a user thinks (needs) to be in the game.
Q: Ok, that was pretty vague. What do you mean by design principles?
A: This would require a separate journal entry but broadly speaking, we mean that Derek Paxton (Kael) has a specific vision for Elemental: Fallen Enchantress which falls under a number of broad design principles. A common request is that the tactical battles be much more complex than they currently are. But one of the design principles of FE is that tactical battles should not decide the outcome of the strategic game. That is, no matter how good someone has mastered the tactical part of the game, it shouldn't enable them to turn what would normally be a loss strategically into a win. This is an intentionally vague concept since we want tactical battles to be meaningful but we don't want someone to be able to win against 10 to 1 odds because they've mastered that aspect of the game.
Q: Does this mean tactical battles won't be changing?
A: We have a number of changes planned. We just can't commit to anything specific until we've had time to play through it via iteration.
Q: What areas of the game do you consider furthest along?
A: The general flow of the game is fairly far along in terms of having a solid core. It's not any particular feature. We are in BETA 2 presently, Beta 1 was to make sure the game was compatible (hardware wise). Beta 2 is designed to allow us to create a very tight core from which we can expand upon.
Q: What areas should we expect to see the game expand on?
A: Our recent poll confirmed that our beta group seems to be on the same page as us. Making each faction be very different matters a lot to us. Secondly, the city management is an area with a great deal of work ahead for it. Not on the poll but diplomacy is an area we want to expand on.
Q: What is the future of multiplayer and why isn't it planned for initial release?
A: 90% of the multiplayer features are in. The issue is that we don't want to split our resources between supporting multiplayer (from a bug testing / stability point of view) while also trying to do the same for the single player game.
Q: What can you tell us about the campaign?
A: It's been designed and created by Jon Shafer (designer of Civilization V as well as the Beyond the Sword expansion for Civilization IV) and written by fantasy author, Dave Stern. Voice overs are being done by some of the people involved with Fall From Heaven and music provided by a team up musicians who worked on Civilization V and Galactic Civilizations II.
Q: I have heard that Fallen Enchantress is a different development team than War of Magic?
A: Yes. After the sale of Impulse, developers who had previously worked on Galactic Civilizations II were brought back from the Impulse team to the Games group to work on Fallen Enchantress. It is led by Derek Paxton (Kael) who had previously worked on the Civilization IV mod, Fall from Heaven and as previously mentioned the campaign was designed by Jon Shafer formerly of Civilization V fame.
