Spellforce 3

You people are retarded

I'll probably play later today, looks good but rts is current year is a red flag by itself. I'll pirate it at best unless it's the second coming of rts or something, 50 bucks for a rts is a joke even if they went full retard on grafix

I've been playing some battle realms again. It's still good, but I wonder whose idea was to include neolithic barbarians and Dark Eldar.

I only played the first one's main campaign and the first expansion. I stayed away from 2 because I hear 2 is completely different and just bad.

It's a weird RPG and RTS mix. You get a main hero character you can build a certain way (archer, healer, necromancer, nature mage, fighter) and run around the world like an RPG, but as soon as you bump into a shrine you can activate it and start spawning units and then control the units. You also get secondary heroes but they're essentially premade classes you find in summoning stones, and you summon them when the game gives you a shrine for them in the rpg'ish sections. They also join your army a few times. There are also 3 dark races and 3 light races.

The main campaign is amazing at first and it's fucking long. It creates this real sense of wondering what the next races abilities are, what buildings you haven't found yet for the races you have, what kind of titan you can summon (you can summon a big ass titan when you get a certain high tier building), etc. You kinda just stumble into a level after playing the last race 4-5 times, then suddenly you notice it's a shrine for the next race. They all seem to be really diverse to and have unique quirks that make them all stand out. For example, dark elves passively will resurrect their enemies at night-time to fight for you. It also creates a really strong sense of fighting an uphill battle, and kinda sneaking under the nose of the opposition because you always end up taking forbidden paths controlled by massive hoardes of enemies that people haven't been through for centuries, just to get around the defences of the main antagonist because it's assumed to be safe.

I was addicted as fuck to it at first, until they gave you the dark races. The game basically goes to shit then, and people say it's because the dark races suck the dark elves are OP as fuck but honestly I think it's the level design. They essentially give you no resources and/or have enemies 2/3x your units level, in some cases they have aoe magic, and the game just becomes cancer. The last level is fun though

The only thing of note in the first expansion is the elves do the winter-chan meme before it was a thing.

I still have to play the first two
I remember playing the first on my cousins computer 13 years ago.

Did they go full rts or still doing that third person/rts thing?

Every question that can be possibly asked in this thread will never be as important as the following question. Can you Remove Elf?

How much did the original cost on release?

Im gonna check it out
You better not trick me OP you tremendous faggot

I tried the first one, but I couldn't stand the fucking tedium. You get quests that make you walk all around the map and your character takes forever to do so, and the game pauses when it loses focus so I can't even alt-tab out and browse the internet while waiting.

I wouldnt know, a friend pirated it but probably not that much

I remember getting most games back then for $30, so that inflates to around $40. It wouldn't surprise me if it was more. Games use to cost money before steam.

Pretty sure 5200d4 just wanted to know more about the game.

I never liked it but kept coming back for the main menu screen tits.

I've not played another game in the series… Just played the campaign mission in the demo thing, it's pretty good.
It plays kind of like Warcraft 3. Traditional RTS with unit abilities and heroes that level up. The leveling and abilities are more in-depth than WC3 though, with full skill trees and stat points for you're characters (you get 4 in the demo: warrior, archer, necromancer, elementalist/priest) Full loot system too.

Unfortunately the game doesn't really give you a good way to use all your characters abilities. You can hold alt to slow down time and open a radial menu to use abilities, but it doesn't seem to display them all. There's also some hotkeys at the top of the screen… But again it only shows 3 per character. I might be just missing something here as I'm assuming there's some way to bind abilities to hotkeys? I never used it in the demo as I just zerged everything and spammed the elamentalist's ice blizzard skill.
The map is separated up into nodes so you can't just build anywhere, and any one nodes expansion is limited by it's size/resources/etc. Resources are shared across the map though which is nice.
It seems your tech progression is locked behind blueprints you have to either loot on the map or buy from traders, which is kind of shitty.

All in all probably worth a pirate.

I played Spellforce 2 shadow lands or whatever years ago. Only about 10 hours or so probably, the whole set up is fun at the start of each level, but it got repetitive and the cities in between the campaign were either too big with quests I don't feel like reading or doing (boring), and just moving through the main story line. Leveling up was nice, getting new weps and armor/trinkets.

...

2 is suppose to be shit compared to 1.

Me, I remember SpellForce 1 advertised a chick on the box which is not actually in the game. It was somewhat infamous back in the day, and it made the whole series look sketchy. So I never played those games.

So, how is it?

Good
Bad

All in all I'd say it's bretty gud above average for a current year rts. Not game-changing but no something that is hateable Like Starbound either.

Why the hell do games do this? I don't care if the skellies are shit just let me have a couple dozen at least, damn it.

why does she have candy on her eyes?

You probably still can, it depends on how much they copy from spellforce 1. There's a distinction between summoning undead and raising undead.

I know when you summon a skeleton it drains mana while it's up, soft capping it. However, way later in the game you get a raise dead spell, which casts a giant AOE turning all corpses in the area to skeletons and there is no mana drain for uptime and there is no cap. You even could kill your own workers and raise them. Also the dark elves would passively raise enemies at night time giving you even more skeletons. If you made an entire army of dark elf necromancers, they will ressurrect enemies and summon undead goblins (I think each necromancer could have 2-3, and you have armies of 80. Do the math) ontop of your skeletons.

There's something very wrong with the visual composition for units. I get what they are aiming for with buildings and world geometry but units don't stand out enough, it makes it really annoying to find them and quickly spot them, especially among workers. No they shouldn't make them WoW-coloured with flaming pauldrons, but they can change the colours so they stand out a bit more against the ground.

Aside from that I like the game so far, it's just that you can't really tell what the fuck is going on at ground level when a fight breaks out.

How good is turtling? I honestly only like RTS that let me turtle because I like managing my local economy and tower defense.

(checked)
Yep. I think the idea is that by that point your hero should be an OP monster that should make up for how shit your troops are in comparison, but in practice it ended up with me clearing out bases with my hero until I got overwhelmed. Enemies don't start spawning until after you interact with the shrine, and you can deactivate the infinite spawners by destroying the buildings, so you just have to fight the initial troops they have. So you can cheese the RTS part that way. The RPG bits that expect you to not have the mass of troops can be cheesed by deciding to use the RTS bit to your advantage, and just drowning your enemies in trash mobs.

It also becomes ridiculous because my all in dark mage ended up surviving better in melee than my fucking titans. Part of this is because the game expects you to do a bit of cross class stuff, and I went heavy into dark magic which allowed me to use mage armor that was better than anything my melee heroes had access to. The only reason I managed to get that armor is because I cheesed a bunch of way higher level enemies with massed elf and dwarf spam.

If they copy a fair bit from Spellforce 1, the hero will become absolutely OP later. I get the feeling they won't.

You can't, the necromancer has 2 summoning spells, 1 passive (which makes spells cheaper), and 1 debuff. I think there is something to do with corpses too but I never used it. The summoning spells you get are:

Also there is no titan units like in the old spellforce games

I take it there's no hero customization either?

So your main hero is basically a moba hero?

The candy are buff items that you eat a fuckton of ingame to get good times and shit.

There is hero customization but it would only be probably used for top-tier play in muh-esports. There is a merchant you can buy from but a lot of the weapons and gear he sells are just flat out worse then the stuff your hero begins with so it may just need to get balanced.

Heroes have tiny skill trees ( less than 7 skills) but I thnk more will get added because in the menu there is still a shitton of space for more skill trees
When you unlock a skill, if it's a passive it will be always on but if it's an activatable (like the archer's deadly shot) then you assign it to one of three slots. There is potential for up to 4 heroes the the keys are "QAZ" for hero 1, "WSX" for hero 2, "EDC" and so on. I wouldn't say there moba tier but they are getting there. The renegade who is a melee tank yet also does massive damage has two skills that attack everyone around him and another that causes him to passively block one strike every second.
The necromancer gets killed instantly, the shaman deploys the totems and then dies, the priest either makes his troops unkillable because he gets 2 heals, one which is placed on the ground for around 7 seconds, another that takes 5 seconds to recharge and mobs only attack once every 1.5 seconds so he can outheal them.
The commander gets auras that give people around him passive buffs like attack speed, damage, resistance to everything. He is op later but early game he is shit.
The archer is a hero killer but he falls off later since the deadly shot stops insta-killing and armies get too big to control.
There is also an assassin I haven't used but he can teleport.

The way the game works is where there are zones you capture with outposts, that allow you to build buildings there. The outpost produces workers automatically and only has enough workers for 2 buildings though until you upgrade it, at max level it can do 5-6 buildings.
It brings resources back to the outpost and then these get sent along pre-defined roads to where they are needed. Example:

I tried to get screenshots from the game but it's not letting me take any.

Don't bother. SF was always an RPG first and RTS second and I can't believe they'd turn it into some moba shit.

Are there any mlp mods for these games?

Watched a few minutes of it. Looked like Warcraft 3 (mobashit to the underage) hero treatment and hero-centric campaign styles but with exactly the same wet noodle hero combat as Age of Empires 3, except instead of guarding treasure the random critters drop [Hairy Spider Scrote] MMO loot.
Units were all identical ooga booga men, even the heroes were hard to tell apart. High res desaturated colors amplified this greatly. The map and buildings suffered from this to a lesser extent.
Honestly looked really fucking boring and a chore to your eyes and patience to play.

Fucking wot.
80% of the game is RTS, 20% is slog you have to grind to for story shit nobody cares about.

You can throw stale memes around or you can try and remember or play for the first time you faking hipsterGrind in SF when everything that gives you XP or items is non-respawnable? wew, right how both the games had you running about doing quests, gearing, proper building heroes and talking. CnC and all. First game in particular was more of a run around this map for two hours before we maybe give you some builders. Maybe. And it's not like SF2 changed that since you had optional and conflicting party members, multiple branches of character development including specialized branches of magic or more weapon specs than your average aRPG as well as entire dungeon or city crawling levels where you never got the chance to resource and build.

I don't know what you can really do when someone says something so objectively false with such a condescending tone other than provide a screenshot proving otherwise. Enemies DO respawn they DO give XP and they DO drop loot. Unfortunately I only saved after I cleaned up a bit so I wouldn't have to do it again, so this isn't the massive sea of golden bodies I've seen multiple times but it does demonstrate that you can afk grind for loot all day every day.

There is a softcap for xp though, once you hit a certain level you get like 1/50th of the xp, but you still definitely get loot, and I'm pretty sure the game wants you to grind because if I didn't grind this way I was always behind the level curve and never could use the rune workers available at the max level which you fucking need.

This is what I meant by 20% slog. Maps where massive. Objectives where far apart. Lots of waiting for your character to run around. I think you forget how the game would go 1 rpg map per 4 rts maps. and the majority of the RPG maps appeared at the beginning like you said and where much shorter than the RTS maps.

Haven't played 2. Avoided it because I heard it's shit and I still need to get through the 2nd expansion of spellforce 1, which I might or might not because the 1st expansion sucked dick.

Kiss my ass and stop lying yours off. None of the troops the AI creates give any XP. Period. And if you do get a chance to use your troops against neutral creeps you'll get reduced XP, ie no soft cap involved.

This is what I meant by a faking hipster. You probably a millennial and that's your problem. But for the love of god stop trying to present yourself as anyone vaguely credible.

And I know you're full of it. 3/4 of those "RTS maps" start as "RPG maps."

I wasn't exactly impressed with the game either, but let's not cheap out the labels here.

You don't gain resources by farming your oponent's soldiers, you still control your own army and build your buildings, economy is more than just a single resource used specifically to gear up your hero and him alone will not stand against an army, plus you get more than just a single hero and the goal of the game isn't to break down a single building in the enemies base.
It's not a MOBA by any standard of the term at all. Call it shit if you want, but call it the right shit.

More specifically, it seems much closer to Warcraft 3 indeed, but with a twist to it. Although there seems to be some more focus on your heroes, controlling several of them with easier controls to use less micro, they don't seem as strong and capable against standard troops in large numbers.
There's also a much more interesting economy than just Gold and Wood, although the ability to store resources or dictate where they are sent is missing and that can make things quite frustrating.

Maybe you're right but I'm getting a serious DOW3 vibe from what I'm seeing.

You call anything that doesn't have just regular troops a MOBA these days anyway, you're diluting the word.

It should have been a term to describe a particular genre of games that's flawed by design due to the many aspects that govern how it works (focus on unbalanced fights, grindy economy, dead man's syndrome, burden of knowledge, etc) and instead it's becoming "a game where units have strong abilities".

Yeah I just magically went from level 14 to 16 overnight magically while not moving from the spot I was in, and the armors different because you needed to be white magic level 7 for it and I was only 6 before grinding.

You don't even know how something as basic as the XP system works, and probably never even touched the expansions.

Maybe like half, and still the vast majority of the map is RTS, just like how the vast majority of the game is RTS.

Well how'd you call an RTS so streamlined and balanced for multiplayer with a strong focus on a few carrying units/heroes and near mirrored factions? Saying DOTA or LOL is clear but what about something that tried to emulate both that and a classic RTS, CNC4 for example?

Those are still neutral units dipshit. If you got any real assets from faction troops you'd outlevel the game so fast it's not even funny.

Tactically ignores the screenshot of how I've been doing this with the crimson empire the main antagonist for the first two thirds of the campaign
This is just getting sad. I suppose it isn't coincidence that you're one of the only people I've seen say good things about 2, further evidence I should avoid that game like the plague.

I said it once and I'll say it again: kiss my ass and stop lying yours off. So far you got one bridge you pulled some neutrals on, a bunch of random towers riveting and a whole lot of bullshit. And I honestly don't care enough to rise to that cheap ass deflection bait you're throwing. Facts are you've admitted to not having even finished the games, you're wrong and you're too much of a bitch to accept otherwise. Like I said, a millennial.

Nah m8. If you actually played the game you'd recognize it's the bridge in the level Fastholme. The enemy keeps sending units nonstop until you guide an NPC to the edge of the cliff to blow it up and cut them off. You'd also know there are next to no neutral creeps in spellforce 1. 99% of enemy camps will spawn units and send them to you until you destroy their base.

If you actually played the game you'd notice all the corpses are the crimson empire. Again, the main antagonist for 2/3rds of the campaign and the only ones who are gold and red very hard to not recognize

Yet you literally do not know how basic mechanics work and suggest there are "neutral creeps". Ignoring the fact literally everyone shits on spellforce 2 and is nothing like it's predecessor. You wanted to wave your dick around thinking no one played the game recently, and now that you've gotten blown the fuck out, you're literally shilling 2 the game everyone thinks is shit.

You say balanced for multiplayer like it's a bad thing. Unless you want everyone playing online to only use the same race\faction\strategy or not even bothering with multiplayer to begin with, there's nothing wrong with that.

I'd still call it an RTS? Just because it has a bigger focus on the hero units doesn't change that.
Rise of Legends was pretty neat and it also had you summoning Heroes that could devastate small units too. You could even drop rally points on your heroes so produced units would not only join them but also be assigned to the same control group.

An RTS is an RTS. You manage your economy, you build your base, you train your dudes and you micro them against your oponent. If one of your dudes is a strong dude and he plays an important role in a fight, it doesn't change any of that. You still build, harvest and train dudes.

A MOBA is a MOBA. You don't manage your economy, you only farm for 20 minutes, you don't build anything, you don't train anything and you only micro your dude for 5 seconds during the teamfight phase. After that, you're either losing or winning for 20 minutes.
Just because it's a top-down view and the control scheme seems similar to an RTS, it doesn't make it closer to one, it's fundamental problems are still the economy and the pacing and neither of that is a problem in Spellforce or DoW3 for the matter.

Try saying literally a couple of more times kid. I reproached your bullshit and apparently you've nothing new to answer with. You're wrong, and muddying the water with some real cheap deflection won't change that.

Define small units. RoL had tanks, dragons, mecha or prototype shit that once upgraded raped most heroes. Hell, basic infantry had some real teeth when upgraded.

What about footman wars or one of the other dota era modes/mods? You do train units and you do manage economy. What about "RTS" games where you don't build unless it's on predisposed locations at predisposed times? Or games that aren't full RTT where you don't build at all but use some cap/point system? I get what you're saying but there's certain leeway considering the age or the improvised origin of the terms. Especially considering just how generic and wide encompassing "Multiplayer online battle arena" is. When you say dotashit or ASSFAGGOTS that's a bit more specific

I'm just amazed you opened yourself up to be beat the fuck down so many times before it resorted to this. Even if it was bait.

GET good, faggit.

Also, Paladins best unit. Them flaming swords!

Nigga it's RPG/RTS hybrid, in 66%/33% ratio, I ain't touching that shit, fuck you.

Ask there my man
>>>/gaschamber/

Go back to auschwitz.
>>>/Auschwitz/

I haven't met anyone who hasn't said that part was a slog. I had to cheese hard and it just wasn't fun.

Kill you are self, my man.

Until you upgraded your heroes as well.
And if you want to go that way, go check out what a properly upgraded squad of normal troops does to normal heroes in DOW3.

Gimmicks and extra modes built by the community to be something else entirely? What about it?
There was Life as a Peasant that was neither an RTS nor a MOBA. There were many "singleplayer MMO" as well as "wave defense" games. What's the argument here? Those had nothing to do with the base game.

Give examples please so I can tell you you're actually talking about RTT, a whole different genre.

You're contradicting yourself, those sound full-on RTT.
Unless you're talking about stuff like Total War, where that's a GSG.

Age doesn't change the meaning of most words, not that fast anyway.
And the origin is anything but improvised.
Even ASSFAGGOTS not only accurately defines the kind of game that's being labeled, it even contains a tidbit to it's story.

Point of fact is that MOBA is a very well defined term. It's a multiplayer game where 5-6 players join up in battle with a single hero against a similar oposing team farming resources in a laning phase with creatures they don't control spawning on both sides, followed by a short skirmish phase that creates the powergap between both teams that eventually gives one the victory.

A game cannot be considered a MOBA if it's missing any of those details.
Do you control your own troops? Not a MOBA.
More than one Hero? (Don't be a smart ass with multi-unit heroes) Not a MOBA.
Do you spend the first half of the game grinding your enemies forces for resources? No? Not a MOBA.
Is the game decided in a 5 minute skirmish followed by 20 boring minutes of dead man's syndrome? That's a MOBA.

It's only considered a diluted term because it's so often abused to talk trash about disliked games and it's the main reason you should opose this. Even if you dislike the games being labeled as such, using this word for everything cheapens it and before long, every thing is a MOBA, just like everyone is a faggot now and cuck had to step in as an insult.

Like every RTS, turtling (either by building towers as human/elf or by building shrines as the elf) results in your opponent just casually collecting more resources than you for the entire game. If you're playing against the AI, however, they are very susceptible to turtle tactics. The AI also seems pretty poor at choosing an army composition. I haven't played against insane yet, but this is consistent at very hard and lower.

I played this game in co-op mode with a friend. I'm into economy management games and he's into ass faggots, so I build all of the troops and manage the buildings, and he manages the heroes and armies. We actually had a lot of fun like this. I expand as hard and fast as possible and he skirmishes with the enemies over and over, microing heroes. If you want to just turtle up and have fun with an economy, I'd suggest finding someone who is into ass faggots. They'd want to play, but without all of the economy stuff.

Titan units are listed in the score screen, so I'm pretty sure they're just not in the beta.

not even qt girls?

...

I've been looking forward to this, so far it seems to run like shit and nothing else has been memorable.

its time to go to the official forums and tell them about it, they will listen

it runs like shit but not outside of the modern norm. of things running like shit.