How many players should/can we allow in a game? 8? 12? 32?

I would add as many players as the engine could handle for online play. Up to 32 would be great for PBEM games. I hope PBEM will be included as a multiplayer option.

How sophisticated can we make dungeons in the game?

Multi-level dungeons, traps, ambushes, underground cities/forts/defense structures, monsters, tunnelling, mining for resources, creating your own dungeon in game. Putting prisoners in your dungeon.. Maybe I'm getting carried away, but you get the idea.

How sophisticated can we make quests in the game?

The more the merrier.

How sophisticated can we make tactical battles in the game?

As many options as the AI can handle. Maybe even have an option for advanced/simple tactical battles.

How big of a scope can we give the campaign?

Multi-branch, Strong story, random events.

While I'm not necessarily interested in PBEM, your wish prompts me to ask if the game will allow multiple campaigns/games to be managed at a time.  Not to play simultaneously, but to (for example) be able to start a campaign, save it, start another campaign or MP game, save that session for later continuation, start a PBEM game, save that, etc... then pick up again seamlessly when I wish to continue any of those 3 (or more) sessions.

A longer beta period sounds like a good idea to me, especially with how long it takes to play this type of game. I remember people in the Twilight beta complaining that they couldn't finish a single immense-size game before the next beta period started.

It sounds good for the company, too. Blizzard became on of the most successful and well-respected developers in existence by thoroughly polishing all of their games and refusing to release them before they were ready. They're famous for release delays, but they still make tons of money. Stardock looks to be following the same track here.

Although...

Aren't you blurring the line between beta and release? If anyone who preorders gets the game right away, is it still a preorder? Seems to me like this whole thread is just arguing semantics.

In my opinion, a long beta needs to be fun for beta testers to give feedback, so you'd have to provide tactical battles early for instance (even though personally I think I'll probably always sip them) otherwise the game beta tested during the first months will be too different from the one after the tactical battles are added in, and the feedback may not be that good. So you'd have to be very careful of the schedule.

You also run the risk of releasing a game that will be too hard or have too many tricks that only the people who played the beta will appreciate and that will put off would-be buyers, so that's a risky decision.

Specifically:

> How many players should/can we allow in a game? 8? 12? 32?

Humans: Just me. AI's: As many as possible.

> How sophisticated can we make dungeons in the game?

Interesting to check out. This probably doesn't conflict with the rest of the game so it's worth exploring and a good reason to have more testing.

> How sophisticated can we make quests in the game?

I dream of automated quest engines that wouldn't generate silly quests... Good reason for beta.

> How sophisticated can we make tactical battles in the game?

I don't care. Scrap it and release the game faster.

> How big of a scope can we give the campaign?

None. Scrap it. If it's a series of scenarios with nothing carrying on from the previosu to the next, SCRAP IT. If it's more elaborate like Fantasy General or Battle for Wesnoth, then yes, sure.

I've noticed that a lot of people want there to be a lot o randomness in the Campaign. I'm completely opposite! I play campaigns once, and then never come back to them unless maybe I start playing the game again years later. So I don't want it to be random. I want every aspect of the campaign to be masterfully hand-crafted, so that the one time I do play it through it will grab and hold my attention. Randomization is for sandbox mode.

I think the more input you get the better off the game will be. So I'm all for the extended schedule,

All hail the frog!

I think the goal is to have the benifit of both sandbox and campaign.   Diablo had a semi-random campaign (the 1st one, not the 2nd) and I believe it made the game more enjoyable because of it.

If you have a sandbox mode that *feels* like a well crafted campaign, then you're set.  There are some games you just could not do randomly, but I honestly feel that a lot of RTS or TBS "story" campaigns are just an excuse to go through different maps, and honestly could have almost had the whole 'story' element cut without confusing users.  So if a dev team does not want to compete with the masterfully crafted stories of games like Starcraft or the 1st Dawn of War campaign (I feel DoW's story charm was lost with each passing expansion into the sequel)  Then I promote  aiming to have a campaign that IS just a sandbox and see if it can be made just as enjoyable as a completly linear story.

Another thing that happens, is sometimes in an attempt to make the "story" campaign seem like more than just a bunch of maps with a cheaply patched together story connecting them, special features are added like  the volcano in Advance Wars 2 (or was it duel-strike? both games have story campaign only buildings and units) or the titan's cannons in Dawn of War.  And I say to myself "Well gee, I kinda wish there were multiplayer maps with this kind of stuff on them.  The volcano is even random, so it would still be fair."   Having a sandbox like campaign would allow the devs to explore ideas of multiplayer story-campaigns and the like.

A randomized campaign will never be as good as a good, well-thought out and well-implemented hand-crafted campaign. At least not until we invent computer intelligence with the creativity of a human mind. I would love for sandbox mode to feel like its own, different mini campaign every time. A great way to do this, I think, is to have quests, dungeons and events all tied together - instead of being completely separate entities like they usually tend to be. If you add in revolutionary diplomacy as well as sophisticated independent kingdoms, that'll just make it all the better. The best way, IMO, to make it feel like there is actually a story is to have lots of meaningful interactions with different entities, and to make random events and such tied together so that the cease to feel so random.

But I still don't want that in the actual campaign. I want the campaign to be crafted like a well-written book. I want there to be miniscule details and plot twists and fleshed out characters and personalities. I want it to feel like I'm playing through a good book. And a heavily randomized campaign simply cannot provide that feeling.

I'm on board with having both an Official Campaign and a map/game generator.  I would look to the Official Campaign as being the first benchmark by which custom content creators can use to create their own worlds - ideally to meet or exceed the quality and level of detail in the OC.  I would want the ability to have randomized maps, a quest library, and starting units as well, though my expectations for quality and overall cohesiveness would be set lower as compared with an OC and early efforts for custom content put forth by the community.

It would be fantastic if the Sovereign(Senior Channeller) could actually evolve / morph into these larger type monsters.

"preorder" doesn't mean the same thing in Stardock lingo then it does elsewhere, yeah. I kind of wish they'd use a different term, every now and then someone comes in confused by it.

I created a forum account just so I could reply to this thread.

I think this would be wonderful.  It will be difficult to wait so long for a finished product, but I agree that the end result could well be a classic, and it would be worth it. 

I haven't done a serious beta test since working on Geneforge II for Windows.  It'll be fun to be back in the sausage factory again.

I'd also like to weigh in on the campaign.  My own preference is to have a campaign (or multiple campaigns) embedded into the sandbox mode.  For example, Master of Orion II had the overarching plot about the extremely powerful aliens from another dimension; X-Com had an overarching plot about turning the aliens back.

This could be handled in large part through the in-campaign special story events.  Enough semi-random story events turns into an overarching story line.  There could also be story lines associated with different canon races in a regular sandbox game.

Anyway, I like a story in my sandbox.  I'm not crazy about campaigns where you play one scenario after another.  A good sandbox game I find to be too long to make for a good campaign of linked games, but I'm open to having my mind changed.

I think it is a really great idea. That way you can really add in feature by feature and we can really test things one at a time. It will get the game really solid and then some by the time it is released.

And all those questions in the OP can easily be answered, assuming that the beta is given enough time to test out all the things we want.

I am FOR the extended beta

How many players should/can we allow in a game? I suggest to not restrict the number. Make it 128 (I.E insanely high) and let each player choose for himself. 

How sophisticated can we make dungeons in the game? This should be an optional modul. A player should be able to choose wether he likes big dungeons (a la Birthright) or just a text event. Even better would be to get asked for each dungeon wether you would like to explore it by yourself.

How sophisticated can we make quests in the game? On a scale of one to ten, I would say 'take all the option and add them together' (this would net me 55 on this scale)

How sophisticated can we make tactical battles in the game? This is the only thing where sophistication can potentialy be counter productive. The main problem would be to adjust the learning curve to the AI, which tends to be done rather badly. In most games I've played, I can *easely* beat the crap out of the AI's army with a third of the menpower they have.On a few games though, the AI slaughter me. Idealy, no player should ever play on the highest difficulty setting, so he'll always know that he can improve and face greater challenges.