COMMUNITY - FORUMS - GENERAL DISCUSSION
Game concerns

I'm a bit annoyed by the images that Caspian posted on discord showing "real carrots" "real potatoes" etc, excepted the goats that were not looking real. The game is actually looking for specialists in Middle Age technics and I'm afraid that the game will become an evolution game like "how to grow from Middle Ages to Modern Ages"., that it will become too focused on "first you discover lenses, than how to make glasses, than how to make a microscope" instead of allowing stuff like "I try to cross bread my bees with fire flies to get illuminating bees" or "how to try to use pheromones" without having disillation equipment, sublimation equipment, etc available.
So first to discover Leonardo Da Vinci, than Gallileo, Marco Polo and redo all the historcal discoveries before being able to discover real new in game stuff. By the way Caspian, Potatoes come from south america, they dont fit in a Middle Age scenario.


...
5/13/2018 10:08:48 PM #1

I don't understand the point of this post.

So you want the game to have research tracks that waste time? Or you want the progression of technology to include more high fantasy?

Do you want ultra-realism at the cost of enjoyable gameplay?

What?

5/13/2018 10:30:03 PM #2

The game is actually looking for specialists in Middle Age technics [...]

Potatoes come from south america, they dont fit in a Middle Age scenario.

There are potatoes in Lord of the Rings. Does this break immersion in any way?

CoE is not set in medieval Europe. Nor is it set in medieval times at all. Although conceptually SBS borrows heavily from there.

The fantasy adventure genre – in literature, movies and games – is often set in a world that resembles medieval Europe in terms of available technology and appearance of the cultural landscape. It is a heavily romanticized version at that, though.

It is still unclear how far Elyria will progress technology-wise. Personally, I do not want to ever see gun powder on a large scale in the game, but maybe we will have that at somepoint. Who knows?

Keep in mind that the main story of 10 Earth years covers about half a millennium in Elyrian time.

TL;DR CoE is not medieval Europe – nor is Lord of the Rings. Both have some inspiration there. Both bring something special to the table #Fantasy #OtterBear


TBD, Count of The Metheglin Meadows in Iyandolin, 🌷Kingdom of Al-Khezam 🌷, Selene

5/13/2018 10:33:22 PM #3

Hey there! COE was originally advertised as a low fantasy game with some fantasy elements within it. There will be many ties to historical technological approaches etc. This does not mean everything will be done in a purely historical sense though.

As for middle ages scenario --> this is not something SbS appears to be going for. They seem to be wanting the time period to impact the Elyrian world but it does not appear they want it to be strictly a European thing


5/14/2018 9:10:03 AM #4

Posted By _ac at 3:03 PM - Mon May 14 2018

Couldn't agree more _AC!!

It's Vucar's fault.... Caspian said so in Vucar's forum sig!!!!

I hope my reply made more sense than OP


5/14/2018 11:17:21 AM #5

Posted By Kaith at

I'm a bit annoyed by the images that Caspian posted on discord showing "real carrots" "real potatoes" etc, excepted the goats that were not looking real. The game is actually looking for specialists in Middle Age technics and I'm afraid that the game will become an evolution game like "how to grow from Middle Ages to Modern Ages"., that it will become too focused on "first you discover lenses, than how to make glasses, than how to make a microscope" instead of allowing stuff like "I try to cross bread my bees with fire flies to get illuminating bees" or "how to try to use pheromones" without having disillation equipment, sublimation equipment, etc available.
So first to discover Leonardo Da Vinci, than Gallileo, Marco Polo and redo all the historcal discoveries before being able to discover real new in game stuff. By the way Caspian, Potatoes come from south america, they dont fit in a Middle Age scenario.

It's Elyria, not earth. There's no South America, there is no Europe. Whatever fruits and vegetables Elyria has, has nothing to do with earth.
FYI, corn (maize) also originates from south america, and orange carrots were cultivated by the Dutch, as wild carrots were white, yellow or purple.
But again, Elyria is not Earth, so they may have different fruits and vegetables than us and have them grow at different places.


Count LizenÇace VeLeîjres of Mydra's Crossing, VII of the order of the IX.

Order of IX

5/14/2018 12:32:38 PM #6

I appreciate OPs concerns. It can seem a bit confusing at times seeing so much resemblance of medieval Europe in CoE. And if you assume this was the setting, sure there will be some disonance if something doesn't quite fit.

That being said, if you do follow CoE's development more closely, you can more readily estimate what a – quite literally – fantastic world Elyria is going to be.


TBD, Count of The Metheglin Meadows in Iyandolin, 🌷Kingdom of Al-Khezam 🌷, Selene

5/14/2018 4:38:09 PM #7

Kaith, I totally get your concerns here. And, if we were targeting this to be a hyper-realistic medieval sim, I would share them. I also totally get how you can have the impression that CoE is a hyper-realistic medieval sim, given many of our influences and mechanics, but that's not actually what we are.

Chronicles of Elyria, in terms of genre, is a fantasy game. More importantly, though, CoE is about Elyria, a world all its own with its own ecosystem, its own history, and its own course of historical progress. We do borrow heavily from human history but, when we do, we borrow from a very wide range of times spanning roughly from 1000bce up to 1600ce. Even then, we pick and choose elements that suit Elyria and incorporate them where we want them, where they make sense for Eylira, ignoring the Terran timeline in the process. Heck, even that range of time I quoted is more "at least so far we've picked stuff in this range" than it is a rule about what has to happen when or what is "period" for Chronicles of Elyria.

Some elements of Elyria's technological development will certainly mirror Earth: You won't get to lenses without first learning something about making glass, for example. But, in general, we've put the tech where it makes sense in our world, based on the history of Elyria and the development and migration of the tribes of Mann, rather than depending on the chain of events that introduced that tech into Earth.

I guess what I'm saying is this: While you can probably squint at the way things happened at Earth and get a sort of fuzzy, distorted, sense of how things work in Elyria, there is no direct 1-to-1 mapping between the two. The fact that, for example, Archimedes puzzled out displacement and thus we can attribute the concept to the Greeks in western history has no bearing on how that same concept and its related technologies appeared in Elyria.

Likewise, the same holds true for where certain plants can be found. While not every plant in Elyria comes from our world. there are many Earth analog plants in Elyria. Even so, Elyria is not Earth and the biomes of the two worlds are only similar, not identical. Since Elyria's continents formed under their own conditions, what flora and fauna ended up on which continents has no correlation to Earth. Potatoes might be ubiquitous on our starting continent, while oranges are nowhere to be seen; that sort of thing.

You might have seen me say "Verisilimitude > Veracity" before, usually in reference to mechanics, but that applies to the way we incorporate "reality" into Chronicles of Elyria as well. Our goal isn't complete realism by any measure. Instead, we want to capture the feel of medieval times, the more romantic notion that we modern folks hold of what it meant to live in that time. The reality is stark and bleak, and not nearly as fun, so we aim to capture what it is from those times that makes us want to look back and enjoy them, not the realities that led humanity to develop their way out of those times if that makes sense.

Hope that helps! :)


  • Snipehunter
5/14/2018 5:12:39 PM #8

wooot? no lenses without glass? why? I can make lenses out of snow/ice, if I want to, and make fire that way! very simple in addition to the possibility! Just doesnt last long.


Friend Code: 30EF47

5/14/2018 5:19:19 PM #9

Posted By Gromschlog at 10:12 AM - Mon May 14 2018

wooot? no lenses without glass? why? I can make lenses out of snow/ice, if I want to, and make fire that way! very simple in addition to the possibility! Just doesnt last long.

Heh, perhaps I should have said "no glass lenses without first learning something about glass," then. ;)


  • Snipehunter
5/14/2018 5:49:48 PM #10

Ice lenses confirmed. Maybe I should roll brudvir after all.


Count LizenÇace VeLeîjres of Mydra's Crossing, VII of the order of the IX.

Order of IX

5/14/2018 8:15:37 PM #11

A lens-like item that beats ice lenses in,... coolness would be the sunstones of Viking legends used as navigational device. Basically transparent stones that allow you to spot the sun in cloudy weather. The concept works, but it's unclear whether this has only been a myth or actually been used in the past.

Only mentioning this because of the focus on lenses here ;-)


TBD, Count of The Metheglin Meadows in Iyandolin, 🌷Kingdom of Al-Khezam 🌷, Selene

5/14/2018 10:32:43 PM #12

Posted By _ac at 1:15 PM - Mon May 14 2018

A lens-like item that beats ice lenses in,... coolness would be the sunstones of Viking legends used as navigational device. Basically transparent stones that allow you to spot the sun in cloudy weather. The concept works, but it's unclear whether this has only been a myth or actually been used in the past.

Only mentioning this because of the focus on lenses here ;-)

+2 pun

Just as an aside: I love that experimental archaeology has shown us that these could work as written about in lore. For game designers working on fantasy and historical titles like CoE, the experimental archaeologists of the world are basically our greatest resources.


  • Snipehunter
5/14/2018 11:11:59 PM #13

If you're concerned about CoE reaching modern tech allow me to direct you to the Advanced Technology Prevention Society. It's based on NA-W but if someone wanted to make a branch on another server I'd be supportive of it.

Caspian has basically told us that it's our responsibility as players to keep things from being researched that we don't want to be researched. So it's exactly that, taking our destiny into our own hands to prevent people from ruining the game by researching stuff like guns, computers, airplanes, and so on. We'll find people that are researching that kind of tech, assassinate them, and destroy the research.

5/14/2018 11:33:09 PM #14

Meanwhile I will make sure that that research remains in hidden mountain bases until its time to release it upon the world with no going back ;)


THE EMPIRE GUILD

6ADB99

5/14/2018 11:48:35 PM #15

Posted By Xerr at 6:33 PM - Mon May 14 2018

Meanwhile I will make sure that that research remains in hidden mountain bases until its time to release it upon the world with no going back ;)

Why would you want to actively ruin the game? Just to troll everyone, or what?

...