And so the DUMBING down of the game begins.

Hooray for more Faction Traits =D (love the sandbox aspect and the customization)

Dumbing down...?

So a greater spectrum of tactical and strategical decisions and less passives = less complex?  I think you may need to consult your dictionary, as you really mean to say "Smarting up".

He thinks eliminating a vestigial component like slashing resistance is dumbing down.  Even though it was a mechanic that was mostly ignored and didn't fit in with the mostly 1 armor set per tier in the tech tree.  

I agree here, the only problem I had with the earlier damage system was actually the lack of "counters" (armour sets) more than the mechanics.
Then again, thats me being a number nut. I cannot wait to see what they offer as abilities, because that will probably make up for it.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

What's ironic is that at one time, I pushed for 3 radically different damage types: Mundane, Arcane and Elemental with corresponding types of protectiosn against them.  Was great on paper. Absolutely sucked in practice.  Worked fine in GalCiv but here it was just amazingly tedious.

We also have 6 + 2 damage types in elemental.

Blunt, Piercing, Cutting.
Fire, Ice, Lightning.
Poison, Whatever doesn't fit into the other columns.

I still hope for traits (for trained units) that gives some amount of protection against fire or ice, so I can more easily design a unit against fire troops, without having to spend hundreds of crystals on my army.

(and deep inside, I hope magic staves will start using spell mastery and spell resistance ).

But alas, It might be a good change to remove the damage types, I just like the idea behind constructing some units behind countering the enemy swordsmen, etc. So I hope we retain that in some other form.
If we have that, I could care less about damage types such as piercing, as I do see the difficulty in showing this easily and accessibly through the UI.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Me thinks the successes of X-COM mayth opened the eyes of Stardock!  At least a tiny bit, this is not a combat simulator.

Damage categories math is an archaic relic of PnP days because player options are a bit limited.  Look, what is more fun?  Do you like having the choice of getting that 100% aim bonus for your sniper rifle at the cost of waiting one turn or attack now instead?  Or in other words, do find enjoyment in victory being mostly predetermined before the fighting commences based on stat modifiers or because you made smart, bold decisions as the unit commander, as the player?

Now playing devils advocate, the counter argument is those stat modifiers in FE were special weapon abilities that enhanced gameplay such as the counter attack on (preequipped) swords.  That is true but in the end you are still fighting a mostly predetermined battle and that is what the devs openly explained the vision to be, just not in those exact words per se.

I just hope the devs hit the right design balance on tactical implementation.  If good tactical play turns out to be too repetitive and essential or game breaking then the minigame get re-visioned closer to FE.  If too optional then a lot of people are very disappointed.  Unless some very clever solutions like allowing only hero armies tactical combat (less is more) then it could be difficult to make things work to their fullest potential. 

I remember those types from GC II and when you would see ships coming loaded up with beams or whatnot, you would have to start planning your strategy a bit different, not to mention if you didnt adapt to how the AI did to your wps, that could hurt as well.  Was a great system for GC, but I bet it wouldnt work so well for FE, like Lord Frog said above.  Rock, paper, scissors isnt always the best way at times.

PnP and limited options? PnP basically lets players do whatever they want. It's more or less for gameplay and thematic reasons.

Just try to penetrate plate armor with a sword. Now attack that same plate armor with a poleaxe, mace, or warhammer. It's a pretty dramatic difference... And oddly inverted in Fallen Enchantress.

The entire appeal of reducing "victory being mostly predetermined" is a false premise to me. As is the premise that preparation is somehow contrary to making "smart, bold decisions."

I'm guessing any decently experienced player has found ways around the physical damage types of FE at some point of play. Compensating for such inequities can lead to interesting alternative tactical approaches, or phrased differently necessitate "smart, bold decisions." (I'm guessing many just burned them with fire... Literally. Fireball is pretty awesome.)

The playing field being fundamentally unequal on engagement is a natural consequence of general logistics in warfare. Damage types are really a pretty small part of the big picture in "predetermination."

I'll miss damage types. It opened the possibility of overly specializing against one enemy army to find yourself at a disadvantage against a differing faction. Some of the roaming monsters (such as Golems, or Stormworld's "Kami") also made this interesting.

My problem is, you couldn't really specialize against a certain damage type, because there were no proper armours for the job...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I take it you are referring to elemental (crystal costs) + pierce damage? The chain (slash) and plate (blunt) is pretty straightforward, though illogical(plate).

I never really saw this as an overly debilitating issue due to the many alternative damage types. All it really meant is that one damage source out of 7 wasn't optimal. It certainly helps that spears are awesome, bypass armor, and have pierce damage.

In reflection, I would find it funny/odd/depressing if one of the motivators for removing damage types was simply making spears less prominent. Spear troops were my B&B, and due to armor penetration spear troops were the most significant threat to my Path of Defender Champions/Sovereigns and general armored troops.

It also didn't bother me as frankly, swords are IRL joke weapons when used against such things as Plate Armor.

What? no...

I am referring to the amount of tech needed for plate armour for one, and plate armour is still as good vs cutting than chain armour is, so there is little point in using chain amours.

and besides that, my games rarely get to the "platemail" part of the game, I focus too much on the wars.

I think that there should be added more armours so at the technology level of leather you could specialize some of your defense points against blunt/cutting  or piercing (it pains me there is no counters against piercing), and similar, there should be better armours at the level of chainmail, which would counter each type of damage type.

Instead of adding the choice of damage types though, we see the choice being taken away.

I always have too much metal anyhoo, guess its my metal luck, never enough crystal, always too much metal, so I always go all out plate for the sake of it, when I reach that part of lategame when platearmour is available... Usually after I have been in several wars.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

That's true. Even in formats that are intentionally designed to go on long, I found that I had (essentially) won long before 3rd tier armor was even unlocked.

Lack of pierce damage resistance doesn't really bother me... With the exception of monsters like Golems that is. In Mount and Blade for example Blunt + Pierce damage are purely superior to Slash damage, however they compensate it by giving them less absolute damage. This makes slash superior against weakly armored troops and blunt/pierce more effective against heavily armored troops. (As it should be).

I don't really think of Plate as a 3rd tier armor as I had always taken the "Light Plate" trait and paired it with "Master Chain." This was primarily motivated by the fact that Plate offers more mobility than chain mail. Plate is also much easier to make too. This should make sense if you really look at what they are: Interlocked metal slabs versus hundreds of linked rings.

While it makes perfect sense for plate to be higher on the tech tree, the weight difference bugged me enough to take both armor traits anyways. On reflection this was almost purely a nerf, as Slash damage is much more prominent than Blunt damage. Hammer style weapons had such severe initiative penalties that I found their troops to be a bit of a joke when I stacked Slow and hasted my troops to exacerbate the speed difference.

Well for me it's like saying "any" weapon could kill a vampire or a werewolf now whereas the old way you would have needed a "piercing wooded" weapon for vampires and a "silver piercing or slashing" to kill a werewolf. These are just basic examples. But, different damage type would have more or less quality based on armor hit as well as creature types. Now with dumbing down you just pick your weapon of choice some area axe that hits 3 targets at once or some other silly crap sword or spear. That's dumbing it down in the worst way. Whatever happened to havinging to THINK about your army makeup and reinforcing it with things you might need later on? Too many casual nintendo game genie types playing games these days wanting the "easy" and less "complex" games anymore. THey'd rather play a candyland game than something that actually makes them use their brains.