i agree both, but it would be nice to have more than just 2 races. it doesnt need to be as many as MoM but more than just factions of good vs evil. i would add maybe something usually good like elves and something evil like orcs or trolls (along that line of species)

     glad someone brought this up

5.  Make sure the player is having fun, not the designer/computer.

It doesn't mean that if suddenly most of the players of this forum want the game to be turned into an FPS, Stardock should do as people here (which is just a small part of the people who will play the game) says.

Stardock offers an idea. And while they are nice enough to let us influence it, only them have the right to finally decide how it must be. And it's their duty to make sure that what they offer us is fun for us. So if they say: "You get 6 human factions and 6 fallen factions, all of the mechanically different.", they must make sure that we have fun playing those races they provided us.

8. Make it Epic

This game (or any other) doesn't need more races to be epic. That's nothing but a totally biased an unfair opinion based on the desire to play different races. Master of Orion III must be epic just for having multiple races. Oh, wait, wasn't it a bad game? And surely Civ IV cannot never be epic because it only has humans that play mostly the same.

But here we are again with a topic of: "This game must have A, B, C or it'll suck." (not literally but the spirit is the same).

If you won't get it commercially, how will you get it? Or maybe you really wanted to say that you won't get it at all?

Aaaaaanyway, sometimes I wish Stardock added different races to the game but made them work exactly as the humans. Seriously. The people only cares about there being different races after all, right? The correct answer would be no. Smart people wants factions that play differently. That's what really matters. Oh yeah, if they can get those differences in different envelopments (races) then the better. But different playstyles will beat number of races any day.

And it's quite tiresome how people fool themselves about how if they are no many races (species actually, unless people talks about having arians, asians...) the game cannot be fun, how it cannot be epic, how it's going to suck and how Stardock don't care. Not everything is the frakking Lords of the Rings, a Dungeons and Dragons book or any other book with lots of "races". The Trilogy of Darwath, Paladin, The Ladies of Mandrigyn, The History of the Runestaff, The Time Master Trilogy, Mirage... there many fantasy books that don't depend of multiple races to be good, interesting and/or epic. In fact, although some of those might have some non human elements (like the dark creatures of The Darwath Trilogy) but they are human focused. And the same can be applied to games.

Stardock has a story they want to develop for this game and it emplies humans and fallens. If they really want to make a good job with it, they need to focus on it and not in what some players define as "fun" and "epic". "Spiritual sucesor of MoM" is not the same as "MoM2 in disguise so Atari doesn't sue us.". Let them work in their vision instead of twisting it to match other different vision. Some time ago it was said that non creatures would be available for sandbox but not campaign, so we might no need so much mods for some "traditional" fantasy races. And expansion packs are assured as long as people are not closed minded zealots. Oh, those would be a minority so at least a expansion pack is mostly assured. And if Gal Civ II's expansion packs are an indication, expansions for Elemental will redefine the word "epic".

In an early post/interview Stardock staff mentioned they wanted something that was similar to MoM in some ways; I don't have the exact quote. My purpose was to express a thought others have shared about what made MoM cool.  I think the races helped, and I think there are enough posts on this site to validate that.  MoM was one of the best ever--follow success.

I agree that if there were tangibly different factions with cool magical differences it would serve the same purpose, if they are both believable and fun.  Can they create a human faction that regenerates health like a Troll might? Yes. Would it seem like they were still human? Maybe--but I'd think the artists would want to draw something different than another human type occasionally to add interest (fun). Another example: if a race has a natural affinity for wind/air magic, over time would they maybe develop wings? Maybe--it sure would be cool!  It's a little harder to believe really cool (read unpredictable, which is important for interest/fun) effects with all human factions.

By 'commercially available' I referred to the modding perspective. Some features are in the original game, others are deemed not important enough but allowed via modding.  How do they determine which must be in the original release? I'm just trying to lobby that if enough gamers want races in the original release they will possibly lose some sales and opportunity. Usually you evaluate this in terms of cost. If it costs an extra 1% to add races but maybe sales would rise by 5%, do it, right? 

If the factions are really different and not just different armor and story, I'll be content. If not, and the modding engines allow for enough flexibility to add races, I guess I'll just have to learn how to mod. Or maybe not.

Oh, and by the way, I never said it would suck without races. I didn't imply that in any way.  I said I want this to be so good that it's considered EPIC and so that all my friends want to BUY it and PLAY it. I think you'll have more sales with races than not. Enough said.

Oops, err, and I like complex; not generic for this particular title.  Rather it didn't launch as soon as I wish(yesterdayX10)but fully great in form and play.(even almost bug free, well )

Sure. You fund Stardock now, right? All the extra art assests so different from each other that doesn't allow reutilization, the coding to differenticate all of them properly, all the whole testing to try to balance minimally all of them, release date pushed back (this one isn't necessarily bad)...

Yeah. Epic.

Yeah same here, but imho modding in new races won't be easy...just don't forget...those new races must have new 3D models. Not only that, but those models must have animations as well. [Death, swinging with a weapon etc. etc.] Oh and let's don't forget about armors and weapons. The existing armor "models" for example won't work with the new creature models.

I agree for the most part with the original poster, but I too would be satisfied if the Human and Fallen factions were both mechanically, and asthetically, very different.  If all we end up seeing is a set of monarchies with "you get +5 to your food and you get +5 to your weapons" I'll be very disappointed.  I love stardock, but I didn't get much of the right feel when it came to Galactic Civilizations--- until the last expansion, which did it quite brilliantly. 

I'd like the races not only to have differences in their productivity, but also their lifestyle: some rely on large cities, others perhaps on large seafaring "flotilla colonies" or desert "sledges."  Some civilizations might have tight knit city states where the sovereign and nobles are directly involved in public life, and others composed of detached, enigmatic wizards who live holed up in their towers, pulling strings from behind the scenes.  I want to see this flavor translate into real gameplay features. 

I agree with the original post. The reasons for why a lot of people would prefer several races have been spelled out elsewhere on the forum already (e.g. unique abilities like flying, playing more D&D-like campaigns, i.a.  ...).

To my knowledge SD has not yet really given any one reason why it's all human based. Without any inside info, I would guess it could be linked to the graphics in the battle screen: much more difficult to include a wide variety of races ... How do you do with cavalry, equipment etc when races look completely different ... So, in that case it would just be a developer challenge holdingback a very basic part of the game (too bad in that case, I'm sure the brilliant team could solve the race issue on the graphics). But by now I guess it's also a problem of the background material and story (most of it already written I guess, including only humans and fallen ...) But also here it would be possible to widen the scope if SD really wanted.

Like indicated in the post, if we want Elemental to be successful (really successful) it shouldn't be made to please just this Forum audience, which is hardly populated only by the average players. Best would be if the fans (on the Forum) would be happy, while the game is still reaching out to a wide audience of other gamers too (less interested). Including a lot of options, like several races, seems to be a very good step in that direction. The average player won't spend weeks on modding.

If we end up with only humans anyway, I think the game could still be really good but would then plead for maximum variety among the factions, maximum flexibility, lot of optional stuff etc, to let you, as far as possible, pretend that you can actually play different races. The factions will be key for this!

Let's do not forget about the races in AoW 2. - SM. That game was awesome because of the very different races/units -> tactics & strategies + the amazing tactical combat.

I don't expect race design in Elemental to be like creature design in Spore (which was actually good) but it would be nice to have some way to alter already existing models: take the ears of the human model and make them pointy, make themodel more slim and you have your elves; then change skin colour to #333333 and hair colour to #fafafa and you get drows. But as mentioned before, even if we were to have be able to do things like that, what happens with armours? Would those race design screens include options to check the armours in the models? And shape change them to fit the new models? So if I create a dwarf with their "usual beer belly", I need to change the armours they are suppose to use to prevent clipping an dall that (not even sure of the Havoc effects on it).

So... would be possible to get a sneak peek (in worst case scenario) of what are the plans on that part of the game? Some rough sketches as "screens" are more than enough.

Thank you for the update BoogieBac.  By the way most fantasy books including George R. R. Martins have "fantastical" creatures in them.  The Corum series was just 1 in a group of books that were Michael Moorcock's "Eternal Champion" series and guess what?  They too had fantasy creatures.  And since were talking fantasy books I better not forget to mention J. R. R. Tolkiens books(probably the best fantasy literature ever written with the possible exceptions being the Illiad or Odyssey or some other civilizations seminal writings) and they all had fantasy creatures in them.  So I am happy to hear that we can create our own creatures at start of game or as a mod tool.  It also great that we will have statistical controls as well.  As most in this forum have pointed out the exceptional strategy elements by have different races(flying creature civ's, water based creature civ's) besides just the factional differences(humans).