Might & Magic X - The Outer World

Couchpotato

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Might & Magic X has a new post on it's open development website showing us the outer world.

Would you like to know how travelling, quests, items and NPCs work together in MMX? Then today’s post is for you!

Quest Types

There are different types of quests, which have different priorities and are sorted by priority in your quest log:

● main quest (always on top position of lists)
○ completing steps of this quest line advances the story
● promotion quest
○ complete such quests to be promoted to an advanced class
● grand master quest
○ complete such quests to be allowed to unlock the grand master tier of a skill
● side quest
○ general quests of all kinds
● ongoing quest
○ long term quests spanning the whole story and world

Item enchantments

Except for consumable items, all items can have up to two enchantments. Different item classes and types have different pools of possible enchantments. Enchantments are indicated in the item name by a prefix (e.g. Fire Dagger) or/and a suffix (e.g. Dagger of Might).

Prefixes relate to one of the magic schools and their effects. They can for example add elemental damage, or increase protection against the corresponding school. Suffixes on the other hand are more versatile, they can consist of any combination of several conditions, a chance and an effect.

Relics

In contrast to the ordinary generic items, relics are unique. They are assigned to a certain class, type and subtype, they can have more than two enchantments, and they can level up, which also has an impact on their attributes. While equipped, relics receive the same amount of XP their wielders are receiving.
More information.
 
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Looking forward to this game. I love all the little details they are including. 95% of what I read about this game I really like. The other 5% I'm either agnostic or 'meh' about it. Nothing I've read about the game yet have I thought "wow that really stinks." Still cautiously optimistic but it all is looking very good.

Not gonna participate in the early look at the game. Don't want to spoil it.
 
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I was going to go the early access route, but I've been rethinking that because of my starting over propensity. If I burn through the first 25% of the game 10 times, would I be motivated to ever play all the way through? I may hold off till the end also. I believe we have a couple early adopters to give us insight.
 
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Can any early adopter please convince me to buy it? I said I would never bite again on paid beta--then I Pre-ordered x-com Bureau-- and dam I regret it..
Please make my decision for me! Lol
 
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I wouldn't want to convince anyone to buy early access. Not because there is problem with the product, but because it is incomplete and everyone has different expectations. I can say that it has given me confidence in the future released product based on its current state.
 
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I have played to just before leaving Sorpigal for the first time and it has been great so far and I have had only 2 issues with one being that one of the people you can hire didn't have the dialog option to actually hire and also the amount of time that goes by when you move is way too much and days go by too fast because of it. The only other issue I had was a codec issue that I fixed by changing the settings in K-Lite codec pack.

This is really just like the older might and magic games so far except without the sci-fi elements. The graphics look really good and the spiders are very detailed and also the animations are good. I might play a little farther but I don't really want to replay too much when it gets released so I will stop after checking outside of town.
 
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Finally got to play a little MMX myself. I played the first quest through, explored Sorpigal thoroughly and did a bit of the second quest outside of Sorpigal, all in all playing for about 2-3 hours or so. Based on that (albeit short) experience, I can say that MMX is shaping up to be quite a good and fun old school CRPG. Sure, the game's a bit rough around the edges now, but it's early beta (of sorts) so it's understandable. Despite that, I didn't experience many bugs — in fact it was surprisingly stable. I had a few freeze ups (both during area transition loading screens) and two outright bugs (both during combat, in the same place, the game "forgot" to advance a turn and left me perpetually waiting for the next turn). But that's all. Impressive for an early release version, IMO. (Hey, Crafty! This is how early releases are done. Not like you did with the actual release of your game. You know, just saying. Not that I'm sore about it or anything… who am I kidding, of course I'm sore about it. In fact, I'm fuming mad, but enough about that.)

Well, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the game is very unoptimized as of now. It is a resource hog, there's no way around it, and I've read it runs like a drunken pig on older machines. However, both optimization and bug-stomping are what polishing is about and I'm confident the devs will manage to do a lot of both in the 4 months they have now before release. I don't see this as a problem to worry about, to be honest.

More problematic are a few game design issues, that I don't consider very good. First and foremost is the enemy movement phase, which takes too long as of now. It needs to be sped up. Well, more to the point, the enemy movement animations need to be sped up. Ideally they ought to have a slider for players to adjust the animation/movement speed of enemies to their liking. This problem manifests once you leave Sorpigal and encounter several groups of enemies in the same near-by area. The time it takes to cycle through all the enemies moving in combat is tediously long. Worst offenders are the spiders (which weren't as bad in the first dungeon), but they take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to move around obstacles and the turning in place animation, in particular, is slow as molasses (when you're waiting for your turn, that is).

Conversely, the day-night cycle is waaay too fast. It seems you can't take but a few steps and the day's over. As your characters get tired once they've been up for 20 game hours (IIRC) and need to rest, the fast day cycle is seriously detrimental to fluid gameplay. I don't mind the required rest, but if it needs to be done every 10 minutes of playing, it gets annoying.

I would prefer if there would be ways to regain mana other than potions and rest, like a slow regen, but I can live with the current system if mana potions will be easily available from vendors (currently they aren't). A few mana potions as loot wouldn't hurt either, as long as it doesn't get out of hand.

There are many small nitpicks and a few bigger annoyances, but it's not worth the effort to go into detail with them as they will most probably be ironed out or fine-tuned to be non-issues during the next 4 months of polishing. All in all, MMX is looking very good and is very much on the right track, making me more than cautiously hopeful that the final product will be a great CRPG experience and a return to form from the venerable Might and Magic series.
 
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@Lurking Grue

I agree with your points

  • Day/night cycle to fast
  • enemy moves too slow

I would add some (minor) things:

  • party > 4 would be nice
  • better (sharper) /greater fonts
  • finding food would be nice (loot or in the nature)
  • the NPCs need a bit more text to get a personality
  • it would be nice to see what items each party member can use at the shop
 
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I would add some (minor) things:
  • party > 4 would be nice
  • better (sharper) /greater fonts
  • finding food would be nice (loot or in the nature)
  • the NPCs need a bit more text to get a personality
  • it would be nice to see what items each party member can use at the shop
Yeah, a party of 6 would be great, but I don't believe it's going to happen. Not this late in development. Maybe they could have the recruitable NPCs be more interactive and make them more active parts of the party. I wouldn't hold my breath for that, though. I guess all we can hope, is to get the recruitable NPCs to show a bit more personality and be more active at least in conversation, if nothing else. I truly hope, like you, that they breathe more life into the NPCs, as they're pretty lifeless and underwhelming now.

I didn't have any problems with the font, but a bigger one wouldn't hurt.

Yes, it really would be nice to see what items each party member can use AND in addition to see what they have equipped at the shop screen. I'm pretty sure this will be addressed, however.

Finding food would indeed be nice and we ought to be able to buy more than 6 rations at one go (and have them cost x per ration pack, not x for a refill be that 1 or 6 rations as it is now, IIRC).
 
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Yes, it really would be nice to see what items each party member can use AND in addition to see what they have equipped at the shop screen. I'm pretty sure this will be addressed, however.

On this subject, as I recently played M&M6 and currently playing M&M8 - when it comes to buying spells it would be a fantastic time saver if there would be some kind of message while hovering your pointer over a spell book you are considering purchasing that would tell you if that character already has the spell. It's a little thing, but it would be helpful.

I like the buying and selling aspect in games like this, but I don't like having to flip back and forth between screens to see if I already have something or if something I'm thinking about buying is better or worse than what I already have - this should all be quickly doable from the buy/sell screens.
 
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I have one photo in my own Games Com thread. There will be a party of 4 people - at least during the demo.
 
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