Hello AotR developers, i used to play BFME when i was really young and then abbandoned it. I started to play it again like 3 weeks ago with a more critical point of view since i grew up and in theese 3 weeks i thought a lot about what needs to be done in order to improve the game to be really at the top. In my opinion this game has the highest potential of any other Real Strategy Games out there and you guys did and still doing one of the greatest modding job and i want to thank you because this is one of my favourite game and i would like to help you develop it as much as possible. Unfortunately i’m not a content creator nor an informatic otherwise i would have created my own mod. I’m writing you because i think your work and dedication are the best one to possibly fit my ideas. Without any further delays let’s jump into it:
- I’v been playing every feature of AotR and almost any other major BFME 1, 2 and RotWK mods (campaign, war of the ring, skirmish) and what i found is that there is a lack of FACTIONS UNIQUENESS, let me explain: when i play skirmish or war of the ring i feel like it’s the same pattern strategy and playstyle for every faction. You just start with cheap units and buildings to grow up until you can purchase stronger units and that’s ok but if you take it long it’s boring. Every basic unit has no abilities at all so the only difference between a silvan archer from Woodland realm or a basic archer from Lothlorien is the price and CP nothing else. I feel like the units are too much standardized. There is really no point nor the will to advance a unit to its maximum level without any rewards (abilities). I think every unit and hero must have AT LEAST a starting ability, a mid-tier ability (lets say at lvl 3 for units and 5 for hero) and a max level ability (when i talk about abilities they can be either passive or active). Tier 2 units do have 1 ability and hero units 2 or 3 but in my opinion does not make any real difference between one another. I think you should implement much more abilities and unique skills even for basic units so that each facions has it’s own playstyle and strategy. For exemple we can see from moovies and books that archers from Woodland Realm use short bows in order to fight in the forest against goblins who are much faster and agile than normal orcs or uruk-hai and it makes perfectly sense. We can also confirm that since Legolas is given a longbow by Galadriel when before he leaves Lothlorien. With theese information you could just simply make Woodland basic archers have less range than any other basic archers in the game but much more attack speed due to their skills and short bows. In addition you can have them learn an ability at level 5 that makes them be able to shoot while mooving for a while at a reduced attack speed. The same concept can be applied to any other basic units of each faction. Another exemple could be with Lothlorien: we see that they use longbows and that their are very skilled at distance so you could build this faction’s strenght on archers by having them have much more range and damage than any other archers at a reduced attack speed and maybe having an ability to bleed and slow targets. Same thing with tier 2 and heroic units and also you should give the opportunity to have more than 1 or 2 battalions of heroic units. What’s the point of spending so much money and waiting so long to have just 1 or 2? It is all a matter of implement more and more abilities and skills for each units and heroes in order to jump deep and feel the uniqueness of each factions.
- War of the ring. I think WotR is the biggest idea ever made to play different factions istead of the boring skirmish because i really enjoy the idea of level up units and heroes and bring them with me during all the “campaign”. Since making a single campaign for each faction would be really long, WotR is a perfect compromise but i would like to see the old BFME 1 build system (also for skirmishes and campaigns) beacuse if you are using free building system every game will lasts at least 1 hour (unless you are playing vs paesant or soldier AI of course) and it is really frustrating. Lets say i have 2 free hours to play and i want to play some AotR, i can’t play paesant or soldier AI because they are really easy to deal with while hard and brutal you just take at least 1 hour if you are lucky and if you dont have to restart the game or loose it. So i find myself play just 1 skirmish at the end of my day. This problem could be fixed by bringing back BFME 1 building system.
- In my opinion you should bring the campaign back to its original BFME 1 style. I personally don’t like the fact that you can’t choose the map you want and that you spend 90% of the campaign without the possibility to build anything and you have to go on with just the troops or heroes you start with. I don’t like either the fact that it is way too difficult and boring because the first episodes refers to some parts of the book or moovie that could really be skipped, for exemple when aragorn has to heal frodo stabbed by morgul knife (you spend so much time finding athlas to heal him). The original game was meant to be army vs army with the possibility to win using the strategy you want and in this version of the campaign i don’t see strategy and freedom at all.
With that being said there are really endless ideas that could fit into the game with just some immagination. I know that with theese changes i listed above all the math should change as well to balance the game and it’s a lot of difficult work but i feel like this game could improve so much. I really appreciate your hard dedication and i thank you again for constantly trying to improve the game. I hope my ideas will be taken in consideration.
Thank you
