Idea's to shoot around for a potential "Majesty 3" game if possible.

[Demon Slayer]

I have a few idea's I'd love to share about what a Majesty 3 might have in it to make it great. And I hope you all do too.

[peterdekraker]

Trying to find my way around steam. For Majesty as is, I would like to be able to import heroes from other provinces for extreme difficulty quests. Raise a high level hero of choice with Bell Book and Candle or all shards of Brashnard's sphere. Or the original dragon slayer sword that could be brought to another blacksmith. Or to bring to multiplayer battles. Majesty 2 has some features similar to things I hoped for but not sure yet how much I like it.
I see a few guides. Have you seen one that lists all potential starting stats and levels of weapons available. What spells and units are most effective against what monsters? Is there a place where best games are posted?

[Peach Jelly]

My ideas:

-- I liked that Maj2 introduced the necessity of researching class abilities. More variety with that would be cool.

-- Eliminate the placement constraints for certain types of buildings (like how in Maj2, you could only put temples and trade posts on specific nodes.) I disliked that mechanic because it made the maps less customizable.

-- Better wave balancing. In Maj1, it was pretty alright for the most part, but in Maj2, I felt like I was CONSTANTLY fending off endless streams of mobs all the time in certain maps, which was incredibly tedious.

-- Researchable peasant upgrades? Those poor guys could use a little love to make them more utilitarian.

-- More granular control over what classes are allowed to access the Fairgounds and which are not. Like maybe I want most of my melee heroes to go train, but I don't want my gnomes wasting their time in there when they should be out repairing instead.

-- Maybe more resource management mechanics like they do in other city-builder games? For example. maybe you'd have to build a mining outpost before you could build a blacksmith, and the blacksmith's output would be limited by how much ore is being mined.
Or before building a Magic Bazaar, you first need an herb-gathering hut. And the map's resources would predetermine what kind of gear or potions you could provide to your heroes.

I could probably come up with a bunch more, but that's good enough for now. xD

[Reality]

I think Majesty is strongest in its godsim roots so it's a balance of how much simplication of its neccesary secondary RTS/CItybuilder part to keep without going too far -

I think we all agree that the hero independence "ant farm" thing is the games strong point, but you do have to think of how much of the Real Time / Citybuilder shell is left intact -

I lean toward citybuilder > Realtime (even without unit control) but it still has some consous decisitons - the majesty tech tree is based on owned prequisite buildings directly rather than needing both tech buildings and then spending to research a technology - the game uses a single resource, etc -

I feel like in general, keeping single resource + building prequisite tech tree is the way to go because that part of the game SHOULD be light to put emphasis on the more interesting part of the game.

The danger is that it can't be TOO light - "big economy" almost comes too easily in Majesty as it is, and you don't want people to feel like the game plays itself like (Master of Orion 3)

I also personally would kind of prefer Roller Coaster Tycoon style toolbars and window in a Majesty sequel but that's a bit of a personal tweak - Majesty's UI is functional, but the two "tracking" windows in the bottom left kind of have a mind of their own and will "re-focus" all the time, compared to the fun that I can have just watching a guest / or ride of my choice in a little box that I have full control over. It would also get rid of the "2 step button click" of Palace first, then building/reward flag menu (granted players start to use hotkeys pretty soon anyway).

I feel like the hero system is fine - I do have a preference for playing with heros that have "wanderlust" by default because it's more interesting to watch them decide things for themself (compared to Majesty 2 or an A-life game where the things are TOO good taking care of themselves) but it's hard to put into words how to make heros make both good and bad decisions without doing too many of either --- I am confident a compromise can be reached though.

[Totally Not Gollum]

There are a few things that I would suggest for a potential Majesty 3. For one, I agree with those above me that peasants should be better. I also think that guardhouses should operate like the lowest level of guild, where guards are recruited at cheap, and offer a cheap solution to in town problems, rather than just a prayer that they will help with the rat problems.

Majesty should have a campaign mode. Not just the missions, which many should be kept in concept, just getting a facelift. But there should be a campaign map, bigger than the current huge map, where there is a progression as the map is explored. The goal should be to eliminate all enemies, and should get progressively harder as the map is explored, and inevitably the kingdom gets bigger.

The temple system in Majesty 1 is... fine. But it could be better. Like how outposts and trading posts have ranges of influence, temples and non human races should have the same, where the opposing races and temples should be built outside of the range.

On the topic of temples, there should be more classes that are influenced by the temples, like with Paladins and WoD. For example; Elf Druids which follow Fervus or Agrela, or Dwarves that follow Dauros. Or, alternatively make non human temples with their own type of clerics.

Finally, as a quality of life game improvement, houses should be more controlled by the player. They should have to be placed in order to recruit heroes or guards, rather than just appearing after heroes are recruited.

[Demon Slayer]

For a few of my ideas for a Majesty 3, I'd like to see the ability to play story missions Co-Op, but raise the difficulty, and maybe even add a secondary goal to the Co-Op missions, like once the main goal of the quest is met, a new goal for the players pops up, like "Last Kingdom Stands" or "Earn The Most Gold" that way it goes from teamwork to total domination, and it makes you more aware of what your player 2 is putting down and using for later. And maybe even a Dark Souls esque PVP system, where players can join a game and fight against you with a small mini mob raid or hop on to help you out if you get stuck on a mission, but that might cause issues down the line, not certain yet.

Another thing should be the option to manually take control of a single hero/sim and go around the map in First-Person with them and fight/do things (which could potentially allow for the previous Dark Souls esque mechanic I mentioned).

Other than those for rn, everyone else here basically hit it out of the park with ideas, like damn guys, good ♥♥♥♥. Now I want this to be an actual thing.

[Peach Jelly]

Originally posted by Totally Not Gollum:

The temple system in Majesty 1 is... fine. But it could be better. Like how outposts and trading posts have ranges of influence, temples and non human races should have the same, where the opposing races and temples should be built outside of the range.

I like this one. Maybe have a district-assignment mechanic? Like, you can break your city up into zones or districts and each district can have its own alignment or whatever.

Originally posted by Totally Not Gollum:

On the topic of temples, there should be more classes that are influenced by the temples, like with Paladins and WoD. For example; Elf Druids which follow Fervus or Agrela, or Dwarves that follow Dauros. Or, alternatively make non human temples with their own type of clerics.

I really like this idea too!

Originally posted by Totally Not Gollum:

Majesty should have a campaign mode. Not just the missions, which many should be kept in concept, just getting a facelift. But there should be a campaign map, bigger than the current huge map, where there is a progression as the map is explored. The goal should be to eliminate all enemies, and should get progressively harder as the map is explored, and inevitably the kingdom gets bigger.

I think they did it more like this in Majesty 2.

Originally posted by Totally Not Gollum:

I also think that guardhouses should operate like the lowest level of guild, where guards are recruited at cheap ...

houses should be more controlled by the player. They should have to be placed in order to recruit heroes or guards, rather than just appearing after heroes are recruited.

I'm not super crazy about these. I like that some things in the game are pretty hands-off. I prefer *not* having total granular control over everything that goes on in the kingdom.