Comments - JoeTheBartender

That's understandable. The release of 0.9 was what I would refer to as 'sloppy', which may be a somewhat charitable description in some respects.

There are some things in it which I wish was done better. There's some parts of it which weren't remotely finished or ready for release at the time. There are also some parts of it which were mistakes or oversights as well. I would have loved for people to have received what was envisioned of 0.9, but unfortunately what was released wasn't representative of that vision. I feel it's a good base to start with, though there's a lot of work that needs to be done to bring it up to that vision.

The complexity of the thing has, I think, gone off the rails with regards to the quantity of everything in the game, and we just don't have the manpower to keep up. We without doubt overstretched in many areas, despite the amount of time we've been working on it. That, I think, is what's especially frustrating to me - to have worked on it for 3 years to see it have such a sloppy release. I hope that gives some context to my response.

There are some things which I agree with you on and some things I don't. I prefer the way army limit is done now, with the capacity for smaller base sizes. It doesn't have the issue of the infinitely-cycling unit production via barracks-spamming which we think presented issues regarding players' ability to make comebacks too easily, and made it too difficult to achieve high army limits whilst also overemphasising it as a win con. There is an option to use the old army limit in one of the skirmish option windows.

I see item durability, as it is implemented now, as more of a detriment to 90% of the game than a benefit. It's cool to switch and manage items in a campaign run which is designed for it, but for the entire rest of the game, it's a meaningless, extra chore. It's also extra work which we didn't/don't need. Similar with keep research in the campaign. It's awkward and unnecessary for a load of chapters and campaigns. I like the concept of the retinue missions, though they could use some more focus.

With regards to the way that resources currently work, we are looking into this and plan on making some revisions. As we have a lot of other things to look into, this may come in a later patch.

The new AI is much harder than the old one because it's much more sophisticated (it doesn't cheat on difficulties lower than Emperor too). Because of this, it does break certain missions. Campaigns and chapters could use some attention regarding this issue. Offending maps could have certain sides lowered in difficulty or if there is no alternative, they could be removed. The campaign/chapter maps could also use some calibration so that they incorporate all the new map features like cover, negative cover, terrain height (not new exactly, but it now has a big impact and certain races require it), army limit settings and more.

It's going to be a lot of work, which I hope is achievable. We may have to make some difficult decisions, we'll see, but at the end of the day it's important that we end up with something which people are happy with.

Have you updated and rebooted windows?

Have you tried running it as an admin? You may have to reset the campaign from the menu. If that doesn't work, try deleting any pre-existing campaign save files. Those can be found in My Documents/The Protectors/Saved Games.

Generally, we've changed that spell into Silence, which applies an affliction of same name which prevents the use of spells/abilities for a duration, which makes wizards much more playable vs units with that spell.

What do you need help with specifically?

Thanks for the kind words! We hope 0.9 lives up to your expectations :)

Thank you for the interest! We are planning to make a few more factions. I can't say when they'll arrive, could be 0.9.1, could be 0.9.2 etc, but they'll definitely be here.

There's currently no way of playing the WBC3 campaign without keep research levels. We are planning to disable the keep research feature for most of the chapters and campaigns, including the WBC1 Tears of Dawn, WBC3 Fifth Horseman and CW Magees' Conquest campaigns. In 0.9, you'll no longer need to research keep tech tiers for these chapters and campaigns, and for those you do, the game now has a helpful reminder to inform people about the feature and how to use it.

Thanks for the report! Most of these bugs have been fixed in the next version. The lair upkeep is intentional. However, we will probably change this in the next patch, and we'll do our best to fix all of these bugs.

The next patch should fix most of these problems. The difficulty ratings have been adjusted, though I'm unsure if we'll be looking thoroughly into the main TPC campaign this patch. We're focussed more on an interactive WBC2 conquest campaign, complete with RPG-like events and plenty of different things to find. We will certainly get to the main TPC campaign sometime in the future when we have a firm footing, which is what 0.9 is intended to provide.

Repair types have all been replaced with a single repair type - you either repair a building or you don't, there's no longer any fast repair or slow repair. Repairs are also much easier to activate and deactivate across all of your buildings. This also makes it so that all races/factions have access to repairs in an equal fashion. Most racial uniqueness comes down to special researches, mechanics, abilities and economies.

We've also adjusted how lairs work, making them so that they spawn guards more often than not, so there are fewer neutrals rampaging around the map than there used to be. This also makes lair locations potentially dangerous to explore, and all the more rewarding when they've been defeated.

We are going to introduce some new units or buildings for factions, I wouldn't expect too many. I think they will only be introduced if it fits them and only if these new productions have unique properties.

As always, thanks for the feedback and the support! We appreciate it and hope that 0.9 lives up to your expectations :)

We hope so but it's unlikely.

Both bugs have been fixed in the next patch (releases sometime next year). Thank you for the report!

Sure

Thanks for the kind words! Lore and the role-playing side of the game is something we intend to focus on in coming versions. We're trying to incorporate all of the series' canon into TPC, and make good use of it for multi-choice dialogue too.

There's credits on the TPC website?

It still has a way to go yet, could be late summer, December or even 2023 (I'm placing bets somewhere around the latter).

There will be less of a problem in 0.9 since it won't matter as much (unit types take precedence over damage types).

The Pantheon Temple is the 'base' alignment Temple. After capturing a Pantheon Temple, the player can change it into a Celestial, Primeval or Infernal Temple depending on their hero's alignment - Celestial if good, Primeval if neutral and Infernal if evil. If a neutral or evil hero manages to convert a Celestial Temple, they will be unable to produce anything from it and must change it to the Temple of same alignment before they can make use of it (same for the Primeval and Infernal Temples). All three of the alignment Temples produce units, similar to vanilla.

Zeto will be happy to know!

I've never tested whether it can play on USB or not. Someone else may know more and may be able to help with that.

Instead of levelling each spell individually, heroes now have a global 'spell proficiency' which increases the level of all of their spells. There isn't any spellcasting chance anymore, so Ritual and Intelligence now determine the level of a hero's spells. Items like the above give access to a spell if it says +1. If it says +2 or +3 etc, then the spell will be cast at the hero's spellcasting level +0, +1 or +2 respectively. It's a bit confusing. It could be clearer if it said spell level +0 (or just that it gives access to the Stoneskin spell, either way).

It could be that those buttons are located somewhere else on the screen. Try moving the cursor around a bit. If that fails, you can manually adjust the resolution in the .hjson in the documents / the protectors / settings folder.

It's not possible yet, but support for non-English characters is planned.

You can get it from Pat if you sign an NDA.

I'd recommend ditching Hamachi. Instead, give TCP/IP a go via port forwarding. For information on port forwarding, check number 7 on this post: The-protectors.forumotion.com (there's also a guide on our Discord channel too).

I would recommend joining the Discord channel and taking a look at the FAQ. If in doubt, ask Mulletman.

There are language channels in Discord, but TPC is (currently) English only.

The main campaign isn't finished yet.

There are no summon timers in TPC.

I don't think you can get this running on a MacBook unless you can get a Windows emulator to work. Wine is a good shot if you're confident about the power of your machine.