uriak wrote:

I see what you mean. I still believe at this stage it's important to incorporate more cooperative factions and maybe be make them kinda relatable. I've tried myself to avoid humanoïds for my Unfallen entry, though that leads to many questions of design when making them interact with others. 

The worst offender may be the whole tech tree. What do endless supermarkets meands for Sowers or Harmony ? Do they even needs those complexe technologies for colonizing arid/Polar planets ? Why would they have a senate ? Internal consistency kinda nudge us toward more relatable folks, though they still can be visually different.

Consider the unfallen, I envsion them with quite different views than ours about mortality (they are long lived, they may have countless seedlings... ) love, personnal hobbies, fears, aspirations etc. We still needs to give them a set of attributes that allows a good usage of the main elements of the game. Otherwise, we'll end up as sophon/Lumeris/humans as the only "vanilla" factions among robots/locust/crystals. 

Why wouldn't they have a senate? It is not uncommon for Sowers to still show individual traits or skills, and some are even living along side other races as individuals. They only share consciousness to coordinate tasks more efficiently and that's when there are sufficient numbers of them.

The Harmony are more tricky, but again, individuals now exist among their kind as well.

If the Cravers can have a political system (although a slightly altered one), then I don't see why that can't be adapted to other factions as well.

As for the tech trees, all factions had lore fluff explaining why they still dabbled in agriculture or terraforming, including the Sowers and Harmony.

Seriously, there is little reason why these ES1 races couldn't be added to the game, they just need a few changes here and there in terms of gameplay, just like the Cravers and Sophons got changed for ES2.

I do see you point of view on internal consistency or relatable visual/lore ques, but the game has too many "vanilla" factions as it is. There is no danger of flooding it with /robots/locusts/crystals when the game is already flooded with humanoids, who by the way I don't really find that relatable anyway.

We only have two completely unknown factions left, and I would like them to at least be more "out there" than what was revealed so far. 

Please be honest with me now uriak: Would you rather have the Squid Aliens or the Amoebas/Harmony/Sowers/Automatons/Anything else if the same amount of time was dedicated to developing them?

I know what my choice would be.

I have to tell you all that I love to come here and bathe in the rivers of Endless lore    

FYI the origins of the Broken Lords, Roving Clans, and Ardent Mages as you have been discussing them are pretty much correct. But as far as the debates on major factions for ES2 go, my lips are sealed and my keyboard unplugged... 

All I can say is that since we now have EL-style faction quests for the major factions, anybody who enjoys lore will hopefully have a blast in ES2.

UndeadPuppy I feel what you are saying. I too would rather have the Sowers (my favorite) or any other faction from ES1 than these 3 eyed aliens. Just because they are a) familiar and b) have a good groundwork to really flesh out with faction quests. That said I don't think they will use these 3 eyed aliens because they look very uninteresting. Also it's face and expression is rather simple... What I want to say is that they did a great job with depicting very different Lumeris with lots of facial individuality and very different body shapes. Just from an art perspective I can't imagine this for these 3 eyed aliens. I mean even the Vodyani with their armor as the only form of differentiation offer more of that. Also Cravers and Sophons have very distinct stlyes for their heroes.

I guess and hope you are reading too much into these artworks. Also Slowhands just expressed the focus on faction quests. I guess they will use at least one more ES1 faction besides the Humans to use their lore and expand on it.

Slowhands wrote:

I have to tell you all that I love to come here and bathe in the rivers of Endless lore    

FYI the origins of the Broken Lords, Roving Clans, and Ardent Mages as you have been discussing them are pretty much correct. But as far as the debates on major factions for ES2 go, my lips are sealed and my keyboard unplugged... 

All I can say is that since we now have EL-style faction quests for the major factions, anybody who enjoys lore will hopefully have a blast in ES2.

*raises eyebrow*

Broken Mage Clans confirmed as faction! You heard it here first folks!

Slowhands wrote:

I have to tell you all that I love to come here and bathe in the rivers of Endless lore    

FYI the origins of the Broken Lords, Roving Clans, and Ardent Mages as you have been discussing them are pretty much correct. But as far as the debates on major factions for ES2 go, my lips are sealed and my keyboard unplugged... 

All I can say is that since we now have EL-style faction quests for the major factions, anybody who enjoys lore will hopefully have a blast in ES2.

Oh come on something really small pleaaaaase c: 

We could mostly think about the general mechanics missing.

So far we have : science oriented. Ultra militaristic + slavery, Religious + pop consumption, Dust and buyout oriented.

WIth the Unfallen we have a faction that uses food for industry, and diplomats.

Human could be UE (industry heavy ? Militaristic traders ? )

We lack probably a influence oriented civ (though the Unfallen mayyyy fill the gap)

There is space for at least another military house (could be UE)

An expansive faction (Horatio/Amoeba)

There is no "cultural" element in the game... could still have space for an explorer faction (vaulters/pilgrim) 

Of crouse there is still the antidust theme of harmony.

uriak wrote:

We could mostly think about the general mechanics missing.

So far we have : science oriented. Ultra militaristic + slavery, Religious + pop consumption, Dust and buyout oriented.

WIth the Unfallen we have a faction that uses food for industry, and diplomats.

Human could be UE (industry heavy ? Militaristic traders ? )

We lack probably a influence oriented civ (though the Unfallen mayyyy fill the gap)

There is space for at least another military house (could be UE)

An expansive faction (Horatio/Amoeba)

There is no "cultural" element in the game... could still have space for an explorer faction (vaulters/pilgrim) 

Of crouse there is still the antidust theme of harmony.

We do know that the two unrevealed factions will be Industrialist and Ecologist. 

I hope Harmony are the last fraction. I want to see an all out war between them and the Vodyani. 

Here is some new gameplay footage played by Slowhand himself.

https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=3Y9ez0BDi7I

Look at the ship art at 07:10 . Doesn't this look very much like Vaulters? Or more like the UE ? The blueish color and the triangles and stripes scream Vaulters! Even if the palyer is up against the Sophons this artwork is used. I guess they use artwork regardless of the factions involved. Same as with EL quests when they often used humans.

Also in this video: The Cravers don't pay for their laws. Zero influence cost due to having a dictatorship. And +50%  on systems. Cravers OP.

MezzoMax wrote:

Here is some new gameplay footage played by Slowhand himself.

https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=3Y9ez0BDi7I

Look at the ship art at 07:10 . Doesn't this look very much like Vaulters? Or more like the UE ? The blueish color and the triangles and stripes scream Vaulters! Even if the palyer is up against the Sophons this artwork is used. I guess they use artwork regardless of the factions involved. Same as with EL quests when they often used humans.

Also in this video: The Cravers don't pay for their laws. Zero influence cost due to having a dictatorship. And +50%  on systems. Cravers OP.

Pretty sure that's just "generic human" art thats be referred to in the past...

Yeah I agree those ships look like just generic ships. They really look more like freighters or something than warships too.

They could also be Minor Faction ships that we haven't seen yet.

Hmm, Sowers as the industrial race?

Vaulters/Mezari as the ecologists?   Remembering the mistakes of Auriga?

Not sure about Sowers as synths there might be that three part robot thing still.

Mokinokaro wrote:

Hmm, Sowers as the industrial race?

Vaulters/Mezari as the ecologists?   Remembering the mistakes of Auriga?

That alignment sounds unlikely; we already had Vaulters as clear turtle scientists in ES1 and AFAIK Auriga isn't really their fault or anything.

Sowers as an Industrial Race it is possible but I'd predict the United Empire taking that spot first.

Honestly if they did the UE as a UNITED Empire of different factions you need to balance delicately it'd be pretty neat.    Vaulters could be the scientist cabal within the greater group.

The UE seems like the most logical choice for the default human faction because of the sheer number of its population and colonies. (lore wise)

Factions like the Pilgrims or Sheredyn are small splinter groups that fit better as Minor Factions.

I'd still say sowers are unlikely as a main faction. They would give us 3/8 factions descending from the Virtual Endless, which feels like a lot. Especially since I don't recall seeing the concrete endless mentioned anywhere outside of the Vodyani splinter faction. 

It's weird because from a gameplay based pov there is a lot of room for the Sowers, they're already morally ambiguous and they can fit either ecologist or industrialist roles, both of which we don't have a major faction for yet. And they're also a faction that could inherit some of the ardent mages unique abilities, which, depending on their popularity, the devs may or may not want to replicate in ES2. But from a purely high level lore pov it still feels kind of crowded putting a second 'proxy of the virtual endless' faction in a pool of 8. (the cravers get a pass because they're a strong independent race who don't need their creators)

Regardless I think the Amoeba are most likely ES1 faction we'll see. So far the Endless 4x games have been 2 for 2 on races that get a map reveal as one of their main perks, I don't see why this one would be any different. That said the Amoeba don't necessarily preclude another ES1 faction from being added as well, especially if the humans are getting a completely reworked "new" faction.