I've been watching Dragon Commander gameplay videos and trailers and interviews the last couple days--it looks amazing BTW--but I was wondering if anyone knew a little more about the Dragon gameplay.
First off, a lot of people interested in the game have expressed concern over the Dragon itself being overpowering, sabotaging the RTS elements of the game. That might have some truth to it, but personally I'm not too worried about it; I'm one of the very few people who purchased Sacrifice back in the day and that featured an overpowered, player-controlled "commander" unit in an RTS setting and that game was amazing. (Strangely enough, when I first saw Dragon Commander gameplay I was immediately reminded of Sacrifice, yet whenever someone at Larian mentions the games that inspired DC it never comes up!)
Anyway, my worries come not with the power of the Dragon unit but with the player's ability to enter/exit Dragon form at will. It's a mechanic I can envision some players exploiting by simply switching into "RTS mode" when on the verge of death and "teleporting" back to safety. Has anyone heard of any counter-mechanic that prevents this?
Furthermore, the consequences for dying as a Dragon don't seem bad enough. From what I've heard you have to either wait for a cooldown or spend "Population Points" for a quicker respawn. But since every player draws from the same pool of Population Points, this punishes all the players. Considering how game-changing the Dragon is supposed to be, I'd imagine the punishments for losing that unit should be equally game-changing, like losing a Queen in a Chess game. Are there other consequences I'm not aware of, or am I just getting something wrong?
It's very likely the player who's constantly dying as a dragon or exploiting some mechanic is also the worst player in any given game, so maybe these won't be much of a problem but they just seem like things that have the potential to ruin the experience, or is it just me?
P.S. I'm not the only one here who still plays Sacrifice am I?
