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Misty Mountains Speculations and Questions

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TheDarkOne:

--- Zitat von: Garlodur am  4. Okt 2016, 18:51 ---I have this complete concept in mind of how Smaug should have his position in the Misty Mountains, but it's quite extensive. Anyway I want share my thoughts on his levelling process.

In order to not have Smaug as a terrifically strong hero at the very start of the game, I wanted to suggest a unique levelling system: as the Goblins have to gain acces to three different realms before their full power is unleashed I thought it would be interesting to link Smaug's levels to the complete upgrading of those bases, i.e. by fully upgrading recruitment and resource buildings. In this concept I have found some interesting mechanics for this. The fourth building that completes Smaug's levelling process would be something that has to do with the special outpost for dragons/drakes.


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 He won't be available from the very beginning cause he will definetely cost a high amount of resources. The faction won't be able to summon him due to the need to gather resources and goblins will quickly spend them on structures and units, so his levelling system can remain basic. However I like your idea of linking him somehow to the dragon or drake lair on an outpost. But to a certain degree - Preventing Smaug from levelling up is a strange idea. He is not essential to the MM, being just a Dragon who may fight for an immense amount of treassure.

Garlodur:
Thank you for your response, TheDarkOne.

In the first place, I want to clear up what I meant with the levelling system linked to upgraded buildings. This is meant to make Smaug a much less useful hero at the beginning of the game because the Misty Mountains camps won't be upgraded fully yet. This means Smaug can be recruited for the maximum amount of resources (3000) from the very start, but without investing in Goblin buildings that increase the treasure hoard Smaug would more eagerly appropriate, Smaug is barely efficient for his price. This links the personality of a dragon to the necessity of a big hoard of gold which it can defend.

In the second place, I don't think the One Ring would suit Smaug as a treasure in itself. It's quite difficult to draw a line between what Tolkien and Peter Jackson have portrayed in their versions of The Hobbit. I want to give the example of the Arkenstone. In the film this artifact is the principal reason of Thorin's dragon sickness and consequent downfall as King under the Mountain. Nevertheless being the greatest treasure in the whole mountain, Smaug sees it nothing especially worthwhile. In fact he would like to give it to Thorin to see it consume him. His stance towards this treasure is understandable because it only signifies the position of an heir of Dúrin to rule the rest of the Dwarven realms; to a dragon, this means nothing. It is arguable whether Tolkien ever wanted to put so much emphasis in a dramatic interpretation of The Hobbit, however I do think it is a valuable extrapolation of the lore.

This supports my argument that the One Ring in itself would not be considered a treasure more significant than a golden coin in Smaug's eyes. Of course it would influence his potential greed and wrath towards any who would steal from him, but it won't stop Smaug from desiring to accumulate more wealth. I therefore feel that offering the Oner Ring to Smaug would not be enough to keep him on the battlefield, were such a temporary summon system be employed.

I hope this furthers the discussion, as is always necessary with such great topics.

UdunPlayer:
I hope smaug get a model based in the movie design, but with dragon body (4 legs, 2 wings) instead of wyvern body (2 legs, 2 wings). I posted a comment on moddb saying that it would be cool if the edain team could use the DunedainRanger's smaug, asking of course permision. Here some pics:






I know Edain team make their own models, but I really would not like to see the old 3.8.1 smaug model. Instead, something like dunedain's model would fit the mod's philosphy of taking the best from both movies and the book. The old 3.8.1 Smaug just doesn't fit in the newest versions of the mod anymore in my opinion.

By the way, thanks to DieWalküre. He suggested me this thread in my moddb comment.  :D

Walküre:

--- Zitat von: UdunPlayer am  8. Okt 2016, 18:16 ---By the way, thanks to DieWalküre. He suggested me this thread in my moddb comment.  :D

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Many thanks to you, on the other hand, for bringing the topic here to open discussion. And welcome to Modding Union as well! In light of the recent happenings taking place on ModDB, it has certainly been a wise choice to have moved here and the Edain Community will thus be granted the chance to debate in a more proper place  :)

Well, where to begin, I personally already stated in this thread my wish for a new model of Smaug, alongside other graphical and conceptual overhauls aimed to stick even more loyally to the whole Hobbit motive we all appreciate (I hope) very much; other great changes have already seen light during this and last year, and they were exactly meant to provide the Edain Mod with more unique and Hobbit-ish additions. Just to mention two significant ones among them: the new Iron Hills models and Thranduil's silver armour. Therefore, as the current known official news concerning the Misty Mountains came out almost three years ago, I believe there will logically be needed improvements to make before the final release and Smaug ought to be (in my opinion) included too.

The Misty Mountains shall be the last chapter of the Edain 4.0 plan. A grandiose plan that has most importantly transposed everything into the initial BFME1 mechanics and permitted great concepts from the Hobbit to find their place in the game too, on the footsteps of the end of PJ's six-film saga which exactly dealt with Middle-earth. Given that this faction will be the most Hobbit-based one of the Mod, who, if not Smaug, deserves to be the greatest possible as all the other splendid concepts from the Hobbit trilogy? The 'leader' (a particular type of leader, as we convened in the previous passages of this discussion) of the Misty Mountains is in fact one of the most prominent characters of the trilogy and the valuable motive of those films consequently underlies him all.

Regarding the model itself, as you wrote it, it's simply a very clever compromise between the cinematographic rendition of Smaug and Tolkien's four-leg concept; the latter was also the concept which WETA initially came up with, before opting for a wyvern-fashioned design. This feature (four legs) thus resolves the lore issue at the root of the matters and avoids the need of a new animation, something that would result in a very daunting task to achieve. So, yes, I'm fully for a new model of Smaug characterised by graphics more accurate towards what we watched on the big screen (his malicious face, his smile, his eyes, his smile,...). With all the due respect for the current one, a new model (entirely made, hopefully, by the Edain Team) would eventually do the right justice to the Edain 4.0 era.

That said, I once again make clear that this kind of proposals is not really common to manage, for it's easy to conceive ideas in theory but not so in practice (even if animations are not involved). Furthermore, we always have to consider that there are people with the legitimate opinion that graphical aspects should not have a so major role in the game and should thus remain secondary compared to other ones. Nevertheless, what expressed above is my pure view of things and I really hope it will finally get real someday, regardless of the time it would take. There are other magnificent suggestions in this forum whose main intention is exactly exploring deeply the valuable sides of the Hobbit trilogy, in line with the premises I illustrated above; this one is totally one of them  ;)

P.S. I edited your comment to make the images easier to handle.

TheDarkOne:

--- Zitat von: Garlodur am  8. Okt 2016, 15:12 ---Thank you for your response, TheDarkOne.

This supports my argument that the One Ring in itself would not be considered a treasure more significant than a golden coin in Smaug's eyes. Of course it would influence his potential greed and wrath towards any who would steal from him, but it won't stop Smaug from desiring to accumulate more wealth. I therefore feel that offering the Oner Ring to Smaug would not be enough to keep him on the battlefield, were such a temporary summon system be employed.

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Now I get your point and I have to agree with it. The Ring wont be anything but a shining golden coin. However he still is considered as an upcoming ring hero for MM, so  we have no choice but to watch as everything develops by ET. They may create something fitting. I am almost sure of it.

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