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Ohmigosh- MoLAoS, is that you? I was puzzled by your other post on the Majesty board, given I hadn't seen a fresh commit to the github repo for weeks. Good to know you're still trucking away.
Goodness. I wasn't aware this was being discussed so openly. Uh... I guess the point I'd make for the moment would be that it might be best to go with disruptive innovation.
Rather than lavishing vast expense on production values and marketing hype, start with small prototypes, get early user feedback, and try features out at semi-random until you find a receptive market which you can expand within. You might not make money the first time 'round, or even the second, but you wouldn't lose much, and you would gain useful information for later tries. And if you really hit on the right formula, it might go viral and market itself.
I'd suggest this in particular because Majesty has a couple of features that may fit the description of a disruptive innovation, at least with respect to the RTS market: It gives you conveniently low levels of micro (casual entry) at the expense of a lack of tactical finesse (with repels most of the RTS hardcore crowd.) If you can get a toehold in the casual end of the market, then sustaining innovations in autonomous AI might allow you to combine the best of both worlds, move up the food chain and displace competitors. (I think I started a big thread on this years ago.) Anyways, this is all hypothetical.
...Alternatively, as I've mentioned elsewhere, one could try doing a better version of The Sims Medieval, which isn't the most niche market out there. Wouldn't be hard, though it might be expensive, development and marketing wise.
So, anyway. There are possible methods of addressing (A) and addressing (B), or possibly both, depending on which way you look at it.
...Medieval Mayor is on hold? Frack. I wasn't overly excited about the mechanics (been there, done that) but I was hoping it might lead to greater things. Here's hoping Banished might fill part of the void. The graphics look sweet and the gameplay ideas are fascinating by the sounds of it.
Anyways, I really need to get back to work. But, regardless of the faults or merits of DoA or Maj2, I'm glad that InoCo hit on a winning formula with MotA, which is apparently a quite decent game when taken on it's own merits. But it would be a shame if development in this area permanently overshadowed the possibility of a genuinely Sim-centric spinoff, remake, or successor.
Anyways, I really need to get back to work. But, regardless of the faults or merits of DoA or Maj2, I'm glad that InoCo hit on a winning formula with MotA, which is apparently a quite decent game when taken on it's own merits. But it would be a shame if development in this area permanently overshadowed the possibility of a genuinely Sim-centric spinoff, remake, or successor.
I like the Majesty games, but I think Warlock is significantly more interesting and way more fun. There's just something about playing a fast-paced fantasy war game with great spells, interesting creatures, and a dash of Paradox's wacky humor that turns into a winning combination. I would probably buy a new Majesty game if it came out, but I'd more be doing it to support Paradox than anything else and I wouldn't be nearly as hyped as I am about Warlock 2. I guess what I'm saying is that, if I'm anything at all like a typical gamer, Paradox is right to think that the Warlock series has more potential to find an audience than the Majesty one. Which obviously doesn't mean that a new Majesty game wouldn't succeed, but, as a company that needs to turn a profit to exist, I can understand why Paradox would want to focus on the title with the greater potential.
I think the major problem here is Paradox assuming that either updated graphics are necessary, or that reaching a large audience is necessary, or both. (For my own part, I was 80-90% happy with the original majesty's production values- what I wanted was major gameplay expansion/refinement, and that could be done relatively cheaply.)
Secondly- and I mentioned this before, but I really feel that I have to stress the point: The biggest-selling video game franchise of all time is not Total Annihilation or Civilisation or Europa Universalis but The Sims. To such an extent that they can release a substantially botched medieval fairy-tale spinoff of sorts- why, one might almost say Fantasy Kingdom Sim- and still sell half a million copies plus expansions. (Now sure, a game with those kinds of production values isn't exactly cheap to make or market, but these are not piddling numbers we are talking about.) Crusader Kings II is one of Paradox's strongest-selling titles at the moment, for much the same reasons- because to a large degree it's an elaborate role-playing simulation where semi-autonomous characters follow their own goals and desires.
So basically, I don't agree with this analysis. I think that Paradox have gotten persistently strange ideas in their heads about 'what the Majesty franchise is good for', when it should be reasonably clear by now that there is good money to be made producing bona-fide Sim titles. (Which is not to say that MotA is a bad game, by any stretch- but given the tenuous resemblance to the source material or game mechanics, it could have been set in, say, Oz or Lilliput and probably been equally successful.)
EDIT: ...Speaking of which, I gotta go buy this.
Secondly- and I mentioned this before, but I really feel that I have to stress the point: The biggest-selling video game franchise of all time is not Total Annihilation or Civilisation or Europa Universalis but The Sims. To such an extent that they can release a substantially botched medieval fairy-tale spinoff of sorts- why, one might almost say Fantasy Kingdom Sim- and still sell half a million copies plus expansions. (Now sure, a game with those kinds of production values isn't exactly cheap to make or market, but these are not piddling numbers we are talking about.) Crusader Kings II is one of Paradox's strongest-selling titles at the moment, for much the same reasons- because to a large degree it's an elaborate role-playing simulation where semi-autonomous characters follow their own goals and desires.
So basically, I don't agree with this analysis. I think that Paradox have gotten persistently strange ideas in their heads about 'what the Majesty franchise is good for', when it should be reasonably clear by now that there is good money to be made producing bona-fide Sim titles. (Which is not to say that MotA is a bad game, by any stretch- but given the tenuous resemblance to the source material or game mechanics, it could have been set in, say, Oz or Lilliput and probably been equally successful.)
EDIT: ...Speaking of which, I gotta go buy this.
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I'm not really sure what "proper" sequel means, because I personally like Majesty 2 but haven't played Majesty 1. (Although I've read that Majesty 1 had randomly generated maps, while Majesty 2 does not.)
But if you are looking for a "fantasy kingdom sim" to potential reach a wider audience, my vote is for the sequel to have gameplay elements similar to the Tropico series. Idunno, I just think it would be fun to rule as a morally-questionable king enacting ridiculous edicts in a fantasy realm while trying to keep various factions happy. Or at least content enough not to storm my castle with pitchforks.
Warlock is successful partly because it is accessible to Civ5 players. So who knows, maybe the tropico, or even simcity, audience isn't large enough to justify allocating resources to making another Majesty sequel. Personally, I think it's large enough, but I'm not a game-industry analyst and honestly have no idea the cost/benefit tradeoffs.
Actually, now that I think about it, I'd say the project with the best risk/reward ratio would probably be a turn-based close-quarters squad-tactics game similar to XCOM, but set in the Ardania universe. And just looking at Steam's stats, you can see how popular turn-based close-quarters tactical games can potentially be with XCOM's consistently high player base.
I mean, it would be a fun game where the player has to set up a medieval mercenary-for-hire shop where I get to build up and manage my team of swordsmen, archers, mages, etc, and respond to various threats around the realm, similar to XCOM. (But one distinction is that it would have to be very close-quarters with cover gameplay elements, rather than an open battlefield like with Fantasy Wars. Fantasy Wars was a lot of fun too, but I think that style of gameplay isn't as popular as it used to be.)
Edit: I agree with the above post about the popularity of The Sims and Crusader Kings II. I think the roleplaying elements in a game where you become psychologically invested in all your particular characters is a big part in those games' success.
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Majesty 1 was broadly speaking a better game than Maj2. (Maj1, to be sure, had it's share of flaws, but well, just read down a bit.)
I wouldn't mind something loosely similar to Tropico, though, at least as an expansion of the economic/social/base-building side of things. Juggling the demands of various religious and racial factions would definitely be fun.
Actually, I was thinking that X-Com might not be the worst example to look to, and least on the military/questing/adventuring side of things. While I wouldn't advocate having direct control over your hero-companions, the idea of having a playable-sovereign venturing forth to slay monsters in the company of AI-controlled team-mates has plenty of industry precedent. Set it during the time of King Sydrian, and you might have a nice setting justification for it.
EDIT: As long as the base-building still lets my 10th-level solarus blow all her earnings on ale and whores. And yeah, we could probably steer clear of MOBA territory. The franchise has seen far too much cannon-fodder AI by now.
What kind of game would you like to see, personally, Colombo?
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I like Majesty a lot but at times I wished for more direct control of the heroes. Sometimes getting the high level heroes to do anything was impossible. Yet, giving the player direct control would ruin the charm of the game. I would suggest giving the player direct control of one hero. You could create a skill tree that would allow players to play to the style they liked. If you prefer to go out and adventure, have an appropriate path. Or you could keep your hero in town and focus on the building and economy, have a skill path that reflects and gives bonuses for that. To keep up the autonomous hero side of things, you would have to create a world that had enough going on that one hero, e.g. the player, could not do everything. This would provide the need for these NPC heroes.
I would also like to see more than gold to attract heroes to quests. Magical items, prestige, offers of titles or marriages, and other things included in this list of quest rewards. This would also give you a chance to give the NPC heroes more personality, as different heroes would respond better to different types of rewards. This would also allow a the player options on how to obtain said rewards to give; either through questing on his own or building the appropriate building or even trade routes off map to other cities in the world.
You could also give the player control of the local garrisons, providing a better sense of being able to respond to enemies or events in town. You could limit these units to an area around town and patrol routes around the map. These unit would obviously not be as powerful and be more likely to run when not in the presence of a hero.
The possibilities for a Majesty style game are endless, especially by tweaking the formula to include a little more direct control but not so much as to ruin the charm of autonomous heroes.
I would also like to see more than gold to attract heroes to quests. Magical items, prestige, offers of titles or marriages, and other things included in this list of quest rewards. This would also give you a chance to give the NPC heroes more personality, as different heroes would respond better to different types of rewards. This would also allow a the player options on how to obtain said rewards to give; either through questing on his own or building the appropriate building or even trade routes off map to other cities in the world.
You could also give the player control of the local garrisons, providing a better sense of being able to respond to enemies or events in town. You could limit these units to an area around town and patrol routes around the map. These unit would obviously not be as powerful and be more likely to run when not in the presence of a hero.
The possibilities for a Majesty style game are endless, especially by tweaking the formula to include a little more direct control but not so much as to ruin the charm of autonomous heroes.
Alfryd: Center on player character could bring a lot of players. Just look how attention on heroes helped Warcraft III (and, bleh, Moba). It helps player to better connect to game AND it could add a lot of possibilities, character evolution, classes etc. Such as you could play as Warrior, Mage, Theif... you could then put points in various skills, maybe even substituting techtree with that (Elf friend or even elf as race for player character).
Then, player character would have something like "personality" (not exactly like heroes, but with his class and skills), from Warrior with some spells, to shadowy assasin, honest paladin or necromancer. If all this would influence which heroes would come and how those heroes would behave (when you go for spellsword, common warriors wouldn't be common warriors but would mimic whole mage-oriented swordfighting). The hard but important part would be to influence graphical appeal of all those choices. All out military drill lord town would look differently, than mage-hunter lord's town, so the mage-hunter's heroes (as slight modification of basic warrior class) would look differently than paladins.
Hinterlands tried something like that, but was horribly bland and unfinished. And too diablo-like for my taste.
I think that addition of more-fleshed out main character could add to gameplay no matter what. Question then is, what the rest of the game should look like? I like tightly-packed towns, so I am all for town walls. Something as graphically appealing as Stronghold could have.
What about map? Should the enemies be present on map (just like Age of empires etc., skirmish stronghold) or spawn on borders? (City building games, events in Majesty 1; defense map in stronghold) -- for me, combination. The first one is a must for functional multiplayer and so the player can better interact with its enemies)
How about heroes? How big they should be? Or to be more precise, how the rest of the world (eg. henchmens) be modeled/neglected/abstracted?
As someone on the other thread wrote, in Majesty, the town was in constant war, but not by never ending stream of monsters like in Maj2. Rattmans kings, Goblin warlords and Vampire lords or Dark queen fielded armies and sieged town in Majesty. Sometimes with catapults, sometimes with hordes of goblins, sometimes magically animated trees marched from the woods and attacked town. But, was Town just border village, where heroes fight against monsters that devoured lone merchants in dark woods? Just small villages where every man is unique and death of two villagers is tragedy? Or was it large town or kingdom, that clashed its armies against goblin tribes or rattmens empire? Was the ressurected power in dark wood someting that just awoke and was it geographically specific, someting like in various folktales? Or was it full-fledged dark empire that hungered for power?
I think, that Majesty had combination of both. And I liked more the empire-part. Heroes as mighty players on nation scale, that turned tide of battles, that led soldiers to attack and clashed against enemy leaders to defeat them and to rout that goblin army. So number of henchmens sould increase and heroes should even get to command those. Maybe heroes would come from henchmens that gained enough experience or trained enough (another way where Leader could influence gameplay).
Even higher level of DnD etc. often go this way. At the lower level, players do common things, battle monsters... On the higher levels, they ten to battle armies. On paramount, they battle gods.
So if henchmens would be, apart of gold, important resource, one would wary to lose them by common errors and try to defend them, so he could spend them on attacking... other players or enemy kingdoms. Protect farmers so he could have soldiers to die in battles.
And this could have both type of heroes. Common enemies and auto-generated quest could look like evil witch nearby, old tomb, someone stealing babies or just overbred rats at sewers and troll eating merchants that travel to kingdom.
And on this background, player would fight enemy towns and empires, sending armies commanded by heroes toward enemy town or to attack enemy empire (that is not represented on map).
I would like it so much and imagine that potential in multiplayer (and the storytelling). In the endgame, not just statistics about "you had xxx gold, you have kiled yyy" but "Sir Robin the Brave have fought in great battle against Ratmans kingdom. In glorious fight, he killed ratmen warlord and routed ratmen army." stuff.
But this would not be cheap.
Then, player character would have something like "personality" (not exactly like heroes, but with his class and skills), from Warrior with some spells, to shadowy assasin, honest paladin or necromancer. If all this would influence which heroes would come and how those heroes would behave (when you go for spellsword, common warriors wouldn't be common warriors but would mimic whole mage-oriented swordfighting). The hard but important part would be to influence graphical appeal of all those choices. All out military drill lord town would look differently, than mage-hunter lord's town, so the mage-hunter's heroes (as slight modification of basic warrior class) would look differently than paladins.
Hinterlands tried something like that, but was horribly bland and unfinished. And too diablo-like for my taste.
I think that addition of more-fleshed out main character could add to gameplay no matter what. Question then is, what the rest of the game should look like? I like tightly-packed towns, so I am all for town walls. Something as graphically appealing as Stronghold could have.
What about map? Should the enemies be present on map (just like Age of empires etc., skirmish stronghold) or spawn on borders? (City building games, events in Majesty 1; defense map in stronghold) -- for me, combination. The first one is a must for functional multiplayer and so the player can better interact with its enemies)
How about heroes? How big they should be? Or to be more precise, how the rest of the world (eg. henchmens) be modeled/neglected/abstracted?
As someone on the other thread wrote, in Majesty, the town was in constant war, but not by never ending stream of monsters like in Maj2. Rattmans kings, Goblin warlords and Vampire lords or Dark queen fielded armies and sieged town in Majesty. Sometimes with catapults, sometimes with hordes of goblins, sometimes magically animated trees marched from the woods and attacked town. But, was Town just border village, where heroes fight against monsters that devoured lone merchants in dark woods? Just small villages where every man is unique and death of two villagers is tragedy? Or was it large town or kingdom, that clashed its armies against goblin tribes or rattmens empire? Was the ressurected power in dark wood someting that just awoke and was it geographically specific, someting like in various folktales? Or was it full-fledged dark empire that hungered for power?
I think, that Majesty had combination of both. And I liked more the empire-part. Heroes as mighty players on nation scale, that turned tide of battles, that led soldiers to attack and clashed against enemy leaders to defeat them and to rout that goblin army. So number of henchmens sould increase and heroes should even get to command those. Maybe heroes would come from henchmens that gained enough experience or trained enough (another way where Leader could influence gameplay).
Even higher level of DnD etc. often go this way. At the lower level, players do common things, battle monsters... On the higher levels, they ten to battle armies. On paramount, they battle gods.
So if henchmens would be, apart of gold, important resource, one would wary to lose them by common errors and try to defend them, so he could spend them on attacking... other players or enemy kingdoms. Protect farmers so he could have soldiers to die in battles.
And this could have both type of heroes. Common enemies and auto-generated quest could look like evil witch nearby, old tomb, someone stealing babies or just overbred rats at sewers and troll eating merchants that travel to kingdom.
And on this background, player would fight enemy towns and empires, sending armies commanded by heroes toward enemy town or to attack enemy empire (that is not represented on map).
I would like it so much and imagine that potential in multiplayer (and the storytelling). In the endgame, not just statistics about "you had xxx gold, you have kiled yyy" but "Sir Robin the Brave have fought in great battle against Ratmans kingdom. In glorious fight, he killed ratmen warlord and routed ratmen army." stuff.
But this would not be cheap.
I have read to the end of the Majesty 3 thread and I am beginning to think what the big think and the fantasy-eque picture of advent Paradox calendar (or how to call it) might represent.
I agree with an awful lot of what Kilwar and Colombo are suggesting here, to the extent that I'll probably need to think on it a bit further before getting around to proper responses. But I think it might be useful to break down this topic into a couple of broad headings first.
(1) Marketing concerns/finding an audience/industrial precedent.
(2) Understanding of the game's psychological appeal, and specific design decisions based on that.
(3) Budgeting and scale of development, in terms of technical difficulty and content production.
By way of example, while I certainly like the idea of having a playable sovereign character from a game-mechanical perspective (and there might be a couple of pieces of old cyberlore concept art which suggest this was an idea thrown around), on reflection there's also the risk that focusing on the player-character as the primary feature of gameplay will lead to demands for a first-person perspective in terms of graphics. This could lead to much heavier demands on rendering quality, texture resolution, SFX and the like, and therefore a much larger minimum budget for art/engine licensing.
This isn't to say it couldn't work. But we are talking about a need for innovation here, both in terms of game mechanics and marketing strategy, and in the games industry, 'innovative' and 'expensive to make' don't easily coexist.
This is kind of why I actually don't want Paradox to spend lots of money on developing a Majesty sequel. At least not at first. Because, as others have pointed out, Majesty could stand mechanical improvement in certain respects. Maj2, even more so. And if the latter had been produced on a shoestring budget as an experimental prototype, you could even consider it successful as a source of information on where to go with the franchise. (i.e, not that way, thanks.) I could also mention Cyberlore's abortive Majesty: Legends and Treasure Hunt titles- and the former in particular resonates with a lot of my personal preferences for where the franchise could go- but (through no fault of cyberlore's) neither made it to market, so we don't really know if those would work.
But actually finding out where the franchise should go- that's going to take a certain amount of trial and error to nail down, and you can't afford to do that if every iteration blows 10 million dollars in production costs. So I'd prefer them to keep things cheap at first, and ramp up production values as the formula is refined.
I've mentioned disruptive innovation before, and if you listen to Jonathan Blow talk (with perfect accuracy) about some of the intrinsic conflicts in modern game design, I honestly think that the AI-driven 'procedural narratives' you get out of titles like CK, The Sims and Maj1 could be a viable resolution to that conflict. I also think that Paradox are particularly well-positioned to take advantage of this possibility, since they (A) actually make games which showcase this 'sandbox story' philosophy, and (B) have a well-established policy of sponsoring small 'indie' development efforts outside their main studio and command structure, exactly as Mr. Christensen recommends. Which makes their, from my perspective, apparent and repeated misinterpretation of the franchise all the more baffling.
But I'm reasonably sure a straight-up simulationist title would be a step in the right direction.
(1) Marketing concerns/finding an audience/industrial precedent.
(2) Understanding of the game's psychological appeal, and specific design decisions based on that.
(3) Budgeting and scale of development, in terms of technical difficulty and content production.
By way of example, while I certainly like the idea of having a playable sovereign character from a game-mechanical perspective (and there might be a couple of pieces of old cyberlore concept art which suggest this was an idea thrown around), on reflection there's also the risk that focusing on the player-character as the primary feature of gameplay will lead to demands for a first-person perspective in terms of graphics. This could lead to much heavier demands on rendering quality, texture resolution, SFX and the like, and therefore a much larger minimum budget for art/engine licensing.
This isn't to say it couldn't work. But we are talking about a need for innovation here, both in terms of game mechanics and marketing strategy, and in the games industry, 'innovative' and 'expensive to make' don't easily coexist.
This is kind of why I actually don't want Paradox to spend lots of money on developing a Majesty sequel. At least not at first. Because, as others have pointed out, Majesty could stand mechanical improvement in certain respects. Maj2, even more so. And if the latter had been produced on a shoestring budget as an experimental prototype, you could even consider it successful as a source of information on where to go with the franchise. (i.e, not that way, thanks.) I could also mention Cyberlore's abortive Majesty: Legends and Treasure Hunt titles- and the former in particular resonates with a lot of my personal preferences for where the franchise could go- but (through no fault of cyberlore's) neither made it to market, so we don't really know if those would work.
But actually finding out where the franchise should go- that's going to take a certain amount of trial and error to nail down, and you can't afford to do that if every iteration blows 10 million dollars in production costs. So I'd prefer them to keep things cheap at first, and ramp up production values as the formula is refined.
I've mentioned disruptive innovation before, and if you listen to Jonathan Blow talk (with perfect accuracy) about some of the intrinsic conflicts in modern game design, I honestly think that the AI-driven 'procedural narratives' you get out of titles like CK, The Sims and Maj1 could be a viable resolution to that conflict. I also think that Paradox are particularly well-positioned to take advantage of this possibility, since they (A) actually make games which showcase this 'sandbox story' philosophy, and (B) have a well-established policy of sponsoring small 'indie' development efforts outside their main studio and command structure, exactly as Mr. Christensen recommends. Which makes their, from my perspective, apparent and repeated misinterpretation of the franchise all the more baffling.
But I'm reasonably sure a straight-up simulationist title would be a step in the right direction.
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Man, I would really like to play something like that. But it looks like that I would have to code it myself.
Why must everything be first-person? What's wrong with top-down or isometric?
Also, I've yet to see first person sword combat that didn't suck horribly.
Doesn't have to. Moba games are quite popular. Best pov for strategy games is isometric. Isometric RPGs are popular too.
Please don't misunderstand- I have no personal problem with the idea of a playable main character in a top-down/isometric perspective. What worries me is that, from a marketing perspective, if you give top billing to the main character (possibly with cover mechanics, as strawzombie suggests) as a game feature, then there will be the idea that a first-person view will be easier to produce nice IGN-ready screenshots for. It seems to have happened with X-Com: Enemy Unknown. *shrugs* I dunno, maybe I'm worrying too much, given that Paradox can self-market and usually seem to be more understanding about these things.
Anyways, on earlier points:
RE: Degree of direct control- You can make a reasonable argument that explicitly-military classes (like folks at the Warriors' Guild, along with city guards, etc.), ought to be possible to assign direct orders to- at least en masse. (It's possible this is what Call to Arms is supposed to represent, and some of the early fluff would suggest likewise. Regardless of the actual severity, the Sovereign's Warriors were duty-bound to respond.) This doesn't strike me as an intrinsic problem, so long as there's a potential drawback- e.g, long-term loyalty erosion/risk-of-betrayal if you send them on missions that go sour.
Other possibilities:
* Being able to approach individual heroes (maybe invite them to the palace) and ask them specifically how much of a reward they want for doing Task X. This could also dovetail nicely with Kilwar's suggestion of heroes asking for different types of reward.
* If you want to go down the morally-questionable route, there's always mind-controlling magic, like Change of Heart in Maj-NE, or possibly using threats of torture or blackmail. (Again at the cost of loyalty/reputation erosion.) I'm not crazy about the idea, but used sparingly it could make the game interesting.
And, of course, a playable sovereign-character could go out and do the job in person, and perhaps inspire others to follow your example. (This could be a good way to earn/restore heroes' loyalty, for that matter- e.g, head in to rescue a mortally-wounded rogue or ranger.)
EDIT: Anyway. This is all just stuff off the top of head. The main point I'd want to make here is that lack-of-direct-control isn't so much intrinsic to majesty as it is a side-effect of being a simulation. The reason why majesty's heroes and citizens go off and do their own thing most of the time is because that's what real people do. Real commanders have to delegate. And even when they twist someone's arm, they either need to have some kind of leverage, and/or they'll find it's not a great long-term strategy.
RE: Degree of direct control- You can make a reasonable argument that explicitly-military classes (like folks at the Warriors' Guild, along with city guards, etc.), ought to be possible to assign direct orders to- at least en masse. (It's possible this is what Call to Arms is supposed to represent, and some of the early fluff would suggest likewise. Regardless of the actual severity, the Sovereign's Warriors were duty-bound to respond.) This doesn't strike me as an intrinsic problem, so long as there's a potential drawback- e.g, long-term loyalty erosion/risk-of-betrayal if you send them on missions that go sour.
Other possibilities:
* Being able to approach individual heroes (maybe invite them to the palace) and ask them specifically how much of a reward they want for doing Task X. This could also dovetail nicely with Kilwar's suggestion of heroes asking for different types of reward.
* If you want to go down the morally-questionable route, there's always mind-controlling magic, like Change of Heart in Maj-NE, or possibly using threats of torture or blackmail. (Again at the cost of loyalty/reputation erosion.) I'm not crazy about the idea, but used sparingly it could make the game interesting.
And, of course, a playable sovereign-character could go out and do the job in person, and perhaps inspire others to follow your example. (This could be a good way to earn/restore heroes' loyalty, for that matter- e.g, head in to rescue a mortally-wounded rogue or ranger.)
EDIT: Anyway. This is all just stuff off the top of head. The main point I'd want to make here is that lack-of-direct-control isn't so much intrinsic to majesty as it is a side-effect of being a simulation. The reason why majesty's heroes and citizens go off and do their own thing most of the time is because that's what real people do. Real commanders have to delegate. And even when they twist someone's arm, they either need to have some kind of leverage, and/or they'll find it's not a great long-term strategy.
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Well, yes, it does- an optional one. But my point is that you can also zoom in to a first-person perspective, which means that all the game's art assets need to have their quality raised to that of an FPS game (or pretty close.) Which means development is expensive. ...Which is what I was concerned about.