Elemental all-purpose thread

[kerzain]

The 10 megabyte interim day 0 update is up on Impulse for those folks that want to try out these changes before the official day 0 update tomorrow.

I heard it mentioned that this might wipe your existing preferences, but save games should still work.

[PeterGinsberg]

It’s probably only because of the beers I’ve consumed I’m jumping into this, but I’ve never let that stop me before.

First off, I think Matt is a great poster and usually wicked funny and all that. The posts in this thread though read a lot more like someone with a vendetta against Brad Wardell than “on topic joking around”. I know it’s not like people who post here are doing it for my entertainment (or are they?), but the axe grinding is kind of a downer, however valid the reasons behind it.

[MattKeil]

It’s like a cosmic rebirth!

[kerzain]

Sand golems were nerfed :~(

[Mark_Asher]

And I’m not sure why I am being singled out in particular, regardless of motivation, for posting only on-topic jokes related to what many, many other people are saying.

Others are able to have a good laugh about Mark Rein taking a dump on cliffski at a conference and others in turn have good laughs about cliffski’s vehemently expressed ivory tower ideology regarding piracy, all without segues into “why” and exhortations from the management to fuck off.

And furthermore, if you purport to know all of my motivations for doing nothing but making on-topic jokes riffing on opinions that many have expressed, why do you imply that you consider those motivations invalid? Are they really? How ugly an American does Brad have to be and how many developers who employ my friends have to have their reputations close to obliterated by his fuckups and subsequent shady spin before I am allowed to make a joke or five at his expense?

You single yourself out. Your posts have little to do with Elemental and everything to do with your vehement dislike of Brad Wardell. If you have stories about developers who have had their reps “close to obliterated” by Brad, let’s hear them. Otherwise, you’ve made your point – you hate Brad and won’t ever give any Stardock game a fair shake because of that. We get it. It’s tiresome after awhile and it gets in the way of discussion of the game.

[Cubit]

You single yourself out. Your posts have little to do with Elemental and everything to do with your vehement dislike of Brad Wardell. If you have stories about developers who have had their reps “close to obliterated” by Brad, let’s hear them. Otherwise, you’ve made your point – you hate Brad and won’t ever give any Stardock game a fair shake because of that. We get it. It’s tiresome after awhile and it gets in the way of discussion of the game.

Pssst, Mark. He can’t hear you anymore. :(

[Mrenda]

Pssst, Mark. He can’t hear you anymore. :(

Does Tom do some magical jiggery pokery that you need a proxy to view the site or something?

[Dave_Weinstein]

I don’t care if the Impulse master server gently touched Matthew Gallant’s dog.

Really, I don’t.

What bothers me is that I was foolish enough to pre-order a game where the reward for pre-ordering is you are not eligible for the normal return policy if you don’t like it. And frankly, at least for me, the game is currently combining bugs, game balance issues, and a frustrating UI.

This is not the recipe for a happy customer. I gave it another go tonight, and I’m still not finding the fun.

Lesson learned.

[Editer]

Y’know, at first, I figured this was just Qt3 being its usual hypercritical, “more fun to bitch than find the fun,” self… I was still going to pick this up tomorrow once the patch was out and folks reported it fixed the technical issues.

But reading this?

I have three Action points per combat round, and casting Fireball (or Lightning Bolt) uses all of them. But only if I cast it first! If I do some other action that doesn’t use up all of my Action Points, like moving two spaces (costs 2, leaves me with 1), I can still cast Fireball. This gets pretty crunchy when you are actually fighting, because then I can make two melee attacks with my sword (1 AP each!), and then also cast Fireball, all in one round. Unless I cast Fireball as my first action–if I do that, then I am done. Surely it’s not supposed to work that way?

This tells me it needs to simmer a bit longer in the crock pot before I serve myself. That’s a pretty core gameplay issue.

[tomchick]

The core issue isn’t that casting a spell uses up all your action points. Heck, that’s a staple of a bunch of tactical RPGs, if I’m not mistaken.

Instead, the core issue is that Elemental doesn’t tell you this anywhere. The problems with glitches and broken stuff are relatively minor compared to how uncommunicative and cagey this game is. People can deal with waiting to cast their fireballs as the last thing they do. What they shouldn’t have to deal with, and what Elemental unreasonably expects of them, is figuring out on their own why sometimes they can cast a fireball and sometimes they can’t.

It’s a huge problem that’s going to take more than a day 0 patch. :(

 -Tom

[Sarkus]

Does Tom do some magical jiggery pokery that you need a proxy to view the site or something?

That was my experience when I was temp punted once. I encountered a notice that I wasn’t allowed access to the site.

[Phydeaux]

I just wanted to say that I really dig this game, and can’t wait for it to be ready for release. Also I agree with all of Brad’s political views lock, stock, and barrel. I don’t know what they are, but any flag that pisses people off this badly is one I want to salute.

[Jab]

I was planning on continuing the campaign but from the day 0 patch thread it may just be worth it to wait until tomorrow and start over with everything patched up.

[Abiding_Dude]

The problems with glitches and broken stuff are relatively minor compared to how uncommunicative and cagey this game is. People can deal with waiting to cast their fireballs as the last thing they do. What they shouldn’t have to deal with, and what Elemental unreasonably expects of them, is figuring out on their own why sometimes they can cast a fireball and sometimes they can’t. -Tom

Yikes…that’s not damning with faint praise…that’s damning with faint damnation.

[TurinTur]

As for the differences among the spells, many of them can be affected by whether you control a certain elemental shard. For instance, fireball would be preferable if you have fire shards, whereas chain lightning would get a boost if you have an air shard. I’m not sure if that’s the case with the spells you’re talking about.

 -Tom

Which remembers me other of the flaws of the magical system. Lots of similar spells because lots of them delivers the same damage: “x intelligence, multiplied by the number of shards”. There aren’t “weak damage” spells, or “strong damage” spells, for example, i had three spells, fireball, magical arrow and lightning, and the three made the same damage: X Intelligence.

[TurinTur]

Ok, I was not in the beta, so I’m pretty lost. I tried a random map, but had a graphic glitch where the whole screen was gray when I reloaded a save.Thoughts on this? I also had a new unit when I reloaded another time and had Jansik disapear.

Then I tried the campaign, and founded my city. I’m told that a shopkeeper has set up shop and I should buy equipment. How do I do this? I can’t find a shop or a button to click and the PDF manual does not tell me how unless I mised it.

Any way to shut off the auto turn feature? It’s a turn based game and I want to decide when to advance to the next turn …

About the bug: try to zoom in, zoom all out, zoom all in again.

You can buy equipment if you select a champion which is inside your city, in the action bar, first icon.

[Sarkus]

I haven’t really followed development closely, but this is pretty disappointing to hear about. It even seems like Brad is admitting that the game isn’t really “ready for primetime” but is taking a Paradox approach to things. Sad to hear unless that “day 0” patch is pretty amazing.

[TurinTur]

The core issue isn’t that casting a spell uses up all your action points. Heck, that’s a staple of a bunch of tactical RPGs, if I’m not mistaken.

 -Tom

Other staple is that you need to action points bar full to cast the spell in first place, which is not the case here. In fact, that was the problem mentioned, the lack of consistency. Yeah, i can learn to use spells at the end, hell i only need two seconds to learn that (the time i need to read the sentence) but that’s not good design. a better, stronger design would be that casting spells consume a predictable, non-arbitrary amount of action points, so you can choose to cast a spell just before moving or after moving. Or perhaps not moving at all if the spell is very powerfull and i can’t do anything else that turn.

[TurinTur]

Can I point out the absurdity of having the tutorial being a guy that newbie players can easily get killed early on? :)

Yes you can. In fact, i killed him in a early tough fight. Oops.

Thing is, the campaign bugged a bit with the fact, later the already cold body spoke to me as he was still alive, and in the other hand, much later, i had a special event where the game recognized he was dead, but it didn’t make sense, because it was written as i had a final dialogue with him before dying, that wasn’t the case.

[Stepsongrapes]

The core issue isn’t that casting a spell uses up all your action points. Heck, that’s a staple of a bunch of tactical RPGs, if I’m not mistaken.

I can’t think of one that has spellcasting do it, but not an attack. Many have the two-part movement mechanic: move points separate from a single attack action (be that a swing or a spell) per round. This seems more sensible.

The idea of a modern RPG that forces you to consider order of operations to maximize your round is offputting.

This game was highly anticipated for me, but it’s going on the backburner, for now.

Many thanks to Ben Sones for the journalist-like reporting of issues. This attack one and the random terrain bonus issues he described are sure signs of incompleteness (or unfathomable game design). The MoM-like tactical AI also sounds bad.