I really think it has. Good tooltips, in game manuals, intuitive UIs, and other such improvements have made cumbersome dead tree manuals obsolete.
No, it really is that bad. Look, I’ve been playing since Beta 1 and I was really confused by the way the campaign worked. “Talk to the merchant” is not a helpful instruction when that procedure is buried in a small bar at the bottom of the HUD.
Talking to the NPCs isn’t intuitive at all. The cursor changes when you mouseover, but for most people, that means a left-click will initiate the action. It doesn’t.
This stuff isn’t a mysterious puzzle. Basic UI issues like this should be covered by now.
“The campaign is significantly updated (though only for those starting fresh).”
Well, that answers my question about whether to keep playing the campaign tonight.
Dejin
2744
I suspect an awful lot of us know how a game like Civ works, not because we’ve read the manual, because we’ve delved even more deeply than that. Rome on 640K a Day was popular because it dug even deeper than the manual did. I’ve got hint books for the original Civ, the original Colonization, and the original Railroad Tycoon. And that was back in the day when Microprose had truly incredible manuals, far finer than anything that has come out in years.
Some of the stuff you need to play optimally in those games isn’t in the manual. I know for CivRev I had to go poking around the CivFantics forums to get a better understanding of how some stuff worked, and that’s the simplest of the Civ games.
Therlun
2745
Spellcasting doesn’t use all your APs.
If you have more than three action points you will notice that spellcasting costs three of those and you can cast two times in one round or move or attack afterwards.
So the issue is not inconsistency or a complex system, but simply “partial APs can be used to do any action” and the point that the standard three AP for your leader are the standard cost for casting.
I don’t ever recall a game having three versions out among players on its release day before. It’s a bit bizarre.
The only situation in which I can see using it is if you have a unit with a good attack and high defense and then a bunch of other weaker units with low-defense. If the high-defense unit takes an enemy’s health down to somewhere in the 1-3 range, switch targets and let your weaker units finish it off. Ideally you want to make sure any low-defensive units can kill their target on the first attack without having to take a retaliatory hit. So having your tough guy attack a bunch of different units weakening each of them instead of just going all out and killing a single unit might be a good strategy.
Not only that, the current system also allows you to have a high def, high speed unit to soak up the counetrattacks from multiple units, allowing low def units to attack with no retaliation.
Additionally, the game’s help file is talking about different types of attack/defense - blunt, pierce, fire, etc (I didn’t see it in the game yet, not sure if it’s in or out). So having a unit with high fire defense hit a bunch of fire attacking enemies will allow to minimize the damage your other units will receive.
Thus having multiple attacks on units does allow for more tactical choice as well as introduces more complexity into unit design and planning.
That’s what I am talking about when I say that people are critisizing the game without even knowing it yet. Not all games with tactical turn based battles have to play like HoMM.
Sadly, you’re probably right. FWIW, Elemental’s manual is in digital format, but it still doesn’t seem to be something people feel like reading anymore.
Stardock has had some bad luck with launches. The Demigod debacle, and now this.
I have Elemental but haven’t fired it up. Half of it is a matter of not having the time yesterday, and the other half is waiting for the rest of the first-day patches to hit. I’m wanting my first post-beta experience to be as positive as possible.
I didn’t really “get” GalCiv2 until Twilight of the Arnor (though that’s hardly its fault, more mine). I’m hoping Elemental doesn’t take that long for me.
Chuck
2750
Is there widescreen support? Specifically 1280x720? I get a message saying I need to change my desk top to 1024x768.
Hello 1999.
Why the hell would talking be initiated by left clicking when left clicking de-selects the unit and all other actions (moving, attacking) are done by right clicking? I am sure glad you are not designing UI for games.
I haven’t played Beta at all and I had zero issues in finding how to talk to a merchant. Maybe because in all other TBS games unit’s actions appear on the action bar when you select a unit? By the way, that’s what they call that “small bar at the bottom of the HUD” and it’s present in 90% of the games in the exact same position. Ok, sometimes they move it to the side. :)
I don’t think that’s any better, though. It seems fundamentally problematic to have a system in which different actions have widely varying AP costs–which ostensibly makes it so that you can offer the player more powerful actions that are balanced in that they take the place of several lesser actions–but then also allow the player to initiate any action with any non-zero amount of AP. Has it been that way throughout the beta? By which I mean, is that a purposeful design choice and not a bug?
Dejin
2753
I’m running in 1920x1200. So definitely widescreen support is in. I don’t see 1280x720 on the list though. I see 1280x768 and 1280x800 and “custom” (whatever that is).
It plays fine in 1600x1080, not sure about 1280x720. Have you tried running it in a window?
What’s so fundamentally problematic about it? An action will use APs up to its cost, if you have some APs left after that, you can use them. And it’s not wildly varying AP costs. Fighting will use up to 1 AP, casting - up to 3.
BTW, having to move first and shoot after is not that new of a system. An archer in HoMM could move 4 hexes and then shoot or could shoot immidiately and have all 4 moves “used up” by the shooting. You guys are seriously reaching trying to find a flaw here.
Therlun
2756
It has been that way for a while and is even applied to several elements of the game.
-Leader creation: Normally raising attributes costs three creation points, but if you have only one of those left you can still raise an attribute with it.
-Fractional move points on the strategic map also worked, though I don’t know if they are still in 1.0. In the betas there was an item that gave +.2 move points on the overland map, which came down to one more move.
I actually agree that it is a decision you need to get used too… just not the wonky and arcane system some people seem to make of it.
Because the default action should be whatever your cursor changed to. That’s the whole point of changing the cursor. I’ll concede that it’s a design choice that I may only be sticking on and I’ll leave it at that.
Good for you. I’m glad you were able to figure out the merchant issue based on your long history of gaming. For me, “talk to the merchant” does not immediately mean “click on your city, look in the HUD for ‘inventory shop,’ click on that, then talk to the merchant.”
I too have been playing games a long time. Back to the original Civ, so reading manuals and dealing with hidden systems isn’t new to me either, but we’ve come a long way since the days of yore and there’s no reason for Elemental to make things so damn difficult.
Good for you. I’m glad you were able to figure out the merchant issue based on your long history of gaming. For me, “talk to the merchant” does not immediately mean “click on your city, look in the HUD for ‘inventory shop,’ click on that, then talk to the merchant.”
Actually it’s much simplier than that, IIRC it’s “select your unit, click on Actions tab to display the action bar, click on Talk to the Merchant”. Maybe you found some complicated alternative way to talk to merchants?
If I was wrong in specifics, then I was wrong. Either way, wouldn’t you agree that the steps you describe are not exactly best explained by “talk to the merchant?”
I know you’re trying to win +1 internet points here, but you can’t possibly think that it was intuitive in the campaign when it first happened.
There are points? I missed the memo.
Everyone is different. When I get a new game, I start it up and see what the interface does, without even moving my unit(s) first. So I found the Action bar and specifically “Talk to Merchant” button (as well as “Guard, Autoexplore”, etc.) even before I had a merchant to talk to. And I wasn’t surprised to find those buttons there, I assumed they will be there once I saw the Actions tab. So to me it was intuitive.
I can probably see how this might not be that obvious to other people but, then again, there are people who are looking for “Any” key when asked to “Press any key”. I am not trying to belittle you, just a little joke (true story?) to demonstrate how subjective intuitiveness is :).
