Elemental all-purpose thread

[Alex_Hopkinson]

Well this seems a pretty sad state of affairs.

I now feel I’ve played this game enough to start making some judgements about it. Here’s my two cents worth so far:

1. In about 10-12 hours of play I’ve had one (1) crash to desktop. Now this is fairly unhelpful for people like Tom Francis who are having CTD every ten minutes, but it does suggest that these issues are somewhat system configuration dependent. Stuff like this is a reality of Windows gaming, there’s just so many different configurations out there that even a huge company like EA can’t test them all. Hopefully these issues were fixed in the last patch or will be very soon.

Tom may have been in a similar state to me - version 1 crashed once in 4 or 5 hours but version 1.01 rapidly moved into crashing every 1 - 10 turns (proper games, not the campaign). And being in the UK, these patches have been releasing well after midnight our time so our experiences are always half a day+ behind the Americans.

The crashes have been pretty rampant, looking at the Elemental support forums yesterday. A lot of them have been addressed in the patches that went live today (UK time), so hopefully it has settled down a lot now.

[Dan_Theman]

I said “early beta,” and just to clarify this once and for all, what I meant was that the game plays like a beta that is not a final beta, where all the systems are in place and the design is feature-locked and you are down to testing and tweaking play balance, and chasing bugs.

Fair enough, Ben - I wasn’t meaning to single you out like I did Brad and Mr. Francis because several people have made comments along those lines with much more implied. For what it’s worth, I agree there’s still work that needed (and needs) to be done. I’m pretty happy to see it’s getting knocked out in short order, although I wonder if this is something that was born from the time crunch due to the retail release. Being able to release a game on your own terms because you handle its digital distribution has got to be a great advantage when it comes to hammering out bugs.

[Dejin]

Another nice addition from the last patch. You can now see in the toolbar how much it would cost to hire an NPC.

I’ve experienced no non-alt-tab related CTDs since the release patch.

I think it’s most unfortunate that so many of you are basing your opinions either (1) from playing the pre-day zero patch or (2) in some cases not having even played the game listening to people (some of whom seem to have an axe to grind) playing the pre-day zero patch.

Now I certainly expect people to make buy/no-buy decisions based on what people are posting, but it seems like people are jumping on the “it’s not ready to play” band wagon without having actually played the game. Which is pretty problematic, given the fact that at least some posters are not being objective due to Brad’s political views.

It’s also rather unfortunate that Stardock gave us access to the game pre-day-zero patch, since that seems to be the bulk of the complaints. They are also playing things a little too loosely on the patching process turning things around very quickly without thoroughly testing it as evidenced by the close to game breaking bug they had to fix last night and the still outstanding issue with the faction editor.

The current version of the game seems to be quite solid, far better than the release version of many (quite possibly most) PC releases. The polishing between the pre-release version and the day-zero version is quite significant. And in fact the day-zero patch fixes many (perhaps most) of the things people were bitching about earlier in this thread – for example stability issues, tutorial issues, and provides better access to information on the game mechanics.

[rezaf]

At least RPS is spot on with their observation about the Gamer’s Bill of Rights being removed from the Stardock site.

“2. Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.”

---

rezaf

[Dan_Lawrence]

the hell? Stardock released an incomplete, unfinished game. They deserve all the criticism they are getting.

Fellow “perfectionist”? That is rich.

Not sure why you’ve quoted me in there Cory. I agreed in the post that it sounds, from the many, many user reports like the game deserved all the opprobrium being heaped upon it. I’m certainly not in a position to say the criticism is unfair either having not played it yet, just popped my head in to see whether the word of mouth was strong enough to pick up the game.

I do think its sad, though not at all surprising, in the culture we have today that a senior game developer who was/is willing to talk about his games with us here like a normal human being on QT3 is going to suffer for it. I don’t think his remark toward Ben was well judged but in the context of the thread where he was being baited and mocked very disrespectfully it wasn’t completely out of left field. Now it is going to lose that context, be stripped of any remaining nuance and become "Stardock CEO says ‘Bugs in your copy of the game, piss off ad don’t buy our games in future’ " as it spreads around the internet.

This is another one of those times when developers are reminded to keep silent outside of official PR mouthpiece statements for fear of them accidentally saying something slightly ill advised in the heat of the moment. When I worked in the industry we were told repeatedly ‘Do not talk to the customers on the forums’ or we would be in trouble with management. For me that was frustrating, I like talking about games, talking about making games and talking with people who care about the game I am making.

[Dejin]

Tom may have been in a similar state to me - version 1 crashed once in 4 or 5 hours but version 1.01 rapidly moved into crashing every 1 - 10 turns (proper games, not the campaign). And being in the UK, these patches have been releasing well after midnight our time so our experiences are always half a day+ behind the Americans.

The crashes have been pretty rampant, looking at the Elemental support forums yesterday. A lot of them have been addressed in the patches that went live today (UK time), so hopefully it has settled down a lot now.

1.05 is much, much better crash wise. The 1.01 patch was actually worse for me on stability than 1.0.

[Dejin]

At least RPS is spot on with their observation about the Gamer’s Bill of Rights being removed from the Stardock site.

I don’t think that’s fair at all if the game is judged with the day-zero patch with hotfix. Obviously the hotfix should not have been necessary. But right now the game is in a solid finished state, that compares well with industry standard. The only real issue that I am aware of that means the game might be considered “unfinished” is Stardock breaking the customized Empire factions.

[Cubit]

Not sure why you’ve quoted me in there Cory. I agreed in the post that it sounds, from the many, many user reports like the game deserved all the opprobrium being heaped upon it. I’m certainly not in a position to say the criticism is unfair either having not played it yet, just popped my head in to see whether the word of mouth was strong enough to pick up the game.

I do think its sad, though not at all surprising, in the culture we have today that a senior game developer who was/is willing to talk about his games with us here like a normal human being on QT3 is going to suffer for it. I don’t think his remark toward Ben was well judged but in the context of the thread where he was being baited and mocked very disrespectfully it wasn’t completely out of left field. Now it is going to lose that context, be stripped of any remaining nuance and become "Stardock CEO says ‘Bugs in your copy of the game, piss off ad don’t buy our games in future’ " as it spreads around the internet.

This is another one of those times when developers are reminded to keep silent outside of official PR mouthpiece statements for fear of them accidentally saying something slightly ill advised in the heat of the moment. When I worked in the industry we were told repeatedly ‘Do not talk to the customers on the forums’ or we would be in trouble with management. For me that was frustrating, I like talking about games, talking about making games and talking with people who care about the game I am making.

Like I said, Brad neither apologized for or edited his post, so I don’t know how you can just explain it away as a “ill advised”, “heat of the moment” thing. That must just be how he feels.

[Tony_M]

Turn Based Games are my passion, and it breaks my heart to see a highly anticipated TBS game like Elemental get such bad publicity.

I so badly want this game to be good, and for it to sell well.

As for the “If you don’t like it don’t buy our games” quote. That sounds like a guy whos exhausted from late game crunch and the stress of trying to salvage a buggy release. Its a long way from Brads noble response to Toms first critical Diary entry. My guess is that hes been working on fixing issues 24/7 and the stress has made him a bit snarky.

Tony

[JM1]

I don’t think that’s fair at all if the game is judged with the day-zero patch with hotfix.

The game is in a solid finished state, that compares well with industry standard

That doesn’t say much about the industry standard, in that case.

The campaign is improved but there’s a heap of issues with it still. There’s graphical issues in tactical combat (spell effects disappearing, mostly). The combat AI is dire and only goes for one unit, which makes manipulating it a piece of piss. According to the tooltip, disbanded units go back to the city that produced them; when you do it, the popup tells you they went back to another (random) city. Parts of the campaign will spam you with the same messages in certain places. I lost sound completely at one point and had to restart the game. The performance is still diabolical given that it’s not really doing all that much. The new inventory is now a big button on the action bar… that looks like a village and has no tooltip.

And this is just an hour or two into the campaign. Which, I might point out, is pretty short, with more promised at a later date.

[ckessel]

A lot of the complaints (non-crash ones anyway) would have been helped by having a usability specialist look at it for a couple days. Ah well. Based on the beta progress, which was rapid, it just feels like they were a month short of truly being finished.

The bit about missing the retail shelves may have been a big deal. Stardock has already said the majority of sales still come from retail. A good chunk of those people have internet connection. So, even if the game is a month of patches out from being polished, the bulk of the retail buyers are never going to know that since by the time they get it, and update, it’ll be in decent shape. I could see releasing it now, knowing it needed patches, would still be the smart business move given retail realities.

Sadly, after the heat Stardock took with the Demigod release, people are going to see Elemental’s release and think a trend of inadequately tested games. Even though the reality is Demigod and Elemental development weren’t by the same companies.

I write software for a living, but I don’t think I could ever handle the game industry. Having such long incubation times combined with the fact gamers are a pretty tough audience would be very demoralizing. My skin isn’t that thick.

[MSUSteve]

Comes off as someone with an axe to grind. Ah, well. I’ve got no investment in this beyond a little bit of my money, and I figure it will wind up being well worth it after some tweaking.

However, some people should really learn to stay clear of hyperbole and knee-jerk reactions:
[ul]
[li]Tom Francis - Upset that Stardock/Brad was not being apologetic that beta testers ran into bugs? Seriously, isn’t that one of the prime reasons why real beta testing exists? There’s a reason Brad thanked people, and also why he continually posted that the beta test would be unfun for anyone involved. Hell, the freaking opening of the beta told you that, ya goofball.[/li][li]Whomever said it plays like an “early beta” - I’ve played early betas. I’ve made early betas. They sucked far, far worse than the last beta of Elemental.[/li][li]Brad - kind of a shame you wound up going with the “then don’t buy my games” appoach in this ridiculously sound-bite oriented world we live in. Things like that get remembered instead of the reason why they were said (see above)

[/li][/ul]
For not having any investment, you sure do sound like an over the top apologist. Tom Francis wasn’t upset that beta testers ran into bugs. He’s upset that people are paying to continue to beta test the game.

I’m a huge Stardock fan, and Galactic Civilizations 2 is probably my favourite turn-based strategy game of all time. I was happy to test a very flaky version of Elemental at the beta stage, because it’s potentially a great game. But it’s been truly disappointing to encounter most of the same problems with the retail version. If they think this is ready for release, their internal testing isn’t nearly good enough.

Regarding it being “kind of a shame” that Brad posted that people unhappy with the launch state of Elemental should stop buying Stardock games, I wholeheartedly agree. That’s a piss-poor response to valid criticism from people who paid for what should be a finished product. There is no element of media conspiracy in this “sound-bite oriented world”. Brad said what he said and it was dumb. I disagree that there is any “valid reason” for Brad to have reacted that way, especially to Ben and Jason’s very even tempered and justified criticism.

[MSUSteve]

I do think its sad, though not at all surprising, in the culture we have today that a senior game developer who was/is willing to talk about his games with us here like a normal human being on QT3 is going to suffer for it. I don’t think his remark toward Ben was well judged but in the context of the thread where he was being baited and mocked very disrespectfully it wasn’t completely out of left field. Now it is going to lose that context, be stripped of any remaining nuance and become "Stardock CEO says ‘Bugs in your copy of the game, piss off ad don’t buy our games in future’ " as it spreads around the internet.

Except that he called out the two guys who posted reasonable criticism of his game, not the trolls who were just bagging on him and the game for the hell of it.

[Oghier]

My experience is also quite different from that of the PCG writer. About 12 hours in, playing random games on large maps:

• One CTD, when I tried to alt-tab. I have not tried that again
• I love the different approaches you can take, the RPG elements and the customization of armies, etc
• Plenty of odd design decisions I hope mods address (e.g., you regenerate one mana per turn, period. That’s way too slow for a caster-based sovereign)
• The interface has some unintuitive oddities, but the learning curve is not that steep
• There are many instances where I can’t figure something out, and neither the game nor the manuals (in-game or out) provide sufficient illumination

I admit to being predisposed to like Stardock, so I am more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. This game is currently playable. I am having enough fun with it to rate it as “pretty good, but…” There is little doubt in my mind that this will evolve to “really good” within three to six months.

[Pharaoh]

Do we actually know the reason why they released Elemental this week? I mean, fiscally, strategically, what’s so special about a mid-August release.

All signs point to this staying in the oven a few more weeks to be really solid, and that still beats the annual fall gaming zerg. Why push it out now when they obviously knew it had serious problems?

[mono]

I still haven’t had much time in RL to play this game, but I will say I’m grateful for the 0-day and subsequent 2AM patches that hit last night. The campaign mode actually starts off with some basic direction. Good to know that the middle mouse lets me rotate the map!

[Aki]

Elemental is about to replace Master of Orion 3 on my list of most anticipated but also disappointing games of all time.

[Richard_Holt]

Do we actually know the reason why they released Elemental this week? I mean, fiscally, strategically, what’s so special about a mid-August release.

All signs point to this staying in the oven a few more weeks to be really solid, and that still beats the annual fall gaming zerg. Why push it out now when they obviously knew it had serious problems?

Their physical distribution partners only had two release windows open, this week of some time next February. Also, the imminent release of Civilization V probably makes releasing in a couple more weeks a non-starter.

Shame everyone can’t go digital distribution soon so game developers can be more flexible about release schedules.

[Pharaoh]

Ahhh makes sense. Thanks Richard.

[MSUSteve]

Elemental is about to replace Master of Orion 3 on my list of most anticipated but also disappointing games of all time.

I wouldn’t go that far. There is still plenty of time for Elemental to be a fantastic game. I haven’t gotten my hands on playing it with the “Day 0” patch yet, but my understanding is that it’s vastly improved.

Their physical distribution partners only had two release windows open, this week of some time next February.

Ugh, that’s a tough decision to have to make. It certainly puts the state of the game on release into perspective for me.