Elemental all-purpose thread

[TurinTur]

I also managed to solve all my Elemental-related problems. I uninstalled the game.

I have a sizable amount of games in the backlog. I will play a few of these in the coming months, and then i will come back to Elemental. Everybody wins.

[Dejin]

That aside, GalCiv2 was stable and relatively bug free at launch, which is the state I expect all Stardock games to be released in. I’m willing to give Stardock the benefit of the doubt over the “day zero” stuff since that was the intended “release” version of the game, and not the version released earlier to deal with the broken street date (though I really don’t understand why Brad & team thought pushing out a flawed earlier version was the answer to that particular issue - there’s a reason the bigger publishers don’t do stuff like that when their street dates are broken).

Post last night’s patch Elemental is stable and relatively bug free.

Clearly trying to come up with a pre-release patch just for pre-order people was a mistake. It also seems like they are pushing too hard to get patches out quickly instead of slowing down and testing thoroughly.

I won’t argue with complaints that the interface is a bit awkward or that some of the design is a bit obtuse. But IMO that’s true of GalCiv and GalCiv2 as well. Stardock game design and UI just seems to march to a different drummer than much of the rest of the industry. Sometimes that’s a great thing like the GalCiv2 ship editor. Othertimes it’s just awkward, like how their unit movement UI works both here and in GalCiv.

[KevinC]

Based on the comments on this thread…

I ordered the Civ IV complete pack for Fall from Heaven 2 (since I never did get around to picking up Civ IV).

Kael & Co. made a masterpiece there, so I think you’ll find that money very well spent.

[tomchick]

Yeah, I personally think it sucks that Brad has to watch what he says around here lest it be trumpeted as company policy. The cool factor of having devs as an active part of the community decreases somewhat if they have to run every statement past the PR department.

No kidding. Fuck you, Tom Francis at PC Gamer and Quintin Smith at Rock Paper Shotgun for treating my forum that way. I have to come up with material for a daily blog also. I know what a challenge it can be, but I don’t lift informal comments out of context to be provocative. Did you guys also post how graciously Brad received some similarly harsh comments I’d made the previous day in the same goddamn thread? Will you post how graciously Brad has apologized to Ben?

As if there isn’t plenty to write about Elemental without digging up one line from a long and varied exchange!

Again, fuck you, Petadact and Quintin Smith at Rock Paper Shotgun. Assholes. Go Kotaku from someone else’s forum.

-Tom

[Dave_Weinstein]

Anything that is the version that shipped on the retail disc or later cannot accurately be called “pre-release”.

[Sarkus]

I won’t argue with complaints that the interface is a bit awkward or that some of the design is a bit obtuse. But IMO that’s true of GalCiv and GalCiv2 as well. Stardock game design and UI just seems to march to a different drummer than much of the rest of the industry. Sometimes that’s a great thing like the GalCiv2 ship editor. Othertimes it’s just awkward, like how their unit movement UI works both here and in GalCiv.

I’ve always just assumed that is a throwback to Stardock’s original OS/2 focus. Give it up Brad! It’s over! MS won. ;-)

[Cubit]

Shit just got realz, yo.

[ElGuapo]

I’d like to add that if there are any attractive women reading this that came over from PCGamer or RPS, go ahead and contact me for a sexy photoshoot.

See Tom, it’s not all bad! Sexy photoshoot!

[Sarkus]

Anything that is the version that shipped on the retail disc or later cannot accurately be called “pre-release”.

I wish that was still true. But the reality is that a lot of developers seem to think that it’s perfectly fine now to ship a disk with the assumption that they will be able to continue working on the game and release a patch when the game officially goes on sale. I’m disappointed that Stardock has joined this group and I certainly don’t think Brad should have claimed that version was in good shape.

[BrianRubin]

No kidding. Fuck you, Tom Francis at PC Gamer and Quintin Smith at Rock Paper Shotgun for treating my forum that way. I have to come up with material for a daily blog also. I know what a challenge it can be, but I don’t lift informal comments out of context to be provocative. Did you guys also post how graciously Brad received some similarly harsh comments I’d made the previous day in the same goddamn thread? Will you post how graciously Brad has apologized to Ben?

As if there isn’t plenty to write about Elemental without digging up one line from a long and varied exchange!

Again, fuck you, Petadact and Quintin Smith at Rock Paper Shotgun. Assholes. Go Kotaku from someone else’s forum.

-Tom

This is now one of my favoritests post on Qt3. :)

[Dave_Weinstein]

I wish that was still true. But the reality is that a lot of developers seem to think that it’s perfectly fine now to ship a disk with the assumption that they will be able to continue working on the game and release a patch when the game officially goes on sale. I’m disappointed that Stardock has joined this group and I certainly don’t think Brad should have claimed that version was in good shape.

They can do whatever they like.

But calling the official released version that they released “pre-release” is a sin against actual meaningful use of language that cannot be tolerated!

[Richard_Holt]

No kidding. Fuck you, Tom Francis at PC Gamer and Quintin Smith at Rock Paper Shotgun for treating my forum that way. I have to come up with material for a daily blog also. I know what a challenge it can be, but I don’t lift informal comments out of context to be provocative. Did you guys also post how graciously Brad received some similarly harsh comments I’d made the previous day in the same goddamn thread? Will you post how graciously Brad has apologized to Ben?

As if there isn’t plenty to write about Elemental without digging up one line from a long and varied exchange!

Again, fuck you, Petadact and Quintin Smith at Rock Paper Shotgun. Assholes. Go Kotaku from someone else’s forum.

-Tom

Well said Tom. Now I know how the people who were really upset with Elemental/Brad Wardell/Stardock felt when they were commenting earlier in this thread. I don’t read much video game journalist because I think the general quality is offensively terrible, but Tom Francis and RPS I do read because they’re normally islands of intelligence and reason in the turbulent crap.

When I got up this morning and saw that Tom Francis and RPS had posted the the stuff that was upsetting me for the last two days in this thread as news, and even quoting Brad completely out of context, I was besides myself.

[vyshka]

http://forums.elementalgame.com/392474

The site, www.gamersbillofrights.org was set up and is run by Stardock. We stand by it. It is, with some irony, our commitment to no DRM on our DVD release that ultimately caused the rough pre-release experience of Elemental. Several retailers broke the street date and we felt we needed to release our gold version to our customers who had pre-ordered from us as well as to our beta community that helped make the game the outstanding strategy game that it is.

If the Gamers Bill of Rights is adhered to shouldn’t retailers breaking street date be pretty much irrelevant? Whatever the team felt was needed in the day 0 patch to make the gold acceptable should have been blocking release of the gold.

[TimJames]

British journalists savage wholesome Midwestern game developer?

[Ben_Sones]

Post last night’s patch Elemental is stable and relatively bug free.

Clearly trying to come up with a pre-release patch just for pre-order people was a mistake.

It hasn’t been stable or bug free for me. I thought that it had improved performance, but then I noticed that the patch cranked the default graphics settings way down (AA turned off, clutter turned down to 2, shadows turned to low or off, I forget which, etc.). And I’ve had three CTDs now with the newest patch, which is more frequent than they were before.

I’m also not comfortable with your suggestion that the main problem was that rushing out a pre-release patch, and now that the day one patch is in place, the game is basically in good shape. It’s really, really not. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but sweeping changes have been made to some pretty fundamental mechanics in the game, like how bonus percentages are calculated (they are now added, not multiplied) and how action points work (no partial point expenditures, APs for actions have been necessarily adjusted across the board). If these things sound familiar, then you should also have a pretty good idea of how last-minute these changes have to be.

Now, I’m all for listening to feedback and addressing criticism, but I think it’s pretty unrealistic to expect Stardock to pull together a play experience that is even remotely balanced or tuned based on an overnight rewrite of multiple core game mechanics. If you think they have done that… well, just go play some more, and you’ll see.

The game is getting better, but I think it still has a long road ahead.

[SlapBone]

Also, to anyone, like you Ben, saying the game is like an “early beta” then well, please stay away from our games in the future. I consider it ready for release and if others disagree, don’t buy our games.

Treading in Derek Smart territory here.

[Therlun]

“Stable” is indeed relative.
I might consider joining the Elemental-hater’s side :P. The day-0 patch didn’t improve the stability for me at all. Few crashes in betas 3 and 4 turned into constant CTDs in the current version for me.

Treading in Derek Smart territory here.

Wow. Late to the party much?

[mouselock]

I wish that was still true. But the reality is that a lot of developers seem to think that it’s perfectly fine now to ship a disk with the assumption that they will be able to continue working on the game and release a patch when the game officially goes on sale. I’m disappointed that Stardock has joined this group and I certainly don’t think Brad should have claimed that version was in good shape.

Given that the lag between gold master and shipping is, to the best of my knowledge, 1+ months, and that it’s safe to assume that the vast majority of the game players out there these days have access to fast internet with at least a medium amount of bandwidth, I don’t see why anyone should be required to have the disc version be the same as the “This is when customers will actually play it!” version. It doesn’t seem at all onerous to require a day 0 patch, especially in the face of multiple publishers who require internet connectivity simply to validate the game for day-to-day playing. Technology advances, time moves on, yadda yadda hoohah…

[Dave_Weinstein]

The lag time is weeks, not 1+ months. It can be even faster than that if you pay for expedited ship.

And again, Brad declared (in this thread) that the version on the release CD would be great, even if the purchaser never patched.

Tell me again how that is pre-release?

[SlapBone]

Wow. Late to the party much?

I submitted that 2 days ago. I don’t know why just just showed up now.