Elemental all-purpose thread

[Richard_Holt]

Richard was “beside himself” when he read the PCG/RPS articles, apparently.

I don’t know how you get so emotionally invested in a game that’s been out for a couple of days.

Oh for goodness sakes JM. Are you just trolling me now? I thought I was fairly clear, even if it was in a judgmental and condescending kind of way I suppose.

Just to clarify:

1. I don’t have any particular opinion of Stardock.
2. Lets just say, based Brad’s public persona, I’m not much of fan.
3. After ~30 hours of play, I can state quite certainly: I do not like Elemental.
4. Brad’s comment to Ben Stone was unacceptable.
5. Releasing a game that’s broken is bad.

I was defending Stardock and Elemental, not because I’m a fan, but because I was interested in Elemental and the negative comments towards the game and its developer were extreme and not based in reality. This thread was pretty bad. RPSs ‘Stardock Rescinds Gamer’s Bill of Rights’ article was highly questionable. It is Yellow Journalism, I mean as a technical description, rather than an insult. Not that I’m not above insults.

[aganazer]

I just took a day off work and played Elemental for over 12 hours on the 1.05 patch. The game is pretty awesome. As far as stability and bugs, its already 10 times better than MoM ever was. I had no crashes all day.

Its like I am living in two worlds. One where I am actually playing the game and its awesome and everything is great. Then the other one when I visit forums and everyone is going off on the game, the company, and the designers. I think I’ll just start to ignore this thread since it obviously doesn’t reflect the quality of the game I just played.

[Sir_Digby]

Actually it took a lot longer than a week. Initial cracked versions of the game were broken with the player only being able to run around the city without doing quests because they had to capture all of the content from Ubi’s server and then integrate it properly. Even then it took months to get that right (well about two months).

Several minor groups had zero-day releases which didn’t work; it took SKIDROW a week, one week, to have a fully working crack; plus, it WAS possible to play with the first releases, what happened was that some of them were from a buggy leak and were repacked incorrectly and caused to game to hang while trying to save to the server.

And regardless of how much time it took them to bypass the protection I bet the backlash from actually having it was much worse.

[Mordrak]

Several minor groups had zero-day releases which didn’t work; it took SKIDROW a week, one week, to have a fully working crack; plus, it WAS possible to play with the first releases, what happened was that some of them were from a buggy leak and were repacked incorrectly and caused to game to hang while trying to save to the server.

No it didn’t Sir Digby. There was a big hullabaloo about Skidrow stealing its crack from Razor because they cribbed a DLL or something used for the server replication once it did finally get cracked. You’re wrong.

The game was released March 9th, a fully working crack didn’t appear until then end of April.

Edit: As for the backlash, the article doesn’t really address any of these issues, that’s kind of my problem. We’d all like to think the backlash mattered, but only UBI knows what effect the DRM had on its sales. Instead, it looks like Stardock wrote the article for CNN and CNN published it just attributing statements to Stardock with objective sounding phrases.

[Sir_Digby]

No it didn’t Sir Digby. There was a big hullabaloo about Skidrow stealing its crack from Razor because they cribbed a DLL used for the server bypass once it did get cracked. You’re wrong.

Snap, you are right, it turns out they DID steal the crack from Razor and then had to release a proper 2 weeks later which means 3 weeks in total; sorry, my mistake.

That said:
And regardless of how much time it took them to bypass the protection I bet the backlash from actually having it was much worse.

[JM1]

I was defending Stardock and Elemental, not because I’m a fan, but because I was interested in Elemental and the negative comments towards the game and its developer were extreme and not based in reality. This thread was pretty bad. RPSs ‘Stardock Rescinds Gamer’s Bill of Rights’ article was highly questionable. It is Yellow Journalism, I mean as a technical description, rather than an insult. Not that I’m not above insults.

I’m not trolling you. I’m suggesting that spending all week defending Brad + Stardock, being “beside yourself” over the articles, and cancelling your RPS subscription suggest an emotional investment beyond that which you’d expect from your average consumer. I just don’t understand why you’re having that reaction.

[Mordrak]

Snap, you are right, it turns out they DID steal the crack from Razor and then had to release a proper 2 weeks later which means 3 weeks in total; sorry, my mistake.

That said:
And regardless of how much time it took them to bypass the protection I bet the backlash from actually having it was much worse.

That said, I’ll just repeat my edit:

Edit: As for the backlash, the article doesn’t really address any of these issues, that’s kind of my problem. We’d all like to think the backlash mattered, but only UBI knows what effect the DRM had on its sales. Instead, it looks like Stardock wrote the article for CNN and CNN published it just attributing statements to Stardock with objective sounding phrases.

[Richard_Holt]

I’m not trolling you. I’m suggesting that spending all week defending Brad + Stardock, being “beside yourself” over the articles, and cancelling your RPS subscription suggest an emotional investment beyond that which you’d expect from your average consumer. I just don’t understand why you’re having that reaction.

Well unlike you, we’re not all emotionless machines send from the future to kill Brad Wardell through the medium of Qt3 forum posts.

[JM1]

I dunno, only a robot would crack that kind of joke.

[Jorn_Weines]

Well unlike you, we’re not all emotionless machines send from the future to kill Brad Wardell through the medium of Qt3 forum posts.

And FINALLY* we have a (Giant) Death Robot joke in the Elemental thread(s). I thought those were reserved for Civ V :)

*= Unless someone has already made one.

[EvilIdler]

As I’ve previously posted, 1.05 is quite stable for me, and I’m generally quite happy with the game. However, it sounds like some people are still crashing a lot, and you might be one of the unlucky people where the game still doesn’t work well on your machine.

Thanks, that sounds promising. I have had blessed systems so far (ability to play System Shock 2 in a recent OS, no save glitches in Fallout 3), though, so karma is hiding outside my front door with a sledgehammer ;)

[Dejin]

Thanks, that sounds promising. I have had blessed systems so far (ability to play System Shock 2 in a recent OS, no save glitches in Fallout 3), though, so karma is hiding outside my front door with a sledgehammer ;)

I’m not positive, but I’m starting to get the impression that perhaps ATI video card users are having more problems than nVidia users. FWIW.

[EvilIdler]

I had really hoped RPS was…above?..beyond?..better?..different?..than that.

If you were expecting honourable journalism, maybe you were thinking of “Roc, Pauper, Shogun”, the feudal Japanese blog they were modelled after?

I don’t know how to say it without sounding pejorative. It may not be possible to say without sounding pejorative. :(

It’s tough to not sound like a dick. I try and fail all day!

I’m also a little disappointed in the whole thing. Less of the gossip, more of the fun game blogging, and more fact-checking when something of this magnitude of juiciness comes up! I also think the lot of them are capable of taking criticism (and hope that goes for the other people involved in/dragged into this whole flame fest).

I think Brad cleared it up well enough in the posts referenced in the later RPS blog. But it also reminds me devs should probably have two hats on each forum: One for personal posts, one for posting in official capacity :)

[EvilIdler]

I’m not positive, but I’m starting to get the impression that perhaps ATI video card users are having more problems than nVidia users. FWIW.

Ah, nothing has changed there. Glad I decided on yet another GeForce at the last moment!

[Alex_Hopkinson]

I’m not positive, but I’m starting to get the impression that perhaps ATI video card users are having more problems than nVidia users. FWIW.

Whilst I think this is true, there are plenty of Nvidia problem users post 1.0.0, including me. Whilst aganazer is lucky enough to be free of crashes and so on, there’s an Elemental support forum (as well users in the two threads here) full of people who are not so lucky.

[Dave_Weinstein]

For reference, I called Stardock to follow up on my refund request, and 30 seconds later they told me they were processing my refund, and I uninstalled the game from my system.

So any objections I had are dealt with. I tried it, I didn’t like it, and they gave me money back.

[Tyjenks]

Screw you guys for being so active while I actually got sleep and have tried to work. I am now 2 hours into my work day and have done nothing (much as yesterday due to this thread).

If there had not been so much hostility, I think this would have been a great conversation to have for multiple reasons. I am not sure that it still isn’t, but for any damage that could result to whomever as a result of Brad’s unfortunate sentence. I still think it all stemmed from Brad’s buttons getting pushed incessantly and that maybe could have been avoided (not likely), but that is, obviously, just my opinion.

The fact that I like everyone involved, sure makes it hard to ride the fence and defend everyone. In my head, I am devil’s advocating all over the map. Analysis paralysis and all that.

XXXOOO

[Razgon]

For reference, I called Stardock to follow up on my refund request, and 30 seconds later they told me they were processing my refund, and I uninstalled the game from my system.

So any objections I had are dealt with. I tried it, I didn’t like it, and they gave me money back.

Thats what I thought they would do - thanks

[Kool_Moe_Dee]

At its heart, it’s a simple disagreement here. You don’t think the quote was relevant to the story. I do. And I don’t believe for a second that there’s no quote from a developer here you wouldn’t use as a story. Let’s say Charles started a thread explaining why he really hated Assassin’s Creed or something. You’d link to that. I don’t believe you if you say you wouldn’t. And - perhaps just as importantly - if you still say you wouldn’t do it, you’re 100% wrong. It’s about as newsy as videogame news gets.

RPS = TMZ. Prepare for game developer fashion reports, love life exposés, and “who’s hot, who’s not” updates!

[Tony_M]

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I don’t like it when Mummy and Daddy fight :(

Tony