3561

You make me thinks Elementals is not a complete MoM game, and a complete MoM game will be much better than Elementals.

3562

So how moddable are things like the spells? How hard is it to change the spell name and accompanying text, if nothing else?

3563

Very easy for the most part. It’s all buried in XML files, and sometimes finding the right one to edit is a bit of a challenge, but once you find what you’re looking for it’s pretty easy.

Should get easier too once they release a few more mod tools.

3564

I have only ever skimmed this site so pardon me being a noob as it were.

In regards to Brad Wardell, it goes to show that good will or animosity can be generated by what a developer does with the gamers. Sid Meier for being as big of a name in gaming as there is, seems accessible to gamers, but seems to not rouse trouble. Coming from a journalism background and not having a dog in this fight, what he said was valid to use by anyone there is no expectation of privacy in a public forum. I also think more should have been done to put it into a better context. Both sides and their supporters behaving badly are not mutually exclusive.

The only reason why I looked at either site caught in this snag is I was hungry, nay, starving for something resembling a review of Elemental. MoM is easily in my top 10 games of all time. Elemental promised to carry the torch as it were… something Stardock did well enough GalCiv 2 carrying on the MoO legacy.

So that brought me here. A developer/publisher putting one’s foot in their moth on the internet is not new. Back in the heyday of alt.rec.games.rpgs (memory hazy about the exact newsgroup, sorry) there was a scifi RPG called Battlelords of the 24th Century. Nominally it was a game that had a lot of design mis-queues but they had a lot of passion and some good ideas. It was a sexy mess of an RPG. Then their online rep, one of the fist publishers to do so as this was circa 1995, started what amounted to flame wars over criticisms of the game. A wiser fellow would have simply walked away from the fight as no good can come of it.

Back to Elemental. It shocks me that no major site has had a review of the game. Gameplay blogs and a warning blog are fine and dandy, but either they are wary of doling out a bad review or the game is not in a state where they feel comfortable reviewing it. Which is sad and maybe touches back to some of the bad aspects of gaming journalism.

A buddy of mine summed up Elemental as having promise and was intriguing… but probably would mutate to something different than his first impressions over the coming year. Promise is not exactly the clarion call for me to dole out 50 bucks on something that might be fun, might not, might be totally different (for better or worse) in a year.

Elemental was a game I was looking forward to, maybe even more than Civ 5… which is saying a lot for me. Maybe forthcoming patches will fix things. Maybe I will but it at that point and that point could be next week, next month or next year. But today I am so wary of Elemental that I feel I will be Master of Orion Three’d by this release.

Thanks for the fun commentary about the game, you all proved to be an interesting read.

3565

Ohh yes.

The fantasy/magic feeling is much less that MoM, Heroes, AoW, Dominions, etc. It’s more like a bland D&D game. But blander.

edit: also, still not even one professional review? Stardock are recieving a bit of help, being honest, not having reviews in Day 1.

3566

Changing attributes like range, mana cost, damage, text descriptions, etc is a job anyone with Notepad can do, even if they’re never looked at a XML file in their life.

3567

Darkurthe, first of all welcome to the forum. What I’d recommend is giving Civ V several plays, then checking back in around Christmas to see if Elemental would make a good gift for yourself.

3568

MoM was really a game about magic. Magic played the starring role, and the whole research portion of the game was about learning new spells. There were no unimpressive spells in the game. You started out summoning Floating Islands and raising the dead and surrounding your cities with Walls of Fire, and from there proceeded to spells with descriptions like “Inexorably and methodically destroys both worlds.” MoM was great at making you feel crazy-powerful.

In Elemental, it seems like magic plays more of a supporting role, at best. For that reason, if no other, I’d say that it’s not really a spiritual sequel to MoM. “Civ with fantasy elements” is probably a more accurate description.

3569

If you’re the only one playing it on either system I dont’ see a problem.

3570

Yeah what is the deal here? Why no reviews?

3571

I get the feeling they were waiting for the day-0 patch at least, which as was stated was doing Stardock a big favor. I know some sites, like RPS, didn’t even access to the game until release day or thereabouts.

3572

What Kevin said. There is a review on Metacritic now, but it is a French one.

They gave it a 3/10, and even quote Qt3!

On suivra donc le conseil de Brad Wardell - CEO de Stardock - qui déclarait récemment : “A tous ceux […] qui disent que le jeu est à peine digne d’une bêta et bien, ne touchez pas nos jeux à l’avenir. Je le considère prêt pour sa sortie et si vous n’êtes pas d’accord, n’achetez pas nos jeux”. Aucun risque, Brad.

http://www.gamekult.com/tout/jeux/fiches/J000093507_test.html

3573

The multiplayer portion is not released yet.

It would be ridiculous to publish a review without having played multiplayer.

Also, for a turn-based strategy game, a reviewer should put in at the very least 60 hours of game time to be able to give a fair review.

So it it makes sense and I actually applaud the usual reviewers for not releasing early final reviews.

3574

That is, unless of course, that the game was released with the multiplayer features disabled…

3575

There aren’t a lot of reviews because it’s not big title.

Also it doesn’t matter if the game is released incompleted, once the game is release, it’s consider ready for review, if reviewer withhold review due to lack of features, then there wouldn’t be any reviews for MMOs.

3576

Phew, I was worried the activity in this thread might die down!

3577

Time for some popcorn.

3578

Hey, it’s a common fact that most turn-based strategy games have multiple races/factions/civs/etc.

You have to play them all to be ethical for a balanced review, right?

If you figure at least 4-6 hours per “civ” including install time, 60 hours is actually wholly insufficient, but real world compromises have to be made, of course.

Different genres require different review requirements.

3579

Not really. If all a Civ is giving you is +% to a few traits, there’s not so much differentiation that you’d need to play them all. A few and you’re done.

3580

We’ve had this debate before at QT3. In short, a number of the professionals feel they only need to play “until I get a good feel for the game” and also don’t think they need to divulge how much actual time they’ve spent. That includes professionals that are generally held in high regard. Other professionals think a reviewer should at least complete a game. I’m inclined to think considerable time is required personally.

But my biggest issue is that I do think actual play time should be divulged. I once read a review of an expansion on a highly regarded website and was shocked when the reviewer admitted in the comments discussion of the review that he had actually only played a demo of the expansion. I was even more shocked when one of the site co-founders, someone who’s writing I did (and still do) respect, tried to defend the reviewer. So you really don’t know.