3801

I have two questions which after looking through the threads I cannot seem to find an answer for.

Firstly, is this game currently worth the price tag? I was about to buy it on a whim before I saw the cost. Secondly, is a demo planned? That could solve my first question right there.

Edit: further reading has answered my first question.

3802

I’m one of those poor bastards and believe me when I say we warned them that it was filled with bugs and boring +X% tech upgrades. What was the response time after time? Brad or someone else would create cutesy posts about how excruciatingly awful it was and to bear with it as the secret, super-duper build they were using and we didn’t have access to was turning out great. That’s when I begun to get nervous and wanted out, but too late as Stardock doesn’t give refunds on betas. The real funny part of development came in June and July when we started hearing how it was going to be ready by the end of August and you’d frequently see posts crop up about how they were shipping too soon and weren’t going to be ready. Brad or another Stardock employee would show up and remind us that had all been said before with their other games and that we were worried for nothing as polishing up the last few things on their lists wasn’t going to be a big deal.

Hell, the beta itself was a mess. When you see Blizzard have an incorporated feedback system for Cataclysm and Stardock is having us use forums to post bugs after taking down their 3rd-party bug tracker because it was supposedly spammed it’s a little sad. I’d say the whole experiment in having the beta testers have an entirely different build than theirs was an abysmal failure. All we’d get were assurances that they had fixed such and such internally and we couldn’t see for ourselves what new problems they might have created by doing so. Or even if it was actually fixed! Early in the beta towns would run out of room mysteriously for buildings when there should still be plenty of tiles available. Imagine my amusement when I sat down to the day-0 patched game and it happens there all these months later. 40~ tiles supposedly available, I can build on 2 and then the town is no longer able to build anything.

Now I send an email requesting a refund after a couple days of poring over this dreck and I’m told I’m SOL because I chose to rather naively support them by pre-ordering the LE more than 90 days ago. They’ll give me instead store credit minus shipping of the box. Awesome. Kinda confused what ‘reasonable amount of time’ or ‘full refund’ means for the #1 right on the GBoR page if I can’t get a refund during beta and I can’t get a refund after release.

Excuse the venting, but it’s rather frustrating to have been roped along all this time to see this waiting on your plate. I’m finding it great too reading the excuses on the forum about stores breaking street dates. You mean if they had waited a day or two the game would have magically been released in a playable and fun state? Neat. MP that was promised wouldn’t be locked away for release at some later date? Random maps would be in instead of a small handful of premade ones?

I’ve enjoyed Stardock’s publishing and distribution service through Impulse and wish them the best of luck in the future, but if this is a testament to their capability in game development I’d go back to the drawing board.

3803

Really?!
This thread didn’t answer those questions for you?

I haven’t played Elemental, but I’ve read this thread and I’ll take a stab:

Currently? No.
Demo is planned for a later date… but I think Stardock is rather busy fixing the game they shipped.

3804

Kieron Gillen posts Impressions Of: Elemental:

So is there a RPS-speak to normal-review-speak conversion chart? Wot I Thinks are reviews, but what’s an “Impressions Of”?

3805

Thanks. I appreciate the heads up, and I just wanted to clarify as I didn’t want anything thinking “free updates” will stop after 1 year. :)

3806

Played a finished game, but not enough to do a formal review and making it very clear I haven’t. “This is what the finished game is like in the first 6-10 hours or so”, in this case.

KG

3807

I’m not picking on just Stardock here because they’re not the only ones to lobby to have their patched versions reviewed. But it’s a bad idea. First of all, virtually every single review source says they only review gold master editions. That’s the version you get when you get it in the store and bring home. That’s IGN’s policy, that’s PC Gamer’s policy, GameSpot has the after the fact reviews to update for patches, etc. So trying to say the v1.05 is the “release” version just isn’t correct and would go against many review site’s own policies. V1.0 is the release version because that’s what was shipped to stores.

Furthermore, it just seems wrong to suggest that “because our game was so FUBAR, you need to review the patched version”. The last thing gamers need is for review sites to suggest that it’s actually ok for publishers to release undercooked games and the reviews shouldn’t reflect that. Again, this should hold true for any and every publisher and not just Stardock. Then again, I’m a former reviewer and I’m hardcore that this is one rule that should never be broken. I remember savaging Ultima 9 in a review, all the while Origin was releasing hotfixes for some issues. But it was a mess of undercooked garbage to the point that my saved games got corrupted and the review reflected that.

3808

I thought Kieron’s impressions were fair. There are plenty of interesting elements in the game, but many seem unfinished, and most are poorly explained. It’s stable. It’s playable. But it needs some serious patching.

I also like the fact that Kieron includes screenshots from his own playthrough ;) That one-ups 1up (whose reviewer, I suspect, did not actually play the game).

3809

I understand the principle here, but I wonder if it’s outdated. Most PC gamers expect a day-zero (or at least an early) patch, and that’s been true for a while. You install a new game, you patch it, then you play. The version on the disc is not relevant to me, or I suspect, most of us here. We’ll never play that version if a patch is available.

I’d rather have reviewers look at the version I would be playing, if I bought the game right then.

3810

When you can name units, who can resist your own screenshots?

KG

3811

What you wrote is true but Elemental is getting a wide pass with reviewers refusing to review it because it isn’t finish yet people still have to put money down to buy. Are we going to enter a new era where games are released and people won’t render an opinion on the game for many months just in case a developer decides to finish it?

3812

I don’t think “the game isn’t finished yet” is a glowing endorsement that is making people rush out to buy the game.

3813

I dunno if I’ll agree with your reading here. Only PCG has said they were holding off their review. For most people, it’s a game which wasn’t available to review until the day of release. It’s an enormous game. It’s not the sort of thing you can expect to see in a review sharpish if people have code that late, because it takes a while to actually write an opinion.

(Which is a reason why we went with impressions rather than wait for a full review, because we got our code especially late and we wanted to offer some qualified opinion as soon as we could.)

I would only start to expect to see reviews around now. And there’s also the chance that being a PC only turn-based strategy game it doesn’t exactly hit the multiformat site’s GET A REVIEW OUT NOW buttons.

KG

3814

Sadly I think we’re moving to an era where the informed PC gameplayer realizes that he should always wait at least a month or two after release before buying a game, unless the publisher and developer have an absolutely sterling reputation.

As far as reviewing the game with or without a patch, how about on consoles, where at least for multi-player it will be impossible to play the game without the day-0 patch anyway. It seems likely that as updating systems get more and more automated and sophisticated and the gamer public moves further and further online that getting the day-0 patch will simply be a normal, natural part of purchasing and playing a game.

3815

That was my thought as well.

http://www.elementalgame.com/journals

When 44% of the people hanging out at the official site are ‘disappointed’ it seems like denial to put a positive spin on that.

Also…1.05 was NOT the version that was originally released. It was not the version that came on my DVD and it was not the version you were playing if you downloaded the game on release day.

The lack of reviews still blows my mind. Its been a week and there is one big site with a review, 1up?

3816

I sure hope some more reviews drop soon detailing what was actually given to us. Hell, there are fans so wrapped up in this for whatever reason that I’m being told elsewhere I must have pirated the game because the patches have already brought the game to full working order.

Unbelievable.

3817

What is the cutoff? The first patch? How about the hotfix for the Day Zero patch? Why not wait another month for the “real” version of the game?

In Elemental’s case, Brad said the version that shipped on the disk without patching was a complete product.

3818

The Reality distortion field is the only thing in working order.

3819

Yep, and believe it or not there are still people out there who do not have a high speed internet connection. These folks are stuck playing the version of Elemental that came in the box. :x

The game should be reviewed as is.

3820

Just come across awesome bug. So my sovereign stack takes an enemy city, that only has one defender, wins. Next turn, I own the city, but my sov stack has vanished, to be replaced by the opponents sov stack, in that same city. Wierd.