3921

Cool story, bro!

3922

A very fair review. Though the reviewer (and I think a lot of people) heavily over-rate the “modding tools”. Out of the three levels of modding (level 1: creating assets, level 2: changing gameplay, level 3: conversions) Elemental only allows level 1 (creating assets). Brad has promised python modding later to change gamplay (level 2), let’s just hope this promise is kept eh? ;)

3923

They never have pictures, so why start now?

3924

Right on here. I recall having a small spat with brad on the forums when gal civ 2 came out. I loved the game but it was buggy on my ati/amd set up and would crash to desktop frequently. Apparently years later they still have not tackled their inability to develop on a platform other than intel/geforce.

Anyway I remember he kept at me for calling the game buggy when it was not and a lot of people jumped on calling me a troll.

Well anyway, I preordered elemental. Brad’s personality isn’t really for me. He milks a bad joke to death, and while he hit’s with the humor, he kicks the joke until its dead and wince worthy. I work with a lot of wince-worthy people in an engineering field, so I’m used to it.

Despite his personality being grating, he still has good ideas for games, and the heart is in the right place for a lot of things he does. Still, he does lots of scummy PR, pretending to be better than other companies, when he is in fact quite the same.

It’s ok though, and I still have hopes for this game. I am letting my box collect dust right now and haven’t even thought to download the game. I was honestly shocked he was releasing so early since I had been following the journals pretty regularly and trying a build here or there. I really felt there wasn’t much of a game there yet.

I’ve hated the art since forever, and yes the hair is one of the ugliest things i’ve seen in my entire life. The lore is boring as crap too, but that is a moot point really.

Honestly they needed 6 more months. This game is like at a ‘hey the engine/game kinda sorta works’ state, and they forgot to spend time to make it fun. I hope they will keep at that at least.

Unfortunately you only get one chance at a release and release press, and they really fucked the pooch. At most the game will get a random footnote in the future about updated patches and that is it. Maybe later on a steam /impulse sale will give them some sale numbers, but they are pretty f’ed.

What a shame it’s been.

3925

Hey that’s not true at all :p

GalCiv2 had all sorts of trouble with my old Intel/GeForce machine for what felt like a year. Elemental wasn’t able to run for more than a couple of minutes with the 3D landscape enabled prior to patch v1.06, and although the engine seems stable now (read: it doesn’t crash while I’m not playing), it still isn’t using my GPU.

That said, you & everyone else ought to leave your opinions of Brad out of this. The game and the man are quite separate. Attempts to argue otherwise are neither pretty nor persuasive.

3926

I’m sure Brad would love to have a Steam sale of Elemental. And no, they are no “f’ed” at all.

I find it funny that the last rants are more about evil Brad than Elemental. Hell, the last one says that “I am letting my box collect dust right now and haven’t even thought to download the game.” am I supposed to read that you have the game and you are not even going to install it to check it for yourself?

3927

There are many, many posts suggesting that this game might be worth checking out in a few months. It’s not the dumbest move - those who have been soured on it now are going to find it harder to enjoy if/when they finally patch it to some sort of decent game.

3928

There’s also many out there that really enjoy the game. I’ve experienced one crash (when I was alt tabbed and went back in), but that’s it so far. Would I like to see some more flavor, definitely, although I like several of the higher level units I’ve encountered so far, and I do think there are some cool spells. It’s not as if there is universal condemnation of the game. I would deem it considerably above decent. If you own the game, at least give it a try.

3929

Yeah, I’m definitely interested in it. I certainly don’t mind waiting a few months, or even longer. There are always other games I can play, etc. Good luck to Stardock as they work on it – there aren’t many 4X fantasy games being made these days.

3930

So stardock is the new paradox?

3931

Why all the personal attacks on Brad? He released a bad product and it’s clear he knows it’s bad and is waiting for the bomb to drop. I agree with Tom in that it is definitely a shoddy product but with enough time and the right kind of changes could be a fantastic game. While I certainly hope Brad feels the financial sting for his poor choices and bad beta practices he doesn’t need pure bile from Qt3.

3932

No, Paradox charges for their patches. Semper Fi, I’m looking at you…

Stardock hasn’t done that. Yet.

3933

While I certainly hope Brad feels the financial sting for his poor choices and bad beta practices he doesn’t need pure bile from Qt3.

He said he broken even from pre-order alone.

3934

Yes, some people think it’s decent. Some think it’s fucking terrible. What it certainly is is a game that will undeniably be better at a later date.

3935

For what its worth, I’ve been putting a lot of time into the game and still haven’t seen a single crash. That’s on 1.06. It seems like a lot of people made a judgement about the game when 1.0 was delivered and haven’t looked at it closely since. That said, even if the game was stable for them, it’s also clear that a lot of people had expectations that weren’t going to be met either way. Design decisions are different kind of “bug” then technical issues. IMHO, Elemental in its current form, while it still has both kinds of issues, is not a disaster. But then, I didn’t have any “successor to MoM” expectations.

On the review issue, I think the days of relying on a gold master physical copy is pretty archaic. If Stardock hadn’t made the stupid mistake of trying to satisfy its fans by letting the pre-order digital crowd download some version of 1.0 a day early, then the “day one” experience would have been 1.05. Elemental is hardly the first game to rely on a “day one” patch.

3936

That doesn’t mean he won’t see diminished profits because of the state of the game at release.

3937

Lucky you. The game still runs out of memory around turn 200 for me and crashes every single time. I have still never seen the end of a game!

3938

I’m up to around 250 in my current game and my 4 GB of RAM seems to be holding up pretty well. And the game is using my geezerly 9600 GT GPU. The game has slowed down, and this isn’t on a particularly big map either, so there are definately issues. Not so bad as to make me stop playing, but noticeable.

It seems to me that there are a bunch of “not enough hardware testing” issues going on with this game. For whatever reason my rig is generic enough that I’m missing most of them. I realize not everyone has been as lucky.

3939

If the reviews don’t hit it fairly hard for whatever reason I guess I’m left wondering what’s to dissuade Stardock from doing the same crap in the future of releasing months early and expecting customers to report all that’s wrong with it.

I sit here nearly a week after requesting a refund and all I’ve heard back is that I might be able to get a lesser amount than I paid in store credit. How does that mesh with their Gamer’s Bill of Rights policy?

“Gamers shall have the right to return games to the publisher that are incompatible or do not function at a reasonable level of performance for a full refund within a reasonable amount of time.”

3940

You aren’t alone, Mazuo. I know of a few people who pre-ordered the game, wish to return it now, and Stardock is only offering store credit in return. It isn’t a refund, it is an exchange.