4461

Forgotten about by whom? Everybody else on the forum? Fuck off.

Thanks! Flowers posts make me feel like there will be a quiz after them and if you fail it, ninjas will break in and beat you with a walrus.

4462

I’m sure he’ll soon realise it’s good for business to help even the naysayers…

4463

I’m not trying to be critical, but I guess I just don’t get this approach. You’ve paid for a game but you won’t play it because of the forum chatter? Why bother buying it in the first place? Maybe you’ll enjoy playing it in its current form, I know I have.

I just don’t get buying something and then setting it aside without at least checking it out to your own satisfaction.

4464

Yeesh, it’s salvageable but good lord there’s a lot of work to be done. If they burn hard, I think it might enter the realm of decent by Christmas, optimistically. A lot of that hinges on whether or not they fully realize everything that’s broken though… Brad’s follow-ups have me questioning that. There seems some disconnect where he’s still not quite fully getting it (similar to the Warlords Battlecry 3 thread).

What really needs to happen is he needs to bring in some 3rd party critics of the game and pull them into the (re)design process. A lot of the ideas in Elemental are really cool, but none of it works well together right now (or work at all, in some cases).

EDIT: I just popped open Impulse and it’s notifying me of an Elemental update, but it seems to be stuck on “Preparing Download”. Did they get 1.07 out the door today?

4465

Apparently. I’m guessing the demand is pretty high at the moment, which is why the download is sticking.

Edit: started downloading for me. It’s relatively small (under 10 MB) so it should be fairly quick.

4466

Ah - good question. It’s because I have no shortage of other games to finish off in the meantime, and I think my hours with Elemental will be better after it’s been given a little more time to cook, so to speak. If Brad/Stardock need my feedback then I’d be happy to dive in and try it out, but it seems as if there’s already enough feedback for an army of devs. Although to be blunt, I’m not so sure about the signal/noise ratio.

Anyway, I preordered many months ago so the purchase was all about the hope of supporting a great game that would come out sometime in the nebulous future. It’s not like I’ve been that concerned about delayed satisfaction.

Of course, one could argue that there’s little reason to preorder anything - the games are going to come out regardless, and it just parts a person from their money that much quicker. Maybe it’s the feeling of being a part of something, a movement. Maybe the investment allows me to more fully share in the enjoyable anticipation. It could be that giving a miniscule vote of confidence could somehow make a difference (think Fan Effect). There are several underlying psychological drives that contest for first place when it comes to that decision and it’s hard to say which is predominant. But the decision to purchase was made and I’m now left with the choice of activities in front of me.

I can:
[ul]
[li]Play other games which are at peak condition right now, and then play Elemental later on when it’s in peak condition, or …[/li][li]Play Elemental now, knowing that there’s apparently some serious work to be done on it and play other games later on.[/li][/ul]I think my amount of enjoyment would be better served in the long run by following the former rather than the latter path, but I’m willing to hear arguments against that line of reasoning.

By the way, it warms the heart a bit to hear people such as yourself are enjoying it. That raises my hopes even more.

4467

It was worse then that, really. His employees posted in threads telling people that anybody posting about how the game couldn’t possibly be polished and ready for launch would be ignored. They wanted, and created an echo chamber with that kind of chill effect.

There were several people in the beta trying to get through to them back in June (if not earlier, I’d need to do a lot of reading to confirm stuff before that). I was one of them. They flat out didn’t want to hear it, no matter how clear it was that there really was more then 2 months of work to do to people on the outside.

What he said today fits with what was going on in the last 2 months of beta. They believed a certain thing, and the people saying otherwise were external and easy to dismiss.

4468

Brad’s post appears to be the sincere result of getting some time away to clear his head and play the game. I am not surprised he sees the issues, but I am surprised he’s so blunt about them. He no longer trusts Stardock’s development process, which is a heck of a thing for a CEO to say in public. I imagine he’s about to embark on an end-to-end analysis of their core business processes, organizational structure, roles and responsibilities, etc. I do all that stuff for a living, and I hope he doesn’t underestimate the degree of difficulty and time required to get that right ;)

He’s going to come back with a huge chip on his shoulder and burning desire to make this game great. I suspect we’re going to end up with a very good game. Eventually. Given the amount of work required, it may be next spring.

4469

You give yourself too much credit. Not forgotten by me mate. ;)

4470

4471

… we’re going to need a bigger boat?

4472

adulator, backscratcher, backslapper, bootlicker, brownnoser, doormat, fan, fawner, flatterer, flunky, groupie, groveler, handshaker, hanger-on, lackey, minion, parasite, politician, puppet, slave

4473

So what has Stardock released between Demigod and this (game wise)? Have there been other major releases if not I could see why Brad might take a look at internal policies etc. I love Stardock, I love the idea of Stardock, but it scares me how two big name games could roll out with such trouble.

4474

I’m trying to sort out the N^2 variables thing as well. Is he saying that every option yields exponential end cases that have to be handled?

4475

That was my point, dumbass.

4476

Stardock released Demigod but didn’t develop it. So that’s a somewhat different situation. Prior to Elemental, Stardock hadn’t actually developed a full game since GalCiv2, over four and a half years ago (though they did two expansions to that game). I suspect that has something to do with how things turned out.

4477

Well I’m keeping the game, it will probably mature and I still am very fond of their products

4478

Bump ::teehee::

4479

You are a bad man Dude.

4480

Dumbass has always struck me as a pointless insult. Your ass doesn’t exactly have much intelligence to begin with, so dumbass really is normality. ;)