5641

yes, and they need to shut-up about it for the next 6 months, and just work on the game, and not get “great ideas” from the “community”…

5642

I’m surprised so many people still tolerate the “we’ll release a buggy mess and use the schmucks who buy it as our beta testers” model of game development. It was damned annoying with the original Master of Magic game, and it’s wholly unacceptable now. People wonder why Blizzard does so well with their releases - one of the big reasons is that they are playable out of the box.

I know Brad Wardell has built up a lot of credit over the years with the Gal Civ franchise, but you guys should be less tolerant of getting the shaft.

5643

Did you… like… totally miss the previous 5588 posts?

5644

Honestly, with this game he’s used up his freebie.

If GalCiv 3 ends up like this, I’ll be demanding a refund like everyone else.

5645

Seriously, when I read this line, the first thing that crossed my mind was Wardell putting in a phone call to some super Gaming version of The Wolf or something.

sigh I’ll just sit and drink my coffee.

5646

Wow, I dig that idea, A LOT!! From your lips to Brad’s ears…

5647

But I wasn’t shafted, I knew what I was getting going in, I post-ordered. I’ve gotten my money’s worth; over thirty hours of play so far and I still have many new things to see. Oh, and they’re pretty much overhauling the game so I’m actually getting another new game for the price of one.

Not to mention getting a first-class ticket for the combination of a rollercoaster and a haunted house ride that is the Amazing Contrite but Confident Development Saga of Elemental, the Game that Ate the Internet.

5648

I lol’d…

I have never hated this game. It has a lot of features that I like. I’ve played a few games that were really fun even in the broken state the game is in now. I think a lot of the whinging is based on the idea that, as a product, games should be like cars – perfect out of the box. That is one way of doing things, but I don’t think it is necessarily the best way.

I will take for my example some of the many fine mods that exist, running on various game engines. (Note that it takes these mods years to become completed.) I will mention just three here for discussion – Third Age Total War, the Lord of the Rings mod of M2TW; Fall from Heaven 2; and Nehrim, the total conversion mod for Oblivion. Each of these mods is awesome in their own way. I would argue that they are vastly superior to the orignal games which spawned them. It seems to me that making games is a process that can work very well when it is public and crowd sourced.

Since I’m all about the finished product, I don’t mind waiting for Elemental to get good. I’m sure some will say, why should I pay for what fans could make themselves for free? The difference between Elemental and a fan made mod will be that the turnaround is going to be much faster, since the coders are on the payroll.

5649

I think people have already been saying this, but it’s been the game developers not the players.

5650

Touche. You know who would never do something like that? An artist. Each of the three mods I mentioned were driven by true artists. Unfortunately, our present set up does not pay for artistry in games…

5651

Heh, I have tonnes more. For example:

I’d like to divide population into the employed and the unemployed. The employed generates tax, the unemployed give a positive modifier to population growth.

I’d like production chains so, say, you can’t build a unit of guys with swords if you don’t have a bladesmith, armoury and barracks.

I’d like for these production chains to have a specific output working along the lines of how food currently works (X units/turn but no stockpiling).

I’d like for it to be impossible to maintain production chain XYZ if you lack heroes with the corresponding special abilities.

I’d like heroes divided into 3 basic groups: adventurers, commanders & administrators.

I’d like if resource sharing only happened between cities linked by caravans, and I’d like for cities linked by caravans to also share production capabilities.

I’d like stacks divided into three types:
Upkeep-free, leaderless & size-limited patrol stacks that autonomously try to protect stuff like trade routes and resource points not located within cities.
Upkeep-free adventuring stacks that requires a leader and can do quests, spread culture, and attack everything but cities and army stacks.
Army stacks with an upkeep cost and a leader requirement that can do/attack everything except quests and adventuring stacks.

And… I could go on, really. I mean it. I have some not-all-that-rough outlines for the combat and magic systems lying around somewhere - though they predate the release of the game.

5652

I love them all! Let’s get Disconnected connected to the project!

I said before that artistry doesn’t get paid in this game market, but I should have been more specific – this kind of design artistry is what doesn’t seem to matter to the gaming companies. Obviously, they do pay for visual arts and sound.

In the end, I suppose, what we as consumers who care about how the game plays are really paying for is an engine that can accommodate the work of design artists?

5653

I don’t know if I’d say I like the game, but I sure do like what the game is trying to be. I’m still hoping Stardock can pull it off. While I do share the worry about lack of design focus, I think it is a good sign that they are willing to completely redesign aspects of the game… because that’s exactly what the game needs.

5654

I just want a spiritual successor to MoM. Thats all really. Unless this is ultimate destiny of Elemental, then I will consider it a failure. Perhaps I was wrong in thinking that is what this game was supposed to be. In that case it is MY mistake. On the other hand, if that is what it was supposed to be, then it is StarDock’s mistake and they need to fix it to satisfy me. They need to fix it “for free” because I will not buy an expansion pack to get the game I thought I bought for $50.

5655

I almost bought it… the I realized I would have been crazy for dropping 50 bucks on what amounts to a beta. If/When Elemental becomes a good game, I might buy it, I might not…

Elemental went from a game I could not wait for to a game I have to wait for and I am not sure how I feel about that.

5656

http://forums.elementalgame.com/397448/page/5/#2784896

Brad’s new idea for specialists.

I see some potential issues, but some real potential for game improvement here. Might end up needing a 1.11 or 1.12 to get working right though.

5657

They can take as long as they need to make it right as far as I’m concerned. I’m in the camp of “They shouldn’t have released it early”, so if they hadn’t of done that I’d be waiting anyway. If they were to aspire to Blizzard levels of quality control I’d be waiting as long as it takes for normal companies to put out the game plus several bug fix patches and content expansions anyhow.

I already own the game, all I can do now is wait, and read the upcoming fixes and changes like they’re buzzworthy pre-release features.

5658

Man, I find Stardock forums impossible to read. Nearly non-existent font on a black background = me squinting and not seeing. That’s why I like to read this stuff on a different forum.

If anyone else had that problem, here’s what Brad said:

It’s specialist supply. Not specialists. And they’re global.
There’s nothing to manage about them. They’re not people per say, you’re just deciding what you want to do with your population.
I found my kingdom which gives me a capital. The capital provides 5 to my specialist supply.
I can then build a merchant, workshop, arcane lab, study and each one will use 1 of these. *Moreover players can, like in our original design, construct multiple merchants, workshops, arcane labs and studies as long as they have the people to run them and can afford the maint.
If I want to train a soldier, that uses one from my specialist supply. So I’m having to choose what I’m doing with my people. *It’s much MUCH closer to Elemental’s original design document (in the original design players designed their cities in a much more intricate and fun way but we could never come up with a way to adequately limit the # of merchants and labs and studies because of the way the population resource was implemented).
The best improvements require higher level cities and because the core building blocks can have duplicates, it encourages players to use outposts for outposts (i.e. not small towns but just a 1 tile fortification to stuff units in which is why they’re called outposts and not tiny towns) and makes having larger cities that much more compelling. *The reason we don’t have outposts cost food is because we want to encourage players to fortify their outskirts. *Outposts will no longer providing any free housing so there won’t be a reason to spam them out other than for strategic reasons.

5659

Considering Stardock tried to lay hands on the legal rights to MoM, I don’t see how they can deny that a spiritual successor is what they were at some point shooting for.

5660

I’m pretty sure remaking MoM hasn’t been the intention for a while now. That said, you might want to check out King Arthur - The Roleplaying Wargame. It is more Total War than MoM, but it is sort of a marriage of the two.

Heh, that will never happen. But thank you.