5821

So sayeth arakyd. As it is written, so shall it be done.

5822

Oh wait, you think the expansion was pushed back to add new stuff?

lol. That’s a little naive.

Sec, lemme put on my conspiracy theory hat:

Brad knew, from the moment Elemental went gold, that it was not street ready and had the quality of a late Alpha. His “blinded by The Vision” excuse came after days of blundering around with various excuses. It sounded the prettiest and the fanboys liked it the most (“Oh, it’s just so ambitious! We’ll give you all the time you need, Lord Brad!”).

“Blinded by The Vision,” when translated out of PR speak, is simply “denial.” I think McQuaid might have pulled something similar with the turd that was Vanguard. Well, either that or the creator has such catastrophically bad taste that he actually thinks his creation is good (cf. Derek Smart). But I don’t think that’s the case here.

Where the “good” comes in is that, thanks to Brad getting knocked down more than a few pegs (which is where he belongs – Stardock is a good developer at its best but a slightly above average one the rest of the time), he’s realized that, gee, you know, there is no way this is going to be ready by November. Or December. Or probably January either.

In fact, I really wouldn’t be surprised if this “expansion” gets pushed back to September 2011 and is released as a $30 boxed product (or $50 for it + the original, in order to get the original the fuck off the shelves). All the new content would go into that, while the mechanics changes would be trickled out in monthly patches.

There is just no sane way to simultaneously be updating two codebases for a game – one where the mechanics are original, one where the mechanics are “fixed.” That’s why the original concept of the November release of a DLC-patch made absolutely no sense. The only reasonable way to do sweeping core mechanics changes is the typical practice of mostly abandoning the ‘base’ game (save for the occasional bug fix) once the expansion is out.

Ok, just one more sec, let me sit down in my Designer Armchair:

If I were him, I’d do exactly that. Shiny new stuff + any new mechanics (ie, brand new stuff like Civ4:BtS’s Espionage, not overhauls of existing systems) in a new SKU released Q4 2011 with monthly patches until then to bring the game out of beta. $30 for just the expansion, $50 for the base game + expansion. Pull the original release off the shelves entirely, ideally burying them next to the ET cartridges.

This way, you force re-reviews of the game, additionally making it difficult to get the godawful original. You establish good will by essentially selling the base game at $20, which appeals to people who returned the game or didn’t buy it in the first place thanks to reviews. Plus, you make the suckers who bought the game early happy by letting them cash in their “free expansion” on a $30 product, not a $5 confusing DLC-patchspansion.

5823

I suspect like GalCiv, the “broken” original version of the game will just get bugfixes and won’t really be supported outside of what the “fixed” version is.

So it will really be one codebase. I don’t buy the two codebases argument either.

I do think Brad knew this game wasn’t ready, but I honestly didn’t expect the game to be ready until early next year anyways. That’s one reason I can remain optimistic, I expected mediocre at best at launch, so Stardock hasn’t really underperformed my expecations as much as some people. Generally Stardock takes a lot of time post-release to get the goodness out, and I do factor that in.

that new SKU in 2011 concept- I suspect that will happen myself, but I think the early adopters will get it free- which is actually good business sense. He’s already promised such, and given the disasterpiece Elemental’s launch was, they’re in no position to break promises without a good reason.

That said, SD was getting flak on their broads about the November DLC-patch not being an expansion, so adding content and delaying makes sense, especially since its a free XP. (which they sorta did with GC2 back in the day also)

So yeah, you’re probably right, but I don’t think of it in such a negative light. It’s fanboyism, I wouldn’t cut any other developer as much slack, I’m sure- but I liked GC2 enough that I feel like they deserve it.

5824

New update (fixes and tooltips, no added features with this one):

----------- Elemental v1.09e Change Log -----------

  • Fixed a bug where loot could go nuts.
  • Grand kids should no longer defect to dead factions
  • Map list now has tooltips + lists the map size
  • When you load a map from the world setup screen, it now updates the world size spinner
  • Fix: Minor Water Elemental summon (from Lord of Sea spell) and Storm Giant now have their “Drowning Strike” abilities
  • Heal spell working properly (Unit “CurHealth” modifiers now work with Min/Max value calculations)
  • City List now features tooltip explaining red popupation
  • Bug Fixed: ‘Resource Changed’ event not firing when the resource was already in the player’s pool (broke chapter 5 of the campaign)
  • Trigger for ‘Resource Ammount Met’ no longer requires the player to have been BELOW the required amount the turn before
  • Consolidated most of the SP/MP xml files, eliminating discrepencies between MP and SP files
  • fixed leaked ref with starting spellbook spells.
  • on new unit design screen, when hovering over or selecting an item that has no “attributes” or “costs”, those labels in the selection context area will not be shown. An example is when you hover or select a hairstyle from the [OTHER] tab, equipping hair has no benefits or costs, but the labels were still showing up, which looked dumb.
  • Fixed bug where mounted units did not generate their portraits properly
  • Fixed bug where after renaming a city, the old name would still be displayed on the cloth map

Multiplayer specific fixes:

  • Removed checks for duplicate factions in the choose sovereign screen so that cycling through all the AI players doesn’t leave you with no choices
  • You can now right click on the team, faction, and sovereign buttons in the game lobby to cycle backwards. (for non-AI players, right clicking does the same thing as left clicking for faction and sovereign)
  • Fixed bug where map size was always tiny in the available games list
  • Fixed bug where minor factions were picking player colors
  • Fixed bug where if there were duplicate factions, they would get all the AI designed units from the other faction
  • Fixed bug where you wouldn’t have a faction if you finished or quit out of a game (now keeps the one that was previously set)
  • If you change the world size, the map name is now cleared so that a new random map will be picked.
  • Fixed stuck turn bug caused by caravans with invalid destinations
  • I believe that I have fixed the bug where if you clicked fast enough you could build multiple instances of a limited improvement, or build two improvements on one resource
  • Fixed bug where the learning queue was not saved in mp save games
  • Fixed bug with learning spells twice by spam clicking
  • Fixed bug when choosing a spell level not getting saved
5825

Grandkids? Holy shit. Who plays that long?

5826

v1.09e has also these changes:

  • AI being limited by the UnitType “AllowGrouping” tag (won’t groups catapults to assult the player)
  • City List: RED population when there’s not enough housing
  • City List: doubleclicking an entry acts the same as seleting it and pressing “Details”
  • City Building Mode
  • turn off camera bounds clipping (fixed bug where the camera would jerk around,causing improvements to be oddly placed)
  • selecting a friendly city in city-build mode selects it for city building
  • doubleclicking a city-details improvement entry will auto-place it

** Multiplayer **

  • Multiplayer enabled in public build
5827

<sheepishly raises hand>

MY exact recollection is a bit faded so I don’t remember the exact settings , but I was having no fun with the warfare part of Elemental, so I thought I would try to make the settings as friendly to just exploring with my leaders and really push the boundaries of the RPG part of the game. I think I made a huge map and put 1 enemy on it set at the lowest AI level. And the game went on forever, and eventually the game got to the point where I was having trouble outfitting all my leaders grandkids in all the best gear as befitting their royal station. There were so many of them I was constantly broke and had the grandkids sitting in line at the capital waiting for the treasury to build up to outfit them.

5828

If ever there was a game that should have a “Get off my lawn!” button, it sounds like this is it ;)

5829

Fixed that for you!

;) (j/k)

5830

You know, part of me is getting kind of bored of the “hurf durf uninstall it” because 1.09 is kind of enjoyable in a early GalCiv or Civ5 “dick around a few games and then wait for a patch” way.

The other part of me is laughing because it’s funny.

5831

The answer from Stardock:

It adds additional quests to the quest locations in the game. You’ll come across them randomly during play.

5832

More info on what’s coming when:

The main things v1.1 is targeted to address are:

City spam
General AI crumminess
Hero spam
Crummy spells
Your society's direction being determined by random resource placement
General clean up of research trees
General balancing of improvements and techs and monsters

What v1.1 will NOT address but instead will come in the expansion:

Tactical Battles
Combat System changes
Spells having a cool off time
Spells having a casting time
Counterspells
Spell Abilities not requiring mana but instead having a cool down and time to use.

Global mana pool is in v1.1 and initiative based combat wont’ show up until the expansion.

5833

…

okay the pushing back of fixing the game is getting annoying. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be 1.1 that fixed the things he now says is in the expansion…which is what, next year?

5834

Another breadcrumb:

In v1.1, mana gets stored and has no mana cap. Thus, a cost of 15 isn’t that big of a deal then.

At a glance this might lead to tightly hoarding your mana and occasionally unleashing a deluge of high-impact spells to demolish the more troublesome opposing armies.

5835

Do you know if there’s been any comments on whether or not there’ll be a limit on how much mana each channeler can use each turn, like Casting Skill in MoM?

5836

Well, if the A.I. can do that too, you might want that hoarde.

5837

I haven’t seen them but I don’t read the forum enough to know for sure. It’s a good question, how about going ahead and asking it there?

5838

But that would require effort, and you’ve already spoiled me by reporting news from the SD-forums ;) I usually just check out the Dev Journal-posts and not much more on the SD-forums. I’ll just assume SD people are still checking this thread (if only to get an advance notice on any bomb threats or such).

I think some sort of limit on how much mana you can spend each round would be a good idea. I can’t be alone in thinking it’s not fun to have all interesting choice removed by the availability of no-brainer obviosuly optimal options. Maybe each caster will still be limited to their essence? I think I read in one of the Journal-entries that the plan was to have spells that would take several turns to cast, but I don’t think there were any specifics on whether this would be because of a per-turn casting limit or that each overland spell would have a specific casting time. When I think of it, maybe it said something about how overland spells would be cast independently of your channelers, so a limit based on any one unit’s essence will probably not factor into it.

The Casting Skill in MoM was increased by directing some of your mana income to it, and there’s not really a similar mechanic in Elemental as far as I know. I guess a casting limit could be linked to the Wisdom attribute instead of (or in addition to) modifying the action point cost for casting spells like it does now?

Or the “Spells having a cool off time”-thing means that the cast spell action has a cooldown based on what spell you cast, which will in effect put a limit on how much mana you can throw at powerful spells in tactical combats in order to avoid risking losing units in conventional combat.

5839

Dude, you just spent way more effort than that on your last post. Of course, speculating can be more fun than just getting the answer straight away.

5840

Ehrm, but that’s a different kind of effort ;)

I’ve read through the various posts that have been linked again now, and it looks like the big changes are still quite far away, and that there might be a bigger beta process: