OT: Starcraft II and Elemental - Page 4

RadicalTurnip · #1 July 30th, 2010, 01:35 PM

Yeah, so far in the campaign, the in-between missions are silly and meh, but the gameplay is very interesting for the most part, so I appreciate that. Sounds like I need to up the difficulty from "normal" though, haha.

llamabeast · #2 August 16th, 2010, 02:25 PM

My plan for Elemental is to wait a year, then get it. I reckon they will have it all sorted by then, and the modders will have corrected any of the egregious failures of judgement that Brad is sometimes prone to.

Has anyone played "Distant Worlds"? I just stumbled across it - looks like it might be pretty awesome.

Knai · #3 August 16th, 2010, 03:59 PM

I had high hopes for a while, but they can't seem to get criticism. Even when they do things that are completely stupid (The Empire and Kingdom dichotomy in troop enhancement and such.) the fan base worships them, and if someone raises a legitimate criticism they are either shot down by the mods or everyone else on the testing forum. Its getting eerily similar to Pathfinder in that regard really.

thejeff · #4 August 16th, 2010, 10:43 PM

I think that's the point. Why have an open beta if you're not going to listen to the feedback? Is there a mechanism for suggestions from the beta testers to "be sent to the publishing company"? Or is that company's forum the mechanism?
If you don't want criticism in public, don't do the beta test in public.

Sure, lock the threads that are like the faux example above, but listen to actual suggestions and give some indication that you're listening. If it's not really a test, just a way to generate positive word-of-mouth, then it's kind of annoying.

It could be partly the fan base though. If anything but raves turns into a flame war, then that's a harder problem to deal with.

Lingchih · #5 August 17th, 2010, 05:45 AM

Stardock is well known for having open betas, and then not listening to the feedback. Still, they are the top developer of TBS games in my book, and their AI's are top notch. I will try Elemental... it looks like a poor man's Dom3, crossed with MoM.

Doo · #6 August 17th, 2010, 06:06 AM

Elemental is a worry. I have the beta and so far have been... largely unimpressed. It promises much that I should like but I ask myself will it deliver considering release is a few days away?

Ultimately I think that it will be brilliant with time.

WraithLord · #7 August 17th, 2010, 07:12 AM

sector24, can you give example links to the threads you mention?- If what you describe is true then I think I'll avoid elemental altogether.

You know, I now recall making a two suggestion posts that got, well, ignored. No wonder...

You can check for yourself:
http://forums.elementalgame.com/329075
http://forums.elementalgame.com/330349

Gandalf Parker · #8 August 17th, 2010, 08:45 AM

Another facet to this 20-sided dice would be this post from usenet.

A person asked about the game saying it was due soon but he hadnt seen much chatter on it. One of the response posts was this....

Quote:

I've been doing the beta testing and I am a little concerned.

The game is still very unstable (frequent CTD, extreme slowdowns,
running out of memory on a system with 16GB, ...) and incomplete as of
the last (beta4) release and they have been making huge changes in each
"beta" release. It is waaaaay late to be making such big changes with
release immanent instead of just ironing out serious bugs and balancing
things. I suspect the initial release is going to be in very rough shape.

That said it is a lot of fun and if they stick with it and keep cleaning
things up it will eventually turn out to be a great game.

On the one hand this does support the statement that the release date might be something to avoid.

On the other hand it does not give me the impression that new ideas are being ignored. If anything, quite the opposite. So if one or two ideas seem to have gotten no attention except flamage from fans Id suspect they did not meet the criteria.

sector24 · #9 August 17th, 2010, 12:12 PM

http://forums.elementalgame.com/389642

http://forums.elementalgame.com/389083

http://forums.elementalgame.com/388766

http://forums.elementalgame.com/388747

I didn't have time to do too much digging, but this is the general gist of things. There are a whole lot of threads talking about how the tactical combat is awful, how the spells lack distinctiveness, how the research is overly simplistic, etc. They don't all get locked but the "promise" that release will be awesome while all evidence is to the contrary is a bit disingenuous.

I believe the fanatical side of the fan base is sometimes a hindrance as well. I have a difficult time getting objective information out of their forums because there's a ridiculous amount of blind praise and bashing of any contrary viewpoints. That is of course not Stardock's fault per se, but from my (cynical) viewpoint they condition the forumites to tow the party line for "karma" or the slim chance that "Frogboy posts in my thread" kind of stuff.

I'm wasting altogether too much time talking about Elemental.

But I guess I'm overly harsh simply because it's almost worse to come so close to success and still fail than it is to just come up with crap in the first place. I guess I set my standards a little too high.

WraithLord · #10 August 17th, 2010, 04:10 PM

Good examples.

Frankly, I don't understand SD's attitude.

As a dev I highly value potential customers inputs. It doesn't matter if it's "constructive" or plain *****ing (in case of *****ing I just filter the facts from the noise). Comments are good, criticism is good since at end of the day the product is developed for the costumers not for the devs.

SD seems to be pretty resistant to external influence, the threads give the impression that they know what they're doing, all the comments are already in their ToDo list and the beta version is nothing compared to that hidden version they plan to release.