OT: Starcraft II and Elemental

[delacroix]

[quote=WraithLord;755473]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

You should read that, following all links in the article:
And quoting this notable paragraph:
"In response to someone saying Elemental “plays like an early beta” on the Quarter to Three forums, Brad requests that anyone who thinks so “please stay away from our games in the future. I consider it ready for release and if others disagree, don’t buy our games.”
"

I don't see what's so bad about the quote though or why PC Gamer is making a deal out of the quote. Maybe it's just how I'm interpreting the quote. All I get is Brad is saying is if a person doesn't think a game is in a good enough state, not to buy it. Sounds fair enough. "Vote with your wallet".

It's not like Brad's making a derogatory comment, or saying he "wants his life back" or calling them "little people" like BP oil's PR campaign and people don't care about that anymore either.

The reviewer says he'll be making a full review soon, so it'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

I'll post a couple impressions as well in a couple more days. I haven't had enough game-time just yet with the release build.

[13lackGu4rd]

Originally Posted by delacroix

the problem is that Brad is the CEO of Stardock, thus he can't just act like your average poster! sure, he apologized for it later saying he was tired and sleep deprived, and of course that his quote was out of context, but it's still no excuse for the company's CEO to post in the forums as if he was some child customer. also saying "if you don't feel the game is ready don't buy it" and insisting that he feels the game was actually ready for release, sounds like "this is the game, take it or leave it" instead of "we are aware of the problems and we'll fix them. sorry we released the game too soon, our mistake".

I mean, come on, the game has been released, not beta, retail! you can't release a game and charge money for it when even basic features don't work and the came crashes constantly! sure, they're patching it up and fixing problems on the fly(and causing old problems to reappear it seems), but that's just bad, period. don't release a product until it's ready and mostly bug free, that's pretty basic. if you find the odd bug here and there that's alright, nobody is perfect, but crushing every 10 minutes? having tactical battles not work? AI factions that don't work or don't move outside their capital? those things are basic, and should never happen after release!

they'll probably fix all those bugs eventually, and even fix other things like the UI, AI, etc, heck Elemental might be a good game eventually(in a year or 2) but right now it's just pathetic, and charging money for such an unfinished product(and claiming it is finished) is almost criminal.

[sffrrrom]

Firstly, Brad isn't an average CEO. Stardock is a privately run company, so it's not like he has to answer to the shareholders, and Brad has always been deeply involved in the trenches, so to speak. While he has been known to take criticism poorly, and this is a prime example of that, I'd much rather he continue to lose his temper once in a while and still be actively involved in the community. Also, the review, while fairly accurate in a variety of extents, struck me as somewhat disingenuous in their use of that quote.

Secondly, the reason Elemental's release was so rocky is that several retailers broke the street release date. While the game still would have been rough around the edges without this (notably with respect to balance, which is still remarkably poor, a fact I've been critical of in the Elemental forums) many of the unplayability bugs and crashes probably would not have been large issues if people had been able to access the Day 0 builds properly, which would have happened if the street release had gone as planned.

That said, I really couldn't recommend buying Elemental right now. Personally, I'm just sticking it on the shelf for a month or two till it gets better balanced.

[Zeldor]

sffrrrom:

If someone does that, you sue them in court. There are deals, if someone releases game earlier, it's breach of contract. They'd have to pay huge fines for that.

[sffrrrom]

13: What do you mean by the game still isn't ready? If you mean that it still needs serious balancing and gameplay work, then I agree with you, and did in my above post. My point was that the broken street release date most seriously negatively impacted performance/crashing/unplayability, especially people who tried to play the retail version without patching (because they couldn''t patch yet). Many of those issues have been addressed by now, and I don't see that they really should constitute a black mark against Stardock. On the other hand, the fact that the game isn't really much fun to play at the moment, because its so poorly balanced, should certainly count against them.

Also, whether or not you think close contact by Brad and the others is a good thing or not, it's really the only way for Stardock to pursue their business model as an indie company. There are plenty of large, impersonal corporations out there who take no notice of their fans (cough, EA, cough).

Zeldor: No, or at least not in Stardock's case. The fact is, retailers DID break the street release date, and this probably represents a breach of contract. However, suing those retailers who did is impractical (Stardock even stated this themselves), at least for a small independent company like Stardock. Maybe a huge company, like EA or Blizzard, who commands millions of dollars in sales of one product, might be able to pursue litigation. But the reality is that in pursuing legal remedies, Stardock would likely be forced to spend far more money than they would ever see in return - money they don't have to spend to prove a point, like Blizzard or EA do.

[Baalz]

Yeah, I had a pretty crappy experience with Demigod from Stardock. It was so buggy upon release that it was nearly unplayable - it's essentially an entirely MP game that was launched with unusable matchmaking. Months in it was still just plain *bad*, requiring a potentially prohibitive amount of effort just to line up people to play, which sucked because the game had a lot of potential. The community just withered and died because of it, I've no idea if they eventually ironed out all the problems but it didn't matter because nobody was playing it anymore. It totally soured me to paying retail for a game then doing the beta testing for my trouble. Stardock used up all the goodwill I have, I'm not picking up another game from them until I have some assurance it's polished.

[Zeldor]

sffrrrom: [couldn't you pick easier nick?]

No, small companies cannot afford not to sue. They have to be even harder when dealing with people that want to damage their business.

But even without that we see that:
- game was not ready to be released now, or in a week or probably even few months
- they cannot do betas, there are insane amounts of bugs that can be spotted after 15 minutes

There are many very serious bugs that are not fixed in 1.05 patch. And Brad thinks 1.05 is a ready product. Database is screwed terribly - you can build multiple limited buildings, have multiple battles with same opponents and collect same loot few times - you just need to click fast enough [or make game run slow enough, easy thing]. Imagine this in MP. And if they cannot make basic stuff like that, how about all hacks and db injects?

And I'm not talking about balance or gameplay, which feels like Civ5 mod that adds 100x more huts and make barbarians diversified.

[13lackGu4rd]

sffrrrom, not ready not in the sense of game balance but in the sense of game options not working properly, I gave you some examples in my above post, Zeldor just gave you more. also, I understand that the multiplayer aspect of Elemental still doesn't work, which is another huge issue, considering most gamers buy new games just for the multiplayer aspect...

now, stop with this bull**** about the early release due to retailers! we're now almost a full week after the retailers released the game, Stardock already made what? 2 or 3 patches? and the game still isn't ready! Brad thinks it is, but it is clear he's mistaken... the game won't be really ready for a few months at the very least, sorting out the various bugs, getting all the game options to work as intended, fixing the UI and AI, etc. note that none of these have anything to do with the actual game play, balance, etc(well, part of the AI issue I assume, but the AI issue is huge...) so yes, we're talking about the BASICS not even the more advanced stuff(that usually takes more time, and is the real reason for patches, not to fix basics).

[sector24]

Update to tactical battles: http://forums.elementalgame.com/392831

Shards are supposed to increase your spell damage, but currently they do not. This is definitely a contributing factor to magic being so weak.

[LDiCesare]

Impassable terrain exists in tactical battles, but I've only been able to make use of it once, and I had 4 or 5 troops to boot, so it isn't terribly thrilling indeed.

The game is indeed in a beta state if anything.

Main issues remain. Brad blamed the number of Windows variants and graphics cards. He's certainly right in a sense, but then he wanted to make a PC-only game. And he's wrong in that in ye olde days, there was this mess with sound cards and with extended memory, so... Anyway, this kind of game certainly shouldn't use cutting-edge features that'll bleed the memory out of the game. But then I checked the 'cloth map only' option, so I'm probably biased. (And yes, I'll launch nethack of adom again soon.)

As of 1.05, the game crashes often (2 hours max for me). Several posters also report the impossibility to load saved games.
Random map generation is unable to provide a decent number of maps, and won't ever be if they stick to their current scheme. They have a patchworkk-algorithm prepared, but it's still ridiculous, as they would have decent map scripts ported from Civ IV if they had just opened the map generation api during the beta.
Tactical battles are dull. Auto resolution is pitiful, as I managed to lose a battle by autoresolution (I had about 100+ vs 33 in terms of estimated power), and when I reloaded and replayed I didn't lose 1 health on any unit...
Flavor isn't to be found anywhere.
AI is dumb. Just researching big armies with big weapons and some armor, and building ONE such unit wins you the game on a normal sized map.
Magic is mostly useless tactically, although some strategic spells (teleport, summons) can be useful. Even then, spells aren't balanced. Reveal costs a lot of mana for little benefit, while fire giants can be summoned pretty early and can win you the game all by themselves if you're fast enough at locating your opponent (which only requires building peasants, but I'm usually too lazy to have more than 1 stack at a time).
UI is bad. Locating armies/units in needs of orders is difficult. Finding out how to equip your heroes is unintuitive. Also, sometimes, one unit will move out of your stack alone without your wanting nor understanding. This can lead you to lose the game in case 'twas your sovereign who suddenly left his army because there's no army management window.
Champions are worthless. They cost so much to equip and will be slaughtered easily by the first squad of soldiers they'll meet that they are a joke. Even putting tens of the +2 attack for 100 gold amulet, cheesy as it is, isn't going to make them useful.

I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting stuff.

Still, the game will probably be good in several months or one year.