OT: Starcraft II and Elemental

[13lackGu4rd]

Originally Posted by 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.

keeping such close contact with the community isn't always a good thing. generally speaking the masses are stupid, and when so deeply involved in fan forums it gets harder and harder to filter the quality criticism from all the junk. sure, it's good that he's open and all that, but taking it to heart is dangerous.

oh, and don't blame the early release on the retailers, that's just bull... the game still isn't ready a few days after the original release date(even without the early street release), so blaming it on that is just a pathetic attempt to clear their incompetence. moreover, Brad himself said that he feels the game is ready, which it clearly isn't, which makes your excuse even more mute...

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Foodstamp]

The game suffered because:

Developers added, took away, changed features all the way up until the last minute. (No time for polishing those features)

It is obvious their internal beta team and the developers did not play it enough to realize there is no fun, balance or point to combat, the spell system, or the various other systems that were thrown in just because.

They leaned too heavily on the forums for direction, when they should have known that the Stardock forum goers were going to amount to little more than "yes men" to any idea they presented.

They were following a decent course to release at their secondary date of February 2011 but circumstances forced them to release in August instead.

Add to that the promises that were not kept. The game that Brad (CEO) talked about is a far cry from the Elemental I received. There is no python, there are barely any modding tools, this is not a spiritual successor to MOM, you can hardly call this a game even because the rules it follows are so bizarre, from spell damage to stacked unit damage to everything else, there is no continuity at all.

I paid for beta!

[Num]

The game was not ready for release. In a few words : The AI is terrible, lot of minor bugs, no polish, no balance. It looks like a single player only Dom3... Not really the good way to make it fantastic.
It looks great, graphic design is attractive but there is lot of work to get it enjoyable.
But Civ5 is released in 3 weeks, Stardock probably was in need of money and the next time for a release would be in months...
So lot of disappointment, hopefully the players will not disappear the next weeks until work will be done on the game...