Name another gaming company whose lead developer or CEO (whatever he is) is actually one of the most active members on the forum and actually plays the game with us common folk...
I had issues with the game during release week, but stardock's instances on being an accessable company from developers up to the top made me stick with it...kudos.
I think it is bad for somoene with veto power to prowl the forums. Half of the people with negative opinions are too scared to say them so you get a lot of "this game is pretty good/ok/fun" with absolutely no critique on the dozens of negative factors. Also, you get critical but thought provoking threads locked down with a vengeance. Anyways, just my opinion.
I beg to differ...I create my fair share of "this game is unplayable" threads the first week and they never got locked. I'm sure as long as it is a valid problem and not presented in at "stardock is the worst company ever" fashion it wouldn't get locked.
I don't think I've ever seen Stardock lock a thread, EVER.
Same here.
lol scroll down:
http://forums.impulsedriven.com/350185
Why did you send us a link where virtually no one has any real input? The original post had some issues which he mentioned briefly, but mainly just complained that it wasn't a DotA clone. From there the thread became lost to trolls, by the looks of it.
Failed for who? You maybe. The first update released about 24 hours after the game launched fixed it for most people. There has only been 1 other public update.
You know what I get sick of? The entitlement generation. You bought a game. The game plays fine. The free match making in the game has problems for people who have connection types that weren't expected.
And the post is entitled "Frogboy = My Hero". Not GPG is my hero. What other game P-U-B-L-I-S-H-E-R would be out doing this? Did you buy Supreme Commander? Did you ever see anyone from THQ hanging around the forums let alone their CEO? Do you think the CEO of 2K Games gave a crap that GTA IV for the PC had hideously broken for the first month?
Why do you think people love Stardock? Because they are totally unlike other publishers. You'd almost think Stardock wrote this game. They are that involved. You can say that Stardock helped GPG with their P2P game by licensing Raknet (see the Raknet logo at the bottom of screen) but when things went sour, Stardock stepped up and has said "We'll take care of you." I can't think of any other publisher that does that.
btw GTA IV for the PC is still hideously broken for me.
Compare Stardock's forums to the World of Warcraft and Spore forums.At the World of Warcraft forums there are more "THIS GAME SUCKS" posts than any other kind. On top of that, Blizzard employees treat each post they make like they're taking time away from being Gods to mix with the mere mortals and underlings - it's almost as if they don't like their customers. They focus their community updates with talk on 'their vision' and 'their ideas' as opposed to actually talking to the community. Yes, Blizzard make some awesome games - but the LFG system in World of Warcraft was broken at Launch and it remained broken when I quit the game nearly two years later.
Spore is made by EA Games. Enough said.
It's hard to say whether Brad is just a great guy who works at a great Company, or if everyone else is just plain shit which makes Brad appear to be awesome. In anycase, Brad - if your reading - I think I have that same shirt you were wearing in your day 7 video. Just wanted to add that
Did you just seriously complain that because employee's are on the forums, people won't make overly negative threads that are completely pointless?
I can die happy folks, i've now seen someone complain about the froums actually being productive instead of troll central.
If someone's not mature enough to realize there's a difference between negativity and constructive critisim, then they shouldn't post their "negative opinion."
1. Because when the game works it's awesome. The potential is HUGE.2. Stardock have never let us down before.3. Their CEO takes the time to let us know that they've failed miserably up to this point, and explains how he's going to fix it.4. They're not EA Games.
Running Betas for patches is standard operating procedure - it's a good thing, not a bad one.
imo its nice he is active on the forum giving a few repley's now and then.
that also makes everyone sure that the posts is atleast readed by someone from the game devs or whatever he is
So far, I've been fairly positive, because it's mostly worked. Albiet with problems, but the game was playable. As of right now, I'm frustrated and a bit angry about the game, and patches that apparently break things.
Overall:
Bugs, that are related to Stardock/GPG:
It wouldn't extract. Apparently Impulse won't work with very deep directories. Also required a redownload after changing any of the directories.
Alt-Tab crashing, crashing in general.
NAT will when two players connect at the same time, not connect them, Leading to a lot of nil/unconnected players. Also, it seems to think players are still there after they have disconnected.
Impulse's GUI which has a lightning bolt for a main menu, requires right clicks even when in a mode which presents a lot of options, which LOOK like they are all the options for a game.
Achivements. Favor items. If favor items are enabled, roll the dice, and hope you have points. If you don't and the other side does...
Other problems, not Stardock/GPG's fault:
Cox redirects the dns for irc.stardock.com so chat didn't work until I overrode that today.
People thinking ping is such a huge deal that they'll kick someone for 125 ping or so.
Rage quits, and AIs that replace them being nice and easy to kill. (Though this overlaps with crashes.)
Things which are VERY good:
Stardock's communication, though I can't help but remember GPG early on having that level of communication about Supcom, to now just vanishing on their forums. (Granted the whiney nature after the countdown might have caused some of it, but official word from GPG hasn't really been heard in months.)Hopefully they don't do this.
All that was before This early morning, which added:
Update, which breaks the game, and forces me to reinstall.
Today, Straw. Camel's Back.
It's a fun game, I'm not going to ask for a refund. (Maybe some chocolate, because I'm a bit angry about it.) I hope that this will all be fixed. Frankly, I'd say Demigod might have been done, but the network was horribly horribly unprepared. There's no way to really blame the pirates, for the woefully inadequate. (Might be good PR, but it's not truthful as far as I can tell.)Part of that is due to how the Supcom/Demigod engine works with regard to the network. IMO, they probably should have kept the basic connect to everything model from supcom, and not forced the NAT facilitator. People figured it out port forwarding quickly there as I recall. Sure some people might not have been able to play, but it might have prevented it from being the problem this seems to have become.
</rant style="frustrated/angry">
I'm not afraid to post this or anything. I just haven't felt the need to, until this morning. I think Demigod is a really fun game, when it works. On the other hand, I don't think Impulse is very good at all. Hopefully after it finishes reinstalling, the problems will be fixed, soon after. Hopefully I'll look back on this post and laugh about the early on problems Demigod had.
No software is perfect. If you put a deadline on software engineering on as complex a platform as the PC, let alone multiplayer, you're going to get the product as good as that deadline would allow. Moreover, games are one of the most complex of software to develop. Put it all together, you'll always get a far less than perfect game on release. That's what patches are for, to fix the issues they could not prior to release.
Also, not everyone has the resources to maintain a continuously expanding development timeframe like Blizzard to polish their product. It's very expensive to do that. At least when the game's released, some income is generated to fuel the patching work. Otherwise, a game stuck in an iterative development/tweak/polish cycle consumes a lot of resources in terms of all the wages that must be paid to everyone involved.
Very good and valid points, Deathstalker.
I like this newer genre of this RTS RPG. I first played it and I realized that it does indeed for you to plan out as well as having that fun 'tug of war' over flags and such.
This is my first game purchase from stardock, and even though it didn't start at first I was able to quickly find a solution via stardock/GPG.
I am very happy that theses guys actually talk and mingle with the community! I think it actually does the reverse than what schloob posted, It gives us the perception of more freedom to talk about probelms, because at that point we know that at the very least, our posts and thread are being looked at.
Not only to complain but to see all other customers and users that have experienced that are willing to wait and see that this gets fixed. That shows to me that stardock has a very high customer confidence placed in them. Unlike many other publishers that I can think of.
To answer ganKing, there are 'Betas' afterwords to test things and then get feedback from the community of what they like, didn't like, what balance issues could be, etc... It is very common practice. They seem to care enough to get preview of 'what may be', and so far they have been doing everything that they can to help fix this probelm by keeping us updated, releasing some fixes that hopefully has helped others, and by just talking to us with any other probelms.
Stardock rarely locks threads unless they get out of line. Obvious trolling will get locked eventually, but complaining is not automatically trolling. There's a difference between complaining about the game, and implying that monkeys could make a better one.
I sent it because someone boldy stated in plain English that they have never seen a locked thread and there is one 8 spaces down the forum list.
This is comically rediculous. You are tired of the entitlement generation? I pay $50 for a game (incedently with money the country paid me for serving in the Military) and I can't complain when it is garbage. What I am tired of is people treating software as though it is different than any other consumer product. If you buy a fridge and the cooling coil goes on the first day out you wouldn't say: "well it isn't fair because somoene else made the coil" or "it is ok, they will just send me a new one in a month" or "it is still the best fridge ever even though it doesn't work now, it will work awesome later." I have been absolutely bamboozled by video game companies that release products that don't work recently: Darkfall, Age of Conan, Two Worlds (went in the trash after literally 15 minutes), etc., etc.
You said the Game Plays Fine:
No it doesn't. I have not been able to sucessfully connect to a multiplayer game with real people in over a week. Even in 2v2 the lag completely destroys any semblance of quality gameplay. I did a Panth game 2 days ago and was put in as ME vs. 2 AI lol... I didn't even have an AI partner to help me. The favor point system doesn't work. The competitive ladder doesn't work (before it stopped working for me I played over 20 games and to date only 10 have registered). The menus cause long, uncomfortable system hiccups. If you mouseover a button you have to pray the computer didn't crash while you wait. Alt+tabbing out to complain on the forums crashes the game. I could go on and on but I just wanted to point out that you sir are wrong and have lost all credibility in your statements.
I forget his name (I think it's Maliken or something), but the guy from S2Games is also very active on the forums and in game.
Srsly?
frogboy seems to be a great guy but i dont know him personaly so i5t seems saying he is a hero is a a bit over the top
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
