In my mind, the fun of Elemental resides in the fact that you’re not just trying to conquer some fantasy world but the world itself is designed to be so organic and unique from game to game.
A lot of the difference between games is a result of things like a tech tree that has different techs in it, a huge library of special content that is integrated into map generation randomly each game, quests, integrated community content, and the divergent paths to victory.
Now, as some of you know, Stardock’s bread and butter isn’t from game development. Our desktop software and enterprise software have always given us the luxury of being able to take as long as we want to develop our games as well as take “risks” on the way we release our games (no copy protection for instance – which, in case people are wondering, the retail version of Elemental will not have copy protection).
And that brings me to a question I wanted to pose to you folks. Would you be interested in us extending the beta? Since anyone can join betas by pre-ordering, we could try something that really hasn’t been done before as far as I know – make the beta experience something truly outstanding unto itself.
Right now, the schedule is this:
This is pretty much the same schedule we’ve been doing since Galactic Civilizations I back in 2003.
But imagine this kind of beta instead:
So what would be the point of this? The point would be to make it a lot more fun to develop the game with the beta testers. Rather than have v1.0 come out in February and then have v1.1 in say April and so on, we simply keep working on the game with the beta testers.
Then, when we release the game, it’s got a ton more stuff.
Here are some thoughts that come to mind:
How many players should/can we allow in a game? 8? 12? 32?
How sophisticated can we make dungeons in the game?
How sophisticated can we make quests in the game?
How sophisticated can we make tactical battles in the game?
How big of a scope can we give the campaign?
We don’t have the financial pressure to release the game in February and because of that, we have an opportunity to try something we’ve not done that we think might be really special and that is vastly increase the contribution of the beta players into the game than what we’ve done before.
The end result would, I think, be a game that could very well be a classic. A year’s worth of player input before it was released to the general public.
Tell us what you think.
Twiglet of the Arnor had an increased beta period and that worked out really well in my opinion. Go for it, and make sure we get the modding tools during the beta.
As far as any customers are concerned it means I get the game at the same time, but I get loads of aditional content, on which I get to decide it's flow. Some more regular updates to the game that the current sugested scedual would be nice, so overall...
YES
A big yes I remember the extended beta of ToA fondly, it gives us a better product in the end gives you lots of free beta testers who can make suggestions and judging by ToA it will be fun in itself.
Ok I'm pre-ordering
I can't help but feel like we're 'getting it wrong'. Those participating in game forums at all, I'm told, account for a small fraction of a given game's overall player base. Those that express strong interest in participating in Q&A and pre-release testing are, I'm told, an even smaller sub-set.
On the one hand, it doesn't sound like an extended development cycle would have a major impact on us (those responding here) as we'd still be playing the game - and perhaps enjoying the incremental updates/patches expected during an extended beta. On the other hand, what if we don't get it right, and due to the longer development/feedback/test reiterative process have a longer and larger opportunity to steer things in a direction that makes the game more appealing to this narrowly-defined player segment ("us") but less appealing to the larger audience? We need some objectivity, which is difficult to achieve when you're this close to a process.
To the main question: Yes!
I, as many others are, am looking forward to this game as the major turn-based fantasy strategy game-fix of the decade. If you need more time, by all means spend it.
The extra time, in my view, is the major benefit. I view the possibility of having more interaction with the beta-testers as an added bonus; in particular, for ironing out imbalances, and adding ideas, that only come up as a consequence of extended play and discussion of the game.
As an aside, I might add, that you should, of course, continue to take charge in making the major design-decisions. I'd rather that Elemental be a game with an edge, than a game which - as part of a lengthy beta-process - has ended up with the designs for major parts (such as the tactical combat-model or the economics-model) having been decided by a democratic process. (I say this lightly, as I see no major chance of that happening. The discussion on the economics-model, is a good example.)
Oh yes, and to
One of my major issues with the GalCiv-series was the lack a tactical battle system, so I am very interested in this. I seem to remember, that XCom has been mentioned as an inspiration, as some point...? I think, that's a healthy inspirational source, albeit too complicated. For a game like this, I'd look for something more akin to the venerable Centurion-battle-system. Fairly simple, battles not too long, with a certain chess-like feel, and with strong tactical decisions. It's all too easy to overcomplicate the system. Focus on a small set of strong, crisp features, and a strong, interesting, and moddable AI.
Well, depends on if you are counting people, or people's posts.......
Extended beta generally means better quality in the end so on a first thought i would have a tendancy to say yes. Yet i remember extended beta (for galCiv TA i think) which at the end was particularily long. I don't think overdoing the beta serves the best interest of the game. A one year beta seams in my opinion a bit too much and at some point having a polished and complete game is good as well.
Maybe some intermediate solution solution rather than doubling the beta length from 6 to 12 months go from 6 to 9 months?
Guess that would depend on map size and on how the game plays (colony rush and energy mechanism?). Since huge maps and very long games are going to be in, having a high limit seams to be better. It would avoid a big empty map fealing and/or endless colony rush.
Quoting Aesir rising: I'd rather you ask "How sophisticated can player content creators make dungeons in the game."
As sophisticated as possible i would say (multi level dungeons included) but i rather ressource developement be put into better strategic elements. This might be a good point for modding and player expansion.
Also i liked the concept "you explore the dungeon and you awaken a big bad evil you shouldn't have" having dungeons that can trigger special events, armies, techs etc on the big map should definitly be in.
As long as complex quests are optional and not a must do... don't want to spend one hour to finish a quest when you have an empire to build.
My main issue with tactical battles is a) it shouldn't give the human player too much an advantage over the computer players you should be able to auto resolve battles with a result that is close enough to the result you would have by playing the battle and not have too much of a disadvantage when you don't want to play them all.
Less complex than those of empire total war (having to take into account the slope of the terrain for them to shoot over each others heads and not into each other is way too much imo).
At most one or two special ability you can activate per unit, mostly passive stuff for regular troops (except for mages and heroes).
Moral should be in imo it allows for different strategies. Having units that scare away other troops, better moral near your channeler, army flags etc.. could be in. Moral is also a good point imo because it gives an incentive to make large armies with rank upon rank of troops even if only the first few lines actually fight.
Being able to make regiments of different sizes from 5 to 50 soldiers depending on your strategy quality vs quantity.
What might be nice also is having customizable regiments where you can add in a regiment champion/flag that gives a small passive bonus, mostly to give each regiment a unique feal rather than the 50th regiment of archers in my army.
I would rather no campaign at all . You eventually finish the campaign and they tend not to be very fun to replay. I rather better randomly generated maps, more techs, units, buildings, special events, world changing spells and ai able to deal with those features .
Hmmmm... The silent majority perspective. Given I have been around SD since Frogboy first started it and even before when he was still a student and given the general customer for SD products to the best of my knowledge as well as the general age of anyone that played MoM I would say we are on the right track.
Personally speaking I have a tendency to discount the notion in question. I look at it as a straw man argument. VoC is very important and yes having a comprehensive sample is the best situation one can only use what they have at hand and given anyone can voice their concerns I tend to value those that take the time to do so more than the others that argue the opposite for its own sake. Such people are your foundation and you only grow or die from there in my not so humble opinion.
I was just rounding off things and I was trying to count people only once on a quick browse of the thread.
Yea, I had the same concern in my post. The answers here are going to be completely atypical of what the actual consumer audience would say.
I'm certainly in the "maybe" camp, though the binary choice of the two release dates feels a little forced. I'd rather see one beta cycle iteration after which Stardock can get a better feel for when they might have a game they'd be proud to ship and set the beta/release schedule from there.
Since there hasn't been any beta at all yet, it seems like it'd be difficult to get a feel for how much work they'd want to incorporate from beta feedback into the final release.
On the other hand, those here are by definition those most interested in the game, and thus the ones who would be most likely to complain about a later release if at all. Those not here are probably not following the game closely and are probably less concerned.
Let's not forget that though we are a very small minority of players, we're also often the same type that reviews these games and publizes it from early on. I have a lot of friends that like strategy games, but not enough to be in the alpha or beta. If I send out word that the game sucks they're not going to buy it (I trade that for their FPS advice ).
Another thing, we're the most likely people to be modders so a lot of the questions that have been asked are directly pertinent to this group. If they make it easy for us, their game gets loads of free content.
Lastly, when you make a strategy game you should try to balance it around the higher skilled players. If you can do that while still making the game easy to get into and intuitive, players won't grow out of the game once they get the hang of it and the life of the game will be greatly extended.
I completely agree with kryo... the current community is the foundation of the games fanbase. Our satisfaction or dis_satisfaction will be voiced not only here, but with family, friends and on other forums. If the game provides great fun and stability I'll be expressing my thoughts not only here, but other game forums. All very important to the sales of the game itself.
The longer beta schedule is a no-brainer. I agree that Elemental can become a Classic, especially with a years worth of feedback from rabid fans.
Regarding dungeon sophistication. Probably not in the base game, but I would love for the possibility of starting settlements inside dungeons. I'd love a "Mines of Moria" mod that has dungeons at the base of mountain ranges, allowing you to explore and settle down! An underground fortress would be pretty cool, and it would naturally be very discrete.
If you could work the engine in such a way to allow modding or future patches/expansions to add in things like that, I'd be very happy!
True, but the game isn't really created just for those most interested or there'd be no sales justifying bothering to create the game. It's all a shade of grey I guess. You don't want to be Duke Nukem Forever and never ship, but neither do you want to ship something that's not worth buying.
Releasing software is usually a financial matter. When is the nexus of game features and game delivery going to generate the best return on investment? If financial considerations really take a back seat in this case, then there's not much need to have any particular ship date in mind. I'm assuming financial considerations have some impact though, which is why I advocated having 1 beta cycle before settling on a date. If the beta is going to help determine scope, it's hard for me to see how Stardock has sufficient information to determine that scope without having any beta feedback yet.
As someone the preordered when the game was announced, it's hardly going to matter to me one way or the other though. Barring, as someone mentioned with their Sins beta experience, being burned out on the game by the time it actually ships.
As far as concerns that this forum doesn't represent the audience for this game, ToA had an extended beta and hardly anyone seemed put out by it most appriciated it. Very few people in the press or on forums seemed put out.
I doubt it will have any negative effect on sales in fact I suspect the reverse, although obviously the extended production time will effect profit in a negative fashion.
I think the effect of extended beta will be postitive because those following the game will be on this site, and probably preorder so they can influence the development through the beta test. Other potential customers will hear about the game when it is released and if it's a great game still buy it. The extanded beta will mean at release it's a better game.
As for comparing it to duke nukem forever, well I go by Stardocs track record I was part of the extended ToA beta and that was both great fun and helped to polish that major expansion. Stardoc aren't taliking about moving to a new engine every couple of months.
I've been tracking the site and the forums since I've heard of the MoM remake. But only now I have singed up. I really love the idea of influencing and helping develop the game I've expected for so long.
I think the extend beta is an excellent idea, as long as the beta is open to all pre-orders. If the open beta begins only in January, I rather have the game on February and have it improved by patches and/or expansions
As many AI players as necessary to fill the 64-bit maps. Hundreds on a really huge map.
For Human players, 8 to 12 is usually enough for multiplayer experience
Since elemental focus on single player complex dungeons can add great value to the game. They should be well made, but they are not exactly prioritary.
Same on dungeons.
Essentially, as sophisticated as the AI can handle, but not so complex that it results in every skirmish becoming a half hour long battle. Tactical and auto-resolve battles should have close results.
The focus should be the random game generation. Every game should be interesting regardless of a pre-build campaign I want elemental to remain years on my hard drive. A tutorial like campaign should do fine.
Those not here are also not virtually guarenteed sales. We are. The biggest risk I see with the longer schedule is people who don't fully understand what a beta is hearing about this and buying in because they can't wait to play the game. There are two sides to that coin: First--it's their own fault, and they deserve no sympathy. Second--they could get really, really anoying for StarDock.
Wait. I've read some of Brad's responses to rude customers. There'd be free entertainment from that, too! Win-win!
This is what I've always wanted to know, and never understood about computer games the last 5+ years. They release a game way too early; get negative reveiws and negative posts on so many forums, and then spend months & months working on patchest/updates to try to undo and "negate" how imperfetly the game was released.
I was always wondering, why not spend the exact amout of time that a complany would be working on patches/updates, to beta test/play the game until final release. That would mean MUCH better reveiws, and forums full of happy people, instead of the opposite. And playing a beta helps so many of the hard core fans be much more patient in waiting for the final release too.
I would guess that a longer beta would, in the end, take about the same time to release as it took a game to be released with a shorter beta, plus the time it took to patch/update it up to what the longer beta "would have been".
Pre-buy for me for sure
http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/060207
Sorry, just had to point it out
Well, for a lot of smaller studios, they only have X amount of money to make the game. When that runs out, they either release the game or go bankrupt.
For christmas release games, they need to be out before christmas, no matter what. etc. A game that doesn't have any kind of market pressure for when it has to be released is pretty rare.
And as rare as they are, it is even rarer that the game is ever released if there isn't the pressure of a deadline.
Duke Nukem Forever, anyone?
Extending beta sounds like a great idea! I would love to see the kind of game Stardock could produce given that kind of timeframe and a healthy beta community. Count me in!
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