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.
Frogboy really is smart. If he had come in here and said "the release is going to be postponed until August." there would have been weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. This way he has us begginf for a postponement.
Brilliant! (I have moved from being gung ho for the delay to neutral to still leaning for the delay.)
While I agree that the beta should be extended because in the end it will make the game that much better, I'm still sad because I will be shipping to boot before the game is released now.
in a word, hell yes. ok that was two words. The one thing that has always miffed me about Beta programs is that they aren't really to improve the gamer's play experience, but that they are designed to improve the technical performance of the game. A beta that would allow the gameplay to be improved as well as the technical factors is I think what we all imagine when we hear about a beta test. This would mean new content getting added not just tweaking existing content and the extended beta would also allow for extensive Mods to be available essentially at release rather than waiting for 6 months after release for the game to be expanded by user content.
You have a lot to read so I'll keep my comments short.
My only concern with the timeline laid out, is how everything meshes. I think you might do better with a more complete product earlier in testing, and then a very long period for the last phase. Either way, it does sound as though you are pressed to meet your current timelines, and I think the community as a whole are just excited to be able to finally take part in the development, and see what you have so far.
That's just my two bits.
Overall I’d say no, probably not what you should aim for. One part of it is simply that people dislike release schedules that slide. That’s why I’m something of a fan of not having a release schedule. However I think if you have given a time table, and that time table is something that is reasonable to meet, you should do that.
Also you need to ask yourself if having a longer beta really buys you anything. I mean the public beta testers, well we are just gamers. It isn’t as though you are getting any special quality testers or anything. So I don’t know that you get anything special by keeping the game from a wider release.
Remember that if you do get people who are particularly useful to the testing process, there isn’t any reason you can’t contact them to keep working on the game after release. Tell them “Hey you’ve been useful in the beta, you want to also beta test the new patches?”
I’d say there are two situations where you should consider doing it:
1) There are things you’d like to add that you can’t unless you do it now. In that case, ok sure go for it. I wouldn’t want to see something permanently left out of the game because you had too aggressive a release cycle. However, if the things are something you plan on adding later, then I’d say do that.
2) You feel that the increase in quality is needed to get good ratings/reviews for the release. We know that release hype is important to a game. If you feel that those extra months will take you from a 8-9 score range up to a 9-10 score range then sure. Since reviews don’t count later content, if you think the content is needed sooner, then do it.
Either way, I’d decide soon. Push the schedule sooner rather than later. You’ll get more people annoyed if you get 50-75% way through the beta and then say “Know what? Let’s do that longer beta thing.” If you are going to do it, do it soon.
More or less, I’d say do what you think will make the most money. If you think a stronger release day will do that, and you think this will give that to you, then do it. Otherwise, stick with the original schedule.
+1 vote for long development cycle with constant feedback. Nobody reviews v1.1 of a game, and most gamers' initial taste will be 1.0, as well. There are a lot of games I've tasted and spat out because the initial release lacked polish - and most of them, I never touched again. For all I know, they're playable by now... but (especially when I have lost the CD and/or serial key) I'll never know.
I HATE wearing out the newness of a fresh game before it gets spit-shined.
This is an interesting proposal, and I think it has the potential to work very well.
I find that on average, a strategy game takes at least 6 months to over a year after release before it finds it's feet in terms of balance and bug/exploit fixes. Extending the beta to what you are proposing would essentially eliminate this period when the game releases at retail (since its basically covered by the extended beta), while also allowing the game to integrate community feedback much easier during this period than you could with a game which has already gone gold since the game is still essentially in development mode.
A very good idea, not only will the game have more development time and mode player feedback, but I'll actually get a chance to pre-order it . I'm going to gat payd again in december
Iam all for extended beta. And I am really glad you are thinking about it. This game is shaping to be very unique and great TBS. On today market, there is alot of good games, but only few exceptional ones. I would like this game to become classic, and extended beta would definitely help that.
Isn't 32 players a bit too much? They wouldn't have the time to play an entire game and ..
Oh well .. what am I saying? Who are we to stop people playing their game for a whole year? Give us options.
How much sophisticated should be dungeons? Do you know Dungeon Master?
How much sophisticated should be quests ? Well ... If I remember well there's a way to achieve victory through a huge quest. So I hope quests are more than "Get this. Kill that. Earn this." Why not some quests about meaning of life? Hum .. well ... back on reality.
How sophisticated tactical battles ? You shouldn't even ask that question . Best. Best. Best. Let there be things like attacks of opportunity, like morale, like terrain bonii/malii, like fates of war (getting blind, losing an arm and still fighting), like the possibility for captain to retire and giving bonii to new trained warriors, like "perks" (think fantasy wars/Elven Legacy) for your troops, etc.
How big of a scope? What player would answer "Oh no don't give it a big scope. I want tiny adventures." Who !?! Did I say something about quest for meaning of life? (or earth or fire or etc.)
Did I say : give us options?
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.
I you have time, use it.
I would add as many players as the engine could handle for online play. Up to 32 would be great for PBEM games. I hope PBEM will be included as a multiplayer option.
Multi-level dungeons, traps, ambushes, underground cities/forts/defense structures, monsters, tunnelling, mining for resources, creating your own dungeon in game. Putting prisoners in your dungeon.. Maybe I'm getting carried away, but you get the idea.
The more the merrier.
As many options as the AI can handle. Maybe even have an option for advanced/simple tactical battles.
Multi-branch, Strong story, random events.
While I'm not necessarily interested in PBEM, your wish prompts me to ask if the game will allow multiple campaigns/games to be managed at a time. Not to play simultaneously, but to (for example) be able to start a campaign, save it, start another campaign or MP game, save that session for later continuation, start a PBEM game, save that, etc... then pick up again seamlessly when I wish to continue any of those 3 (or more) sessions.
A longer beta period sounds like a good idea to me, especially with how long it takes to play this type of game. I remember people in the Twilight beta complaining that they couldn't finish a single immense-size game before the next beta period started.
It sounds good for the company, too. Blizzard became on of the most successful and well-respected developers in existence by thoroughly polishing all of their games and refusing to release them before they were ready. They're famous for release delays, but they still make tons of money. Stardock looks to be following the same track here.
Although...
Aren't you blurring the line between beta and release? If anyone who preorders gets the game right away, is it still a preorder? Seems to me like this whole thread is just arguing semantics.
In my opinion, a long beta needs to be fun for beta testers to give feedback, so you'd have to provide tactical battles early for instance (even though personally I think I'll probably always sip them) otherwise the game beta tested during the first months will be too different from the one after the tactical battles are added in, and the feedback may not be that good. So you'd have to be very careful of the schedule.
You also run the risk of releasing a game that will be too hard or have too many tricks that only the people who played the beta will appreciate and that will put off would-be buyers, so that's a risky decision.
Specifically:
> How many players should/can we allow in a game? 8? 12? 32?
Humans: Just me. AI's: As many as possible.
> How sophisticated can we make dungeons in the game?
Interesting to check out. This probably doesn't conflict with the rest of the game so it's worth exploring and a good reason to have more testing.
> How sophisticated can we make quests in the game?
I dream of automated quest engines that wouldn't generate silly quests... Good reason for beta.
> How sophisticated can we make tactical battles in the game?
I don't care. Scrap it and release the game faster.
> How big of a scope can we give the campaign?
None. Scrap it. If it's a series of scenarios with nothing carrying on from the previosu to the next, SCRAP IT. If it's more elaborate like Fantasy General or Battle for Wesnoth, then yes, sure.
I've noticed that a lot of people want there to be a lot o randomness in the Campaign. I'm completely opposite! I play campaigns once, and then never come back to them unless maybe I start playing the game again years later. So I don't want it to be random. I want every aspect of the campaign to be masterfully hand-crafted, so that the one time I do play it through it will grab and hold my attention. Randomization is for sandbox mode.
I think the more input you get the better off the game will be. So I'm all for the extended schedule,
All hail the frog!
I think the goal is to have the benifit of both sandbox and campaign. Diablo had a semi-random campaign (the 1st one, not the 2nd) and I believe it made the game more enjoyable because of it.
If you have a sandbox mode that *feels* like a well crafted campaign, then you're set. There are some games you just could not do randomly, but I honestly feel that a lot of RTS or TBS "story" campaigns are just an excuse to go through different maps, and honestly could have almost had the whole 'story' element cut without confusing users. So if a dev team does not want to compete with the masterfully crafted stories of games like Starcraft or the 1st Dawn of War campaign (I feel DoW's story charm was lost with each passing expansion into the sequel) Then I promote aiming to have a campaign that IS just a sandbox and see if it can be made just as enjoyable as a completly linear story.
Another thing that happens, is sometimes in an attempt to make the "story" campaign seem like more than just a bunch of maps with a cheaply patched together story connecting them, special features are added like the volcano in Advance Wars 2 (or was it duel-strike? both games have story campaign only buildings and units) or the titan's cannons in Dawn of War. And I say to myself "Well gee, I kinda wish there were multiplayer maps with this kind of stuff on them. The volcano is even random, so it would still be fair." Having a sandbox like campaign would allow the devs to explore ideas of multiplayer story-campaigns and the like.
A randomized campaign will never be as good as a good, well-thought out and well-implemented hand-crafted campaign. At least not until we invent computer intelligence with the creativity of a human mind. I would love for sandbox mode to feel like its own, different mini campaign every time. A great way to do this, I think, is to have quests, dungeons and events all tied together - instead of being completely separate entities like they usually tend to be. If you add in revolutionary diplomacy as well as sophisticated independent kingdoms, that'll just make it all the better. The best way, IMO, to make it feel like there is actually a story is to have lots of meaningful interactions with different entities, and to make random events and such tied together so that the cease to feel so random.
But I still don't want that in the actual campaign. I want the campaign to be crafted like a well-written book. I want there to be miniscule details and plot twists and fleshed out characters and personalities. I want it to feel like I'm playing through a good book. And a heavily randomized campaign simply cannot provide that feeling.
I'm on board with having both an Official Campaign and a map/game generator. I would look to the Official Campaign as being the first benchmark by which custom content creators can use to create their own worlds - ideally to meet or exceed the quality and level of detail in the OC. I would want the ability to have randomized maps, a quest library, and starting units as well, though my expectations for quality and overall cohesiveness would be set lower as compared with an OC and early efforts for custom content put forth by the community.
It would be fantastic if the Sovereign(Senior Channeller) could actually evolve / morph into these larger type monsters.
"preorder" doesn't mean the same thing in Stardock lingo then it does elsewhere, yeah. I kind of wish they'd use a different term, every now and then someone comes in confused by it.
I created a forum account just so I could reply to this thread.
I think this would be wonderful. It will be difficult to wait so long for a finished product, but I agree that the end result could well be a classic, and it would be worth it.
I haven't done a serious beta test since working on Geneforge II for Windows. It'll be fun to be back in the sausage factory again.
I'd also like to weigh in on the campaign. My own preference is to have a campaign (or multiple campaigns) embedded into the sandbox mode. For example, Master of Orion II had the overarching plot about the extremely powerful aliens from another dimension; X-Com had an overarching plot about turning the aliens back.
This could be handled in large part through the in-campaign special story events. Enough semi-random story events turns into an overarching story line. There could also be story lines associated with different canon races in a regular sandbox game.
Anyway, I like a story in my sandbox. I'm not crazy about campaigns where you play one scenario after another. A good sandbox game I find to be too long to make for a good campaign of linked games, but I'm open to having my mind changed.
I think it is a really great idea. That way you can really add in feature by feature and we can really test things one at a time. It will get the game really solid and then some by the time it is released.
And all those questions in the OP can easily be answered, assuming that the beta is given enough time to test out all the things we want.
I am FOR the extended beta
How many players should/can we allow in a game? I suggest to not restrict the number. Make it 128 (I.E insanely high) and let each player choose for himself.
How sophisticated can we make dungeons in the game? This should be an optional modul. A player should be able to choose wether he likes big dungeons (a la Birthright) or just a text event. Even better would be to get asked for each dungeon wether you would like to explore it by yourself.
How sophisticated can we make quests in the game? On a scale of one to ten, I would say 'take all the option and add them together' (this would net me 55 on this scale)
How sophisticated can we make tactical battles in the game? This is the only thing where sophistication can potentialy be counter productive. The main problem would be to adjust the learning curve to the AI, which tends to be done rather badly. In most games I've played, I can *easely* beat the crap out of the AI's army with a third of the menpower they have.On a few games though, the AI slaughter me. Idealy, no player should ever play on the highest difficulty setting, so he'll always know that he can improve and face greater challenges.
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