AUGUST 24th, 2010.
This is a day that the team has been waiting for for three years!
As some of you know, some retailers broke the street date and to make sure our beta testers and pre-order customers didn’t get the short end of the stick, we released an interim build of Elemental (internally called Gold Edition++).
It turns out that this was a blessing in disguise because we have gotten a tremendous amount of useful feedback from those of you who got the game before release. The results of this comes in two parts.
First, tonight we released a new interim build. This version is basically bug fixes and such based on player reports. You can see what’s new in it here. Looking at the change log gives you an idea of the complexities of making a new PC game in 2010 with a brand new engine.
But tomorrow (or later today as I write this) is the big one. The official day 0 update that the team and I have been working on since Beta 4 (the beta group can go into more detail on this but in brief: After beta 4, the game tree was split in two. One version went on to be the gold version which is what those people who have it early are playing. The other tree went on to become day 0. These two trees were merged today already and will be going up tomorrow.
So what can you expect?
Here’s a few highlights:
The day 0 version, as most of you know, is the version that was originally expected to be the first version most people would ever play. We’re definitely glad, however, that people got to play the pre-day 0 builds because we got a lot of very useful feedback and some crash reports that were not known about.
Now, a couple words on multiplayer. The servers are up but we are not going to enable multiplayer until next week. Part of this is, to be honest, team exhaustion. The early release meant a lot of people who were expecting this weekend off to rest from the grueling last few weeks had to come in. So we’re going to let them get a couple of days off later this week and open up the MP next week.
One piece of good news on MP. Originally we had planned to eliminate tactical battles from MP entirely because of balance. Some people correctly guessed the misguided (in hindsight) reason for this: We were approaching MP from a purely competitive point of view. Based on the persuasive arguments made by our players, we have decided that tactical battles will be made available in MP – as an option – at a later date as a free update.
So that’s all for now. After the day 0 update, I plan to take a day or two off too. I hear sleeping is the new “in thing” and you guys know me, I’m all about being cool and…um..what not.
The day 0 build will be out today (EST USA).
Congratulations Frogboy. Another awesome game and successful launch.
Well done team! Enjoy the fruits of your labor!
Woohoo! 1.05 Update available at 10:08PM MDT....13.78MB download starting.
I don't like the 15d2 I perfer some randomness in combat. And I like the whole 1d6 thing. What should happen is that damage should have a minium as I have said before. Any damage from 1 to 10 should be something like 1d6, 1d7, 1d10 etc. Damage from 11 to 15 could be something like 2d11 or 3d11, 2d12 etc. The higher the damage the higher the minimum damage. For a 50 perhapsu using 10d50. I think your getting where I'm going. An attack should NEVER be automatic like the 15d2 would be. If a high attack gets a low result this would simulate attacks that were not landed as well as the attacker would have liked. Combat can be messy.
Yes, combats can be messy but there's always a minimum amount of skill your soldiers have and this is a strategy game, where obscene amount of randomness are frustrating. Random results, while good, should always be in moderation. Doing 77-100 is OK. Doing 1-100 isn't. Doing 77 means that your dragon did a glancing blow, while doing 1 damage means your dragon's pinky claw hit them on their ear. It's a bit silly.
The problem is that it seems they tried to merge attack chance with damage (this is why dex increases defence, while doing 0 damage means you missed) which for me makes little sense. People with Big-Arse weapons which are easy to miss, now do a lot of scratches. While Someone dressed as a tank is now very easy to miss by someone wielding a dagger.
On the AI, I wish there was a difficultly level where human and AI are identical. Thought challenging was it, but AI starts with starting gold.
Normal would be, but AI has lower AI settings there.
That is why I said there should be minumum damage based on what the max damage is. So your right 1d100 would be bad but 60d100 or 70d100 would be fine. Anything 10 or below should have the minimum 1 damage. And I think other still and abilites should affect this minumum damage range as well. for example if your Dex is high and your a Archer not only would your Attack score be higher but your minimum damage range should be too. If a Bow has a base damage of 6 (1d6) the if Dex is say a 15 then it should be 3d6 or something like that. Same could be done with Strength and Mele damage.
You could also apply this to defense as well. Maybe use CON or Dex to affect this.
For me to take out all randomness it a tactical game (well in anygame really) would be just as annoying as having full randomness with no skill involed at all.
Ok, I think you confused some concepts which in turn made me misunderstand you.
70d100 means 70 100-sided dice. It means a result between 70 and 7000.
I'm sorry I did kinda typed that wrong. What I meant was min 70 Max 100. I should not have put the 'd' in there. So in my above statements when I list numbers like 1d6 what I meant is 1 min 6 max damage. Sorry for the miscommunication.
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