I downloaded the game on the 23rd, had been looking forward to it since announcement but didn't want to spoil it with the beta.

I was a bit disappointed and worried. But after the two patches that came out the day-of the game is already much better, I love this companies style and the game is looking awesome.

Dude, that's exactly how you respond to all similar posts in this forum.

The last one I read when someone said the game was not finished, your response was for the poster to be quiet and "consider himself warned".

I really like that you communicate with the fans though, even if the posting is a bit rough at times... And threads are closed a bit too easily.

I don't have a great deal of sympathy for frogboy on this one... he was just as snappy back in july without apology... after a comment that reviews could be hurt by technical problems arising from tactical battles being enabled late, lack of beta involvement in the final tweaking for balance of all the easy to change stats of the final beta and release builds.

"The only thing that really frustrates us (and honestly is making my team less interested in reading the forums) are reading posts by people who don't have any idea what is involved in game development...they really have no idea what they're talking about...negative buzz by non-technical people"

I felt describing honest and very valid concerns as a "buzz" to be ignored both insulting and condescending. I love the pure concept of elemental and look forward to the future of stardock... although at the moment it's a little like christmas... with a santa who calls you an idiot and brings broken toys... but a santa that is still in a magical position of power and will hopefully produce something resembling an improved MoM... one with multiplayer, balance and no crashes... almost definately by next christmas... how long was it between galciv2 release and twilight of the arnor?

Yeah.  The pre-day 0 release was unplayable for me, but the day 0 release is stable and running fine, and so far I'm having fun with it.  I know it is too late to say this, but when games hit the shelves two days too early, just let it ride.  We all know we are taking risks when we pre-order, that kind of thing being one of them.  But to release something unfit for public consumption creates a terrible first impression that will no doubt have ripple effects.  I'm sure good word of mouth on the release version will turn things around hopefully sooner than later.

That's a snappy response?  That sounds to me like he's saying that some people don't get what is a big task and what is a small task in game development.  Doesn't sound snappy in the slightest.  If anything you're sloppy paraphrasing makes it sound much worse than it actually is.   

As for myself, I've been putting off a major project due tomorrow to play some today (and to read this thread) because the game is just that much fun.  

Does it need some bug fixes?  Sure.  Could it use more UI polish?  Absolutely.  Are there about a thousand other features we'd all like to see?  Yup.  But it's still a blast.  

As for this whole much ado about nothing story with RPS and PC Gamer UK, anyone who has worked in a stressful, deadline driven environment for any length of time has had this situation happen.  The only difference here is that it's a video game company and it happened on a public forum instead of in a cubicle or a meeting room of a company that does a lot less interfacing with the public.  

This was pretty much a non story when it happened and is even less so now given Brad's gracious mea culpa.  

And as far as Empire: TW, it's launch was so much worse and yet reviewers practically raved that CA walked on water to hand deliver them their glowing golden copy of the disk.  The game was unplayable on a large percentage of video cards and the AI was so broken as to invalidate one of the major features of the game.  

Stardock in general seems to have a history of these sorts of gaffes, and to me at least seems to come off as slightly unprofessional in its conduct. I guess that’s the cost of communicating openly with your customers and being directly involved in forum discussions and whatnot, although you’d think it would be possible to both open, and refrain from insulting people and mocking the handicapped.

Frogboy, it seems like you're not in it for the big bucks, but you're in it to make good games.  As long as you hold that philosophy and are dedicated, I am sure your efforts will keep many loyal customers.

Cheers for all the countless hours I've put in your games.  Please keep them coming.

I think I haven't found the sweet spot on difficulty settings yet.  The AI seems as passive on the default setting as it was in Beta 4.  The quests and monsters are nicer.  Still, I don't see what all the complaints are about.  You'd think any complaints about the core design could have been made weeks back instead of coming out now.

I hope to see lots of feature bloat in the coming updates.  Make the game as complex and complicated as only the hardest-core PC gaming nerd could stand.  That would be my only complaint for now:  The game is too simple and easy to understand.  Almost the opposite opinion of what I've read in some comments.

To be perfectly frank PCGUK and RPS are a bare half step above Kotaku. And that is mainly because they receive 'gifts' from major publishers to lavish praise.

Look at their reviews of FallOut3... was almost unplayable and sooo sooo easily broken until 3 months out when they finally got enough patches into it.

And look at that: 81%... for a game I would have called almost irritating to play.

So yeah.

I think its safe to say that we all know you are not like the guy who is the dev for the old Battlecruiser games who openly flames/trolls his fanbase. The fact that people have to be so guarded about shit talk, hiding their feelings, is sad IMO. So GJ venting.

Forwarded the RPS article to Game Journalists Are Incompetent . . . (you know the rest).

Well, I think a lot of people would agree that Brad's comments, however you feel about them, are really the lesser issue here.  How the game plays is infinitely more important (esp. because if the game was super amazingly perfect or ridicubad, no one would care either way).  As it is now, the game is somewhere inbetween, thus the spirited debate. 

There are game breaking bugs (including some nasty hardware ones for at least a good minority of people) but those are being fixed quickly, and really, are no worse than much I've seen in other games, so I figure, no sweat there - the majority of them will be gone in a week or two.  This always happens with PC games - there's just too much variety.

The AI seems ok to me, better than it was earlier in the Beta.  It's obviously not as intelligent as the player, and it still has issues with some things, but designing good AI is really, really hard.  It's very rarely done perfectly, and Elemental is a reasonably complex game as far as AI tasks go - much more complex than say, GalCiv or Age of Wonders when you start thinking about how many decisions there are to be made and degree of nuance.  However, this is an area that I expect to be improved dramatically as Stardock continues to work on the game, and as modders get more involved.  Ditto for the current lack of variety between races - that's something that I'm SURE will be addressed by modding, both by Stardock and individuals.

The only area of the game that really concerns me right now is balance.  Elemental feels grossly unbalanced in a lot of ways - and not fun unbalanced, like how in Dominions 3 or MoM or even (to a much, much lesser degree) AoW you can "break" the game if you're clever enough and use good tactics/get to know the game well.  Elemental has a ton of balance problems, from city development to tactical battles.  Especially tactical battles - units are still effectively glass cannons, magic still isn't remotely satisfying in combat (there are some cool summons and global effect spells, but in combat magic feels terribly unsatisfying right now, at least for me) leveling Champions really means nothing compared to produceable armies - the list goes on.  Yet, the only reason I'm concerned about balance is because this seems to be an area Stardock is stuck on - many of these concerns have been the same since beta 3, and yet Stardock hasn't addressed them.

I'll admit I'm confused as to if they just haven't gotten to it yet (in which case I'm fine with waiting) or if they intend to leave the majority as is (which would be my understanding at the moment).  If the latter, I have to admit I'll need to wait till some serious third party modding to really enjoy the game.  I haven't been in a single tactical battle I really enjoyed yet (contrasted with say, AoW, which I loved the very first tactical battle and the last). 

I will note that I enjoy the city building for the most part right now.  It's combat I'm most concerned about.

That said, I'm hopeful that with a few months, Elemental will be a really inspiring, enjoyable game.  And there aren't exactly a ton of new games coming out in the same genre lately, so it will certainly be on my radar for a while.  And I'll continue to support Stardock.

I'm playing Elemental on my laptop!! I love it! It was mindblowing and amazing when i tried the 1.05 version of the game!! Good job to everyone at Stardock!!! No mather what the critics say: Elemental will, no mather what get a cult status from it's core fans and become a classic. And a game that will have a long lifespan.

Brad, your one of the greatest game designers out there. The way you interact with all of us is just more then you can expect from any other comany. And this is why i think so many of us from the forums likes stardock, you and the rest of the Elemental team.