I'm trying to figure out exactly what happened at Stardock to make them release the game in it's current state. I can only assume it to be a case of budget related pressure combined with Molyneux Syndrome. I never played the early pre-patch release to hopefully avoid a bad first impression, but I should have probably waited longer. I have to agree with with a lot of the things I've been reading, and I dont think I have anything else to add to any of critisms so the only thing I'm going to harp on here is the UI. The UI is important. Very, very, very, very important, and yet here it feels like an after thought, something I'd find on an old school .html based web RPG from the 90's. In some respects it almost feels like a step backwards from the BETA. For one of your bigger patches, please give that thing a major overhaul. Even after learning it, I find frustrating to interact with.
I love Stardock as a company, I admire Wardell's tenacity, even so, I do not like Elemental. I've been trying to like it. I really have. Maybe in another year or so it'll be close to the game I thought I was buying.
What's wrong with the UI? Other than that it's not explained enough. But that's not the UI's fault.
The UI is dramatically improved over the beta. It's visually a bit bland, but the functionality is miles better than what it was. If you have any specific suggestions rather than an arbitrary "overhaul" for what seems like no reason and no suggestions as to what or how it should be overhauled...
^^have to agree with you there... i was finally able to log about 2 hours of play last night (got the kids off to bed early!)...
i never participated in any of the betas, and my sole exposure to the interface has been via youtube videos, and forum posts / tutorials here... it took me all of 20 minutes to get the hang of what i was doing, and once i was comfortable with the interface, i was tooling around the campaign with no problem whatsoever...
yes, the campaign... i said it! and i was loving every minute of it...
not to take away from the OP's frustration... this is just my opinion, and the UI could certainly benefit from a proper tutorial explanation, but i have absolutely no problem with the interface itself...
Nothing wrong with the UI it's fine and great and easy to understand.
It doesn't communicate the information you need to enjoy the game. It's fixable, but totally inadequate at this point.
As far as pulling the release trigger now, I wonder if Brad just sensed alot of burnout in the office. Making a game like this is an ungodly amount of drudgery. It's like those religions that try to reach enlightenment through mortification of the flesh. You stare at a computer monitor until your eyes bleed. What do you do when you know the game needs polish, but everyone in the office is beginning to show signs of dementia?
I know exactly how you feel, I came to the Stardock forums ready to drink the koolaid and was happily wearing my favorite rose tinted spectacles. However in the harsh light of the release day sun, The gorgeous fruit bowl I thought I was buying happened to be just as attractive as I expected, only I wasn't made aware that the fruit was hollow and made of wax. The fact that inside was a piece of paper saying I.O.U. in 6 months 1 apple hardly makes me feel better.
What people never seem to realize is that release dates aren't just spur of the moment things. They're set in stone way, way in advance because there's a lot of competition for retail shelf space. Sure you can point at Blizzard being able to delay a couple of months, but the difference is every single retail store would trip over their own feet to carry a Blizzard game because they know they'd make a crapton of money off it. The same isn't true for Stardock.
In an ideal world where people don't have to get paid for their long hours and money appears out of nowhere a small company might be able to keep delaying a game, but until then SD had to make good on the August release date that was set far, far in advance.
There will be tremendous christmas sales of this game I'm sure. I can hear the little 12 year olds screaming now for it. )
The frog has explained this several times. They had two slots to choose from: August 2010 and Feb 2011. They went for August. I must say that the game is a couple of patches from greatness, but its still a good game that will only get better.
Life is duality.
We got the people who love to learn by themselves, you got the other who want to be taken by the hand.
Guess what, that UI is far more advanced than civilization UI. Why?
1- Event don't bug the flow of the game. I don't need to answer (show me button) each time a city build a building. EWOM > CIV
2- The button to get the next city that do nothing is fabulous. No more need to search by my own which city do nothing. EWOM > CIV
3- Events are shown until you discard them. Give me that in CIV right on.
4- The UI is minimal in the screen. I have a better look at my gaming adventure map, tactical map... than any other 4x games out there.
I can show you many more UI improvement versus other 4x game.
The problems of that duality is:
People who are mature enough to learn a gaming experiences would enjoy a lot the UI of elementals.
People with sheep attitude, with need to be taken care step by step of their game, are not gamer they are follower. A game is not about following instructions, a game is about the experience you get with it.
So, far my Elemental experience give me more incentives to play it, then play any other 4x that I had played in the past. The game is not perfect, but it's better than a lot of things I can't play anymore.
Yep, I think the OP simply need to whine because he need to be taken of, because he can't learn a game with his own experiences.
UI is not something that needs to play the game for you.
For any slow learner, for anyone who don't feel they need to learn a game to play, don't blame the UI, blame Stardock for the minimal input / output / feedback need for people who can't stand to learn a game by themselves.
Jourdelune
Sushikawa, I think you should give suggestions on how to improve the UI. They really listen!
The interface is usable but I definitely notice it too often, there are a lot of little things like having to navigate to the bottom corner of a book to turn the page, not switching back to the default cursor when a dialog comes up, etc. As far as having an unready release, I think that's the price you pay for not having a major publisher involved. A company like EA or Activision would probably put up the money to have everything polished before seeing any sales revenue, but do you really want to see Elemental come with a 3-year DLC plan and mandatory GFWL? I think it's a very interesting idea to have gamers front the money instead and cut publishers out of the loop. Provided gamers can keep their expectations in check, that is.
1) An option in Civ, don't want it on? Turn it off. Options are always better than not for a large group who have different desires.
2) Press F1, and then click your city with nothing queued? Though in Civ cities almost NEVER have nothing queued (culture, research, hammers), so I'm not even sure that your comparison makes much sense.
3) Ummm... it's in civ, open the dialogue window in the upper left. I get the feeling you didn't really play civ that much, or you are not talking about Civ4.
4) I dunno, the civ4 screen seems about the same to me, oh, and you can minimize the UI, or remove it if you want as well.
The Elemental UI is nothing revolutionary, and lacks certain functionality which other games have. Clearly that functionality can and should be made optional via some settings page. I dunno, I think the UI is probably 'ok', though I have the feeling that it will be getting plenty of attention, and ideally, is even moddable such that those who want to can tweak it to suit their individual tastes.
Here is the deal. Brad and Stardock worked the crap out of "The Gamer's Bill of Rights". He used it for wads and wads of free publicity and to excoriate game companies that release broken and incomplete products for 2 years. He beat that thig like a drum and held Stardock up as a paragon for game development.
Then Stardock released Elemental. I don't even care about the tech issues. I care that the game engine is laughably broken, bare bones, and incomplete.
Then instead of owning this decision, they have been harping about broken street dates and "quotes out of context" from one reviewer.
Remember the Beta? I do... where we were told over and over to stop suggesting gameplay stuff and focus on tech issues. We never got a gameplay Beta and sweet Jesus it shows. The stuff that is wrong with the basic game engine is due to not actually finishing it.
Gamers like me who have been Stardock evangelists linking to every interview Brad gives get burned by this not just in terms of paying for an unfinished product but personally by Brad's decision to release a game early and then hide behind excuses about street dates.
I had several friends I had been plumping for Elemental but the day after launch (not the zero day, I waited for the first patch to see what would happen) I have told them to maybe come back in 6 months and see if they have finished the game. I didn't want that, I wanted the game to wow me.
I still want it to wow me but I also won't let the last 2 years of Stardock history of shouting about "completeness" from the rooftops go down the memory hole.
I'm a bit confused by the handful of zealous fanboys that are in each and every UI thread.
The ones that are basically saying "if you're too stupid to play this game, go away" in no uncertain terms.
I've been playing TBS games since the early 90s and computer games since the late 70s, so I'm not too particularly unfamiliar with how games work. Hell, I've alpha and beta tested numerous games (mainly Blizzard ones of late due to friends who work there) and been through the ups and downs of bad interfaces. And none of them have deterred me for long.
That said, Elemental is one of the worst I've seen in a commercially released game. It's gotten FAR better since day 0 and the hotfix patches hit, but it's still incredibly spartan on the information it gives you. Want to make a specialist town? You'd better damn well *REMEMBER* which one you put which bonuses on or you're just swinging in the dark. This is ok if you have a couple towns, but once you're past a half dozen it gets a bit cumbersome to keep track of.
Civilization 4 gives you almost too much information (that's unpossible!) but in a very easy to manage and digest format. If I want to know every last detail as to why this city is producing X amount of gold, culture or influence I can figure it out to the finest detail.
I'm a huge proponent of "takes a minute to learn but a lifetime to master" in my games. That said, Elemental's obfuscation of even the most basic details is off-putting. I don't mind having to drill down to find information... in fact that's my preferred mode. But having said information HIDDEN from me is a problem. That's not making me think about the strategic importance of various decisions, it's just hiding that aspect of the game completely.
So please stop beating the drum of "anyone who complains is just a dummy" and belittling those who find fault in the overly spare UI. Many of us are doubtless TBS vets who want a challenging *GAME* not a challenging user interface.
Don't leave out the fanboys who simply assert that you are lying, don't have the game, or are a tool of PC Mag UK as well. I love this new breed of rabid fan.
By the same token, some of us consider a game that lays it's bones completely bare to be like showing the secret to a magicians trick. I want to play a game set in a fantasy world, not feel like I'm playing with a graphical mod for an excel spreadsheet.
Gamekult.com, a French video-game site, gave the game a 3/10. It's (too) harsh, but most of the points they make to justify the bad grade are somehow valid; the main one being that the game isn't finished and isn't in a release-ready state, and we could see it coming months ago.
True, I would take it either way but got neither so far.
soo true alot of ppl sayd its rushed myself too
cant find the post where i says its not prepared
tbh i remember frogboy saying he COULD have delayed feb 2011 but HE DID think the game would be ready for aug
There was also a general poo-poohing of gameplay suggestions during the beta as well. That seems ill advised now.
If you bring up the city details by clicking its portrait when selected, it will show you which bonuses it has.
I can dig it.
But make it an option you can either toggle or perhaps a bar with "Please select the level of information glut you wish to have dumped on you".
Spreadsheet nerds need love too, ya know =D
Read the rest of the post, maybe? I'm well aware that people were "warning" about it, and I expressed my concern as well. But it's moot. They're a small company, putting off the release for another 6 months was likely not feasible financially.
There are lots of things that go on behind the scenes we don't see. Better to help them make the game better than continue to whine about the release.
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