Hah, first off, telling someone what their attitude should or should not be, is juvenile, which you apologized for but you negated your apology by starting off being a hypocrite with the first comment in your reply. The reason why I said "shutup" was to bring to the light the fact that you were goading me, an intent which you picked up on but failed to realize. Exaggerating a situation and putting words in my mouth is also juvenile as I never once said "hooray, hooray, hooray" Saying someone is whining, however, is not an uncreative and childish way to write off someone's criticism. Did you even read what I was commenting to? Or did you just see "whine" and go into a rage? The comment I was commenting about was nothing more than the same nonsense I have seen in other threads which does nothing to help the situation, it only adds on to the negativity already present which is not needed. Saying something is wrong and they should have done it "this way" as an idea is something useful. Saying "This game had a good release" "This game had no problems at launch" and on and on, offers nothing to the conversation that we do not already know. If you can't comprehend this than I do not know what else to say to you. If you would like to come into the chat room we can discuss it further. You obviously have a chip on your shoulder which I have noticed in other threads. I haven't read all the threads you have posted in obviously but the ones I have read you have basically offered nothing to the conversations, just complaints with no relevant information. Perhaps you enjoy feeding on negativity but I would think most people do not.

I'm not going to read this reply.  I don't believe in engaging in a flame war to gratify myself, and hopefully you don't either.  I editted my prior post while you were typing a reply.  Please scroll back, read it, and hopefully we can just move on. 

Okay, thanks Rainz.  Yeah, I agree there is plenty of just negativity floating around here.  I don't want a refund because I still believe in Stardock and the company.  I'm looking forward very much to modding the game, and I've always been active on the "ideas" thread.  I think right now we're seeing two simultaneous debates going on that are easily mired together.  There is the debate that Stardock is a great company that had some difficulty variables to deal with.  In this regard, I completely that a rough start is forgiveable.  And then there is the other debate: that some of Stardock's errors must be recognized by themselves before they can successfully move on.  If they are vocal about admitting their mistakes in chat, then that is very encouraging and I'll refashion my feedback on the forums.  I don't participate in the chat rooms as a matter of preference  I like to type my ideas or comments in forum because, if the dev team doesn't want to read them, they can just go ahead and skip them.

Anyway, glad that we cleared this up. 

Karma points for both of you working this out.  If both camps just got together and discussed things constructively, Elemental would improve more rapidly, and I think we all want that.

Wooooord

Finally, remembered my password. 

I've been a long time Stardock fan (I believe my Member Number will bear that out), but I haven't posted in a long time. 

I only want to add or say a few things: for a completely "broken" and "unplayable" game, I've certainly spent so much time playing it that I haven't bothered to post about it.  I have a feeling that's true for more people than Stardock gets credit for at the moment.  This happens EVERY TIME a game is released by anybody.  There's a vocal minority of people who complain about this or that, there's an even smaller minority who provide useful feedback, and there's a lot of people scratching their heads saying, "Well, I'm reading about all these horrible bugs, but I'm still having fun!"

I don't doubt that there are many bugs in the game and the "balance" could be better (right now, balance is an ethereal concept since MP hasn't been activated--play the game responsibly and choose not to equip yourself with a huge number of rings, which is basically cheating, whether the game lets you do it or not).  But Stardock will continue to make improvements long after other studios have moved on.  My experience since I bought the first modern version of GalCiv waaaay back probably 7-8 years ago has been nothing but positive with Stardock games. 

EWOM isn't perfect, but it's actually better than GalCiv2 was at release.  GalCiv2 is one of the best TBS games of all time and I expect EWOM to make an impact as well. 

As far as the "paying for an unfinished game" complaint goes, consider this: how often have you purchased a game that stunk and had no recourse whatsoever and the developers never once patched it?  If you've been playing games for a while, chances are this is a fairly large number.  The game (especially as of the Day 0 patch) was and is plenty playable. 

A lot of the blame can be laid upon the fanboys during beta.. instead of being bluntly honest about the quality of this game most just wanted to suck up to the people with a stardock logo in their avatar.  Your blind loyalty really paid off.. this game had potential.

The biggest problems are gameplay stuff in late game, and that never really happened in beta. The beta schedule was big on tech testing, but never had a real "gameplay beta" phase. That's not the fault of the beta testers.

While I agree with a lot of what the OP says, unfortunately I can already tell you Brad won't agree with any of it. According to him the community Always says a game ISN'T ready, and Stardock always says a game IS ready. In Elemental's case Stardock got kinda screwed over with the release windows available to them. They didn't launch early because they needed the money. They released early because they had other deals in the works and pushing the release back until Feb of next year would have cost them a lot on those other deals they already had worked out (making boxes, printing disks, etc etc).

Brad's NEVER going to agree with the community when they say something isn't ready. As a developer he see's Impulse as the ultimate "Fix anything Later" tool and that's a very BAD view to have. While it's true Impulse is great for delivering updates, it's VERY VERY BAD for business when you have the view that "We can patch in fixes at a later date", because by then it's too late to fix the damage that's been done in the eyes of the gaming public. While the game can always be fixed and patched later, winning over the mind and opinion of someone who thinks the game sucks because they already tried it once and didn't like it is often something that CAN'T be fixed later. Once a gamer tries something and doesn't like it they almost NEVER go back and try it again later. I know that is a FACT from having over 20 years experience as a gamer myself and also having quite a few years of experience working in the industry its-self.

In Elemental's case Stardock really should have bit the bullet and pushed it back until Feb until all these bugs and balance issues were squashed. I honestly don't think any pre-planning was done at all in regards to balance and that can pretty much be proven by seeing Brad's views as a game developer. Brad is concerned with getting engine mechanics working properly, he doesn't care how much damage a Fireball does or how much Strength a Demon has because to him that is seen as "content fluff" that can be tweaked later if needed. While that may be true from a Developer Viewpoint, that is decidedly NOT TRUE from a Gamer's Viewpoint. From a Gamer's perspective that "content fluff" IS THE GAME. If it's not balanced and fun then the game will bomb, plain and simple, and he just doesn't see that and most likely never will (thanks Impulse...). This is WHY digital delivery systems aren't good for gaming. They give developers TOO MUCH LEEWAY when it comes to patching up a broken game and this is what allows so many developers get away with putting out a crap game thinking they can fix it later after they rake in the money. Stardock doesn't need to "rake in the money" to keep a game going or in development because they make their money from Windows Applications and Customization. Not to mention Brad could always dig into some of those millionaire bucks if he needed to too keep the game in development until it's Actually Ready.

Maybe now with the damage that's been done to Stardock's reputation he will finally see that when the community says something isn't ready....maybe it's actually NOT READY *GASP*

Having said that, I STILL think Elemental is a AWESOME and FUN game. I'm very glad I have it now and didn't have to wait until Feb 2011 to get my hands on it. Next time though Stardock needs to have all that "Content Fluff" hammered out on paper in the Design Phase While the Engine is being made. That's the way EVERY company I've ever worked for has done things in the past. Game content is NOT FLUFF that can be balanced and tweaked later. It HAS TO BE DONE BEFORE LAUNCH. Or things like this happen and people lose faith in Stardock's ability to make a fun and balanced game-play experience.

Couldn't agree more. Very little gameplay balancing appears to have happened which presumably reflects the very low importance that Stardock (and by that I mean Brad) put upon it... and yet to the paying customer, particularly for a strategy game, gameplay balance and having interesting choices and trade offs is one of the critical requirements.

It strikes me that what is required is several large spreadsheets of the various game data along with formula to balance them out mathematically, followed up by in depth play testing to check that what seems balanced mathemetically actually feels that way when played. I'll eat my hat if this has happened at more than an extremely rudimentary level.

Fortunately it is still possible. They aren't going to be able to pick up most of the potential customers they have lost from this release but they can fix it so that those who have already bought it are happy and maybe maintain steady ongoing sales.

I wouldn't go as far to say it wasn't important to them. I know it WAS VERY Important to them actually. Elemental is their "baby", just as it's all of our's baby who's put so much into the game over the last two years. Brad see's things as a programmer and a developer though, and has to take a step back to see things from a "gamers" perspective some times, even he freely admits that, and that's not a bad thing. If he didn't think that GalCiv 2 wouldn't have the incredible depth and AI that it has now. GalCiv 2 is my Favorite space/strat game. Even surpassing MoO2 in it's awesomeness. Like I said it was obvious they got kinda screwed on the release window too. I think if they would of had the extra 6 months they thought they were going to have then none of this hoopla over the game would have happened at all and launch would have gone a lot smoother without the drama involved.

From reading Brad's latest post, it seems to me that he doesn't think they did a thing wrong, and everything is proceeding fine, no reputation damage done. The release date was fine, and the game was excellent after the day-0 patch. They will continue to work on it until a larger majority thinks the game is fantastic. Nothing is different from any other release.