The Epic Prologue
Some background: I first heard about Elemental some years ago, and, like many others, was extremely excited at the prospect of a Master of Magic successor. Age of Wonders is just about the only other title to attempt to claim that lofty throne, so the thought that Stardock might be attempting to recreate the magic was an appealing thought.
I pre-ordered Elemental, and participated lightly in the beta and on the forums, with growing concern as the release edged closer and the state of the beta did not seem to significantly improve, despite repeated claims that the external betas were simply systems tests, and the internal build was a much more polished game. Any time I hear the It's Just A Beta excuse, alarm bells start going off.
So, since launch last weekend, I've been playing the release version, and I've gone through the usual stages of gamer denial, from excitement to dismay, as it rapidly became clear that Elemental, the game I wanted to play, and Elemental, the game I was playing were not even close to the same thing - I've been playing games for too long not to be aware of the risk of overhyping anything, and my expectations were fairly low for the release version, but even those lowered goal posts were missed badly.
I've played numerous games, and stomped on the AI at every difficulty level, with a variety of settings, using more or less cheesy tactics or abuses. I've also run afoul of the awful, awful <10fps bug that is still unresolved, and I've run into bugs in pretty much every major area of the game - AI, UI, Diplomacy, Tactical Combat, Strategic Map, Graphical, Cities, Spells, etcetcetc.
But I figured I could at least turn some of that frustrated energy towards some constructive feedback. I've made several posts about various major issues over the last week, but I'm going to try to hit all the areas of the game in some detail. There are fundamental, bedrock level issues with some areas of the game, and there are smaller, but still important problems in other areas. If I didn't think these could be fixed, I wouldn't be wasting my time writing this.
This series will be, intentionally, a higher level look at most areas of the game, with specific nitpicks as they arise (some small issues bother me a lot more than others, and remember: the difference between a good game and a great one are the small issues). I'm starting with the UI, as it is the fundamental way that you 'play' the game, and Elemental's UI has a bunch of stuff that drives me bonkers, plus some bugs that make dealing with armies, stacks, movement, and cities very irritating.
Since I'm going over the UI first, most of these first issues may seem 'small', but because they are UI issues, there's no such thing You use the UI hundreds and thousands of times over the course of a single play session. Any time something isn't quite right, it's irritating to deal with each and every time.
I will not be touching on the AI. The basic gameplay systems and a variety of bugs need to be cleaned up fully before the AI can be noticably improved. I'll only say in passing that the current AI, even on the highest difficulty levels, simply cannot play the game well - but this is both obvious, well known, and well documented, so I won't harp on it.
So, rather than spending my evening playing Elemental as I'd like to be doing, I'll spend it writing up a gigantic tldr. Sit back and enjoy!
The Exciting Story
Chapter 1: User Interface
The UI is the first area that new players encounter. It touches across all areas of the game. It is one of the most important, least cared about areas of any game, especially any game where it serves as your interaction with the game. When the UI is bad, even players who can't articulate fully why they aren't happy with it will express irritation or frustration with the feel of the game.
Elemental's UI is passable. It largely gets the job done. But it has some really seriously irritating issues.
1A) The Options Menu has no tooltips
I probably don't need to point out why this is bad. See threads like this https://forums.stardock.com/393639 as an example of how that can negatively affect the user. There are plenty of others like it.
These are (mostly?) listed in the manual, but I'm baffled they aren't tooltipped in game.
Tact-Battle threshold is a big one that has tripped up multiple people. Auto-Move Camera in Tactical? No idea.
Some I know from past experience, but not everyone is going to - Zoom to Cursor? Sure, obvious if you're used to strategic map zoom, not so much otherwise.
This is most important in the 'Gameplay' options area, but even under the Video settings you have stuff that I have no idea what it is for: Max Texture Atlas Size? And while I've been playing PC games forever, not everyone knows what Depth of Field, Mipmapping, or Antialiasing are. Again, some (though not all) of these are mentioned in the manual, but there's no reason not to have them tooltipped.
Add tooltips to all Options in plain english that explain what they do. It doesn't take long to add, and it goes a mile for making the game more friendly to configure.
1B) Load Game does not show game details
I remember this being an irritation in GalCiv2 also - basically, the load game screen should show the game settings: Version Number, your Civilization, Map Size, Number of AI, what Civs the AI are playing, Difficulty Settings, Current Turn #, etc, rather than simply the name of the save file and a date.
If you've ever tried to play multiple games, or resume a game after being away for a few days or weeks, you know exactly why not having this information is irritating.
One of these save games is a Ridiculous game with 9 AI. One is an experimental 6 AI Challenging game. One is the last save in a blitzed AI execution test. Half of those are outdated versions and I cannot load them. Which is which? Obviously, I can use more informational saved game names instead of 'zzzz' But do I really need to write 9/Med/Chal/Ridic/Tarth/1.05a on every one of my saves when the game could simply display that information automatically? Particularly relevant for Auto/Quicksaves, where you can't customize the name.
1C) Create World has no tooltips
The first screen you see when you start a New Game, there's no tooltips to explain what the Victory Conditions entail, what the World Options adjust, and more annoyingly, what the Difficulty setting does.
Intuitively, you would think this is the game difficulty - you would be wrong. This apparently sets 'world' difficulty. What does that do? Got me. Probably more/tougher monster spawns. Maybe resources. Maybe quest locations. Maybe hero appearances. Maybe global modifiers to income or research. I have no idea!
For World Options, Notable Locations, Quests, and Pacing, I have no idea exactly what Pacing effects. Speed up or slow down research, income, or unit creation? A short tooltip would clarify that. 'Notable Locations' are goody huts (mentioned in the manual I believe, why not a one line tooltip?)
Additionally, that Load button in the top right - that's to load a custom map apparently. I had no idea what it did until I clicked it and randomly wound up loading the campaign map. The manual mentioned something about custom landmasses, but that apparently also includes 'scenario' maps, and I'm still not clear if that's supposed to be choosing a random map seed style (ala civ4 continents/fractal/islands/etc), or explicitly picking a custom map.
World Size could also use a text box that recommends the number of AI that would make for a sparse, common, or crowded game. Without any guidance, you can easily make a game that either puts you tooth and nail against the AI immediately, or a long boring monster bashing session with no AI in sight for dozens of turns.
1D) Create Sovereign
No statistics have detailed tooltips! On the 'Select' Sov screen, the tooltip for Strength reads 'Strength'. On the 'Create' screen, you get more detail (Increases Attack), but no mechanical information (increases Attack by 10% per point above 10, -10% per point under 10.
Wisdom is confusing, as it isn't available for selection in-game as a levelup choice, and yet it is an important caster stat.
Spellbook - It would be nice if you could click on a spellbook and get a Homnomomnom entry popup that listed all the spells of that school, so that you could make an informed decision.
Professions seem pretty well balanced, or at least not horribly broken, though Royalty stands out as a very powerful growth trait, and the tooltip for Assassin is confusing - does it double the first hit from your Sovereign, or from all Champions? Does it affect spells or physical attacks only?
Talents: Natural Leader, Intimidating, Cowardly, and Cruel tooltips tell me nothing about their specific Morale effects (or even what Morale does).
Hardy doesn't tell what the bonus HP is.
Naturalist doesn't tell you what type of mine it provides.
Daring seems exceedingly weak, and it is also unclear if it affects spells, or physical/ranged attacks only.
Organized is flat out broken. This talent needs to be reworked or removed.
Insane and Inefficient hardly seem like penalties, as you can simply keep your Sov out of your cities, and only duck them inside if you need to hide from an enemy. Should probably be reworked.
Equipment needs to be reworked. Spending precious permanent character points on temporary, cheap, and outdated equipment is a very bad investment.
If you provide unique/rare/powerful items, you run the risk of strengthening early blitz strategies even farther (something they really do not need).
One option that I saw someone recommend would be giving everyone a pool of gold and allowing them to buy some gear. This would at least let you kit out your Sov as a caster/melee, or maybe even add some items that provided more economic/empire bonuses, so all types of Sov leaders could pick a kit. Any gold not spent could be saved and then used in-game to purchase champions/jumpstart city production.
Backstory - hah, bet you didn't think I'd hit this one! I bring it up because it touches on another issue - the text input/parser in Elemental sucks. I'm not 100% sure, but I think it may be using the same one that GC2 did, because I remember it driving me crazy there too. In short - you create a new city, it pops up the name with the cursor input at the beginning of the line. You have to hold delete to delete the name, then type a new name. Why isn't the name highlighted already so I can simply type a new name? Why can't I use Shift-End or Shift-Home to select the line? Why can't I drag select the name? Why can't I click or double click the name? This cursor-at-start-of line behavior and the inability to use standard windows text controls is aggravating.
1E) Faction Selection and Choose Opponents
The faction selection screen is straightforward. The Choose Opponents one is not.
Altar's 'bonus' seems pretty awful in comparison to just about anyone elses.
Resoln's Death Worship ability seems excessively powerful.
I have no idea what the tooltip/bonus for the Siege Master ability is supposed to do or be telling me.
The Choose Opponents screen needs to be MUCH more clear about several points
1F) In-game UI and HUD
Woo, we made it ingame.
Let's go over some issues. The basic in-game hud is pretty solid really, though there are a lot of quirks once you get into unit/stack/city behavior. But first, the basic hud.
1) Tiny Buttons. These suck. These suck a lot.
These tiny little arrow buttons are used in several places in the game, and they're annoying and irritating in every one of them. Please double, triple, or quadruple these in size.
This also goes for the tiny X's in the corners of the various windows.
There's another issue here specifically - this particular tiny arrow is used for one purpose: To let you access the Dynasty screen, which essentially 'hides' it from the player, until they fully explore the HUD.
Because 4) already takes you to the Kingdom Overview screen (the fifth button here), why not remove the Kingdom Overview button and place the Dynasties button there, removing the need for scrolling (and hiding information from the player).
One other point, it seems like if this empire 'ribbon' is staying, it would make good sense for the mousewheel to scroll left/right on it.
2) Resources. Mostly straightforward, but a few issues.
First, mouseover tooltips: Mousing over these gives you your income per turn, which is cool, but you can't click on them - it'd be very nice to be able to click on these and get an empire wide breakdown of your income per city, so you can quickly identify and remedy problem areas.
Second, Food and Elementium do not behave the same as other resources. Food in particular has confused several players. I'd recommend moving the Food off to the side, and having a special tooltip for it that explains how Food works in the game (see point 6) for more on this).
Elementium is similar, though less critical. As far as I know, Elementium is only acquired from high level goody huts (making it impossible to acquire if you have disabled), and it is only used for creating troops with certain magical gear. More relevant to this issue is that, like Food, it does not have a per-turn income.
I'd recommend bundling Food and Elementium off together in a special section, again, with a special tooltip that tells the player what Elementium is/does.
One potential issue here - if clicking on any other resource took you to an Empire summary screen, clicking on Elementium could perhaps take you to its Homomnom entry, since you don't *have* an Empire wide source of it.
3) Empire Ribbon
I see the 'what do those red/blue dots' mean question regularly, and I'm also not sure if people know they can click on the + on a city or unit stack to expand it. I also didn't catch on to what the yellow/red bars meant for cities for some time.
There's also no consistency between the yellow/red structure bars on the Empire Ribbon and the Empire colored bars if you actually select a city. These should match up, to provide a visual cue to the player.
The icons for 'city size' are totally unclear. These need to be changed to provide a clear visual indicator of the City level.
I personally find the Empire Ribbon to be a mediocre, half finished concept, just as I did in Sins. It has some utility, but I find it mostly grows to unusuable size quickly, and does a poor job of presenting useful information.
4) Kingdom Report button
This button renders the Kingdom Report button in the main UI strip redundant. Remove the one in the main UI strip because this one exists.
5) Tech and Arcane Research Buttons
See incredibly annoying tiny buttons above. You can click the tiny buttons here, but you can't click the giant bars?
6) Population Display
What is this for? Knowing your current total empire's Population serves no useful purpose as far as I can tell. You can compare your population to others on the population graph display at the bottom of the UI already. Otherwise, you only care about population on a per city basis.
7) Goodie Glows
I know they change color at the higher tiers, but maybe change the base level 0 color to be something more distinct? The early white/light glow can blend into some of the lighter background areas.
8) Tooltips
Not shown in the screen, but the upper right is the terrain tooltip, the bottom right is terrain object tooltip.
These are actually quite good! Hooray tooltip person! One minor suggestion would be to add the *movement cost* to the terrain tooltip, as it is not at all clear how much harsh terrain is costing me to move through.
There is one unfortunate problem with these tooltips - the position of the bottom right 'mouseover' tooltip is very awkward when you are trying to mouse over cities in the Empire Ribbon. The ribbon is top left, the tooltip is bottom right.
1G) Unit Controls, Stacks, and Unit/City UI
Lots of bugginess and general irritation here, and that's a bad bad thing, because this is where most of the turn by turn 'play' and busywork comes from. I really think this is an area that you should focus some effort on improving substantially.
There are so many small issues and annoyances this will be a bit scattershot. Apologies, but there's a lot of problems here that need to be resolved.
1) Unit Movement
A lot of problems here, some of it very basic TBS stuff. The UI gives _extremely_ poor feedback on unit movement. This area needs a good solid overhaul, and doing so would greatly improve the intangible 'feel' of the game, as you are constantly moving units.
2) Unit Ejection
There's a major problem with stacks and units in cities right now - if you eject units from a city, you have NO CONTROL over where those units eject to. This is a serious problem when dealing with any city above size 1, as your unit could eject anywhere around the city. That's a very bad thing if you're trying to stop a hostile AI army or monster.
To be clear, if you select a specific individual unit and move it, you can control it, or if you multi-select units, but given the current selection behavior (no means of quickly shift clicking multiple units, ctrl/shift causing mouse lag), this is pretty annoying.
However, if you eject a unit either by pressing 'V' to eject all units, I have no idea how it determines where the units go. Similarly, if you use the eject button, again, I have no idea how the exit location is determined.
3) Stack Behavior
Moving on with unit stack behavior, for units on the field, and units in cities.
Did you know you could click on that shield with a city selected to bring up a stack eject window? I didn't for several days! Note that it does NOT work if you click it on a stack of units in the open, only on a city. It's also kind of clunky. It'd be nice if the window extended more vertically and horizontally, or even popped up as a separate window entirely, rather than being constrained and tied to the bottom of the UI.
There are also some really, really freaking annoying bugs/issues with stacks and movement.
4) The Stack Tab
The 'stack' Tab that occasionally appears at the bottom of the ui when dealing with multiple stacks on a single tile is really unfriendly. I couldn't find any way to a) Attack a hostile unit on the same tile as me, or merge a friendly unit into another stack on the same tile (this seemed to happen a few times with Caravans with 'guards', and another stack in the same tile).
Frankly I have no idea what the intended behavior is supposed to be here. I tried pushing 'A' and right clicking on a hostile unit to attack it - that didn't work. Tried right clicking on it in the Stack Tab, that didn't work.
Same story for friendly units - as in this picture here, say I want those troops to 'guard' the Caravan. How do I do that? Right clicking on the Caravan does nothing.
I can't tell if this a bug or a really poorly implemented feature, but it is really annoying. There needs to be some way to attack a hostile unit, guard a friendly one, or merge units/stacks in the same tile.
As far as I can tell, the Stack tab serves solely to let you cycle between stacks/units in a given tile, whether friendly or enemy, but there appears to be no way to actually make those units interact. I know you can click on the icons in the stack tab, or click on the tile itself to cycle through the 3d visibility of the unit in the stack, but that's about the extent of what I could figure out to do with it.
5) The Vitals Tab
Generally pretty clean, I think this one was done well.
A few points: As mentioned before, I think Moves needs to be displayed much more prominently.
Basic stats (Att/Def/Combat Speed) need more detailed tooltips and to be clickable to bring up the Homnomnomomnom entries, with full mechanical information on those pages.
Items like these Midnight/Destiny's Sliver probably shouldn't even be showing up - you can't click on them, so why are they showing up?
I'm also not sure if the icons for Champion/Hero abilities should be showing up here. Clicking on the Channeler 'ability' brings up the spellbook, but clicking on a Hero 'ability' brings up the Hero stat page. Neither of these things are items.
6) The Actions Tab
No major gripes here, other than the usual tiny button one.
The tooltips could be improved however - I'm not clear on the distinction between Guard and Fortify, other than knowing that Fortify is unlocked, and hence probably some sort of useful defensive bonus. Maybe. Or something.
7) The Trade, Shop, and Equipment Windows
Ugh.
That about sums up my opinion of this and the buy/sell interface.
8) The Spellbook
Unfortunately, much like the inventory windows, my feedback can be summed up with: Bleh.
I'm not a fan of the Spellbook. It kind of gets the job done. Sort of.
I hate the aesthetic, the lack of exaggerated old tome paper flipping sounds (it has them, quietly). I seriously prefer the Master of Magic spellbook to this one, and that was a pretty bad UI feature, but it had flavor. This one is bland and somewhat boring. It should be _awesome_ looking, sounding, and feeling to play with, Magic is a huge part of the game, and this is one area where pointless production matters. This shouldn't be just a menu, it should be your spellbook!
1H) City UI
1) The City Resources Tab
No gripes here! This is a very useful panel of information, made even more useful by the fact that you can click on any resource and get a detailed breakdown. I had no idea you could do this - I'd strongly recommend emphasizing this in the UI.
My only wish is for an empire wide city level screen that has the same type of breakdown that is done here, but in a useful UI window that lets me see and sort all the cities in my empire by resource type output or building/unit production, and to change/add to those building/unit queues from one screen. Such a feature would be a major add, but would also greatly help with managing a large empire, and getting a feel for your empire at a glance, something the Empire Ribbon fails miserably at.
2) The Building Menu
No real problems here, does a good job of showing what it needs to. My only request here would be some means of sorting the improvements. Buttons along the top that let me pick the Resource type would be fantastic, since 9/10 buildings fall into the 'Enhance Resource X by Y%' template, or 'Generate Resource X', with only a very few outliers (that could probably fall under a Military button).
It does have one major issue though - the building menu itself is fine, but when you open it, it closes the Resources pane on the main UI and opens the building queue. This _sucks_. Please make it keep the Resources pane up.
3) The Training Menu
Oddly, unlike the Building menu, the Training menu keeps the Resources tab open, and does not show the Training queue. Almost seems like an oversight.
Only a few small gripes - more detail on the tooltips, as always.
There is one annoying issue here - it's possible to DESELECT a unit, but the unit stays highlighted in the 'active' pane, and you can't actually hit Train.
Also I hate Caravans. But that'll have to wait for another post. They're a UI trainwreck
1I) Kingdom Report and Diplomacy
1) Research
Generally solid. Just a few tiny nitpicks and one bigger issue. Incidently I really like the Research system in Elemental - it has some of the cooler parts of the original MoO or SoTS tech trees (random, variable techs), and fairly quick tech acquisition overall, which constantly gives you new toys to play with. There are some balance/gameplay concerns here, but that'd be another post. For now, UI issues.
The main Research and 'Tech Breakthrough' screens both have the usual tiny arrows and broken slider bar problems (not a huge big deal since mousewheel does work there, but irritating in cases where you don't have a mousewheel - eg, laptop play!). More important here than in a lot of other places, because most of the descriptions require scrolling. This whole area also has the same problem as the 'Resources' tab, all of the techs/unlocks are clickable, but they don't look like buttons, or highlight like buttons.
On the Research discovered screen, same problem with tiny arrows/broken scrollbars, but there is one information presentation issue: Currently, techs on the main Research screen show Tech Description -> Likelihood of being available -> Unlocks -> Leads To. On the Breakthrough/Discovered screen I'd recommend moving the Likelihood DOWN, and unlocks/leads to UP. Knowing the likelihood of a tech you just discovered is not very useful information, but knowing what you just acquired and what you can acquire next IS, and any time you conceal information below a scrollbar, you decrease the odds of the user reading it.
Next up, the Completed Research Window. I'm not actually sure what purpose this window serves. It looks kind of neat! But seriously, I haven't found any real utility from it. I can get a quick look at how developed I am in various areas I guess, and I can click on the entries, but because it's just stacks of icons, I don't really derive any quick information from a glance.
There is one other annoying UI/tooltip issue. Once again, there are lacking tooltips, specifically on certain techs. What does Expert really do? What does Fortify really do? What does Raz... do? I can't click on any of these, and none of them have tooltips. Sure, I have a basic idea at a glance, but details, details! More tooltips, and more clickthrough. There appear to be no Homomnomnom entries on these topics, and they're core gameplay mechanics. Unlocking new unit actions or troop strengths should be documented fully.
Finally, the last bit, and probably biggest suggestion: As far as I can tell, there's no tech tree of any sort. I realize this would take some time to implement, but it would be very nice to be able to click a button beside a major field of research (Imperium, Conquest, etc), and get a full tech tree chart, that can then be clicked through to get more information.
This would be a big UI addition, but I think a very important and useful one - being able to plan out your development is part of the fun in these sorts of games, and also useful for simply learning the game.
Still to come: Remainder of Kingdom Overview screens, Diplomacy screen.
--
LAST WORDS
Your team asked for criticism and feedback. This post is the result of many hours of work, hours I'd rather have spent playing Elemental But because I do have some faith in Stardock, however much I may be annoyed with the current state of the game, I figured it was worth putting in some effort to improve the game.
I'm going to wait and see how this feedback is received. I'm patient, I can wait a bit. If I see fixes and improvements going in, I'll work up similarly detailed feedback reports for the other major areas of the game (Tac Combat, Spells, Quests, Research, Unit Design, Diplomacy, Dynasty, etc). If I don't see any, I won't waste my time
If I had to summarize anything there (and I'm loath to do so, I wouldn't have bothered going into that much detail if it could be summed up quickly ) I'd say the movement/stack/unit behavior and new UI additions for that should be looked at first. It has the most immediate impact on the 'gameplay' of the game, because moving units and stacks around and interacting with cities is something you do constantly, and currently, it's a bit of a cludge.
There are some key feature requests and irritating bug/issues with the UI mixed in there though that (should?) be fairly quick fixes (eg, the resources window staying open when you build a building, or making the city levelup window not lock your screen) and would greatly improve the play experience.
Some are probably less quick, and outside the scope of an immediate patch (a unified trade/buy/sell window, an empire wide city overview screen, sorting buttons for buildings/unit stacks, a new spellbook and research book), but would certainly be nice 'quality of life' features to have once more immediate bugs and critical gameplay issues are out of the way.
But whatever you decide, use it (or don't) as you see fit.
Excellent post. I agree with everything, save for seeing the enemies' destination (as was mentioned earlier)
For me, the worst part about the UI are all the squares that you can't travel on without any indication as to why. It confused me greatly when I first started playing (and frustrates me still). I thought that turning on the grid would help by outlining only traversable squares, but no such luck.
I am also disappointed by the way the cloth map handles terrain features. I tried to navigate the swap in the campaign from the cloth map, but had to keep zooming in because tiles that contained impassable trees showed as clear tiles when zoomed out. Is it entirely necessary to have the terrain features on the cloth map constantly changing position? I see a forest, move a space to the right, and all the trees change position. Very artistic, but incredibly frustrating.
Despite the flaws, I am in love this game, and can't wait to see how it evolves in the coming months
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