Okay, so this is just my opinion, but I value my opinion.
I don't think the initial release of EWOM was ever meant to be an end game. This game was always meant to be a platform for us to play with and expand upon. This was meant as something that each person could make their own. If you want a fully polished and complete game that you play for a month and then move on, then buy SC2 or something other carbon copy piece of crap something else.
However...
...If you want a game that you will be playing for the next decade because every time you look there is a new fantastic mod that makes it seem like you are playing a brand new game, then buy EWOM because that is exactly what this is.
I'm tired of people complaining that this game was released 'unfinished' because this game will never be finished until we, the gaming community, get tired of it and move on. For me, I would still be playing MoM if I could find a copy, but I have this now and I'm not letting go. This is love people, love of gaming at its finest. I'm all for Freedom of Speech, but wake up to the possibilities, if you see something in this game you don't like, then get off your a** and mod it the way you want it!
...well I guess you still need to be sitting down, but you catch my drift.
Oh, and as a disclaimer I meant no offense to Blizzard. You guys are cool too and I'm still waiting for Diablo 3. Anytime guys.
Okay, I'm getting off my soapbox. Gonna go mod something.
*edit* True, SC2 is not a carbon copy piece of crap. Too many people are focusing on that sentence so I am lining it out.
Isn't it Stardock's place to say that? Why do you think you have that right? You're nothing but another customer. Regardless of how much you love Stardock or love the game, your $50 or whatever you paid is the same as the next guys. You aren't any more important because you like the game. A disgruntled or unhappy customer has a right to voice his displeasure and it's up to Stardock, not you, to offer refunds or deal with the problem.
I would only point out that with rare exception of titles from companies with exceptionally deep pockets, no title hasn't any issues right out of the gate. I do not disagree to the presence of the issues, but NWN was equally flawed out of the gate, with much higher budget and still was a blockbuster. Its only the 2nd week out coming up, lets give them another week maybe two before passing judgment.
While I am perfectly content with Elemental as a game right now, given that it is bound to improve over time, I do have to admit that I have concerns about possible blowback against Stardock from mass market store retail purchasers who are going to be unhappy about its initial state. Going mainstream to the big box retail outlets means that you will reach a vast market of potential buyers, but many of these buyers are also not SD fanboys, TBS geeks, PC savvy or especially patient or even rational. If they don't like this release, they may not buy from SD again. If they won't, the mass market may dry up. Already there is a bit of a sh!tstorm coming in from initial review guru's, some of which are royally p!ssed off about the state of the game on release and are plainly stating their ire with SD about it. People are bound to notice, no matter how much SD intends to back the product, they want their perfect game out of the box and reviews that pan the game can kill sales.
I don't know how important that market is for the future of SD (hell, Brad may not give a whit if it flops in the mass market for all I know) but it is bound to have some impact in the long term.
Since it is still just a week after it hit the streets in most places, we'll have to see how the buying masses react. Many games (Paradox titles and TW for instance) came out with bugs and issues that took weeks or months to fix, but the public is still buying. Of course, those games are now $19.99 rather than $49.99 on the shelf. I'd hate to see Elemental consigned to some bargain bin (sniff, sniff.) But such is life in retail biz - not very warm and fuzzy.
I'll be curious to see what Brad posts some (possible/hopeful) Lessons Learned from the Elemental Release thread.
ok i got elemental yesterday and im slightly disappointd. ive played for few hours and i ve never found found my enemy and the monsters are kinda of tough and i cant level up. the game is fun but i am used to rts style games so i think turnbased is a bit weird. also im running on a new computer that can play everyother game i hav on high but elemental seems a bit laggy on normal. I would still recomennd it and i play it a bunch but.....
And Supreme Commander 2 is great!!!! ALTHOUGH THE ORIGINAL WAS MORE FUN
The brand of testers sometimes affects the quality of the reports, though. Like, how specific they are on the steps required to reproduce something. Bad testers waste more of the dev team's time but they aren't necessarily less tenacious or more forgiving.
I know who you are, Dale. I'm a long-term apolytonite, even though I don't post there much. I was completely unaware of the plans to release the SDK. I saw you and whatsisname.. the guy with Cancer Man as his avatar (Solver?)... constantly pushing for it, I had assumed your arguments were part of the situation of its release as they were strong arguments. It's a logical bit for an EU to make that conclusion not being on the Internal team.
Which again supports what I'm saying in the long run. Most of the stuff being said by a lot of people is without knowledge of the internal goings on in Stardock about the game, and that changes a lot of things. Brad and co have been fairly transparent (well, more like translucent) about things, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of things in the works that we would have no idea about.
I also didn't say they were pressured, that's adding force to what I'm saying that wasn't there. Convinced != Pressured.
I was stating an option...why is the option offensive to you? You are not stuck with the game, you do have an out. Anyone has the right to tell you that, regardless if you like it or not.
HOw is that a mature thought out post? We all admit there are problems, some think they got ripped off. If they feel that way they can get their money back...grow up and stop using labels when you feel all flustered.
Bad testers are bad. But I think getting a random tester means they're a lot less invested in your game than say...they guy who has been waiting on it for 2 years plus. A random tester will be quick to point out that, overall, they're not having fun. A fan tester, assuming they're not just there for early access, has more issues to overcome in getting tough but honest feedback to a developer. Like, for example, the very culture in which they find themselves. (Can you count the number of defensive posts, even by Brad himself? The line for criticism they'll accept and criticism they won't is thin.)
I can't claim to be a professional tester or anything, but I've beta'd probably 7 major games from the start of closed to the start of opens. And I've seen what different fan cultures do for or to testing. There are multiple kinds, and I can't claim to know what Stardock's is like...but had I been testing the Day Zero version, I would have told them it lacked enough polish it needed more time, if only to avoid a very negative first impression on release.
You mean like "shut up and go get yer money back hurr hurr?"
This forum really needs is an ignore button to cut down on the noise and noise makers!
Funny, I don't recall saying that. You said you would never have baught it the way it is....so, I thought maybe you don't want it anymore. I don't think you want to listen to reason, so I will just leave it alone.
I said I never would have bought it if it was intended to be driven by player-created content. Which it's not, since Brad is already mentioning if/when the time is right for paid expansions.
If that's being unreasonable, the bar on being reasonable is set to [redacted] levels. But thanks for trying to paint me into that corner.
I think you painted yourself into that corner.
I don't think so, since I'm keeping the game and am actually enjoying it on several levels. But it's frustrating and annoying to have people tell you that "you just misunderstood what this game was about", like we haven't been reading journal updates and following the development closely.
Maybe. My glass fills with every patch, but not necessarily every post by Stardock saying what they're going to do.
It's amazing how a post can take a life of its own. After reading all the replies I barely remember what I wrote.
I have heard a lot of valid opinions, praises, and complaints on both sides of this issue. It's nice to hear the contructive criticism, which was lacking in many other posts, and which prompted me to write this one.
I guess I am truly happy that people are getting so heated up about this game (for and against). After all, people don't get angry if they don't care.
he made it up .. didnt you know that 87% of all stats are made up?
I think that could be said about any forum. Some folks have valid points here, but you're always going to run into a few trolls.
Hopefully you learned a little lesson here ... you will see throughout you life that if you communicate with incendiary speech/comments .. people usually only focus on and remember those comments. Here is a chance for you to improve your communications effectiveness.
Both favorable and unfavorable opinions are valid and good for the forums. It is interesting to see how BOTH camps try to stop the other from speaking freely.
In my opinion, the non favorable opinions will lead to a better game.... as long as you keep the communications civil and constructive.
I oppose ignore or squelch, or at least doing so anon.. If you are going to ignore anyone, you should by fairness ignore everyone and listen to only yourself. As a forum tool, I support such features only if the person ignored has a recordable notification. I feel likewise on +/- Karma systems..
Maybe, but you do get honest feedback, and not just feedback from closed beta testers (and fan boys) who are more interested in pleasing SD than giving them the feedback they need, with the tone they need it in. Professional testers would have told them right away how clunky and poorly delivered some parts of the game are, like the complete inconsistency in how end of turn announcements and events are handled.How much of the game's current state is because it only received glowing praise from testers wanting to be supportive of Stardock, and they took that to mean the problems were minor? For Stardock fans, I'm sure they were minor. For the rest of the public, the ones that are supposed to give up the AAA price tag, and who have no idea who Stardock is, they weren't minor problems.
I don't know where this stuff is coming from. Beta wasn't that long ago, did people forget it already?
The UI was massively overhauled between beta 4 and the day-zero patch. The testers never saw the current UI, we saw a much earlier version and did give a lot of feedback on it.
Quite a number of people posted about the release schedule and not being ready, and SD moderated the forums to suppress that kind of talk. Internal professional QA can be overruled just like the public testers were. (In fact you'd be surprised how often people blame QA for bugs at launch when in fact QA knew about them and management decided it wasn't important enough to do before release.)
For what we got to test, the beta did fine. The problem with it was the lack of a real gameplay beta phase where the game was assembled and it was just systems & balance testing.
I think any expansion of merit will be in the far view for sure, the AI is undeniably weak. I am not a very strong RTS or TBS player, and I totally dominate on normal, max players... mostly because I understand terrain and Zone of Control tactics well, and the other factions eliminate entire empires early game with the immediate fail on sovereign death. The Diplomacy system is optional so far as I can tell right now.. The only allies you really care about are those on the far side of your local enemies.. which is everyone as you fight for local resources around your capital. Doing the main quest or spell of making option, and it's a snore just defending locally doing that line while all other factions seem not to bother with ever.. My game focus is to keep all victory conditions open but keep playing until I win by Conquest/Diplomacy or loose to the other faction wining by Forge or Spell.. So far my longest game was a large map at 619 turns, normal & max players, where I suffered an unrecoverable game crash.. Also I had both forge and spell options open for 150 turns by then at least..
Fair enough. Like I said, I chose not to try and participate in the beta. I've only been going on what other beta testers have been saying in other communities. Up until then, I didn't get an impression the game wasn't ready for release. Or at least, that it had so many outstanding issues.
No there was no uproar like you might hope there to be if the game was going to be overtly flawed. but really EWOM is not flawed so much as unpolished with an ongoing bug causing mem leaks and what not. Take away either of those 2 issues, and things would be magnitudes better for morale.
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