Sorry for the dissertation, but if you are bored while waiting for Elemental to get fixed and want to contemplate the silliness of the human psyche....
I must admit I don't understand all the anger/people saying Stardock should have delayed releasing Elemental until February 2011. It seems to me that EVERYONE is better off with the game released and in players' hands, rather than having Stardock work on it internally for another 6 months before release:
1.) Stardock
Obvious - better off cause they have people's money, and can get players to do their "beta testing", find bugs, etc. without having to pay them...big win.
2.) Players who like the game
"Fanboys" or not, there are apparently a lot of people (50%-ish in the poll, and some positive comments in the forums) who are enjoying playing the game, even if they realize it is not perfect. They are happy it is out now so they get 6 months more of enjoyment. Plus the ability to make suggestions, which means the game will be better by Feb 2011 than it would be if it was just in Stardock's hands internally...let's face it, the official beta-testing process was not, and would not have been, as intense as what is happening now that the game is released - i.e. whenever the game got released players would have a lot of complaints/suggestions, and this way they are taken care of now, rather than 6 months from now. So you get to have whatever fun you can have with the game now, PLUS have the game in better shape by next February than it would otherwise be...PLUS have Stardock feeling bad and more likely to give additional free content that they were planning on charging for going forward = big win for this group, as well.
3.) Players who hate/are frustrated by the game in current form
Okay, you hate the game. Don't play it until next February, and you are in the same place you'd be if they didn't release it until then. Only you are even BETTER off, becasue of the reasons outlined above....you at least have the chance to make suggestions, and/or have other people climbing all over the game and improving it, so it will be better this way by February 2011 than it would have been if they didn't release it until then. Plus more Stardock effort/free stuff, as above. Okay, you had to put up your $50 now. But since you were going to spend $50 next February, you didn't LOSE $50, you just lost the use of that $50 for 6 months. Left in the bank, at the current .1% interest, that "costs" you $.025 in interest (pre-tax!). That sucks, but only a little. I would think if you were going to plop down $50 in 6 months anyways, plopping down, in effect, $50.025 now to get a more-robust, fully tested and vetted game in 6 months that you can mess around with now if you feel like it (and ignore if you don't), PLUS get Stardock's extra effort to make up the problem stuff, seems like a pretty good deal. So ignore the game, come back in February, and have a better game due to the "early" release than you would have had otherwise. If losing out on the $.025 interest on your money for 6 months really annoys you, get a refund and rebuy later - annoying, but not catastrophic, especially relative to the "free look" at maybe enjoying the game now and definelty enjoying the game more once it's been refined by the rest of the public. Either way, the "pre-mature" release seems like a small win even for this group.
I understand if a company releases a game that's not ready, takes your money, and walks away...that REALLY sucks, and no one wants to support the trend of companies doing that. But no one, even those who hate the game in it's current form, appears to think Stardock is going to do that.
Feeling like you are going to get something great, and then having to wait, is annoying...but you'd have to wait if they delayed the release, too. And buying something you thought you'd like, and having to go through the hassle of getting a refund cause you need the money to buy something else to amuse yourself, is also annoying. But it also seems that the annoyance is small compared to the CHANCE to get a look at something early...you might like it..you might not like it but like the chance to help reshape it...you probably will like it more in 6 months than you would have if the release was delayed...it just seems to me that if you really THINK about it, we should ALL be glad Stardock released this game now rather than working on it internally until Febrauary of next year... Stardock wins; people who are enjoying the game now win, and even people who dislike the game in it's current format kinda win. So why the hate?!?!
...if you truly believe that they will continue to improve the game as much as they would have if they kept it internal for 6 more months, the "early" release is a GREAT thing for EVERYONE (like how the capital letters make my points so much stronger.."look, it's in capitals..must be right!"). And it gets even better if you STOP writing how much you hate the game in the forums, and let other people help improve it for you without the distraction!!
Stardock - KEEP releasing games early, AS LONG AS YOU WORK HARD TO SUPPORT THEM AFTER RELEASE, we all win that way!!!!!!
The first part of your post was level headed, but here in my opinion you have the wrong approach to this situation. Going about posting a list about what they plan to change right now would be a disastrous error. There is no way on earth that anyone can say right now all the exact changes needed to make Elemental reach its full potential. It takes time to figure out all the things to change and more importantly how to change them.
Rushing into rash judgments as per your suggestion and starting a debate with the community about how to improve the game right now is a bad, bad idea. The community would have a very clouded opinion about a lot of issues right now. This is one of the situations where I would vote an absolute no to getting the community too involved. Gathering and accepting feedback is extremely important, but the team needs to brainstorm and get their bearings and a game plan first before bringing us back to the discussion table.
If the on disk version of the game when released in AUS is not a very recent and very fixed patch...I won't be buying it at all. I refuse to buy a game that potentially won't work or will have game breaking flaws.
When is the last time you bought a CD and they accidentally slipped in a 4 track demo recording of a track instead of the produced one...never you say? My point exactly. You pay for a working release. You don't buy a cd knowing it's f-ed up so that you can download the tracks digitally later when they make them available online for free which some might see as a fix....I do not, the physical CD is useless and you have content you have to download. That is not something you want from a full RRP game.
I am glad it was out early, me bored with all the other games I have.
Also love seeing the progress and changes. Personally I want to do lots of adventuring in this game =D
APB too few players (Not to mention RTW fail >.> bad luck, timing and pricing, I guess. )
L4D 1 & 2 everyone mia to Star Craft II
Civ IV am a bit bored with.
Other hundred + steam games, don't feel like it and no other interest in rpg yet or not out yet for handhelds.
I think the best thing they could do ASAP, while they continue to patch the game and fix things, is open up the modding as soon and as much as possible. I'm talking Python stuff here. . . where WE have access to the AI and whatever else possible. If nothing else, the game can quickly be turned into a modder's dream and just as War Craft III, Never Winter Nights,Star Craft II, Half-Life, Etc Etc have shown. . . the communities can make some incredible things. That alone would make people buy the game I think. especially once good stuff starts rolling out made by the community. That's my 2 cents.
This is an interesting thing to watch. It reminds me a lot of the Hellgate: London fiasco, actually, but with some key differences.
I remember during the Hellgate: London beta, beta testers were begging Flagship to delay the game because we could see it wasn't ready, but we were assured by the development team that their in-house build was weeks ahead of what we were playing and that we shouldn't worry. When the game was actually released, it turned out that there was only a slight difference between the beta and the release version and that game was buggy, had terrible performance, and had many missing and broken features. Sounds a lot like the Elemental released, doesn't it? Well, here's where they diverge.
Flagship immediately went on the defensive, and its personnel became very arrogant, rude, and condescending to people in the forums. The Flagship PR rep went on a power trip and started banning anybody who was critical of the game, and in a couple infamous interviews, Bill Roper openly insulted those critical of Hellgate: London and said we should just suck it up and play because it was a good game, and we didn't know what we were talking about. Patches were slow to roll out and brought more problems than fixes, and even worse, they had forked the single player and multiplayer builds, so those of us who preferred single player were two or three patches behind the multiplayer game. Eventually Flagship declared bankruptcy, closed their doors, and that was the end of it.
I'm glad Brad is able to take a step back and assess the situation because I think Stardock will have success where Flagship failed.
I'm sticking with Stardock, too. But I'm a guy who got the pre-release emails, salivated over them like everyone else here, and made an emotional investment in the game before it came out... I WANT to see it succeed. At my local Wal-Mart's pc games ghetto, Elementals has as much shelf space as Starcraft 2. I don't know that the next Stardock game will get any play there at all after this. At amazon.com, Elementals is getting review-hammered to death. No one but a fanboy like me looking for a non-Impulse discount would buy it there after reading them.
We don't need another Troika.
Having worked on the first 2 Fable games, i know what it's like to work on products for years on end, for the game to come out and for people to slate it for being buggy or rushed and then your CEO/Lead Designer to apologise to the world at large.
What is needed is a shift in team management, and a tighter reign on Design Freedom, Production Slip and a decent number of honest internal testers/reviewers you can trust and more importantly who you will listen to.
Fortunately, companies can change, and lessons can be learnt and we should demonstrate that with Fable 3's release in October. .
Good luck with getting Elemental back on track, i can see a great game in there, trying to peek out, but i can't bring myself to play it over other strategy titles on my hard drive now, however much i want to . I'll wait for a few patches and give it another try!
tl;dr (just read bold sentences)
This is the *first* post I've seen that gives me some hope that Elemental will eventually become the game we all want it to be. We all love the *idea* of Elemental the *potential* of Elemental. But the *reality* of Elemental is unfortunately (at this point) a disaster. The blindness of which you speak Brad was evident in not only the design but also the defensive comments made about how "finished" 1.0 was. What is encouraging to me is that you, as the man in the driver's seat, now realize this.
Yes, the consequences for Stardock (not just Game Studio but entire reputation as a company) is taking a major beating. A lot of us long-time Stardock/GalCiv fans who were confident enough to lay down our money a year in advance - long before we had a clue about how it would turn out - have lost confidence. At this point, I definitely won't be pre-ordering anything from Stardock again and unfortunately will assume that releases will likely not be "in an acceptable state" (whatever word people chose to use for that) at release.
However, I didn't post this to just heap more negative sentiment on the pile (even if it is deserved). Brad's post embodies what people like most about him and Stardock. He isn't afraid to call a spade a spade and take responsibility. That is what is so refreshing and endearing about Stardock/Brad! In an age where corporations talk (or ignore) like politicians, it is just so damn HUMANE to have someone be open and honest about what they are doing - even (especially!) when they make mistakes... big ones!
Unfortunately, the world is all too quick to jump on our failures. But, as cliché as this may sound, what's more important than our failures is how we recover from them. It will take a lot of work to turn Elemental into the game it was intended to be, but the passion and commitment is there; the raw talent is there; and now the subjective blindness that prevented them from seeing how far they'd drifted from their own mark seems to be lifting too.
I believe that Stardock will learn from this mistake and also take the time (however long that may be) to get Elemental back on track. It likely won't do much for their sales but could really repair their bruised reputation which is far far more important! Let's all be patient and hope for an inspiring late game rally and comback!
My advice FWIW? The damage has already been done - take your lumps and move on. Don't rush/panic and get pressured into another blind spot. Take time to regroup and regain your long term vision rather than just apply short term bandaids. The game can still grow into what it was meant to be as long as you don't just *react* to all the launch pressure.
Best of luck all you guys/gals at Stardock!
Its nice to see someone admitting he completely failed, its rare to se that happen in any business. Seems brad had a reality check, it was a catastrophic release. If you revamp the gameplay and indeed give a new campaign for free, you will rebuild your reputation. Its in sad shape but salvageable.
Heres my game experience , at first i couldnt play at all cause of crashes, then when i could, i finally noticed how shallow the game was. Large map on hardest setting with 8 IA opponents , and only one of them bothering me at the very beggining of the game then nothing at all during 300 turns,not even when i started the quest of mastery, hello guys i am one step from conquering the world doesnt it annoy you a little ?
Another game i meet a suicidal IA,i had a city barely defended , IA move a large army with a sovereign next to it . I expected it to take my city , but no it waited for me to bring back my forces there and my sovereign , to attack the city , and off cousse loose miserably . the sovereign dies, its empire collapsed all together....
Next game , completely inactive IA... its a serious let down compare to gal civ, its worse than the very first civilisation or master of magic IA.Coming from stardock wich strong point was IA thats a surprise.
Some guy posted some master of magic pics with feedback, regarding abilities missing, i wont repost that here, but i suggest devs to look at it, this 1995 game is sadly vastly superior to elemental. I understand they were not planning to make a clone, but we were expecting something as good , as entertaining or close.Theres no balance, no unique race units, spells are bland , not worth using. Once you have a nuke, an area nuke, and the overpowered elementals summons , you are good to go.Theres not much point making different units, all you have to do is take the heaviest armor the best weapon and worgs/horse, theres no anti cavalry spear men, theres no air units, theres no naval units to bomb them .
If you are fed up of Master of magic comparison , look at dominion 3, 2 guys or so at work and see the vast numbers of very unique units , spells, and items crafting.
Finally the over positive views of sycophants on this forum dont help them, with guys like you tellling them all the time they are great for everything at everything, no surprise they live in a dream , you are sinking them.
I didn't mean the team should try to put together a changelist tomorrow, or that the community should co-author it. I meant the team should put a changelist together some time during the next month or so, and post it once they're confident about it. Only then do I want them to give themselves and us another month or so, to give each other feedback.
The primary reason to do it, would be to restore out confidence that there actually is a plan, that the plan isn't just a repeat disaster, and that the team aren't still immune to criticism. Of course there's the chance that the community could come up with something brilliant that works within the context of the changes the team plans to make, but that's neither very likely nor the reason to create a publicly available game plan and talking to us about it.
Again, I'm not advocating design by committee. But I know I would feel a lot better about the future of Elemental if I saw an Elemental Design Doc v2.0, and better still if they held off realising it until we had had a chance to comment on it. But then, it's a suggestion born of my current impression that the team doesn't know what to do with Elemental.
Agreed. Brad said he was "blind" to the state of the game. Now he's had an "epiphany" but until we see more details and the scope of the changes, how are we to truly know he gets it? I'd like to think he does.
Also the plan forces them to spend the time to analyze what's wrong with the game and what needs to be improved.
This is, frankly, one of the most impressive displays of personal responsibility I've seen in some time; a complete turnaround from your attitude a week ago.
I'm sure you're aware this 180 kneecaps the fanboys who have been defending every version of the game since August 24th. That couldn't have been easy.
I think the FFH and Dune mods for Civ IV are the kinds of mods people want to be able to do with Elemental.
And this is the part I'm caring about right now.
The past can't be changed. Analyze it, learn from it, but what I'm most concerned about it not the "should've, would've" mentality, but where do we go from here with this game. The part that can be changed - the future.
That's going to to do more to determine how much I stay with Elemental/Stardock (first ever Stardock-produced game for me) than all the heaping over the launch/beta/etc.
To add to Raven X (although I am not sure he agrees with me), I would also like to see the Sovereigns have more depth. Have more benefit from specializing in only one or two spell types. Perhaps extra damage, more range, etc. Without some benefit to limiting your spell choices, there is no reason not to take all the spell books.
Not to worry though, the game is still rather addicting and I look forward to the upcoming changes.
By the way, thanks for the quick patches and updates.
Thank you! As someone who has been in QA for 20 years I am amazed that you could program this thing up until and past the last day and not have someone in your test organization saying, "Brad, Elemental is not ready" -- and if they did, then shame on you for not listening.
It's fine to take calculated risks but as you seem to know, there was nothing calculated about this. You just screwed up.
Not really. Those "fanboys" as you call them have been defending Stardock. Most knew there were flaws and holes in the game. They are just getting rewarded by Stardock's persistence and dedication, which is what made them "fanboys" to begin with. They were just as right in defending Stardock as the detractors and antagonists by stating that Stardock would adress all issues with their practiced standards of customer support and develoment.
curious question to those that know, I keep on hearing that Stardock does not make their revenues through gaming, so what exactly do they make their revenues on?
Impulse. Windows utilities. Prostitution.
Some people are never happy. Just play the game or not it is your choice. I choose to play it and like it even though it's not perfect. Been playing computer games even before the commodore 64 when computer games were played using a cassette tape mostly Avalon Hill games and I have yet to play the perfect game nevertheless a perfect game upon release.
so the criticism falls into 2 catagories:
1. the game is broken and not finished: this is a simple one. The game has horrible game stopping bugs, performance issues and is a bear to play. Or at least was, I haven't played 1.07 yet to see how they have improved the performance. I personally am sitting on the fence whether I want to try out the most recent patch. It might be an improvement but it do I care? the reason I probably don't is I can handle a broken game, thats easy. What I want is an INTERESTING game. That leads to point #2....
2. The game simply isn't interesting enough. Mechanics are silly, not deep enough, magic is bland etc etc: THIS is where I hope the focus will be falling. I know I am departing from what everyone thinks on this one but I think its worth being said. A lot of the people taking the time to post on this forum mention MoM which at its release was a buggy unfinished mess. MoM was a mess but it was unique, complex and deep on the mechanics. This is what strung us along to keep playing it until the bugs were ironed out. At this point, this is what elemental lacks and what worries me. I really don't expect a perfectly bug free game, maybe I deserve one for my money but honestly when is the last time someone delivered that? What I want is a game that is so interesting and deep that I can't put it down. Elemental does not have that right now.
Maybe I am getting old and the lens of years is what puts so much shine on older games, but Elemental doesn't give me the desire to play it right now. I have suffered through crash after crash on unfinished games. Hell I deal with the insane save game mechanics of mount and blade just because the game is such an interesting struggle. But the problem for me isn't how bug free the game is. If that was the issue I would have never finished the Witcher. The problem is the underlying battle and world building mechanics aren't deep or interesting enough. THIS is what I worry about. That the game will be "fixed" and not hit that magic spot that draws me in as FFH II, MoM, etc did due to their variety of deep, complex asymmetrical paths to victory on both the tactical and strategic scale.
Plus I want my armies of the shambling dead.
I care enough to post, something few games in the last 10 years have gotten out of me. For now, you have my money and I am waiting to see what you do with it.
Very good reply and I agree with alot if not most of what you say. I think the biggest difference between you and me is that I tend to let my own imagination fill in the gaps of what a game may fail to produce. And about the Witcher you nailed that talk about bugs but it was such a great story and unique experience that damn the bugs I was gonna play and finish it truly a great Roleplaying game maybe the best bugs and all!
I think the game is interesting but you are asking about "interesting enough" -- Maybe not. If things were more balanced, and I don't know HOW to balance it, then it all might gel so much better. But right now tech research that illuminates the world makes Elemental far more fascinating than most similar games, and the unit customization options are fun. But it's all clunky and unbalanced and unweildy.
I don't think I have ever called anybody a fanboy. I am not even sure what you are talking about from my post. I want more customization in Sovereign creation, and I want it to mean more. Right now I don't think there is any reason not to pick all the schools of magic. I want to be rewarded for only taking fire. I want more spells than someone who takes fire and water, or I want to be able to do more damage.
I also said I appreciate the quick patches and look forward to the changes. Maybe that is what you are confusing. If not, than, again I have no idea what you are talking about
Sorry, I misquoted. Fixed.
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