I have been reading a lot of reviews of this game and Brad's amazing response/apology to the gaming community. I would like to add my two cents. I don't think it is all Stardock's fault for releasing this game as it is. I was involved in the beta process because I am a huge fan on Master of Magic. This game was supposed to "spiritually" follow MOM's footsteps. I think it would have. In the beginning the game sounded great. There were no global resources (It was so fun in MOM to try to find some adamantum and build a city that could utilize it with good troops before you got mashed by the AI), but a lot of the more outspoken beta testers complained that it was to much micro-management. Over and over the whining beta testers changed the game until every race is generic, every spell is generic, and every resource is magically automatically available globally. Stardock, thank you for trying to include us beta testers in the whole process, but sometimes you really need to ignore the whiners and just develop a good game.
Also since your looking to start over in a way MOM's combat mechanics were awesome (each shield or sword or resistace gave a 30% chance to hit or block an attack). Simple yet awesome.
I can't believe somebody thought this was okay to release. Constant crashing and a one act campaign?!? The patches haven't really done anything to stop the crashing. This may very well be the end of Stardock.
Oh, please. Might you be exaggerating a wee bit? Sure, the game is rubbish as is, but Stardock has too many other solid titles and community respect for this release to be the end. Please keep things in perspective.
If this becomes a habit, that's a different story.
not if i have anything to say about it. once they get the performance issued ironed out i will be evangelising this game to all of my friends, assuming they actually get around to putting together a trailer this time. it's just such a cool concept, and i love the game's art direction.
Oh really? What's the last game they as a studio developed? Not published, developed. This may very well be the end of Stardock as a game studio the way we know it. Not in the sense of them going out of business but in the sense of consumer trust. Sure some will always buy but will it be enough. They practically lost all of their good PR image with this release. It won't be that easy to get it back. Because now you have to lump Stardock in with all the others ( EA, Paradox etc.) when it comes to releasing unfinished products. Their Gamer's Bill of Rights now looks like nothing more than a sales pitch.
Then there's also the possibility that what we're seeing is the true Stardock. Maybe they're just a one-hit wonder with GalCiv2 being it. Maybe they aren't capable of anything better than that. I just can't imagine them taking the same approach or attitude with their main source of income (Windows addons) as they took with this game by releasing it the way they did. Either they're incompetent or they think we're all a bunch of idiots who will buy anything they sell. Sadly I think they have most of the fanboys pegged right. They could put a turd in a box and a fanboy would argue that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Brad you have my respect for taking responsibility but I still think you're missing a big reason this game tanked. Not to belittle the beta testers as I'm sure most did a wonderful job but I don't think it was a wise choice to use customers as beta testers. Pre-order to beta test? Sounds good but with very few exceptions, do you really get good feedback that way? Let's face it most of your testers were diehard fanboys or they would not have pre-ordered in the first place. Maybe in the future it might be wise to hire an independent testing outfit. That way Stardock isn't too close to the project to see it's faults and you don't have most of your diehard fans kissing your butt telling you what they think you want to hear. You'll know right away what is and isn't working.
I'm not sure, the last one was probably one of the galciv2 expansions. But what does that have to with the price of fish?
I'm guessing your argument is that if they lose some credibility or some consumer trust then this is 'the end of Stardock as a game studio the way we know it.' Which could happen for tons of reasons not related at all to Elemental... but how exactly are you measuring how much 'PR image' they lost? Did you buy a device on ebay or something that tracks such things?
Everything Stardock does is the 'true' Stardock. You have to take them as a whole, warts and all. There is no conspiracy here to cheat you out of your hard earned money while falsely playing on and manipulating their goodwill. They screwed up. They admitted it. They are trying to fix it. What else do you want? At least give them a bit to see what they do before putting on the tinfoil hat, ok?
If they didn't have internal QA on it too, then something is seriously wrong. A public beta test is there to augment QA and get wider feedback, not to replace it. QA's entire job is to find problems. They can be unpopular at times with the rest of the team because of that, but they're absolutely essential.
use your brian everybody
This thread here was from July 2nd: https://forums.elementalgame.com/386009/page/1/#2669608
In it, a beta tester begged for the game to be delayed. He was told by most posters to stop worrying, as everything was going to be fine. It ended thusly:
Anyway, I'm going to lock this post. They really don't serve a purpose. The game is coming out on August 24th. As of July 1st, the game is running approximately 55 engineering hours ahead of development schedule.
There's still plenty of threads around from those days. There's no need to make up new versions of what happened.
Its remarkably backwards to blame the beta testers. First of all, its been shown time and time again that these issues were raised by the public beta team, but not heeded. Ask Tridus or Nick to provide some of the countless links they have posted in which the game mechanisms that are most broken are directly addressed, where the polish and 'fitness' of the game is called into question. These are people who cared about the game enough to shell out money pre-release. And yes, there was probably more than a fair share of sycophants and apologists, but the real culpability lies with the studio producing and developing the title. They never released a true beta for their public beta testers to hammer on; they released individual components of the game, without ever releasing a version that showed how all of those components work together and what the proposed release actually looked like.
They have an internal QA team as well.
Blaming the community for Elemental's faults just reeks of battered wife syndrome. I really appreciate Brad's honest, sense of responsibility, and proposed commitment to fixing the problems. I hope the consequences for Stardock are not crushing blows and that they are able to do what they have done for years--supporting their products for years after a release and interacting with the community to improve their products.
Another very common error in the software industry is, even if you do have QA, it's underappreciated. The developers get all the glory. Software QA can become PhD-level material very quickly. If a software QA guy is able to break down an interactive application into a series of vectors, inject those vectors as if they were interactive events, compare those events against something that is considered "correct", formally verify threadsafe behavior, extract code coverage metrics, and formulate a methodology for mix-and-matching various hardware platforms for compatibility validation--that guy deserves to be paid more than the developer. Easily. But because the culture rewards the developer, all the smart people go into development. And your QA ends up consisting of high school guys poking around the application and randomly entering issues into some bug-tracking tool. It's not very smart, but that's how it's done.
Wow, I hadn't seen that thread before... no wonder the massive mea culpa was issued and reiterated...talk about getting it wrong in the worst way with an added dash of condescension thrown in for good measure... just ouch.
It's certainly not the beta testers fault. Many of them spoke about regarding issues, reported our problems, and held dialogue with Stardock before it was released. If we're guilty of anything it was overconfidence in Stardock's process, which I'm certain we can see it as flawed now.
Hindsight is 20/20 but it's a bleak reality staring you in the face when you look close enough. All the evidence was there and Stardock missed it.
Nonetheless, this will hopefully be a pebble in the road for Stardock and they'll be back on their feet in a few. I do hope they don't get burned too badly for this and hope this improves them.
EDIT: I'd just like to note that the beta testers never had the final product. We had peices of it and were assured by the devs that it'd all come together at launch (and it had for past games).
Drago, you really love ad hominem, neh? I suppose in lieu of content or critical discussion its the next best thing.
No way this is the beta testers fault for suggesting changes. It might be partly the fault of some of the more 'yes man' beta testers but even then Stardock are the professionals, they should have been able to adjust for both extremes of the hate/love spectrum. As Frogboy has openly admitted the problem wasn't the beta testers advice, it was a chronic case of group think where Stardock was blind to what was really going on and were living in their own little self reinforcing world.
I'd just like to note that the beta testers never had the final product. We had peices of it and were assured by the devs that it'd all come together at launch (and it had for past games).
lol, had to laugh at this one.
Brad I honestly don't blame you as the individual responsible. During beta4 there were some tutorial videos provided in the developer journals on August23rd where you create the sovereign and play the game: https://forums.elementalgame.com/391280
I orginally watched these tutorials thinking I would pickup a few game pointers. What first surprised me was you chose Adventurer for faster movement, yet did not purchase the traveling boots for 10gold. In the second video you even ask the nearby developer "what we should do next" then later during one of the battles you seem to express witnessing your first enemy retreating. Instead of gathering gametips I felt educated that your time was being focused on other aspects of the game such as meetings with retailers, meetings with sales/marketing, meetings with the book publisher, game previews publicity, etc., etc.,. As the CEO/Owner you should be able to lean any direction while others in the company proceed smoothly while keeping you updated... no single department should need to depend on receiving work from you.
The only way you would be the person to blame would be if any of your team of developers approached you and firmly looked you in the eyes reporting the game is too unstable and not ready yet you chose to proceed anyways. If this event did not occur than you are not the individual to blame.
Beta testers can't reasonably be blamed.
For instance: We all thought the magic system wasn't good. Brad also though the magic system in the beta needed work, said so and said there was an internal beta different from the one we were playing, and a one-month period after the beta where stuff like that would be fixed. There was no point repeating the magic system was bad or making suggestions, since stardock already knew that and had decided a course of action for it.
I refrained from posting many times because I knew that just posting a criticism wouldn't lead to anything, and that's due to the way Brad would react more than anything else. This ment I had to try and be more constructive in my remarks, but it's a lot of work to ask from someone who's paying to do it. Not that I'd mind if the end product is good.
OP - You are very wrong here. I was in the beta since day1, and I was against the global resource model all the time. I've made many posts regarding local [which I prefer] vs. global...BUT, the devs decided to go with the global res. model, and it's absolutely acceptable. This resource model can work like a charm as well. Most of the reviewers had lot of problems with the game, just like many forum posters, but it's not because of the resource model...it's because of the system specific CTDs/bugs/UI & AI problems/some of the gameplay features are not polished enough [magic system, tactical battles for example...]
Indeed. I think that many beta testers did an awesome job regarding reporting various bugs & crashes. We've made hundreds of different suggestions regarding enhancing the gameplay. Just check out the suggestions sub-forum.
Don't worry Froggie. I know that you are sad because of the bad start, but we -"serious strategy gamers"- know that EWoM will be one of the best games in the genre, because it has a huge potential, and you lads in the SD office are awesome regarding enhancing/fixing a game....and this IS important in my opinion.
My point is that maybe we've already seen the best Stardock has to offer with their last release. Maybe they were just a one hit wonder. GalCiv2 being that hit. Not counting expansions. Maybe they just aren't capable of anything else or lost the "magic". You don't need a special device to measure PR. Just read the forums. Before release everybody was on the same side waiting in anticipation. Now look at us. We're divided and with most people it's a "if you're not with us, you're against us" attitude. The stupid hater vs fanboy argument. It's pretty reasonable to assume that if it's happening here, it's happening on other forums to. And if you don't believe anything I tell you just ask Brad. If he's truly honest about it he'll tell you they took a huge PR hit due to Elemental.
Brad, continue to give apologies as you feel the need. They are cathartic.
Part of the problem as you mentioned was this was your baby. And while we all know it would of been better come February and another stage of beta.
You were too close to it. And though you could of created a great game by February. I still think because of the flaws, it wouldn't of been right. It takes these type of events, to knock you flat on your ass, seeing stars.. to get you to get back up. And knock the dust off, and go back to building a great game.
Now, to be honest, I may of felt the game was not ready for release at the time. But I kept seeing what you were mentioning about the changes being so dramatically, different. So I was expecting that there was a whole team who was crafting tons of awesome behind the scenes, and we were getting the blander stuff.. not to sell it but to test it.
The gods know I reported bugs with issues. What I didn't expect was them to be present when it went live. That actually got me peeved. Something I provided dropbox reports for, in the live version. I really thought I was done beta-testing. So it was a surprise.
But you know what.. me sayin' this game wasn't ready.. definitely NOT something that would of helped. And though my expectations of what was behind the curtain was really a LOT more than what we got.. so instead, I kept trying to come up with compelling things that would of made the game much more interesting, unique and special. I wrote a dissertation over on my website. An-honest-personal-elemental-opinion/
So, I'm glad Brad is learning from this debacle. I still think this game with a lot of the fixes in place is a good foundation. This entire thing was unfortunate. I just didn't know there was another team that had their lively hood on the line, or I would of attempted to implore the delay. But I took Brad at his word, and if he said there was a LOT more coming... I expected it. As I hadn't ever been let down by Stardock. And even with this catastrophic release, I still don't feel let down. I just see, a LOT of work ahead.
Because the ideas that were discussed, fantasy civilization, with a blend of D&D style rpg implied gaming, seemed like an outstanding idea. Still does.. (though I would really recommend wearing the trappings of traditional fantasy, to give a broader appeal.. and left the game presented with the lack of traditional high fantasy races, specifically as a world telling story of Elemental.. the campaign. And kept the two separate.)
I'm just hoping that the game comes along soon..
May i suggest opening up beta to those that didn't pre order the game for your next game.
EDIT : Also, if possible, please hire Bruce Shelley. I heard he's available now.
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