Money has been tight lately, as most of you can probably understand in our current economic climate. Having always been a TBS fan, I had to make a decision as to which game I would buy this fall. I've been anticipating Civilization 5 and Elemental for quite some time, but I had to go with the latter, and I still don't regret it.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting pretty tired of the Civilization series. It's starting to remind me of Madden: Release the same game, add a few features, and call it the best thing since sliced bread. I've played every one of them, and every spin off since Civ 1 and the whole tour through history bit is getting a bit long in the tooth for me.
So I'm left with Elemental, which kind of feels like the old pick-up truck your dad gave you. It doesn't exactly run all that great, needs a new set of...well, everything, and doesn't impress your friends all that much. So would I rather take the old pick-up truck that can potentially take me to places I've never been before, or do I stick with Civilization, my shiny ten-speed that's always been safe and reliable my whole life?
I've read all the reviews, seen all the crap hit the fan, and even felt a bit of disappointment in the past few weeks. However, there's something about this game that just gets me excited, something unique, and something I don't feel very often with games. Even with all of the bugs and problems this game has, it has something special that I can't quite explain. With Stardock's commitment to improve things, I am giddy with anticipation as to where we will be led in the next few months and years. It's expecting the unexpected with Elemental that is holding my interest. It's hoping that perhaps one day Elemental will defy it's launch in a way that we have never seen before.
I'm sure that Civilization 5 will get reviewed really well, I'm sure it will be everything that everyone has hoped it would be. I'm sure it will be polished, stable, and relatively bug-free. I'm sure, at the core of it all, it will still feel like the Civilization we've grown to love. Unfortunately, this is where I become bored. I'll take the old pickup-truck, but I'm not sure why.
Perhaps Trinity had the answer: Because you have been down there Neo, you know that road, you know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be.
Same here. I don't pay for buggy unfinished games. I've got room and money for a lot of good ones though.
Judging by some of the things I'm reading on various forums, Elemental actually isn't too far off from Civ 5 in terms of polish and completeness. Lots of stability, performance, and balance issues being reported as well as complaints about the game being overly simplified and inferior to its predecessors, particularly Civ 4 which is starting to look like the pinnacle of the series.
I honestly think the biggest problem with Elemental is that it didn't have Sid Meier's name on the box so people were less willing to overlook its shortcomings.
Wishful thinking. I don't care if Sid Meier is in the name, if Civ V had the buggy, incomplete problems of Elemental, so buggy that reviewers tell their readers they are holding off reviewing because the game is THAT bad, we wouldn't be seeing reviews popping up all over the place indicating that the game is not only playable, but enjoyable. Let's keep in mind here, we strategy gamers are not prone to trash a game because we get OOS errors for the first month of play, or a few crashes to desktop or memory leaks that drag systems down. Civ IV had all these issues, and was still praised and enjoyed by many (not all).... any by enjoyable and playable i am talking out of the box, not after 5 patches.
I played Civ2 and Civ4, and I was a sharp player on Civ4. I have ordered Civ5 months before, and I got it at a few day ago.
While, I don't think I would give up WoM, it is really a good game unless it makes more fun after long time travelling on the map.
hahaha
Thanks for giving me the laugh I so desperately needed
I *LOVE* the running conspiracy theory of a couple of the serious diehards here... "Elemental is great and was only given bad reviews 'cause they didn't grease the right palms! Screw the man! Fight the power!"
Elemental got bad reviews because it's a bad, broken game that's missing wide swaths of it's features including some big ones promised on the box itself (epic battles and multiplayer, anyone?) Yes, it has potential, but outside of the true believers, potential doesn't sell as well as delivered goods.
Here's my caveat... if Civ5 has huge CTD issues and a general hue and cry of lack of polish and features, I'll eat my hat. Hell, I'll BUY a hat just to eat it.
You're wrong. You're just plain wrong. I played Civ V all day today and it makes Elemental look silly. Its not overly simplified at all, I've had 0 stability or performance issues and the game is amazing. Get over it. I have Elemental right next to CivV on the shelf and I like it there. But saying Elemental isn't too far off from Civ 5 in terms of polish and completeness is probably the most ignorant thing I've read on this forum, and that's saying a lot.
Heres how I view it. I own both. I will enjoy years of Civ 5, and hopefully after the 2 free expansions to Elemental I get with my purchase (as we all will thanks to the botched release) it will be enjoyable as well. If its not enjoyable by the 2nd free expansion...then I guess I will have learned my lesson about preordering. Normally I wait till reviews before I buy. I waited on Reviews for Sins of a Solar Empire, then felt silly for waiting. Oh well, life goes on. Off to bed so I can enjoy my 2nd day off with Civ 5.
Exactly my point. Elemental has been brutally criticized for things that reviewers gleefully overlooked in Civ 4 and now Civ 5.
No I'm not. You can visit various Civ V forums if you want to confirm for yourself the kind of widespread criticism that Civ V is receiving. Ironically, it's similar to many of the same criticisms that Elemental has rightfully received (believe it or not, I've seen several posters say that Civ V feels rushed and unfinished), but because it's "Sid Meier's Civilization V", most people are giving it a free pass.
As I told mentalinstra, feel free to visit the various Civ V forums and confirm my observations for yourself.
Oh, and enjoy eating that hat.
- You forgot Elemental developers themselves have admitted that the game launch was a total mess?
- Most gaming sites waited for several patches to do their review of Elemental, while Civ V had its reviews before launch day.
- Missing features of Elemental like MP, or the super stupid AI (something Brad himself posted about).
Come on, we all want Elemental to shine, but when the devs admit they have screwed and they give 2 free expansions to most customers, it's pretty clear they screwed the launch...
That's because those problems are occasional frustrations that distract you from a well designed game. They are relatively minor and the gameplay is so enticing you're frustrated if something delays your play at 3am. The problems that Elemental came out with were serious in that they affected a far larger percentage of customers adversely, but even that would have been overlooked if the underlying game was appealing enough to keep you playing. But it wasn't. Even now, with most of the stability issues resolved, the problem is the base game just isn't good enough - it's unbalanced, lacks strategic depth, there's not enough to do and there's no challenge - to keep 4X veterans interested.
The underlying game is what gets Firaxis, Paradox and Creative Assembly games high marks, despite the problems they always come with at launch. And you can't play the underdog card here. The name Stardock has as much clout, if not more, than those other names. In fact most reviewers made it clear they were being a bit lenient with the scoring because this was Stardock and they have faith in the future of the game. Pretending that putting "Sid Meier" on a box shields it from objective analysis is just kidding yourself.
Well I just downloaded the Civ 5 demo and I am glad I did, my pre-order got cancelled.
It is polished, it is nice to look at, however at the end of the day it is still the same old Civ. I was really looking forward to it and after all the reviews got really stoked for it. However, it is the same as when I used to play it for hours on end when I was 16 years old. It didn't really feel that compulsive or exciting to play.
I think I will just hold on now for the big 1.1 Elemental patch and then possibly pick it up, seen as the expansion will still be free now until the end of October.
If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were talking about Elemental.
The reason Elemental got terrible reviews is because it deserved them - it was not compatible on over 30% of PCs out there. That's a gigantic number of machines.
At the end of the day, Elemental has averaged 3 out of 5 in reviews. Broadly speaking, Elemental lost 1 star for some poor design choices and other game related issues and another star for technical issues.
While Civilization V may have some technical and performance issues, it's no where near what Elemental had until v1.06.
The main advantage Elemental has in the mid to long term is that we are free to make pretty radical changes to game play. Even if we have to call these changes "expansions" (to avoid the issue of people who like the current mechanics feeling baited and switched) we don't have 20 years of legacy design that we have to live up to.
I don't think many people realize how bad the original Galactic Civilizations was from a design point of view. But it didn't have technical issues so it got pretty good reviews.
Elemental is getting flamed because it disappointed so many people. Our job is to address that and we have the luxury of being able to do so because we're the studio and the publisher.
A lot of people may not remember Master of Orion 3 but the parallels are striking with one major exception -- Quicksilver was the developer and Atari the Publisher. The ability to keep working on it required both parties to agree to continue forward.
I would contend (and I think many MOO 3 players will agree with me) that MOO 3 could have become a very good game if it had been allowed to evolve and improve over a long period of time. Even many user made mods and fixes greatly improved the game as-is. I also think that if MOO 3 had done that, there would have been a market for a MOO 4.
Some of us do. That is why we are waiting to see how you/r team resolves/fixes E:WoM. We've seen you work. I have faith.
Let's throw in there Ascendancy (by Logic Fctory), one of my all time favorite games. Seriously, but boy it was broken for a long time.
It's funny that you brought up MoO3, I always think about that when I hear the Civ games rehash discussion. There was definitely something there in MoO3 (although it wasn't all there at the onset). The problem was, it just went too far away from the formula of the previous games. The whole macro management bit in particular I believe, drove many old fans away from the game and thus assured its downfall. Personally, I think the game would have been better off not called "Master of Orion 3" at all, both for itself, and the series.
This is also probably why Civ always seems the same, with a little twist every time. There's a core group of players that expects this, so even if for someone like me, that similarity also means "been there, done that," they can't change even if they really wanted to.
It has issues, I can't even get past the first turn using the recommend DX10/11 exe file. Crashes everytime. Thankfully they included a different exe for DX9.
I remember. I bought Gal Civ 2 went it came out, I didn't really play it until Dark Avatar expansion. Great expansion
I think i bought Elemental just to fill the time until CIV 5 comes out. As a big Firaxis fanboy i really love this game and my opinion is that every version is a big improvement to the core game.
I actually really like the Fantasy style and the RPG elements of Elemental, but there are two main reasons why i will (probably) play CIV for next couple of months. "Interface & Balancing"
Turn based strategy games are so time consuming and so repetitive, that every unnecessary window I have to open and every unnecessary mouse click is a pain in the ass because you have to do it five thousand times per game.
Example in Elemental are the loading and unloading of the Ships, this was a little annoying the first time i tried to do a coastal invasion in a small map. In a huge map, with i don't know 10 ships i would be very fast very frustrated. Or just simple things that i can't see the current population of a city when you open the build improvement window. So you have close it again to check if you actually want to build a Hut or something like that here. All small issues but in the end it consumes a lot of time which is not time playing the game and having fun.
And yes Balancing seems to be very off in Elemental. On the one side it is really cool to have so much features in it. Treasures, Spellcasters, Summoned Creatures, customizable Units, etc. But if the AI cant handle all this features it not really fun in the long run, i will try a game with the hardest difficulty setting but what i read on the forums the AI can be exploited pretty easy.
So i will buy CIV and when it is not unplayable broken all my free time will belong to Sid.
But i will come back to Elemental and i am very curious what changes the new versions will bring.
You've said that you were too close to the project to see the flaws. I think the opposite is true now: you're still too close so all you're seeing are the flaws. To put it another way, Elemental wasn't as good as you thought, but neither was it as bad as you think. My opinion is that the reviews were unreasonably harsh, perhaps because Elemental and Stardock presented a "safe" target for reviewers to say all the things they wish they could get away with saying about higher profile games and developers.
I purchased Elemental to fill a few weeks till Civ5 came out. I knew it had issues but I also have faith in Stardock's ability to grow their games to where they become great. At this point Elemental is getting shelved for a while and I am sure I will come back to it in a few months. I have had zero problems with Civ5 so far. After playing Elemental for a few weeks it is taking some time to get use to Civ again. I forgot what it was like to lose a unit
I agree with you that MoO 3 could have been a great game. It was extremely fun even in it's broken state and if it had the long term support that Stardock gives it would no doubt have gotten there.
I dont agree with that at all. I bought Elemental on the release date and Ive been playing it when each new patch comes out. The game just isnt fun at the moment. I think the major game changes that are coming in the upcoming expansions will go a long way to making this game more enjoyable. Obviously fun is a subjective thing, but when *so many* of the players on the forums are saying the same kind of things, its obvious there is a problem.
I also disagree about the reviewers. A number of the reviewers are personal friends of Brad's and he has said himself that he felt bad for them as it must have been hard for them to write negative reviews when they were looking forward to Elemental. I read a lot of the reviews and none of the criticisms that I read were unduly harsh.
I think Frogboy's approach has been exactly the right thing to do. Hes taken the criticim squarely on the chin and realises that the game has technical flaws and gameplay flaws. The development team have made posts showing that they acknowledge the problems and that they are now working on fixing them. I think that given several months more patching and the two expansion packs, I am sure that I will look at Elemental as fondly as I do Galciv 2.
I bought Civ 5 last night via Steam, finished about 11pm on dl
The DX11 version crashed about every 2-3 turns, switched to DX 9 version and was playable but fugly. Interface is completely different from CIV 4 but I dont think thats a bad thing. Seems more like the iphone version than a full CIV from a UX perspective but after 30 mins had to get some sleep before work so didnt get to experience too much game play
Guess the point is there are some polishing issues with Civ 5 from my perspective, never had a CIV game not work out of the box before. My 2 cents your milage will vary
I had to refill my tank three times while playing Civ V. Don't they care about the polar bears?
I'm enjoying Civ V. The main thing I hope they're able to address is the time between turns which is probably very doable in an update.
I got into making games in the first place because of Civilization. I'm not surprised that it's had some technical issues, I don't think people (or the press -obviously-) have any real understanding of how ridiculous the current PC gaming platform is.
With Windows XP, there was only 1 real video driver model for the video card makers to deal with.
Today, there are three: Windows XP, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit and Windows 7/Vist 64-bit (which are quite different).
The state of the Windows 7 64-bit drivers on ATI and nVidia are in terrible shape imo. I would almost guarantee that if you were to poll the people who post problems with Civ V (or Elemental) that the majority of them are running 64-bit Windows 7 even though they are, as a percent, a relatively small part of the player population.
I'm sure it'll get fixed up in the next year or so but it's obviously a pain in the rear for those trying to make games for the Windows platform. Microsoft should never have released a 32-bit Vista/7 version. That would have relieved ATI/nVidia/Intel from having to create as many driver versions which I suspect would have been very helpful.
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