You don't actually believe that, do you?

Also, honest question here of which I apologize in advance if somehow I manage to offend someone because that's not my intention: if you (whoever reads this) live from paycheck to paycheck, what are you doing buying games on release? Your money is yours and you are the only one to decide when, where and with whom to spend it so from that point of view: whatever, I'm no one to tell you what to do with it. But if I were living from paycheck to paycheck, games wouldn't be top priority and certainly not "on release" no matter who publishes/develops them. Unless I'm ready to accept the responsability of getting burned by a faulty release for not doing something as simple* as to wait and see.

That said, when we pay for a product we get some rights, one of which is to get what we got advertised (and therefore payed for). But I don't think that anyone disagrees there.

* and sometimes so difficult...

ok... whining... have a look at your own post then please.

As far as i know reality is harsh a lot of times, have a look at the news on tv or just at your own simple life involving work and relationships. just because you are a big fanboy of brad doesn't mean he did the right decisions. he did not and he already stated that he did not! i have a lot of respect for that. but if you fail or do something wrong you have to live with the consequenses, and the unhappy and disappointed people telling their 'misery' is just one little aspect of these consequenses, a bigger and more interesting one results directly from it - they are s small company and directly dependent to a strong and supporting community, that's what made Brad Wardells decision even worse. It's a big economical factor.

If you are sick of reading such post, well, just ignore them. Or stay away from the forum a little while. I believe it's their right to show disappointment, that's what a forum is for too.

You know, that's reality too. But i'm with you in that case (for the respect thing). So do it yourself and don't be an arrogant prick too much. calling others 'little kiddies' with 'lack of personality (character and experience)' doesn't make things better, you should know that with your experience in real life. you know, you shouldn't do things you don't want to be done to you from others.

Good thread, after reading the latest journal entry today and Brad's comment in this thread it is clear Stardock is getting tired of some people outright attacking the game in an unreasonable manner and rightfully so. Reasonable constructive criticism is one thing, but launching personal attacks is completely unwarranted and its where the line is drawn for me and this community.

While there are a few seething bad apples here, I've still managed to read through some good threads on this forum and continually check the forums daily for updates from Brad and the team about the game which I want to help shape into a modern PC gaming classic. I highly recommend people to hang out on the #elemental channel on the Stardock IRC (irc.stardock.com). You can even chat there from in-game by pressing shift-tab and selecting chat from the Impulse Reactor menu. A great way to ask questions about the game while the item in question is right in front of you.

To be honest i haven't read every post in this forum and i never read something like 'kill yourself' that's just stupid (if somebody says something like that). On the other hand Brad Wardells gets so gloriefied by all the fans that i get sick of this sometimes too. i mean, what is he hyped for so much? he didn't do this game on it's own nor the other ones (galciv and soase - which are really really good) if you have one single person who needs to be in the shiny middle of attention it's clear that there are lovers and haters. and in this case (elemental) i really don't understand how somebody can get so pampered for making such a huge mistake. start talking about the game and not so much about the person Brad Wardell and such posts will disappear. I think it's a good forum (coming from steam forums) and i seldom read so thoughtful posts like here.

I never read more constructive critic than here, i never saw more fanboyism than here which to me is as annoying as the flamers.

I think the flame-problem will disappear in time as the game gets better (hopefully).

Both points are wrong. This is just ridiculous (or are you just ironic?). no more text here.

Froggie.....just don't let those haters get you down!  I hope this not means, that you won't even make a dev. post regarding the upcoming changes to the magic system.

The change actually started a month or two before release, but the biggest change was at release, yes. What happened at release is pretty well known.

If you go back a few months it was all people talking about theoretical mechanics and ideas, which was friendlier then what's been going on since. Hopefully this stuff will die down soon and we can go back to talking about game mechancs, because there's really some incredibly smart people around here on that subject.

Well I like the game. I like where it is going. However I often run multiple games at a time. Which means my patience for any fixes that it might need is very large. However I enjoy the core game. I read the book and it was a good book and a good primer for the elemental universe. I think a strong point for the game is the story and backstory.

I also have a very demanding job and an equally time consuming girlfriend. My ability to refresh the forums looking for juicy posts or new patches is very very limited.

I can see how some people are disappointed, sure. I, however, am not one of those people. I think I got my moneys worth and I've had a lot of fun. I've played the campaign and probably around 12 battles to completion.

please note this is MY opinion of the game. Everyone should treat it as such, negative or positive.

Forums are like babies and parents. Babies who are happy and content are nice and quiet. Happily cooing away. Babies who are unhappy let you know that they are not happy with something, you can hear them wailing a couple rooms away. 

In any case I don't have much time before work. So instead of wasting time on toxic forums I'm going to go enjoy me some elemental (Or maybe some ArmA II depends on my mood right now), Have fun on the forums kiddies!

Enough said.

I think you are the luckiest guy here! I'd been having crashes way too often until I installed THIS. Now my game runs pretty smoothly and I get one crash every 250 turns which I think is comparable to Civilization. Unfortunately, 30% of people had REALLY bad performance. That's not healthy and indicates a poor launch.

And, yes, many other popular games have their own problems. Civ4 launched with many bugs, printing problems (CDs were wrong), buggy multiplayer, and crashes, but it didn't get this much flack. Armed Assault had an assortment of problems, I still can't get those games to run right. MW2 multiplayer would go out for me in an otherwise very polished game. APB STILL doesn't run correctly or smoothly despite being set to the lowest graphics and I often find myself disconnected. I just don't think there is as much polish in releases as we'd expect these days, I don't know if there ever has.

But comparing Elemental's launch to other popular buggy game launches does not really excuse it. IMHO, that's no a very solid argument. It's like saying, "Well, everyone else failed the math test so the test is too hard" when, in reality, nobody studied hard enough. I just don't think we can excuse the launch like that.

And, lastly, the whole 'bribery' of game review sites does happen but it's usually through marketing money. For me, Kane and Lynch was the biggest example of this because a Gamestop editor was fired for giving it a low review when Edios has an ad campaign on the website and threatened to pull it (and the $$ from it). This isn't common but it has happened. I don't think this is what happened to Elemental, I believe Elemental reviews were on based their own accord.

Wow. This post is completely ridiculous. While I have seen many people express their anger and frustration with the state of the game, I have seen just as many express their hope for its future. I am honestly IMPRESSED with this community relative to others - any other game community would have internally combusted by now.

And for the people who believe that customers should not share their input on forums if they do not 'know how hard it is' to program a game, ect., - I hope you fall of of a cliff. One of the reasons my faith was instantly restored in Elemental after playing the game in its awful state (and not being at all familiar with Brad or Stardock beforehand) was indeed that people are willing to voice their opinions and reasonably expect to atleast have them read and considered. One of the things that separates Stardock from other companies is, in my opinion, the level of interaction it has with its community.

Consider a company that produces software for a mid-sized bank or a company like Target (software for financial records, tracking stock, online sales, etc.).  How would customers of said software react should the software be released in a condition similar to Elemental's?

For whatever reason, customers of computer games generally accept a 'quality' of product that customers such as the banks/companies I describe would not tolerate.  Game companies aren't stupid and have realized this, and that's why it's become fairly common to see a number of computer game companies calculate they'll get a net benefit from a 'release in a not-final state and finish it later' strategy.

If computer game customers were like the bank/company customers, then 'early' releases of computer games would be very uncommon, and likely not repeated, as companies who did that wouldn't last.

So for what we're discussing, it's not the "...nature of software...", it's the "...nature of computer game software...".