Whenever i rage about a modern game being buggy, regardless if we should expect better or not, i just go and watch an AVGN episode.I dont want this thread to turn into a "but in this day and age, quality has improved and so has our standards"..Yes, i know. Every game SHOULD be bugfree, polished to perfection, that is what we all want, that is what the developers should always strive for.No question about that. This thread isnt talking about bugs, its talking about the main game itself, and what it is.
But now, when things are the way they are, when a game has been released, it is what it is.The thing i've noticed with myself is, i can stop playing a game because of a single tiny issue that grinds in my mind (such as the rebel problem in Victoria 2, or the magic balance in Elemental, or the horrible AI in the Total War games).
But then, you step back to look at the larger picture, watch an AVGN episode and afterwards you realize, Holy SHIT, we're so lucky to have these modern games, even if they are shitty by todays standards, they are miles ahead of every platform-copy of the 8-16bit era. Miles and miles ahead.
Now i know someone will reply and talk about how MoM is the best game in the world and still is, but the fact is, it isnt.Those old games were amazing, when they came out. Not anymore. Our memories sweeten them to mask the issues those games had as well, as all games have.
I'm struggling not to disagree with myself here, i want to take the classical "noo!! old games were amazing, today they suck, only gfx and nothing else", but i must restrain myself, it simply isnt true. We've come such a long way in gameplay too, not to mention in the interface department.
I guess my main point is just that, the standard of quality has been raised skyhigh, and its GOOD because it forces progress towards even higher quality, but for us gamers, it helps to step back and realize that even with the issues, the games we enjoy today are so incredibly far ahead of the games in our memories.
I played MoM yesterday. It was horrible, not at all as i remembered. I also played Alpha Centauri and MOO2. They sucked. I loved them, i adored them, at that time. But today, i couldnt stand more than half an hour.We've come such a long way, lets not let our memories cloud the truth.
I think your right, many of us played these older games when we were much younger and weren't critical or even aware of the underlying systems that made up how a game worked (at least I didn't, I was a child, I didn't care how it worked, just that it worked and I was too young to be so critical and anal of how things worked unless it was obviously broken, which I rarely picked up on).
Part of me feels like if people like MoM so much, then go play MoM, it's still there and you can enjoy it for all the glory you think it is. The other issues is that Stardock basically made it very clear that Elemental was to be very much a successor to MoM in it's own original idea, I think that gave people romantic ideas of how much fun they had playing MoM 15 years ago. Granted, a lot has happened in 15 years, everyone grew up and became critical to what worked and how it worked and the pressure was now there to anyone who played MoM to notice the discrepancies, so we did.
I think in hindsight its a bad idea to say a game is a successor to a previous older game unless you truly stay very close to the original. I also think the community created this perception more than Stardock honestly, then again Stardock didn't exactly squash that assumption in any heavy way either.
Honestly, I think older people's jaded and anal view of looking for the issues and bugs is what is partially responsible for older games not being what you remember, you once were younger and not so concerned with the anal ways in which the game worked or how the UI worked or whatever. In many ways I think a lot of us have failed to just give into the mystique of games and their made up worlds and are too quick to look for the cracks in the foundation and the bugs etc. We could learn more than a few things from children and from suspending our disbelief a little more, all games would be better if we didn't treat games so seriously.
Heh... I recently played again Civilization (1), and no it didn't suck. It was fantastic experience. A little crude for today standards, and not with best AI (at least it's challenging at higher difficulties), but it's a damn fine game.
A few years ago, I also replayed Master of Magic and it was a good experience (the amount of detail was huuuge, even compared to newer 4X games), with only failure being lobotomized AI. Only difficulty that gave any challenge was the highest one, and it was not fun at all, due to insane amount of cheating going around.
If you think AC sucked then you just have bad taste in video games. That or you're so blinded by Elemental fanboyism that it's making your brain think crazy thoughts. AC and MoM are still playable even today.
I posted this post to put a thing in perspective.
All that matters in the end is whether or not you find a game enjoyable to play, and believe it or not, a game doesn't have to be a finely polished AAA masterpiece for it to be fun.
I disagree with that. It has been my experience that it's younger gamers who can be unreasonably critical, as if they're so intent on looking for flaws that they forget to simply have fun.
It's both, they just do it in different ways. The old are cynical, the young are arrogant. And game designers get stuck in the middle.
How old are you, to still use "fanboy" comments? I'm perfectly capable of having a clear opinion without being hype-brainwashed.But thats the way the internet works today, if you like something you are a fanboy and your opinions are nothing but mad ramblings from a brainwashed dev-asskisser, and if you dislike something you are an idiot and your opinions aren othing but idiotic ramblings from an, idiot. I didnt say I think AC sucked back when i loved it, it sucked yesterday when i went back to it.
I cannot agree. The past week I have spent most of my days playing Master of Orion 2, it is still amazing fun, and while playing it I feel so engrossed in its world and not more than 10 years ago. It is the same fun. And I have only discovered Master of Magic last year, it is a great game, and those are not memories.
Before that I played 1869 for a week, a 20 year old amiga game I played as a 12 year old. I had more fun with it than with any game that has been released in the past year.
So I am sorry to say this, but you have been brainwashed and old games really are better.
why do ppl talk about being a fan has something bad?
For what it's worth, I'd say MoM is still very, very playable too - I played it recently, only a few turns a session at first, and then I found myself continually just going back for another turn....
I could not say the same for Elemental yet. I really did try!! And it was 'intriguing'. But it didn't pull me in nearly the same way. Curiously, for all the continued questions about graphics and the havok engine posted on here, I'd have to say that it's the brevity of MoM's many little animations that make it compulsively playable: taking the time out to watch the slow and choreographed 3D anims in many modern games just sends me into vegetation mode. And that includes the combat anims of Elemental.
I agree that graphic/technical quality has greatly increased recently, but the basics of what is good gameplay are the same as they've been for hundreds thousands of years. Now, technically, it's possible to squeeze more 'gamplay' into a computer game now (AI, features, etc.) but still the basics are the same. Plus, pre-computers, there were boardgames -- what game is more strategically/tactically complex, has more gameplay, than chess or go? Compare the 1985 boardgame Advanced Squad Leader to the most recent Total War entry -- it's easy to argue ASL is more complex, more tactical and strategic, and has 'more' gameplay.
If anything, the early computers decreased gameplay due to their limitations, and it's just recently we're seeing computers advance to where computer games are regaining said gameplay.
Hmm... not to be Debbie Downer here but, there are well over 100 million people in the world who go to sleep every night without enough to eat, there's the systematic murder of ethnic groups, rape of women, and abduction of children in Africa and elsewhere, regular abuse of domestic servants throughout many Middle Eastern countries, etc. But, I guess this game having some bugs and balance issues is pretty bad, too.
I disagree all around, and I think you confuse graphics detail and capability with all around game design. Quality has not improved in games ... programming and graphics have become more bloated and cumbersome. A car made out of red plastic looks hot, but being made of plastic -- has the quality really improved?
Games had a lot fewer bugs back then. I'm not sure if its laziness on account of "oh, well, if its not perfect, anyone can just download a patch 'cuz everyone has Internetz," programming so complicated that its less likely to pull it off bug-free, or "I don't like negative people, and QA folk tend to be negative, so I don't want to spend too much money on those naysayers." Its sounding like, in the case of Elemental, its the latter. I don't know Brad personally, of course, and maybe chalking it up to QA-being-viewed-as-too-naysaying is presumptive on my part ... but that's been par for the course in just about every company I've worked for. Yeah, I worked in QA myself -- not for games or anything computer-related, but in two different industries: Agriculture (a potato farm) and an aerospace factory (no, not Boeing, but Boeing was one of their biggest customers). Especially in aerospace, every other department rolled eyes at me when I mentioned we were having problems -- particularly management, sales and production. I am guilty of it myself -- I don't like to hear about problems I am causing, and I've worked on the production floor at several places just being joe blow laborer. Its important, though, and I think most companies in the U.S. have lost sight and value of it. Our "domestic" cars have many of their subcomponents outsourced to Mexico, if not overseas -- they are mostly just assembled in the U.S.
Anytime you naysay the naysayers/"negative people"/pessmists, you're striking a blow against quality. It would be hypocritical of me to call it evil or sinful, as I'm guilty of it myself -- but we all need to work on our ability to handle criticism. Based on the propensity of this in society in general, the companies I have worked for, myself and even my friends I know, coupled with Brad's testimony to us customers that it was a lack of QA, I think that's probably the problem. I have never worked as a professional programmer, but from what I remember of programming courses over a decade ago, one of the big things they taught was code was always checked and tested. Every subroutine, and testing between subroutines to ensure they didn't do anything unpleasant and unexpected. From what I surmise today, having read the news that, for instance, Microsoft was found guilty in civil court of providing false technical information on the Windows API so that its own software would be more Windows compatible than its competitors ... that can't help, given how much I guess a lot of programming is offloaded onto the OS these days instead of my projects back in the DOS era when a program did everything, and memory management and graphics handling were handled a lot more by the program and not the OS.
There is certainly room to improve, though, even if the problems are buried in the closed-source OS API that software publishers like Stardock don't have access to, eventually through enough testing, you should be able to figure out what does or doesn't work. I experienced a taste of that when I did website design -- there were the technical HTML specifications, but no browser in existence fully implemented every HTML spec, and even those that did, there was wriggle room that allowed each browser to implement specifications differently. It was still up to me to make my site and pages behave well on all browsers. I know, websites are a lot less complex than computer games, and there is an impossibly huge variation in computer hardware to test games on, but I think a similar principle applies.
yes, cancer is a real bitch. Karma please?
Yes your statement is true. What's to be gained from making it? Did you expect stardock to go about curing these ills? While we're at it, why aren't YOU doing something about them, instead of posting on an irrelevant forum? People who use a "holier than thou" voice rarely are.
Honestly, I'm doing absolutely nothing to stop any of these things. But, I do think it's funny that a "Putting things in perspective" post is only saying that other games are worse than Elemental (which they are). That really isn't much in the way of perspective. My world certainly isn't ending because this games has problems, and I can't really put myself in the shoes of someone who is genuinely angry about this.
With that in mind, I agree with the broad point of the poster. I'm not interested in getting into a big nerd-fight about this, but there is "perspective" and there is perspective. That's all I have to say about that.
Having only ever played MoM after I played Elemental, I'd say I have to disagree. MoM has a lot more going for it from a gameplay standard, even if the UI and graphics don't really meet today's standards for a game. While I do enjoy Elemental, and I do think it could become a great game, at the moment, it still has a lot to do for me to seriously consider calling it the spiritual successor to MoM.
Um ... I played MoM after I played Elemental ... as of 1.06 Elemental, MOM is much, much better.
I don't know about this. I have never played MoM but i am watching a playthrough right now and to be honest if you upgraded the graphics and interface a bit I'd rather play MoM. The only thing elemental has going to it are graphics and interface, at the moment at least. Eleamental has more potential considering modding capability and stardocks history of support, but as far as base games at or near release MoM has more and more interesting features.
Just starting a game in the first 5 mins the amount of character the game has and features you get from MoM blows away elemental. The fact that elemental doesn't blow MoM out of the water besides in things that are standard nowdays is disappointing. With that said I am a proud fanboy of stardock and I know that they will provide enough free expansions and paid expansions that have that will make the game much better and worth my money. The fact is though the game as of now isn't really something I would pay for. Stardock is my favorite or second favorite developers along with paradox, but it still gets under your skin when a released version of a game is as underwhelming as elemental when it obviously has so much potential especially for those not familiar with stardocks support.
You are right in that we are lucky too have these games because there isn't a whole lot of money in them relatively speaking, but that doesn't mean they can release whatever they want without fans/customers expressing disappointment.
I disagree with the OP completely. Good game design easily makes up for outdated graphics and UI. Why? Because the games are still loads of fun.
Played MoM last week: Great game, still loads of fun! I'm sorry to say that I think that all 18 MBs of 1994 goodness are still better than Elemental 1.06 in terms of gameplay and fun.
Played X-com last month: Amazing game, tons of fun, graphics not so important.
Played MOO2 last year: had a blast.
If I could find a copy of Alpha Centauri somewhere I know I'd have a great time playing that one again too. Wish Firaxis would make a sequel.
Conclusion:
Good gameplay and game design is much more important than fancy graphics.
Retried X-com last year ($5.00 on Steam ). Started out going "Yeah! This is as good as I remember it!"
I lost it about away team 15. "OK, THIS guy gets the Heavy Cannon, no I didn't want him to have armor piercing loaded- do I look stupid? THIS guy gets the plasma pistol/motion detector, oh for the love of Murphy why can't you just remember what the loadout looked like last time? Oh yeah, because the game is fifteen years old and was built by a team of twelve guys. "
MoM has a lot of replayability, but even then... here's my shortlist of ways to beat Master of Magic so hard it's not funny:
11 books of any color you name. (Wraiths? For me? when everyone else is still building a Farmer's Market? Aww, you shouldn't have!)
War Trolls.(what's that? Regeneration is broken? Naaaah.)
Halflings. (I'll take slingers and lots of 'em.)
Runemaster/Artificier (20+ free mana per turn for the first 20 turns? sure.)
Dark Elves (Nightblades. Computer can't deal with invisibility.)
I'm sure there are others that I'm not thinking of. About 95% of my battles were either player victory or running out the clock.
I will agree that there comes a point where better graphics are not so important, but MoM is not at that point. I took this actual screenshot of the first combat out of a random saved game. How many klackons, quick?
I agree! People always say graphics are so much better today, but are they really better, or just more expensive? I think graphics have taken a step down since about 2002 or so when every freaking game, no matter what genre, had to be in 3D. I would argue that beatifully drawn 2d images like in Tropico 1&2, Pharaoh and Zeus or Patrician 2 are much more pleasing to look at than heartless 3d objects like in Warcraft 3 or Starcraft 2.
Sure it has helped 3d shooters, but not our kind of games.
Heh... klackons. This just reminded me how Simtex did crossovers with lore between their Master of Orion and Magic games.
Stardock did something similar with Elemental and GalCiv2 (references to Arnor, Dark Lords, Snathi, Drath, etc...).
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