Is this game honestly enjoyable now? Should I buy it with the 1.1 patch, or wait for the next one? Are there still major issues preventing people from enjoying it? Looked at it back in the fall and decided to wait until some of the problems were worked out first - has that time come?
I like in-depth strategy games, perferably turn-based, with lots of playing options, but not obsessive micro-mangement. I've liked previous Stardock games - e.g. GC2, also Civ series, EU3, Distant Worlds, too many to mention going back to the Vic20 days.
Trojasmic, if popularity was equal to quality, American Idol would be better than No Exit (by Sartre) and the New Wave of the 60's cinema.
You know what they say about billions of flies that can't possibly be wrong... (okay, I do think World of Warcraft is actually a very well made game, but because of its inherent qualities, not its popularity)
Edit: Funny, I'd give roughly 1 fewer point for every of those items, almost exactly. Exception:
Diplomacy: 2/10.
Unit Design: 4/10.
Unbiased score card of 1.1:
Yes, because having a large and active fanbase (albeit, with a combined IQ of 10) is the main prerequisite for being a good game...
Comparing game ratings from two different people are pointless. One man's 7 is another man's 5. A single man's rating is pointless unless you get to know how he rates other games. There has to be context. If I say the temperature is 50 out of 100 and I tell you that 100 is as hot as the sun, you still don't know what it means because you don't know how cold 0 is.
Comparing ratings from two different sites, same thing. Site ratings vary.
Only reasonable way to use an individual rating is that each number represents something. There should be a list of what requirements a game of rating X must fulfill. Stuff like Metacricit scores are useful to get a rough estimate of the quality of a game. Still, id doesn't really tell you anything concrete.
To be honest, Brad is probably right about the Metacritic score. As he pointed out, even MOO3 got a 6.4 in Metacritic.
I'd just like to remind people that there are a number of points that render individual critic ratings next to completely useless. It's the text you want to read. They do have power behind them though, the numbers affect the general public, and therefore sales.
I'm quite surprised that there are so many people here wanting to throw out some random number without any context.
As much as Trojasmic's opinion is subjective, at least he gives reference points to the scores.
That sounds very encouraging.
Hey now... I gave reference points for my scores. Further more that's what he asked for. I gave it out as best I can. But I acknowledge it's hard to actually draw anything from it.
I have to admit that reading/writing in these forums is a lot of fun and I'd give that part of the game a 10/10.
It's fun to suggest really cool ideas and then have the community or someone from Stardock say "yeah, that's a really cool idea".
It's fun to bash the game for all its flaws knowing that it's only going to help the game get better.
It's fun to bash the trolls who try to stir up trouble.
It's fun to see what Lord Xia is going to write next.
It's fun to see what Heavenfall is going to mod next.
It's fun to watch Derek write his change logs and wonder what he's going to do when he runs out of letters in the alphabet.
It's fun to watch Brad get powned by his own AI.
It's fun to publicly discuss Jon Shafer and Civ V in Stardock's forums.
It's not fun to wait to hear what's coming next...argh. What's coming next? What's in 1.2 that's going to make this game an 8? Please tell us!
I don't pay much attention to numeric ratings because certain gamer sites seem to always rate high. And each site has a different weighting for what makes up the final/average rating. So there's really no consistency - so even using Metacritic you're still comparing apples to oranges to pomengranates. And it's always the first release that gets reviewed. It would almost be better to have reviews done on the final patched version - but that will never happen cause then of course the whole industry PR hype would grind to a halt...
What I look for is the words in the review. It's pretty obvious whether the reviewer has actually dedicated substantial time to the game or just played a quick game on small and declared it ready to review. Astonishing how many reviews I've read where the reviewer admits he/she is a FPS fanboy and doesn't really understand key fantasy TBS or 4X concepts and gives something an 8/10 by default. I remember reading some EU3 reviews like that.
rating numbers are subjective? are you sure? (smile!)
gmot, you have to understand the critic's side of the view though. You can't possibly expect a professional critic to spend tens of hours playing each game they review. How much is enough time is up for debate though. But you need to understand that it's their job and they work under deadlines.
Though all that means is that it's one more reason to not trust the rating that much but rather read the text.
Oh god yeah, I've seen that too many times. I still remember a C&C3 review that kept bringing up staple RTS features, things that have been with the genre nearly since its inception, as if they were cool new ideas invented by C&C3 itself (a very unoriginal RTS sequel).
I mean I respect that reviewers simply can't spend tens of hours on a given game, and I've come to expect and adjust for the resulting bias towards graphics, UI, and early game (particularly how well the game is introduced towards new players) with less emphasis on endgame, replayability, how the AI holds up to a veteran player, etc. But there's no excuse for people completely unfamiliar with the entire genre to be reviewing a game, and it unfortunately happens.
You do realize that Metacritic user scores rate Galciv2 and its expansions at consistently between 7 and 8 out of 10, right? So you think Elemental is currently about as good as Galciv2? Or do you just routinely add 2 to every rating you give?
Sir_Linque, I don't mean to dump on game reviewers - it's tough to hit all the right points about a game, and give a sense of what the game is to people unfamilar with it and also not annoy the hard-corers who know the genre backwards and forwards. I was in publishing for years, so I understand deadline pressure.
But would I like to see is initial reviews clearly indicated as such, with the biases as austinvn mentions. And then a more detailed review - an actual "review"! - once someone has had the time to really get into it. Just a pipe dream I know...
The most important thing about reviews is to remember that there is no such thing as an impartial review. Everyone has their preferences and different tastes. The best way to look at reviews as just walking up to a random employee of say Walmart, and asking them what they think of the Latest Movie thats out. They will give you their opinion, but thats all it is, just an opinion. Take it with a grain of salt, because you might not agree with them when you experience it yourself. People now days put too much stock in the reviews. Not sayin you do, but people in general do.
Lets see.... metacritic:
Elemental : 54/5.9
Civ v : 90/7.1
HOMMV: 77/8.4
World Of Warcraft : 93/7.1
The Sims 92/7.6
gee, those critic reviews seem super relevant. I'm sure elemental is going to hit an 8 or a 9 no problems. Probably like 12 or 15 million sales. Just need a couple patches. JUST A COUPLE.
next blizzard for reals invest yo monies.
http://pc.gamezone.com/editorials/item/does_stardock_have_what_it_takes_to_weather_blizzards_ongoing_storm/
My fav part of elemental is the multiplayer - its worth the price by itself. The multiplayer is so well done, it makes the other features of the game seem unpolished.
Seriously, though, I give elemental a one out of two. Normally I rate out of 10, but for elemental I figure I should go out of two and do some serious rounding, up to 1, and then its like, almost 50%, or at least it appears that way to the untrained eye. You cant really rate it out of 10 because it has a lot of patches to go through yet. Each patch we can increase the maximum rating by 1. SO for instance after 2 more patches we can rate out of 5, and in 10 patches we can rate out of 12. It'll be like, 4 of 12 - or something like that, I'm just doing what's called an educated guess.
k bb
Its just a joke, I used to play WoW.
i still crash as much in 1.11 as 1.1 , its hacking me off -.-
gmot, I agree. It's just too bad that it would be a pretty bad business decision to tell the readers that they reviewer hasn't really spent that much time playing the game.
That sucks.
Luckily for me, the game is much more stable. It still needs work in that area though...
Try posting crash dumps.. it took them a few beta versions and 1.1 before they got around to fixing the majority of issues i had but atleast they got fixed because I swamped them with crash dumps
ON Topic:
Its fun.. theres still something lacking though.. i think for me its mainly the way techs and research are handled..
The price to research a tech goes up as your lvl inceases in that tech.. so if I choose tech A at level one its cheap.. but if I take tech B first then go for Tech A its more expensive. I personally would like to see this altered in "some way". Maybe assign level values to each tech rather than base the research costs off your level.
And tactical combat.. I'm a huge FFT fanboy so theres a few elements in that I would love to see added. Varying terrain level.. bonuses for flanking. But i'll reserve my opinion of this til it gets added to in the expansions.
Yup yup, very good idea indeed. Help them fix whatever is causing those crashes for you. The added + to this is that by doing this you may be helping others who are crashing as well but not saying anything for whatever reason.
I used to crash all the time, but everyone elses crash dump posts seemed to fix my crashes; happens very rarely now unless I'm doing something naughty like trying to multi-task heavilly.
EDIT: People on the fence regarding EWoM should read the article link posted in http://forums.impulsedriven.com/403694/page/1/#2863125
It's a good indication that EWoM will become much more enjoyable in the future.^^
Game hardly ever (only once) crashes for me and my system is not top of the line, that's for sure (business laptop). So that's good. The AI seems a little schizophrenic - Yithril declared war and then waited 50 turns to do anything - but then brought a substantial force against my nearest city. They still lost but it was a good attempt. Problem for them was then their nearest city was lightly defended so I was able to take it. This was on challenging. Will move to to greater difficulty once I figure everything out...
Honestly, the fact that Elemental got a 60-70 at that time, says as much about how review scores are inflated as anything else.
A 60-70 is an outright faling D in my eyes. GC2DL deserved around an 88 to me on DL, which is a B+, DA an 88 also (I wasn't overly impressed with DA), but Twilight deserved a 95, downgraded to a 93 with time today (A- game) Star scores I view as like a letter grade GPA.
On perspective: Elemental 1.11 in my eyes is somewhere in the 78-83 range, which Elemental launch being around a 60.When it comes to review score, I view them like I do grades in high school, anything under a B is usually horrible.
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