Thanks, this made my day. I get grouchy if I don't get my daily dose of utter nonsense.

Yeah, Elemental is a mediocre game. Publishing the expansions as stand-alones gives them the freedom to make drastic changes without  alienating the people who like Elemental as-is. Unfortunately, I have to agree with you that many people have been confused by their stand alone strategy, and are worried that changes won't port well between games.

My personal feeling is that FE is going to be better to the degree that most everyone will stop playing Elemental.

Seriously, I know I mentioned this, but your post (for the most part) really doesn't make that much sense. Logic, anyone?

Although I'm reluctant to get whiny and bitchy regarding all this, it feels as though the elemental process has become a repeating cycle (promise -> failure -> new promise -> disappointment), beginning from an absolutely disastrous launch, but we all know what happened their. The follow up, however, has been disappointing. While I appreciate the Elemental team's dedication to the shambling monstrosity they've created, it was clearly beginning to look like you guys were just trying to drag Elemental a few more yards before its corpse became too rotten to move. 

Honestly, War of Magic is a video game definition of a failure. Whilst the passion and dedication behind it was admirable, it needs to die. I actually think you're beginning to understand this, hence Fallen Enchantress being a new game. However, it's irritating that you're trying to use Fallen Enchantress to restore people's faith in War of Magic. 

On the very slim chance that Fallen Enchantress is actually a polished, complete, and good game, you will still try and maintain that WoM is a good game, and FE is proof of this. 

I can accept FE as a new, standalone game; but first I think it's about time that you guys stop giving those pathetic attempts at reassurance and admit that Elemental was a failure on launch, and is still not even approaching a finished product. 

That is all, 

Paradoxical

This is one of those things that really comes down to how you perceive this whole debacle. There are a few groups, with three main standpoints - Those that feel that whilst Stardock stumbled, they can pull themselves out of it; those that played the initial product and no longer care; and those who feel that Elemental wasn't just a stumble, but a failure, and no amount of promises and staff changes can pull its wreck from the gutter (or something along those lines). 

I understand NelsMonsterX's reasoning perfectly, far more than those who have some mysterious faith in Stardock's handling of Elemental, but I can also see why some people are still being supportive (if sickening in their boot-licking). 

However, the fact still stands that a company not primarily funded by non-gaming elements were to release Elemental, they would, without a doubt, probably be facing closure (excepting the giants of course). 

Just because Frogboy has admitted that Elemental's release was rough and they're trying to fix it does not in any way make the whole situation anything other than an embarrassment, a bad example of the development process, and a bad sign for the future. Objectively speaking.

I think the one thing we can all agree on is that FE has to deliver, and deliver at launch.

I am going to try not to sound too much like a Stardock fan boy here, but I think these types of comments are simply unfounded. It is easy to knock a developer for putting out a game, which you may have not found as fun or as bug free as you would like, but it is hard to be in the shoes of a developer attempting to create a fun and meaningful experience. Calling Stardock shameless, when it has been clearly stated in the OP that people lost their jobs over the poor release of Elemental and the company is losing money to attempt to make things right with the customer base, seem a bit in bad taste. If one takes a clear look at the moves that Brad and the rest of Stardock have taken in the past almost 6 months, it is incredibly clear that the errors leading up to Elemental's rocky start are being well addressed. To call FE mediocre with limited information on what is and is not being put together seems overly harsh and in some ways short sighted. Derek Paxton and Jon Shafer are both veteran 4x TBS designers, and the core of WoM has become increasingly stable over the past few months. Honestly, Brad and the rest of Stardock could probably scrap the entire game studio altogether, yet as Brad has stated over and over again, their game studio is a labor of love and not necessarily profit. I for one will hold out judgment about the coming FE until I have seen more concerning the proposed designs and what exactly the real changes are going to be.

Remember when this was a thread about the wonderful future? I think we can get there again. Just ignore some of these guys and make a separate thread to argue over things that ultimately don't matter at all, your opinions that is. 

I would like to know more about time frames for these projects and the division of labor. 

Sounds good.  I love Elemental, even in its current state.  I don't know why, honestly, I see all the same issues so many others do. 

I even purchased the whole set of GCII, played it enough to realize what a fantastic game!  But yet...even just today, I chose E:WOM over GC2 when staring at my Impulse game list.  I cannot tell you why, honestly, but am just starting to accept that to me, E:WOm is just plain fun to mess around with, and it hasn't let up. 

Regarding the bootlicker comment, I can imagine that the only reason you perceive it that way is you value "your" opinion way more than would be beneficial to you.   It is ok to not like a game, even to not have respect for the company, but serious, why is it so difficult to accept others' opinions of how they like the company and see a bright future?  They don't have to be mutually exclusive.

There are great examples of turn-based RPG's that I loved playing.  Baldur's Gate, X-Com, Silent Storm, Freedom Force. 

Most of the ones above seemed to lose something with their sequels.  I would definitely buy a game in the same vein if well executed.

Then again, there hasn't been any great party style RPG's in forever either (Dungeon Master, Might & Magic, Ultima, Wizardry, etc..) which were much more immersive than today's standard MMO.

DO IT!  DO IT NOW!  FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY AND RIGHT AND ALL THAT JUNK DO IT NOW!

You have NO idea how much I would like to see a modern make old school top down isometric view RPG.  IMO the 3D craze made people forget these things.  3D doesn't have to be first person, but thats all anyone wants to make. 

Seriously, I'd do anything to bring back old school design with the new 3D elements we have these days.

Hell yes. And what the hell you not telling me Impulse had the new Drakensang game on there?  I love those games.  I bought the new one yesterday and had a snow day from work today and yesterday, been fantabulous.  You should hire me to help come up with ideas for the game!  I have no experience, but I'm a fat geek that played a lot of role-playing games!  That should count for something!

I don't think I like this definition of an RPG. There are plenty of games which are readily accepted as RPGs which do not meet this fairly lofty standard. In the broadest sense, almost every game is a RPG, as the term itself simply means that you, the player, play a game in which you take on some role. Yet, this term was coined in order to distinguish standard board games from those early pen and paper RPGs which cast the player as an actor engaging in a form of dynamic play. Most modern day video games in fact meet the same kinds of standards as a traditional pen and paper experience, in so much as the player is cast as an actor in a dynamic play where in his choices have an effect on the progression of that play. Thus, defining the RPG genre becomes very difficult, and most simply ascribe this title to any game which bares some striking resemblance to either a pen and paper game or a previously defined RPG. Games, like Deus Ex and Diablo, which are fairly easy to define as being member of other genres, such as FPS for Deus Ex and Action for Diablo, are only given to the RPG genre due to a leveling process which closely resembles a pen and paper experience and not because of some direct story consequence.

Exactly. In the Monopoly boardgame, you play the role of a Tycoon, in IL-2, a Sturmovik pilot. But if I had to define what is the difference between an RPG in the more common sense of the term and those games, I'd say it's a matter of choice-based gameplay. A P&P RPG is almost only a game of choice (and, for many people, acting), a CRPG in the traditional sense is usually a sort of action/tactical/adventure mix with a decent amount of choices to make.

Diablo is a hack-and-slash, a genre previously defined as part of the action-RPG genre but now clearly distinguished. Oblivion is an A-RPG. Fallout is a plain RPG. That's roughly how the press and the devs' define them, and I find that satisfactory.

Deus Ex is an FPS (or more accurately, a stealth-based game, ala Thief) with RPG elements, and was not defined by Ion Storm or the gaming press as an RPG. The RPG elements *do* include meaningful choices.

So, when it comes to the games that you say make it difficult to define the RPG genre (because of genre border blurring), I'd just say that they have RPG-elements, but not that they're full-fledged RPGs.

C++ wouldn't be a good pick for the kind of pick-up-and-mod style that games want these days. As a separate SDK, hells yes, but not for general purpose modding. Anyway no one wants to pick through a bunch of pointers just to figure out what the heck is going on!

I did like the Lua suggestion. That's a handy dandy little language, and a damn sight more friendly than Python. Plus the grammer isn't full of unusual choices for standard operations.

I mean, even if you've never programmed a day in your life, you'll be able to puzzle it out pretty quickly:

function get_all_factors(number)
	--[[--
	Gets all of the factors of a given number
	
	@Parameter: number
		The number to find the factors of

	@Returns: A table of factors of the number
	--]]--
	local factors = {}
	for possible_factor=1, math.sqrt(number), 1 do
		local remainder = number%possible_factor
		
		if remainder == 0 then
			local factor, factor_pair = possible_factor, number/possible_factor
			table.insert(factors, factor)
			
			if factor ~= factor_pair then
				table.insert(factors, factor_pair)
			end
		end
	end
	
	table.sort(factors)
	return factors
end

--The Meaning of the Universe is 42. Let's find all of the factors driving the Universe.

the_universe = 42
factors_of_the_universe = get_all_factors(the_universe)

--Print out each factor

print("Count",	"The Factors of Life, the Universe, and Everything")
table.foreach(factors_of_the_universe, print)

I mean, this is pretty easy to understand.