For those of you new to Stardock’s games, let me say, welcome! We’re glad you’re here!
For those of you who are veterans, thanks for hanging out with us.
I want to make sure users are fully aware, because it comes up sometimes, that we have intentions/plans for many things and on the other hand we have promises/requirements/obligations.
The former means, we intend to do something but it is not a guarantee. The latter means, yes, it’ll be in there.
Let’s start for the promises for FE:
Now, let’s talk about intentions for FE:
BTW, if you think WOM v1.4 is "worthless" I can tell you right now that you will find FE worthless too. So if that's really your opinion, you should go find a different game. Heroes VI is out and so is Sword of the Stars II, you might want to check them out.
I'm pretty sure I will enjoy playing FE, but are you seriously suggesting we go play a game which's release was so bad it was called 'elemental-like'? The word surreal comes to mind here...
He does mention WoM 1.4, which is a fair amount better than WoM 1.0. He's not saying that WoM 1.0 was really worth playing.
Lol, disaster game release being called "Elemental-like". Haha, The game is now a permanent part of Video Game history just like E.T on Atari.
Whoa now. I liked E.T. on Atari.
Well, my father has played E:wom all the way from day one, he has enjoyed playing it through all the bugs & changes, I"m talkin for hours everyday. I keep telling him about E:FE, about everything on the forums & such, but he doesn't care he just says 'that he likes this one' & refuses even to check out anything on E:FE.
I just thought this might fit in here with all the E:wom failure talk. Personally am waiting for E:FE but to each his own I suppose.
There is a reason there are few...very few indie PC games of significant scope being made anymore.
It's very very difficult to make them. And it's even harder to release them. Civ V had a budget that was 9 TIMES that of War of Magic and it was able to make use of Civ IV's source code and a pretty solid existing design. If it weren't a Civ game, you wouldn't be able to justify spending that kind of money developing it.
I'm sure it makes the griefers of the world smile when they see a Stardock or a Paradox or a Kerebos stumble. But if you want significant scope PC strategy games, you better hope they succeed because nobody else is making them. Frankly, if FE isn't well received, I'm retiring from PC game development. I've got better things to do with my time. Certainly more profitable things. And by well received, I don't even mean financially successful. I mean critically acclaimed by gamers and critics alike.
BTW, my point is that with FE, Stardock has pulled out the stops. If it can't get FE right then it has no business making PC games anymore.
E:FE will be good. It's being made with that special ingredient after all.
"E:FE will be good. It's being made with that special ingredient after all."
umm... Frog legs? must be cajune cause it be lookin spicy
Frog legs maybe, but I think we'll still need the rest of him.
EWOM 1.4 is not worthless. i even consider that EWOM 1.05, 1.06, 1.07, 1.08, 1.10,1.11, and 1.12, 1.13 as a good game. Well, the bugs definitely was a trouble, but I see that you have done a lot of effort to fixed that.and I respect that. I personally don't like Heroes Might & Magic series. But, it just me, and my taste alone. So don't tell me to check that game out.
But I understand of what Mr. Frog thinking about. Yes, FE use the same engine as EWOM. That means, if you consider that the engine of EWOM is bad, then whatever Stardock do to fix that, you won't get orgasm (sorry). So you should move on and seek other game.
Frogboy, it makes no-one happy to see Paradox, Kerberos or Stardock stumble. We just aren't emotionally attached to the games you develop before they win us over. I don't envy your position, but I hope you know in your heart that most of us care about Stardock quite a lot.
Civ V was 9 times the budget of Elemental? I thought WOM had more budget then that.
As for the reason very few games are made, I think that's more a function of downward price pressure caused by Steam sales. It's hard to make a profit on anything over a shoestring budget when there's a huge supply of games.
I just hope FE is worth what I thought I was going to get with WOM. WOM wasn't worthless, but it was nowhere near what I expected from you guys.
It does look like you've learned from the problems with WOM, so if the AI holds up, I see potential for FE to be a very good game. AI for fantasy games is a lot harder then space game AI though, I don't envy your job.
It makes me sad to see the state of EWOM, Stronghold 3 and Sword of the Stars II at release. I might buy SotS later after much patching and at a reduced price. If it was a quality release, I would gladly buy at full price. Anyways, I am among those who bought EOWM in 2010 and hopefully I will love FE. I am looking for a GAME and not fancy graphics, intros and such. Replayability, ramdomization and fun is what I want. There still is some hope for the future:
Fallen Enchantress - lets all hope
Crusader Kings II
Kings Bounty: Warriors of the North (the Kings Bounty series is the best thing in gaming since CIV IV)
Seems like the Skyrim release is pretty solid compared to the bad launches of late. I might try that one too.
Well my wording was a bit too strong but I stand by my comment that I would have never bought E:WoM without a promise of a fix through expansions and I would not buy it today (1.4 version). I would not even pirate it. It is still a boring game. And by saying FE will be the same does not bode well for FE then. I really hope you just said that while overwhelmed by emotions because all your previous previews seem to suggest FE will be pretty different (read better). Actually it seems FE will have all the parts E:WoM was missing. Unless yours and Derek's previews are lying to all of us
And sending me to play two of the most buggy games in recent history is an evil comment. Sots2 is also not pirate worthy atm and H6 really needs a patch or two before it becomes fun.
And yes, I also seen people at the kerberos forums use word elemental to describe what happened to Sots2 release
I am sorry frogboy, but elemental is on the same list as hellgate london that produced the flagshiped term.
I definitely want to see the little guys, indies and the middle market companies to survive and thrive.
My 3 favourite companies are Paradox Interactive, Runic Games and Stardock.
I am quite confident that E:FE is going to be great and I will do my part in helping make it a success. Whether that be through beta testing,
buying a copy for my brother and perhaps another friend and generally getting the word out.
Of course, E:FE still has to deliver the goods.
Evil? Hyperbole much?
This is computer game ffs, not ethnic cleansing.
Steam has been good for PC gaming. In fact, if it were for DD, PC gaming would already be dead IMO.
I think Steam has been good, this isn't me Steam-bashing again.
I think the issue is more a fundamental issue with supply in the PC Market. There are tons of games, and the shift to DD means you're not just competing with recent retail games, but the classics. This isn't Valve's fault, it's just the free market.
I think this is what is causing the difficulty.
It's a lot harder to make a game people want these days.
Indeed. It does not. You will almost certainly not like FE if you find WOM "boring" at this point.
There are lots of people who find GalCiv and Sins boring too. It doesn't make them wrong. To them, they are boring. FE will probably be boring for a lot of people as well.
I really hope you just said that while overwhelmed by emotions because all your previous previews seem to suggest FE will be pretty different (read better). Actually it seems FE will have all the parts E:WoM was missing. Unless yours and Derek's previews are lying to all of us And sending me to play two of the most buggy games in recent history is an evil comment. Sots2 is also not pirate worthy atm and H6 really needs a patch or two before it becomes fun.
HOMM VI isn't buggy. I listed the two most recent TBS games released.
It all depends on what you find is fun or not.
My problems with WOM ,with the benefit of hindsight, include:
And?
People are under the misconception that Stardock has to make PC games. It doesn't. I said it last year with WOM (And clearly it's true), even if our games made $0, it wouldn't have a lot of impact on Stardock as a whole (it would on the games team obviously). That means, if FE fails, the reasons are irrelevant because we will be done. I will have, at the point, done everything within my capability to produce a quality PC game.
Now, having made PC games for decades, I think I'm a pretty good judge of what makes a good game, especially if I'm not working 100+ hours a week for months at a time (if you want to talk about the single point of failure on WOM, that is the biggie, one can lose any sense of objectivity and be unaware of it).
I can't promise that you will like FE. In fact, I am pretty sure you won't. But I can promise you that *I* will like FE.
I'd have to make a clarification to your point: There are a ton of games out there. But there's only a tiny tiny number of >$1M budget titles released each year and of that, virtually none that are PC-exclusive.
In fact, I am not sure I can name a *new* (non sequel) >$1M PC exclusive game that has come out since Elemental. Can anyone name one?
One of the big things that made WOM such a train wreck is that it all had to be written from scratch. Unlike say BF3 or Elder Scrolls, turn based PC strategy games don't have an "engine" they can license.
And in fact, licensing engines is so expensive that you really can't just do it for the PC.
Think of all the bugs that were in WOM. Particularly the weird memory ones. The engines out there you can license have already been through that and squashed them.
I'd love to license engines. I hate spending money writing 3D engines and 3D game systems. But we can't. Outside of a Blizzard it's not really doable. And even Firaxis, which did make their own engine for Civ V would never have made that engine if they couldn't use it on Civ V and the other game I can't mention they're working on.
We've explained to others that a video game is really just a thin layer on top of a very large software system.
The main reason FE is likely to be well received is that the video game layer knows what the software system can and can't do. WOM didn't have that benefit.
This is not entirely true.
I have a large quantity of Varoa mites and elecromagnetic radiation stockpiled for the event that Stardock decides to stop making strategy games. Should that happen, they will be released into the environment which will precipitate massive colony collapse throughout the Michigan region of America, depriving Stardock of their primary recreational activity. Let's just hope that it never comes to that.
All your bees are belong to us.
Heh. Anyone who does their research in the right type of threat to make has my respect!
Frankly, the game looks very good at this point. It seems to have (almost) all the features people were expecting from EWoM before its release (I mean that in a good way).
Reception is hard to predict though. I assume a good chunk of the people who are into this kind of games already bought EWoM at the time, so they're going to get FE for free. Sure they can voice their (likely, I repeat, at this point) appreciation but they're not going to "vote with their wallets". Also word of mouth can even generate phenomenons, but it's never really all about pure quality of the items: there are other factors like surprise effect, hitting the right moment, raw chance...
Basically what I'm saying is that even FE's "reception" will have to be judged with detachment, when the dust has settled. The game could be great and still not receive an immediate, enthusiastic reaction. But if the game is good, it will get its credit eventually.
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