Greetings!
Yesterday we released Elemental: Fallen Enchantress BETA 5-C. This build is our first pass at balance and UI enhancement.
Next week we will have a BETA 5-D which will focus almost exclusively on bug fixing and balancing as well as some new AI counter-strategies so those of you who have posted your game play strategies online (foolish humans! <g>). We are reaching the home stretch. We will also have a Beta 5-E. After that, we'll see where things stand.
Many of you have been in the beta for a very...very long time. I can't imagine the challenge it is to evaluate the game from the perspective of a typical PC gamer. But we're going to ask you, once again, to try to do just that:
Please go to: https://www.elementalgame.com/journals and vote on your impressions of the game in your hands.
We are very excited to see what players think.
These past two years have been wonderful. The community we have built together has been amazing and on behalf of the Stardock team, we really have enjoyed listening to your ideas, impressions and suggestions.
Like all Stardock games, 1.0 isn't the end of our journey. Even as I type, Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion v1.1 nears completion. Ideas and code snippets for FE expansions and successors float around. And there's some exciting things we hope to announce in the coming months.
We look forward to your opinions:
https://www.elementalgame.com/journals
I voted good, keep working for excellent. Keep polishing, balancing and beefing up the AI. Home STRETCH!
I'm bett'n you that's what's going to happen. I've recommended that they space below the faction choices be used for 'Random' and 'Create Your Own' without much success. I'm beginning to think that they'll add those last two factions in that spot when/with the first expansion.
Sorry, but I had to vote "poor".
The game is still plagued by very visible bugs that often have been around a long time, some I think even since WoM, and at the current speed these won't be all fixed by a hypothetical Christmas release - especially as each Beta seems to insist on adding a few new bugs to replace (some of) the fixed ones.
This will lead many who try it to put it on a level with WoM - unfortunately killing the franchise for good and likely limiting Stardock's future reach to existing fans.
Even more troubling, the fact that some of the bugs happen at all points to deeper problems with Stardock's development process and/or the architecture of the engine.
The basic problem I see in the development process is the fact that IMO you can't test quality into a codebase, it has to be put in from the ground up. This includes the strategy of fixing bugs as they are found, so that any further development can happen on a sound basis.
If we really only see about 1/6 of the bugs that get introduced, as Brad indicated in another post that was simliarly critical of the development process, Stardock's programmers rather follow the motto of "It compiles, ship it" (=give it to the testing team). I shudder to think what Stardock's testers have to deal with.
My main critique of the architecture is that I would expect the game to be running much like a client/server application, with the "server" part doing all the world management (1) and the "client" handling the display(2), and with the AI as bots that get the same info as said client.
(1) would prevent the recently (again) reported bug that an AI unit and a monster occupy the same square by noting that one unit tries to enter a square already containing a unit of a faction it is at war with. (Monsters are always at war with everybody, no? And vice versa, I hope?)
(2) should have prevented the health bar bug in that the client gets 2 numbers - current and max health - and paints an appropriate bar on its own without any need to be told to update that display.
I am overall very pleased and have enjoyed several hours of game play. The main areas I have a problem with is Map Size. I only play on Large and at times it feels like I am playing on medium or small. If there are not going to be any naval units then reduce ocean size to the map edges and the majority of the center as a HUGE land mass with rivers and lakes. I also hate all the small single tile peninsulas.
Also I have had a few factions surrender even though I set it to Never. Still, I have and will continue to enjoy this game. If you could have made WOM this way I would have been very happy nearly 2 years ago. I am glad at least this games potential is being realized and am looking forward to it's completion.
I am on the verge of excellent. The latest Beta really has come a long way to fix some balance issues, and I was surprised how much that changed the feel for me. It was a lot harder to get good equipment (well, with the exception of a bug I'm about to submit), but with a lot of the bugs fixed up and a bit more balance issues ironed out, my vote will soon be excellent. I have to say, the game feels pretty epic and has been very stable for me.
In the latest Beta, even though I wasn't getting lots of powerful equipment from drops, I enjoyed getting ale that have me +1hp and books that give me +1 attack/defense. Its weird how that feels more satisfying to me than getting gladiator armor in a random drop.
I do love the new brews. I haven't been this happy with a game since my thief got addicted to skooma back in Vvardenfell.
Doh!
Wow, after playing the last patch I would like to change my vote to poor. It's almost like the changes are some sort of late April Fool's Day joke. Spiders that charm the enemy, "weak" warrior mobs casting shaman spells, not a weapon left in the land, replaced with tons of armor drops. Not to mention the horrible attack grunts and "I've been hit" screams. Terrible, terrible, terrible. This minor patch was a massive step backwards.
I'm enjoying the game, it has that one more turn feel for me. If this was the previous vote (which was during the mechanics betas) I would be tempted to go Excellent (last vote I think I went Good).
However it is not that vote. Instead Stardock are increasingly talking as though the game is ready to release. Frogboy in a post said FE was now the most solid and polished game they have ever released. So one must vote in this context of a nearly complete game. And I'm afraid in that context my vote is different.
I voted Fair. The underlying game is very good (I think it could do with even more love to reach truely excellent but even so it is very good). But this is NOT a solid and polished game. I've played the new version (0.821c) for several hours now and accumulated a list of 20+ bugs or moderately serious UI interfaces. Plus there are still a few balance issues (although much better than previously). More concerning many (most?) of these bugs have been there virtually forever.
This worries me more than anything else as it suggests that Stardock either regard this level of bugginess as fine (which unfortunately matches Frogboy's statements) or Stardock are not capable of fixing these bugs. Either way if I extrapolate at the current rate of bug fixing for another 2 or 3 beta releases (eg d, e and f) then I believe the end result will be punished in reviews for being too buggy, obscure and feeling generally like a cheap game instead of an A grade release.
I really want FE to be a massive success - I wouldn't put this much time into writing posts and producing bug lists if I didn't. So please take this criticism constructively.
I know I will although I don't matter I like that post since that's how I feel too
Sincerely~ Kongdej
I have jumped back into beta testing after a long time and i have to say that i am quite disappointed that some major balance issues from WoM survived till now.I collected the following major issues (just a short sketch, i can provide more detailed observations if required):1. Balance between caster heroes, melee heroes and regular units.
Casters start weak with an exponential power gain during the end game (due to number of shards)
Melee Heros start strong but get obsolete when regular units reach metal armor, mid level weapons and a stack size of 5.
Regular units are worthless till the above mentioned point in the game, because they are so fragile and therefore can not really accumulate experience.
2. Stack of doom problematic.
It is still the best choice to take your best units and build one army out of them (especially regular units). This optimizes their experience gain and improves their survivability. This is especially effective because the ai prefers to mix strong and weak units. In those mixed armies the few strong units are easy prey. If your cities are taken it is no problem because your stack of doom can retake them without real loss.3. Power of micromanagement and inability of the ai (at least on normal difficulty) to use it to full extend
The most powerfull things here is unit design, upgrading and focussing experience for the military side, combining city enchantments and streamlined reseach for the civil side.
Some fixes one could consider are:
Cities could be damaged more upon conquest (Destroyed buildings, loss of city levels) to make defending more usefull.
Regular troops could require more xp for level up depending on the number of soldiers. Regular troops could lose xp when a soldier dies. More researched items limited to heroes (items where the strength depends on shards). To improve soldier hero balance.
The difference (typically) between a bad game and a good game is that a bad game is buggy, has a poor UI, poor AI, and poor gameplay (of which balance is a big issue)
Very rarely do you have a game with bad gameplay, poor UI, poor AI, and a ton of bugs that is considered a good game.
The game has come a very long way and is nearly complete, but it still lacks enough polish in current itiration that the unbribed review sites will crucify it in current states and lacking massive advertising and top of the line graphics it wiill probably have only mediocre sales if released TODAY.
There are still crashes, corrupt saves, annoying bugs, UI deficiencies, and critical balance issues (razing cities, magic system, and most important dragon in the room which is the fact heroes dominate and the 4X aspect cannot compare or contribute to actual victory in the face of overwhelmingly powerful heroes)
I do not think now is the time to vote if your intention is to only seriously tackle things like "UI" and "AI" And "balance" in future updates. As such a vote would be on what kind of job we THINK you are going to do in the above sections based on prior history, and that is unfair and inaccurate.
I BELIEVE that there isn't A LOT of work left to do and I BELIEVE that you will address the issues that need to be addressed before release. But voting "excellent" now is premature and will only encourage the game's dificiencies to not be addressed. And voting poor now is just unfair. So I am not voting yet.
To be fair though, I think the majority of games being released are trash... and sadly most are buggy as hell (and never get fixed).
Speaking of, there is also the cool factor, skyrim has a ton of flaws that would have ruined most other games as it is a dismal failure on every single aspect of polish except bugginess on the PC (while being unplayable buggy on the PS3) and yet it sold like hotcakes because:
1. People were really hard up for another epic RPG adventure, this is something FE should benefit from this too since its been a while since something like MoM came about but its so different that it might not get it.
2. Cool factor, the dragon combat made up for all those flaws. A lot of games are just bland clones of a dozen other games with nothing to stand apart. FE needs to polish up on the "cool factor" things... things like the elemental lords.
As far as I can recall there has never been any mention of "cool factor" in the game's design ever except for when elemental lords were discussed and I don't know of any polish work that was directed solely at cool factor.
PS. interestingly some sites ran stories about how skyrim sold on consoles 10x more then on PC but I have pointed out in my own analysis that:
A. they only counted retail sales and nobody buys PC games for themselves at retail anymore, they get direct downloads.
B. Based on steam's concurrent players figures and previous ratios of sales to concurrent players given by valve PC Skyrim sold more then PS3 and xbox360 combined.
C. Based on total sales revenue compared to publically available sale counts of PS3 and xbox360 units, basic algebra shows that the unreported PC download sales had to be larger then PS3 and xbox360 sales combined.
Great feedback!
I've been sending Kael updates on this.
I'm glad people are getting more specific on what balance and UI things they'd like to see improved on.
The current plan is to have at least two more beta updates. They will mostly be bug fixes and UI tweaks and balance.
The AI schedule is asynchronous with the other changes because so much of it is listening to your strategies or watching your videos and thinking what I can do to Emulate those strategies and counter. So I can't say which build these will show up.
the biggest bug in beta 5c, IMO, is the lack of player interaction caused by fow uncovering not initiating relations. That has massive negative repricussions on the game.
the other thing we are updating is loot. you saw some of this in beta 5c. The new weapons and other goodies go in next.
I would like to change my vote from fair to good.
Based on new information. Like
A) Champions vs Units are getting addressed already. Amazing what balance fixes can really do.
B.) Not all sov creation choices are hot and maybe expecting too much in regards to a summoner type playstyle. I see it as your loss (Stardock) but I can't force it on you. When you consider that bandit lord is of marginal help also. things like that meh. - even, I suppose.
C) I publicly admit (I can bold this if you want to read it again) That not all AI play like greedy pioneer spamming whores. Some do build up their own towns a fair bit. Some are warmongers and some are builders. Some are balanced while some are magic centric. This is all very nice. I also admit I unfairly criticized the AI after it has been changed. Again my apologies for stereotyping based on past performances.
D) UI as said before. Functional but get as much cool improvements in as you can.
E) Magic as I see it anyways is unbalanced if you want or expected to take one flavor and do what you can with it in comparison to another flavor. Summons are all over the place in terms of level and abilities. Need stuff for mid and late game in that regard. I would like to know if you expect mages/warlock types to take fire or air or both and that's it. Shard scalng. Needs a buff to the how much it scales or a multiplier based on magic density or both. Having one faction being solely able to convert shards to their favorite flavor and nuke the crap out of you with it - seems insanely OP. Could look at a more generic way to convert shard possibly extravagant mana cost and/or crystal compared to the Resoln/Wraiths.
Keep up the good work, and earn that Excellent spot!
Yeah, that's a nasty one. I am glad to hear that these things are being addressed.
I rated it Poor because of the AI deficiencies and the schizophrenic monsters, but that's just because those things are my pet peeves.
Since I put my rating in I have sunk a bunch of hours playing it and really enjoyed myself. It's a beautiful and ambitious game. It feels so close to being Excellent, but because it's so ambitious it's really hard to judge how much further there is. I've felt like we're just about to turn the corner ever since Beta 4 was released! The game is so much better than it was then, yet it still feels like it's just about to turn the corner.
I think some of the frustration expressed on these boards comes down to that. People are certain that if you just address the health-bar not updating bugs or simply make champions weaker than trained units or get the AI to stop placing outposts one next to the other or implement a client-server infrastructure the game will suddenly be great. Maybe, maybe not. But (my vote notwithstanding) the game is moving in the right direction and I have confidence that it will be well received!
There is one, little niggling issue I have, however. Who is beta-testing the Campaign?
Frogboy, make sure you have a look at this thread when you are looking for things to do!
Why am I still getting steamrolled unless I choose ONE specific strategy?
@stenenaus
i had already emailed that over when it first went up.
I think there is a general consensus on the interdependencies.
I think influence is under utilized and part of that is due to the AI relations bug I spoke of. Rid you can't manipulate the AI players against each other then you lose a vast number of playing styles. That's why that seemingly small bug has such large ramifications.
This is what makes me happy about this process and game. The fact that the CEO is willing to peruse these forums and partake with the community and get this game working great. I look forward to see what changes are made this next week.
I agree, this is why I believe those issues will actually be addressed and fixed before release.
I'm hearing a lot of talk about "balance" here and I'm not sure it's really THAT important. Sure, if some things stand out as ridiculously overpowered they might need some tweaking. But what if you made a game that was perfectly balanced? Just have one race, one unit type, one resource, symmetrical static maps, no random elements. So well balanced!
But BORING.
I saw Dominions 3 mentioned before and I played the hell out of that game and it's the most unbalanced thing ever. So, how did that work?
Chaos.
I also played the hell out of Chaos which also had no balance to speak of. The luck of the draw is more fun than a sterile, mathematically approached game.
So, the problematic scenario arises when you get lucky and know you've won and lose motivation to continue on playing out the final few moves. You know you won and there is nobody else around who doesn't know.
Multiplayer.
I get lucky and find a super powerful weapon and know I've won. But rather than lose motivation to finish off the AI I get excited about my secret ace in the hole. I might even delay the win toying with my poor opponent, letting him think his puny Sovereign has a chance!
There's no balance in a game of cards. Sure, some people like solitaire but I'd much rather play poker at a table. Why can't both types be catered for?
I stalk pretty much every thread on the forums.
Regarding balance:
The discussion we're having about balance isn't about making one race as good as another. It's about making sure the distinct components of the game mesh well together.
Watching Kael work these many months has given me a new appreciation to his skill as a game designer -- skills I lack. I have tended to "eye ball" things and address symptoms. By contrast, Kael looks for the underlying cause.
So when people are talking about balance they means things like tech tree pacing, champions vs. soldiers, the value of different skills, the value of different types of equipment, what types of loot should be available and when.
I keep bringing up the "little" bug of FOW not initializing relations between AI players because that little bug has such huge game play ramifications. No relations means no inter-AI war, no inter-AI trading (picture how much THAT affects AI competence), no way for the player to manipulate players around. The result is that the only way to "Win" is to go through a predictable path on the tech tree. All because of one seemingly unrelated bug. It also greatly affects champion progression (no tech trading between AI players means they fall behind) which affects monster progression (how many monsters are around), and on and on.
That's what we mean by balance. There's still a lot of work to be done on that front. Though, make no mistake, the final balance will never satisfy everyone as anyone who has been on the forums of any strategy game ever after release.
sorry durnk, please disregard
I believe you're VASTLY underestimating the quality of Skyrim. People wouldn't put 500+ hours in a game only for the 2 points you just mentioned.
Skyrim is a grand, enormous, engrossing game by any standard (and with some of the latest mods it's just plain off the charts). Its bugs and limits are many and annoying but you just live with them because of all the rest. I don't think there are many games (not even amongst our beloved sandbox 4x strategy titles) that can boast such a stellar longevity.
LOL
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