I think there are many polish issues that could hurt initial reviews of the game as it stands if not resolved before release. I wish stardock would release the final version to the beta community for approval BEFORE release. There could be a survey of the beta community asking whether it is ready or not and if a majority approve, THEN a release date should be set. I'm saying this as an ardent stardock fan. I bought the collectors edition of WOM before release and would do the same with WOM:FE even before release as I really like stardock. I don't want to go on a tirade of the polish issues as I've already posted things I've seen or have seen others post them, but I just don't think it's ready polish wise. The balance issues can be fixed AFTER release as a majority of players wont notice those right off the bat, but the polish issues will be noticed...especially be reviewers!
Not gonna happen.
I know....just sayin'
As I recall from my GalCiv 2 beta testing days, Stardock did do a "gamma test" restricted to a subset of the beta testers. But with an announced release date, I agree with Trojasmic, it won't happen with FE.
So they've hopefully bug-tested, balance-tested and typo-tested all the things that are in the full game but not in the final beta (campaign, extra quests, etc.) We're relying on your QA here, Stardock!
The problem is that they're with the game day in and day out and might not see things the same way we do. I have no fear that any problems will eventually be fixed, I just don't want it to be released too early.
No they shouldn't, and they won't.
And seven exclamation points for a single sentence would be considered a felony in a more enlightened culture. If a very large man named Vito appears on your doorstep at 3 AM this morning claiming to be an officer with the Grammar Security Forces, it will serve you right.
Don't agree. They have their own quality testers, we can't do their job.
A different question might be something like a poll from SD team asking for the community opinion, but the last word is theirs. And with the quality of these forums remarking bugs, sugestions, opinions and all that, I think they don't need a poll either.
No game is going to be 100% bug-free, unless it's super-simple.
I think it's at a point where it's ready for release, though I think some post-release tweaking will need to be done. I also have a large list of things I'd love to see expanded upon...
I just worry that the campaign will be buggy if it's not beta tested. I'm sure they have thought about everything, and I'm overly worried, but it's a feeling I have.
I'm not worried about it being buggy, but I would not be surprised if it is trivially easy to abuse game mechanics in the campaign.
Last night when I posted this I was a few glasses of wine into it Anyways, I want this game to succeed right away. I'm just talking about polish issues here that will be noticeable to someone picking this up for the first time. I'll list some of the issues that I'm referring to.
1. The event scheduling problem is horrible. When it jumps from the middle of an event to another event before the first is resolved is amazingly annoying and makes the game appear poorly written.
2. As of [.992] I still have the 'not responding' thing when the game is loading both before the title screen, and after.
3. Trying to select multiple units is awful. Instead of just highlighting the units you wish to move as in MOM (which was easy) you have to shift select units and then click on the little tiny arrow to have them separate.
4. The crossed-swords icon turns up at weird times and is confusing to use as it isn't obvious where the selection point is.
5. The EQUIP option with new items should take you to the equip screen. I always have to check my unit after this to see what it did.
6. It often happens where I encounter a tile and fight whatever is there. Afterwards, the tile shows the green chest, but I cant encounter it without moving off the tile and moving back to it.
7. Whenever I have a path that a unit is moving through, the dots for the path don't disappear as i move through them. They only disappear when I move to a new tile. I know this sounds trivial, and it is, but it feels hastily tacked on and looks cheesy.
8. A unit can have the explore option turned on (by accident) and there is no way to know other than to realize your unit is going somewhere you didn't tell it to.
9. Text is formatted poorly where there may only be one word on a line and then continues on the next. For example the descriptions of: 'Lost Goods' , The 'Education' tech , the 'Craftsmanship' tech , the 'Refined Agriculture' tech , the 'Heavy Armor' tech , the 'refined Training' tech and on and on....
10. The titles for many of the units don't fit on the text boxes such as 'Air Shrill's Army'
11. There's a campaign that no one has seen that should be vetted by the beta testers before released to the public.
I don't list these things to be an ass. I love the game and want it to succeed. I try to load up the game and look at it as though I haven't played it before, and many of the things I listed above make the game look hastily done.
I just bought the new x-com game and the camera problems with moving between levels is so annoying to make the game near unplayable. Firaxis is getting alot of heat for this and I don't want the same to happen to stardock. While FE doesn't have anything like this, I just don't want it to look half-assed when released as It's going to be judged against WOM and so will be scrutinized more harshly.
@Nomorebeef:
You raise valid points but frankly I think at this point Stardock needs to release it. Yes, I mean for financial reasons.
We all agree they did an awesome thing (give FE for free to WoM early buyers), but that's going to take a toll in the end. It's been 2 years of development, with a good chunk of the target audience not going to pay for the product either way.
It all seemed to speed up when they announced the availabilty of Steam preorders. I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that pre-orders didn't go so well, as I've heard literally nothing about it afterwards. So I think they really need to release now. It won't be perfect, but we can hope it'll do well enough to convince people of the concept, and to justify additional refining and expansions
I have seen a lot of posts that claim to be the "LIST of ALL THAT NEEDS TO BE FIXED BEFORE RELEASE", but this nails it perfectly! Nice job.
The very idea that Stardock should somehow seek our "approval" is absolutely ludicrous. Reporting bugs is one thing, but the average forum-goer is in no way capable of making these kinds of decisions for a multi-million dollar project. If you think the game is not ready for release, then say so.
If us players were to actually decide if the game was ok to release or not, I predict two things would happen. First, the game wouldn't be released ever. And second, even if it was released, it would get shitty scores and sales because we messed the game up.
This the same XCOM that just got a 90 metacritic score and is the #1 selling PC game? That XCOM?
I agree with the points you made about FE. But the idea that they game "needs" those things for the game to be great is absurd.
XCOM has a long list of things that are annoying. XCOM is not as good of a game as FE. By that I mean, the typical buyer for each game will get more enjoyment time out of FE than they will out of XCOM. But XCOM is a very good game and deserves its success. FE deserves to be successful too.
I am....
Sincerely~ K
They should rename the "Explore" button the "Go And Die" button. And then they should take it out of the game. Does anyone use this feature?
I think its the obvious thing every company should do, yet I've never seen it happen. Then 2 weeks later its all "oh we were so surprised when X did Y and that people thought Z was incomplete, we set out to make it right etc". Granted it would work well with FE and its current beta release system, considering everyone who has access to beta either won it as a WoM conciliation prize or already bought the game. Certainly if this was done with other games I won't mention people would be like "wtf, this game sucks and is all hype" and no one would buy them
Note: This is your opinion and to think otherwise is blind fanboyism
Only by accident.
also they should rename "pass" to "defend"
Only by surprise, when my units are stuck, or when I want my scout to die a slow- but scouting death
Sincerely~ Kongdej
I'm not implying that they 'need' our approval, but what's the point of having beta testers for anyways? I'm not harping on the game. I'm just trying to point out some things that I feel will make the game seem unprofessional to someone who boots it up for the first time. I can't imagine these things will be hard to fix. I think you're wrong that the game would get tied down as I'm not talking about balance or gameplay or anything like that...just the polish of the game. If the game were absolutely perfect, but was released with the title misspelled on the opening screen it would look very unprofessional. I know this example is extreme, but this is what I'm talking about. Does It look like a complete game? My answer to this is no. If I'm a game reviewer and I were to get this game for the first time, things like the event problem would be glaring for me...especially since I would be looking to see if Stardock got their act together after I probably gave WOM a poor review.
You reply to me as though I said anything negative about X-COM. I just spent all morning playing it. I'm one of the old guys who played the original and like the new one better. I'm saying that there are a lot of complaints on the website about the camera issue and how much of a pain it is to play with. There are all of these unnecessary cut scenes, etc... which they spent alot of time coding, but they couldn't get the camera controls to work correctly?!?
I didn't say anything about the game needing those things to be great....your response was absurd.
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