Okay, I really wanted to like the game. I bought it on the release date, thinking - Stardock, you can't go wrong with them. Galciv 2 was wonderful.
I waited for a few patches to roll before finally trying to play 1.08, but now I am starting to regret my purchase. It's amazing how every component of this game is literally broken, as is someone put the game into a sack and pounded it with a hammer for a month. Yes, you are correct, this is a rant, but I feel like I am justified to make one, so if you are a fanboi, you better stop reading. Now to some concrete criticism:
Combat - combat is plainly said dull. While other games create interesting combinations of units and formations, offering variety of strategies, here you just slowly trudge over a wast, empty map to slug it out with the enemy. Bigger, badder guy. wins, no nuances here. No flanking bonus, no variety in weapons, no unit roles, nothing. What's worse, there is no initiative based on stats, so you can proceed to bash the unit of choice with all your units. No zone of control, hence no chance to protect your vulnerable units. Cavalry, infantry, everyone fights the same. When there is a special skill, like Sion's "Savage attack", the AI fails to count it into its assessment of the power balance, and gets plastered shortly after (I think it's a bit overpowered anyway). There are also bugs, sometimes units "MISS", etc. You can easily retreat in the beginning of the battle (no penalty, no chance for faster units to chase you), and I feel that it will be abused a lot in MP.
Interface - the interface, while pleasing visually, is a pain to use. It's perhaps good that combat is simplistic, because the interface fails to provide useful feedback. On the tactical map, you can't clearly see who's turn it is, you can't see which units have moved and which are yet to move. There are no tooltips informing you of the chance to hit and other predictions, which is defacto a standard today (Civ4, Wesnoth). Also, tooltips about stats and various GUI elements would be helpful for new players. Some sort of encyclopedia would not hurt either, but that's really just a lack of comfort rather than a flaw. There are no useful lists and spreadsheets with aggregated data about your units, that would enable you to manage your cities from one panel - no, you must scroll and click around the map. The production information is confusing - some units and buildings have regular upkeep cost that is not stated anywhere when you build them, so you just find after, when you discover the detailed food/gildar flow described, hidden just a few clicks behind the town info screen.
Economy - that's one of the strangest systems I have ever seen. It just boils down to one thing: you either have a mine, and then you have abundance, or you don't, and then you are screwed, ending up with nothing. However, you can multiply this nothing with a variety of different looking, but functionally identical buildings. Strange thing is that there is no internal market where you could exchange your surplus goods for the ones you are missing - it was something that worked in the even most primitive societies. Please, add some buildings that produce some absolute value of resources on their own!
Setting - While there is some backstory about Titans, it does not translate into the gameplay much. It's also hard to care about your "heroes" - they all look similar, have no personality, no lives (yes, there is the dynasty, but nothing is happening there. No plotting, no likes/dislikes, no secret deals, nothing.) Generally, the whole world feels static, empty, and well - dead. Also, as a sovereign, you feel extremely powerless. You can't force people to arms, you can't even get your hands on those few gildars you lack for the next unit. You can't set taxes, you can't change policies. There is no religion (strange). Also, the factions look extremely alike and bland. I play a faction that worships Death and the units should have +10 hp, but most my units have <10hp, so a disappointment again.
AI - it does not seem to do anything meaningful. There was a war declaration from my neighbor, but no military action followed. I easily conquered a few cities, no defense, no response, no negotiation, nothing.
To be fair, I will also mention what I like about the game - I like the graphics, a lot. It's not spectacular, but it's pleasing and stylish. I like the MtG style cards with flavor texts about the mobs.
As of now, I am shelving the game, and will watch if it evolves into something interesting via the post-release support. Honestly, I thing it would involve so many radical design changes that it's hard to imagine - but who knows, Stardock has an excellent post-release support.
So, good luck patching the game, and better luck with future releases!
I'm sorry you don't enjoy the game. I also appreciate the constructive criticism. I think I would quibble on your definition of "broken". The game is working as designed, it's just not to your liking.
All I can say is that we are listening to feedback and adapting as time goes on. As you can imagine, it is challenging creating a brand new strategy game in 2010 due to the expanded scope required in today's games. I think there's a lot of merit to what you say above and we will endeavor to continue improving the game over the long haul so that it's enjoyable by the largest faction of strategy gamers possible.
They are actually working VERY hard on fixing the truly BROKEN things. Crashing when you Alt-tab is broken. Not having enough gildar to recruit a hero is a game resource "problem" but it isn't "broken"
I am actually very happy about the fixes to the truly broken things, keep that coming please. Making sure the game runs on all platforms with all video cards with all the different graphics settings is challenging I'm sure.
I actually like 90% of the game mechanics mentioned above, it seems more and more like an original game based on some classics.
Frogboy, regarding the 1.08 game I played yesterday. I was lucky enough to be placed next to 2 fire shards which meant I immediately tech'd up to shard harvesting.
It also meant once I had this, I was unstoppable. Because of the huge bonuses spells get from shards. I was able to one shot everything with the level 1 fire spell which costs 2 mana. I did an average of 24ish damage to every unit twice per round. I never bought my sovereign anything, because it was too expensive, while teching up in warfare allowed me to get soldiers that were better outfitted than the ruler of my kingdom.
Eventually I got fireball, which did double the damage of the first level fire spell but still at TWO mana. So I was doing like 46 damage x2 per turn. I marched into every other faction's territory, declared war on them and singlehandedly destroyed everyone.
There is a huge issue of balance now, because once you get a shard or two, its a wrap. I've won. Now I just chase down everyone to one shot them.
Maybe there can be some sort of natural HP growth as things level up, or you can get more HP when you buy new armor? Because when a sovereign levels up, just put your points in essence or intelligence. Everything else is a waste. There is no reason to melee when you can fire off spells like this.
Ummm so you're saying the game was designed to crash every 10 turns? Have you not been to the support forums? Really? As much as I want to enjoy this game, it is totally FUBARed and could have used another 6 months in the oven. This new patch we have been waiting for hasn't fixed crap and people are just plain frustrated. Myself included.
Well, if you read what the poster said, he points out some mechanic, not bugs. I'm pretty sure that you've red the v1.08 Stremslip that Frogboy post and tell what they will be working for the 1.09 patch https://forums.elementalgame.com/396844
In this case, the OP and Frogboy are talking only about the gameplay, not the technical aspects of the game.
I disagree. Every 10 turns? I think you are a very small minority. From 1.06 onwards the crashes have dropped significantly. On my system I can play for a few hours before I have crash to desktop. Annoying but not too much of a major.
I am banking on Civ V next week. And then in a few months Elemental will be the game it was supposed to be.
Economy, I'd prefer a "hybrid" approach myself, as I have discussed earlier
UI, meh ... not my priority, I'm just glad its better than Dwarf Fortress UI (subjective, I know)
Combat, ... I COMPLETELY AGREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Combat is the essence of these sorts of games. And how combat integrates into the rest of the game determines how easy or hard the game is as a whole.
Without good combat, a game only has minor addictive elements.
Combat, imho, is the Keystone of gameplay mechanics, upon which everything else is built.
Ok, so maybe I exaggerated a bit, but my point remains the same. It's weeks after launch and the game is still ridiculously unstable, riddled with bugs and for some, unplayable. That is just unsatisfactory. It is completely irrelevant if the crashes have 'dropped significantly', they should not happen at all at release, let alone weeks after. Would you keep a brand new car that kept stalling every 100 miles? The point is that quality control was thrown in the trash to meet a release deadline and that's not just sad in this case, but a pathetic growing trend in the PC gaming world overall and people just accept it with cries of 'Hey, they are working on fixing it!' It's BS and makes me a sad PC gamer.
/rant
But ... the core of this thread is the pure gameplay ... all arguments in this thread *assume* its 100% stable, or simply ignore any signs of instability.
//
I'd rather look at stability bugs separately from frustrating/annoying gameplay.
As a caveat/disclaimer I haven't played since 1.06, but I have a feeling the gameplay is still a bit too shallow (and obviously riddled with holes regardless of your depth preference)
If you're finding v1.08 unstable then you really need to make sure you work with one of our tech guys because at this point, the game should be pretty stable.
The car analogy isn't apt because one assumes every car is driven by a human being. By contrast, the game is played by a nearly infinite combination of systems. That is why so few new 1.0 big scope PC games get made these days. I realize some people find it hard to believe but game stability was not something we believed was going to be an issue when the game came out. People just seem unable or unwilling to accept that the PC ecosystem of 2010 is a very different animal than it was even 5 years ago when it was all 32-bit Windows XP boxes running either ATI or nVidia with each having a fairly unified driver package.
I look at the check-ins every day and nearly every "bug fix" that addresses a crash is related to working around some API in some video card/OS/driver combo. The Alt-Tab crash issue is the poster child of this. Am I the only one who finds it ridiculous that in 2010 that it should require hundreds of engineering hours to make a video game Alt-Esc successfully on every system? This is why games are migrating to consoles and other platforms. Most companies don't have the budget or justification to spend the necessary resources to create a big brand new IP for the PC.
Just something to observe next time you're a the store noticing that every major PC game coming out this Christmas season is either A: A sequel or B: a FPS using a licensed 3D engine (or both).
I agree, games shouldn't crash. It's unacceptable. But it's also important to understand the underlying causes of them and not just assume it's due to corporate greed or incompetence.
human beings come with a large number of variations too and that can lead some to...crash. metaphor saved.
The game runs great. I have had 4 crashes in over 60 hours with the game.
Also its not BROKEN, as of 1.08 the game works as they advertised. You dont like it? Well tahts personal preference.
To me personally I had NO expectations for htis game at all, but ive been blown away by how fun and addicting the game is.
All I want fixed is AI and Magic, other then that I LOVE the game.
Sorry to hear you dont like it, but myself and alot of my friends LOVE the game. Maybe this just isnt a game for you.
If you are still crashing at 1.08 then its more likely issues with your computer (drivers or program conflicts or even hardware issues).
I have got tons of games this year on pc and consoles and this is the one game that has be ADDICTED for hours and hours on end. Starcraft2 I enjoy, Halo Reach I enjoy, ARMA2 Operation Arrowhead I enjoy, but Elemental is the most fun ive had all year with a videogame.
We are all differnt in what we want in a videogame, to me this is more then I could have asked for, just love it.. and the fact that with every patch it gets better is a plus.
I agree with much that the OP says, but then again GC2 (vanilla) was just like Elemental is now. It took a while to stabilize it and create uniques to everything. I am enjoying Elemental, I know that in due time it will be everything that we want it to be. The stability issues have been mostly resolved and the game has been sped up, so I am not complaining. Now if everything worked correctly, then the underlying mechanics can be fixed and balanced and we have a winner here.
The OP have some very interesting points and +1 for saying it in a very constructive and polite manner.
I agree with most points and totally agree about combat. A lot of what he said about combat can be said about the magic system as a whole.
Sadly, I agree with the OP.I've been following the updates while waiting for version 1.1 at least but each passing day I become a little more convinced that the game cannot do a 180° turn, while I find myself placing an ever greater portion of my hopes in the modding community instead. Not a good sign especially considering that even the modding tools are rather limited right now (at least that's what I gathered).Too many design choices I "ferociously" disagree with, like researchable heroes and researchable lairs ( ). Too many other rather stale and/or linear mechanics (like a tech tree with no meaningful interdependencies and a lot of "Refined something" that just add one step instead of colorful, inspired techs that breathe life into the setting).I appreciate all the efforts the team is doing right now, I really do, but ultimately I fear I really picked the wrong title, after all.
I did a really good and constructive post, Frogboy. Please read it
If he has responded, he also read, just because he didn't respond directly to you doesn't mean he didn't. It's just hard to respond to something that they know (and have acknowledge many times) and are working on fixing. Truth be told, a lot of this has been said many times over already, and there isn't anything he can say that would change your mind until they release something that will.
For example -- food. In beta it was obvious you were having trouble figuring out a good way to address this. Originally we could build multiple gardens, which was 'clumsy' and took up too many city tiles and was the antithesis of 'fun'. You tried various changes and settled on 'no gardens but seed fertile grounds near starting location'. That you have to seed a fertile ground (and a gold mine) near starting locations to get the game to 'play right' shows that the game's design in this regard is not up to snuff (let alone 'elegant'). This 'solution' addresses the symptoms not the cause, and is a quick&easy band-aid fix.
So for the food issue, the game is certainly not broken, and is working as designed, but the design could/should be better. Addressing this basic game design feature (and similar ones like gold) would go a long way to improving the general feel of the game.
Sorry I disagree. The CTD's are gone for me since 1.07. I do think the orginial op had some very good points and provided some valid constructive criticism.
AI: Works fine, in one game it sent a 500+ rated army to go around and retake cities that I took, and chased me out of their territory. If you leave places undefended, it will try to sneak around and go after those specific cites. Sure, your fellow Kingdoms/Empires may pointlessly declare war on you for no reason, but that happens in Civ too. Nothing new.
Economy: When a city levels up you can select Gildar+%, and specialize that city for Gildar production. Mines are only a small part, you can get a lot of gold from researching civics and specializing a city... an important game point, especially for Kingdoms. Would be nice if you could do something with all those surplus materials though, besides trade them to other kingdoms/empires.
Setting: Does Civilization really have a backstory? No. It's meant for Sandbox. Not story. You can make your own story up if you wish.
Combat: Name one game that you can't miss in. Is combat exciting in other strategy games like Civilization? No. You can use tactical battle if you are sick of using auto resolve.
Please stop pretending you know what you're talking about. I have about 40 games installed on my computer. The only that crashes (and was still crashing quite a bit last night) is Elemental. No others.
Win 7, 64-bit. Nvidia hardware and latest drivers.
The fact that we're still being asked for crash info is just incredibly frustrating. I didn't realize it was part of the Gamers Constitution or whatever it was that we need to do the QA for a game... especially a month after launch... isn't that what alpha/beta are for?
Thanks for the time to respond frogboy.
OP raised some good points,. I have issues with the lack of difficulty and some of the design decisions as well. I AM looking forward to the evolution of the game. My biggest issue is that it seems to be going in the direction of common mechanics since people expect them and has lost the uniqueness I was looking forward to. I was hoping that MoM's abstract ruler would be given form with a method of changing the world around him/her, i.e. essence. Sadly, essence = mana and thus falls into the realm of every other magic using protagonist type game. I'm still hoping it makes it to a good strategy game, but I don't think it will be terribly unique.
In regards to crashing - have had 2 over 10-15 games. Since 1.0.
This is insulting, when you are in the stores this Christmas season, just take a look at how many of those games, actually work when you get home. I'm just sayin'.
I am not happy with the AI. However, until v1.1, my options are limited.
In programming, we have terms called O(N). Someone who is in CS can explain this.
With enough CPU time, i can write an AI that is insane. But I can't do that. I have to write an AI that can play the game with it taking less than 22 seconds on a typical CPU.
There are a number of gameplay things in Elemental v1.0x that are really dramatically problematic to the AI.
Examples:
1. Enchantment slots. The AI cannot compete with this concept of just imbuing crazy number of units. It is an O(N^3) issue. It's also not very fun.
2. Excessive ease in getting units that are more than 5X more powerful than starting units. This is an O(N^3) issue and not really fun for the player.
Now, in each update, I've tried to bandage over here and there. But I'm still trapped by the magic system which has to be addressed as well as the issue of players being able to conjurre up resources for nothing. v1.08 is a big improvement to at least moving to O^2 in some areas but the magic system needs to be made better.
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