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!
Sorry you're having issues. Its OK to be upset if you're game isn't working. We understand it can be frustrating. Maybe if you whine about it enough it will magically fix itself.
My 3 yr old whine's a lot. I usually tell him its easier to understand him if he's not whining, or better yet, think it through and figure it out.
If you've never experienced a buggy game before, you're either incredibly naive or incredibly lucky. Most, if not all, games come out with a patch at some point - its part of being a PC gamer. If you do not have a common reproducible issue, most likely you'll have to work with tech support to figure it out. Might take a bit of effort... or, you could whine some more.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind an AI that took longer.
Nothing more than a full minute probably, but yea. I mean, if it takes almost 2 minutes in really large maps or w/e, i'd still be fine with it.
I get your point, but he had a good point to begin with, a paying customer shouldn't have to waste their time doing all this testing, people don't mind doing a bit but we have lives and we paid money and its getting late in the game for a released game. I still question why we have to submit error reports and it's not doing so automatically when it happens....
The game was released early, whatever. In the long run it will be amazing. Here is a summery of things to remember:
-Stardock internal Dev teams best work is Gal Civ 2 which is amazing.
-Frogboy/Brad Wardell is the CEO.. Name ANY OTHER game developer where the CEO frequently reads and posts on his games forums. This alone shows the commitment to this game.
-Stardock is (in my opinion) the one of the best examples of value adding long term post release support and updates in balance/bug fixes/content.
-Looking back at Gal Civ 2, initially it was ok, with the 1st expansion it was good, with the 2nd expansion, it was the pinnicle of what we dreamed it would be. Go ahead and shelve the game for a few months if you want. It's been sounding like the big update that's coming up to improve a lot of this is 1.1 (These others are heavily bugfix/hotfix), that's the one you'll want to jump back on for (October). Even more so, by then the Mod base will have had time to churn out a couple great mod packs.
-Everything these days is an FPS or Sequel and based off of the unreal engine, etc. This is new, with a new engine and all (other games don't have as many bugs since they use the unreal engine, etc). Besides Civ 5, what else is coming out like this in the next XYZ years?
-Few companies have been committed to the Turn Based Strategy field. The big Guys hate the game type so much they turned Fallout into a shooter, and had the nerve to buy the IP for X-COM (my Turn based Wet Dream) and turn it into an FPS. With so few companies doing these games now, you need support the ones's that do invest significant resources to it.
I haven't tried reloading my saved game with the really Epic map I have going to check, but that map hits a OOM error every 22 turns, I counted, and it's consistent. I'm hoping when I load it up with the 1.08 version that it's fixed and there won't be anymore OOM errors. After all the trudging through I've done I really don't want to give up on the map.
I gotta give my hats off to the SD guys for busting so much ass fixing and patching. They're working almost non-stop to get things straight, and that counts for a lot in my book.
This is just fanboyism. Gal Civ 2 may rock to you but, I honestly didn't see what all the fuss was about, granted the game did work and nothing was obviously broke, so it was and is definitely a good game. Did Gal Civ also go through these awful growing pains, if so, then cool, I guess we can hope for the best here, but many of us were not in your shoes to know that with Gal Civ, so we're nervous.
Honestly, a CEO posting on a forum isn't that big of a deal, that's celebrity weeding into your thoughts and I see it over and over with regards to Stardock, he's just another human, just because he is a CEO who uses forums, please, don't let that cloud your mind, it's not THAT big of a deal.
What is wrong with games based off tried and true engines? Why is that a negative? That isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing, you license the engine which reduces the time for development and time to market and the game is built on a solid foundation. That's what Kumquat is all about I presume, but it's in its infancy and Elemental has massively suffered for it, it's obvious.
I did support Elemental, way the hell back with a pre-order, and I'll not do it again. I don't care if the "CEO posts on the forums" or if they did awesome with another game or they didn't use Unreal or Source, etc.
I can see where you're coming from. We all had huge expectations for the game, and in some cases (alright, most) the reality wasn't what we expected. I was in the boat playing the last stages of beta knowing it was an unfinished game, but hoping that they had a release build that was all shiny and magical. That didn't prove to be the case, and most likely the game could have used another few months of beta testing. Out of everything, the only thing that really annoys me is the "we'll delay launch if needed" initial stance. That still kind of bugs me.
It is what it is though, and unless you're really going to toss the potential away its what we have to work with. Each user can obviously follow their own path, but there are really only a couple options:
Play the releases as they come out and enjoy, Play/not play and provide constructive feedback, Whine un-constructively.
Playing is good, hopefully playing happy. If not happy, provide constructive feedback. Whining doesn't do a lot of good, except drain resources.
The big benefit, and pretty much what everyone IS hanging their hopes on is Stardock's past performance. They do browse the forums, they do take player feedback into account (although ... we'll see), and they have and will hopefully continue to evolve the game. They have in the past, and everyone hopes they will continue. I can forgive the fanboi stuff, as it seems a lot of people have high hopes.
I've had fun playing previously, and even with 1.08 just the lack of organized and teleport being 15 mana its somewhat of a different game. I lost my first city to bandits tonight! I had technical issues, now I don't. The games already evolving, just have to wait and see.
The only problem I have with Elemental right now is the AI. Its pretty bad even on the hardest difficulty. Stardock has fixed most of the big issues already with performance and stability (still some OOM issues though for some people). However, Brad has already said in this thread that he isn't happy with the AI. He has said a few weeks ago that he will be taking a sabbatical after 1.1 rolls out and working full time on the AI to make it truly something to be proud of. Personally, I can't wait, but I'm going to have too.
Stardock has also said that Elemental is getting their full attention for an entire year to bring this game up to par. They have no other games in the works until then.
I was hoping 1.08 would fix enough issues to keep me interested in the game.
Nope.
Instead it has broken the game to a point I do not even want to play it anymore.
Along comes the children all grown up, finally have units with a decent mana regeneration to make the magic usable. Then after almost every fight all the casters mana gets reduced to 0. No mana means now I have to sit there for a dozen turns doing nothing to get mana back. Next fight, mana goes back to zero again. What was the point in fixing a magic system if you have a bug that does not allow you to have mana? This is not a one time occurance, I have had it happen in multiple saved loads, and even with a different sovereign I created. I would think a bug that reduces unit mana to zero after the battle would be a VERY high priority bug.
The loot for killing wandering monsters might as well not even be there. What is the point in getting 2-9 gildar? Maybe if I can find a dozen more I might be able to afford that horse in the shop.
Now with the removal of Organized talent it turned the game into long treks to get anywhere with your hero if it has any other units with it. Nevermind it makes any of the movement bonus equipment useless. Here is your two movement points, now go spend your next five to turns crossing that forest, hope you do not have to come back quickly, because you will not make it in time. Well you used to be able to teleport your army back, but now the spell is so expensive you might as well forget you know it.
Diplomacy is a joke. There is no leeway in values. My treaty is worth 7 points and yours is worth 9 points, AI asks me for the treaty, yet the AI says no? Better yet is the fact I can obliterate an opponents units being sent at me, yet a peace treaty is like my 300 points to his 12500 points.
The economy is feast or famine. One game with one city I get seven gold mines in same city. The next game I have to wait 15-20 turns for enough income to train one unit. Yet the AI is running with a negative 4561 gildar per turn with all the units it has. If you can not afford to equip your sovereign it becomes very useless very quickly.
Lack of the ability building your own roads.
AI that chooses NOT to use roads when plotting movent.
The disappointment is the worst part. You buy a game for $50 from a company you have bought many games from. I have zero complaints about the other products I own. You end up getting a game that should be in beta, not a finished product. So because it is software it is not returnable, even if it is an unfinished product. I can understand have a few bugs and such, every game released has them these days. This game pushed that limit people were willing to tolerate too far.
Yeah I pretty much agree with the OP. I was really disappointed with Elemental when it first came out, and I think its going to need a ton of work before its worth playing. The new patch has changed a few bits and pieces, but I can see that its going to need a lot of development time before problems with the magic system, AI, heroes, the terribad UI, the economy, bland scenary, tedious tactical battles, etc, etc, are resolved. Incidentally im still getting out of memory errors (Win7 64 bit, 4870x2) and my system is stable as a rock with all other games, so that problem still needs looking into.
I think ill just shelve Elemental for the time being and maybe come back to it when 1.1 comes out, or maybe even wait for the first expansion. I wont bother going for the refund, as I think it will probably be a decent game eventually. I also found out about Master of Magic from reading these forums, which for me made the purchase price worthwhile. and Ive been having lots of fun playing that. Its just a bit sad that a game that old has so much more charm and is so much more entertaining!
Trust me, you wouldn't be fine with it. lol. You also have to consider people on weaker computers.
Thank you. I am so sick of the "It works fine for me so it must be your PC" answer. I'm in IT and it's NOT my PC.
Then why was the game release as is?
This means nothing to me. This is stuff that should have been worked out in development and testing.
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.
This is what beta testing is for. Don't make us pay to be your beta testers.
Listen, I'm not trying to be a dick, but please stop treating us like we are stupid. The game was released way to early and needs work. Just admit it. All that needs to be said is " Ok, we let it out to early. We are busting our asses to get it working. Our bad." For the record, I do like the game. WHEN I can play it, I enjoy it. But the constant crashing and bugs have really soured me.
Thank you for being the perfect example of why we have to put up with games released too early and full of bugs. CONGRATS!!
Oh no, don't misunderstand me. It sucks that the game came out early, it sucks that there are a ton of issues with it and that it didn't meet a good portion of the expectations. My point is that just whining doesn't do ANY good. We have what we have. We can play as is, shelve till later, or do something to make the game better. Either provide constructive feedback to HOPEFULLY levy enough support to cause a change or on a personal level work with tech support to figure out your glitch.
"This game sucks!" - does nothing except damage public opinion, therefore possibly damaging funding, therefore possibly closing down support.
"If I click x, y happens. y sucks, and its reproducible on this rig. Here are my logs, please help me fix it" - is much more useful, and may help others.
They have a history of supporting their games, and its pretty much all we can bank on now to get the game better. The other option is they leave as is, kill their reputation but go on to make a possibly more successfully launched game/money.
Ever play gothic? How likely are you to blindly buy a JoWood game? Gothic 3 was a huge disappointment in terms of gameplay, stability and performance - and they did very little about it. The fans somewhat saved it, but it still pretty much sucked. As a company they failed and it took them years to admit it once the public backlash became bad enough.
I am a CS major and no, I'm not going to waste my time explaining big 'O' notation, it won't change anything anyway, I'll leave it for some fanboy CS major. He's absolutely right, it doesn't mean anything to most of us (and me even knowing what your talking about, I still don't care or have sympathy for the issue, welcome to software engineering, I deal with it to but I'm not using it as an excuse why a delivered product isn't up to the quality it should be, that falls on deaf ears after money has been exchanged and a month of frustration has set in).
It should have been worked out in development and testing as he said. Sometimes I think Brad and Co. are better off not sounding off about this or that, the excuses that come up invariably lead to 'the game works by design' and 'there are many things that are broken, but they are by design', basically keeping them from having to own up to the issues with the game and offer refunds. It's a shame.
Man, he has admitted it was released early.
He has said they are busting their butts to fix it.
What else do you want? A personal card to you saying that he is sorry and it will be fixed? Search the forums, he has said it. Let's move on from the crappy launch, nothing you have said here is new or refreshing in anyway...it's all over the forums. It sucks it is the way it is now, yes, but lets focus on moving forward instead of dwelling on the past/problems. Nothing gets done that way.
Bugs aside, the game is just poorly designed. Even a turn-based strategy 'noob' can see that. For other people--people who have been playing turn-based strategy games for years--this game is like a big, clunky Fisher-Price toy: not really that interesting (or challenging, or strategic, etc.) once you play it for a few hours. The bugs and constant crashing is just the proverbial 'icing on the cake'.
I hate to sound so harsh (I used to be a big Stardock fan), but, really, when I see people saying how this game is so 'great', and 'fine', and "well, it doesn't crash for me--so it's awesome!" .... I have to just shake my head and wonder what freakin' reality these people are living in.
Have all the older gamers just given up [playing these games], and now it's just young kids trumping these half-finished games up because they just don't know any better? Kind of seems that way.
Again he has a good point. There are some people who admittedly bitch and nothing good comes of it, but honestly they paid money and are upset, I don't blame them a bit. Then there are people who bitch but with real critique, they are often derailed as well, which is bs. Then there are the fanboys that it doesn't really matter to them cause if it's negative, it's like a lynch mob to shut the negativity down and belittle them as being 3yr olds, Stardock does no wrong in their eyes due to Stardock's past. Blind loyalty I call it, good for Stardock but really quite bad for anyone having legitimate problems. It's unproductive negativity thrown back the other way.
This forum is full of hundreds if not thousands of suggestions, ideas and comments, most of them aren't finding their way into the game proper because it's been so hamstrung by stability, performance and one-off hardware issues that Brad has been so quick to complain about himself. Beyond that, even if they are responded to, it usually seems to amount to 'that's not how it was designed to work' so in effect, give us your ideas, if we don't like it, our design trumps your idea even if our design makes the game FAR less than it could be (the one mana regen per turn thing for example, is ridiculous and it's been voiced very heavily from the beginning, if that's by design, to what possible end was that design decision made?)
They had enough money for this game, money even vast sums of it doesn't automatically equal a good game at the end of the day. Stringent QA, testing and iterations and design architecture all plays into that more than money, it's not a money thing it's more of a time, planning, management, architecture and not biting off more than you can chew type of thing. It's also a massive hype thing, we heard almost daily the wonders this game would be by the dev journals and it couldn't rise to meet them, everyone was getting high off Frogboy's fantasies about the future of this game, the 2+yr future, not the release day reality, and so people were upset. Then they wouldn't refund it and so many of us are stuck, dealing with these forums to hope for a better game.
So here we are, purchasers slave to the manufacturer waiting desperately for the game to work as had been told to us it would for a full year, and all the while the general agreement is we have to wait another year if not two (including expansions) for this to ever come to fruition.
The guy's point is simple, people with blind loyalty to Stardock are who allow this crap to continue, since Stardock can do no wrong, they will exploit that and you'll eat up all day long cause your so blinded by your infatuation with Stardock and a CEO who uses the forums (oooooo), meanwhile people who have been legitimately burned, are told to shut up, unless they have something constructive to say. Their legitimate bitching, is constructive enough as I see it, considering the situation. Stardock needs to hear it and since they lock every thread lately with legitimate complaints, it just further infuriates people.
I have to admit: This kind of thing makes me lose faith in Stardock even more. It's as though they're saying: "Well, we designed the game to be utterly boring and ridiculously mind-numbing--if you wanted actual strategy out of a strategy game, then this game just isn't for you."
When TBS games from the last decade are more challenging, strategic, and innovative [than Elemental], and your only reply is "Elemental just isn't for you", then you have a serious disconnect as a game designer; it sounds like you're blaming the gamers for being better informed and better skilled with regard to the TBS genre, which seems more than a little sanctimonious.
Thank you for saying it. Frogboy needs to stop being defensive and making excuses for the game or trying to defend the "design" that most of his customers hate.
My motto as a Quality Process Analyst has always been "If you're too busy assigning blame, then you're not busy enough finding solutions". Stop excusing the design OR ANYTHING ELSE. The game is a bust, the reviews are horrible, most consumers around the internet are dissing it and looking at the 1 month price drops so are sales. You should be 100% on identifying problems (your customers, not yours), finding their causes and correcting them.
We are already doing everything we are capable of doing to satisfy customers. And no, you don't have the right to bitch on our forums. Take it elsewhere. We are painfully aware of the things that need to be addressed.
Some chess programs had a "move now" button, which allowed you to become impatient with the computer while it took too long to think. Which is great if you're got a screaming system that allows deeper searches.
I also wonder if search components (such as enchantment slots that you mention) could be allocated as genes in a genetic algorithm (either run-time or pre-packaged) to make more efficient AIs.
[I've never really worked with this, but quite interested.]
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