Elemental : War of Magic disastrous launch : stay well away

[iviv]

They should have gone with the final option, knowing what of a state the game was in. You aren't punishing anyone, because the consumer had always known the release date.

First option?

And I see where you're coming from, but what if its an impulse buy? You go into a store, browse around, and see Elemental, which looks interesting, and figure you'd give it a go. There's no telling how many people would be like that, but they would probably all be rather annoyed with impulse, and hold it against them if they bought a game but couldn't play it. And then the press would jump on the story like they have here, just portraying it from the other side, that people who legally bought games can't play them, and so on. There's no winning move.

 

[Tute]

First option?

And I see where you're coming from, but what if its an impulse buy? You go into a store, browse around, and see Elemental, which looks interesting, and figure you'd give it a go. There's no telling how many people would be like that, but they would probably all be rather annoyed with impulse, and hold it against them if they bought a game but couldn't play it. And then the press would jump on the story like they have here, just portraying it from the other side, that people who legally bought games can't play them, and so on. There's no winning move.

Well I think it would be better than having reviewers recommend that the public do NOT buy your game.

For example, would Blizzard have switched on the WoW servers one day early? Not a chance, they'd have stuck to the fact that release was release, and that was that.

 

[FrenchTart]

Well I think it would be better than having reviewers recommend that the public do NOT buy your game.

For example, would Blizzard have switched on the WoW servers one day early? Not a chance, they'd have stuck to the fact that release was release, and that was that.

You can't really compare something like an MMO to a standard game like this...

 

[Redman]

You know what's putting me off buying this? Not any of the reports of a broken game, no decent AI or anything like that. Impulse only. I've never used impulse before, I'm assuming it's a bit like steam, but do I really want two different game management systems holding different games...

 

[iviv]

You know what's putting me off buying this? Not any of the reports of a broken game, no decent AI or anything like that. Impulse only. I've never used impulse before, I'm assuming it's a bit like steam, but do I really want two different game management systems holding different games...

Personally, I prefer Impulse to Steam. Steam games have to be run through Steam, patched through Steam and so on. I'm pretty sure that impulse essentially gives you a retail version of the game. At least that seems to be how it is with the games I've bought. They don't need to be run through Impulse, you can even uninstall impulse and still play the games. And I'm pretty sure that you can use retial game patches as well as patch through impulse. Though Stardock's own games don't have seperate patches, you have to do it through Impulse.

But given the choice, I would buy a game through impulse rather than steam for the increased freedon. Though they are both good. If they were the same price, I would go through impulse, but otherwise whereever's cheapest.

 

[Tute]

You can't really compare something like an MMO to a standard game like this...

Well Stardock could have held the release back until day zero, just like Blizzard could in the same situation. It was simply used as an example, why do people insist on playing dumb with each other?

 

[Sleepery]

Realistically they aren't going to slap the retailer's hand, as they need to distribution channel and aren't big enough to cause the retailer problems by withholding their games.

So I'd have stuck to the release date, and recommend people return the game to the retailer that sold it to them early, claiming, quite correctly, that it didn't work.

Mind you, I think I'd also consider sueing the bejeesus out of the retailers in question for breach of contract resulting in loss of revenue.

 

[Redman]

Personally, I prefer Impulse to Steam. Steam games have to be run through Steam, patched through Steam and so on. I'm pretty sure that impulse essentially gives you a retail version of the game. At least that seems to be how it is with the games I've bought. They don't need to be run through Impulse, you can even uninstall impulse and still play the games. And I'm pretty sure that you can use retial game patches as well as patch through impulse. Though Stardock's own games don't have seperate patches, you have to do it through Impulse.

But given the choice, I would buy a game through impulse rather than steam for the increased freedon. Though they are both good. If they were the same price, I would go through impulse, but otherwise whereever's cheapest.

Thanks for the info, unfortunately you've just persuaded me to spend 30 quid Is it similar to steam in that once purchased the games are tied to your login info & can be redownloaded whenever - or should I keep a backup?

 

[shock33]

No need to backup, it's tied to the account and works the same as steam in that respect so you can redownload when you want.

 

[iviv]

Thanks for the info, unfortunately you've just persuaded me to spend 30 quid Is it similar to steam in that once purchased the games are tied to your login info & can be redownloaded whenever - or should I keep a backup?

While I can't be held accountable for any dissapointment, I'll gladly accept any praise if it does turn out to be a good use of £30

Main things to keep an eye on are the AI levels in skirmishes, as these are seperate for each army, and hidden away off the main screen. The difficulty bar on the main screen is for the 'world' difficulty, and nothing to do with the AI players, something a lot of people are missing (Its hardly intuitive), but they are complaining that the AIs too easy.

And yes, its very similar to steam. Heck, almost everything about it is. Steam powered/ Impulse driven, and The website design. Client isn't as good as the steam one, requiring .net and Internet Explorer to be installed, but the allowances on things like havingit running and so on make it better.

 

[nin9abadga]

i bit the bullet and bought this too, after wrestling with a number of random crashes I eventually got it to work and remain stable so i'm playing through the campaign. i'm trying to put this in a non-sweary way but ffs it's the most uninformative, lack of information anywhere game i've ever played! civ 4 was easier to pick up and play!

tooltips and general game information is incredibly limited, a message pops up to tell me i've unlocked something but how the hell do i get to it?! it took me 20 minutes to work out that when weapons are unlocked you don't automatically get soldiers to train, you have to design them before they become available to recruit. it's not a problem in itself, it just doesn't make it clear that it's what you're supposed to do! and then, how the fudge do i train a pioneer? it's in the list but not in the train person panel?

all i want is a bloody tutorial or useful manual - it's soooo frustrating atm.

 

[Neil79]

all i want is a bloody tutorial or useful manual - it's soooo frustrating atm.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/394104

2. We are going to go ahead and make a more traditional tutorial. I'm not a fan of tutorials but some of my grognard friends have had trouble figuring out the mechanics which means to me that we have to do something about that.

 

[nin9abadga]

cheers ^^. good to see they'll eventually do something, trouble is I'd either have turned it off in frustration or worked it out i still can't build pioneers, it must be somethign to do with the campaign, the only time I've get pioneers is when someone tells me to build a city to harvest crystal. i've found all the major artifacts but have no idea how to harvest them

 

[iviv]

It was worse before, the campaign didn't even have the popups telling you to fo most things! I spent 10 mins trying to figure out how to build a farm before I got fed up, closed the game and checked the forums, where there were a hundred questions asking how to do that XD

 

[nin9abadga]

haha - i was too embarrassed to admit it before but it took me a few restarts to work out how to build a city - it said "click on the build icon in the actions panel" or something - could I find it? could I buggery. i ended up mashing all the keys on the keyboard until it worked - turns out it was B all along

 

[shock33]

I haven't even touched the campaign, having read how poor it was I just went straight to sandbox, and I suspect it was actually the better option! Rather than having the campaign confusingly locking stuff out you get everything and can figure it out a lot easier.

Biggest issues I'm having at the moment:

1 - Speed in mid/late game, I'm playing on a 920@4ghz with 6gb of ram and an overclocked 4890 and it gets dog slow, not just in terms of slow turns, but the whole thing feels sluggish.

2 - Not a massive thing, but each time you restart the sandbox it leaves in the units you've "discovered", so I have multiple observers appearing in the unit list.

I am enjoying it at the moment, I put Age of Wonders Shadow Magic on my laptop last night to play and to be honest just wanted to go back and play elemental! Though that may have been because I couoldn't remember half the things in it!

 

[kieves1]

I haven't even touched the campaign, having read how poor it was I just went straight to sandbox, and I suspect it was actually the better option! Rather than having the campaign confusingly locking stuff out you get everything and can figure it out a lot easier.

Biggest issues I'm having at the moment:

1 - Speed in mid/late game, I'm playing on a 920@4ghz with 6gb of ram and an overclocked 4890 and it gets dog slow, not just in terms of slow turns, but the whole thing feels sluggish.

2 - Not a massive thing, but each time you restart the sandbox it leaves in the units you've "discovered", so I have multiple observers appearing in the unit list.

I am enjoying it at the moment, I put Age of Wonders Shadow Magic on my laptop last night to play and to be honest just wanted to go back and play elemental! Though that may have been because I couoldn't remember half the things in it!

Im waiting for it to drop in price or i get an impulse voucher in an email.
I was looking for my copy of Shadow magic last night but cant find it.Im gutted.I never did finish it and fancied another bash at it.

Knowing stardock they will improve the coding and speed of the game at least they did with Galciv2.Kept improving with every patch

 

[SiriusB]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/08/25/elementals-disastrous-launch-stay-well-away/



What the hell is going on with released games lately , this is not the only game lately to need a mass of fixes. Commander Conquest of the americas , aliens versus predator 3 and also the problems with singularity.

All crap games so not the best examples to drive home your point!

 

[Spektor]

1 - Speed in mid/late game, I'm playing on a 920@4ghz with 6gb of ram and an overclocked 4890 and it gets dog slow, not just in terms of slow turns, but the whole thing feels sluggish.

The Devs have posted to say in an upcoming version they found a fix that pretty much double their FPS when over towns; that mixed with their plans to shake up the LOD'ing to improve performance should have it running silky smooth soon enough.

I'm not 100% convinced by this game though, it doesn't feel like there was any process into developing the balancing between just about everything. You start with a sovereign that can wipe out 3-4 kingdoms/empires solo right off the bat against AI that are happy to declare war on you and spam cities but not build any defences. Then that sovereign becomes pretty useless pretty quickly.

The AI in general is just ruining the game imo; it isn't clear whether or not it's intentional or not yet but the AI on every level has effectively infinite resources as it can spend into the negative as it pleases (this is what leads to their city spam in part). I read threads and I would concur that the AI sees through fog of war on all difficulties, their pioneers will always head straight to awesome resource hubs that there is just no way they have explored, their armies perfectly intercept yours when there is just no way they could have known you were coming etc.

The combat system is pointless, you can stack attack power so high that it one shots any defence / health pool making an army of naked people running around with the best weapons available > all else. It's clear the whole magic system (which seems to be the entire basis of the game?) doesn't work in the slightest, nothing scales properly, just really can't see this being something they fix over a few patches -- really think some aspects of the game need complete overhauls, expansion style.

I'm hopeful it will turn into something good, I only really bought it to pass the time until Civ5 then I couldn't care less that Stardock do with it, but if I'm honest I think it was a waste of money.

 

[Neil79]

(I'm up north on vacation typing on an extremely slow connection so bear with me)


I don't think people yet fully realize the completeness of Stardock's fail on Elementa's launch.


I'm going to write more about this but not only did we think v1.05 was ready for everyone but we felt v1.0 was too. That's the level of disconnect/poor judgment on our part we're talking about.
If the game had come out in February, it would still have been a disastrous launch because lack of time wasn't the issue. It was blindness, sheer blindness. We felt the game was finished. And I speak of v1.0, not v1.05. Blindness.


There will be massive consequences for Stardock's game studio. I'll be talking more about this when I get back. But the game wasn't released early. The game was released poorly. Head in the sand syndrome imo. I've read the reviews as much as possible given my hideous internet access up here and I agree with them. We just didn't see what they were talking about. We thought any complaints would be about polish points or something.



The point is, the issue here is far far worse than many of you think it is. I wish it was an issue of the game being released too early. That's an easy thing for a company to "fix". Elemental's launch is the result of catastrophic poor judgment on my part.


EVERY competent software developer knows that the programmer must never be the one deciding whether the program is done. Yet, my love of Elemental broke my self discipline and I began coding on the game itself in vast amounts and lost any sense of objectivity on where the game's state was. I normally only program the AI on our games so I can keep a level of distance from the game itself to determine whether it's "Ready". On Elemental, I was in love with the world and the game and lost my impartiality.
We'll do better.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/394855/page/2/#2753014