Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Urist McDepravity]

He said if they push back til January, it might be the end of Elemental development if they miss a big bump in sales.

If the consensus is that we should push v1.1 into January, we can do that but it could effectively end Elemental if it's the wrong choice since this Christmas is, effectively the first impression most people will get of the game (sales are already starting to reach a new height and I see some of the support tickets from v1.09). That's why it's important to make the determination of which game is better - v1.09 or v1.1 (what we have + fixes and tweaks).

I think he did mean a bit different thing - that people who will buy the game for x-mas anyway will see old 1.09 version and be disappointed with it, effectively ruining EWoMs reputation further and cutting SD's ability to sell expansions.

[nenjin]

Well, I think "the end of Elemental" is implied. Elemental may be Stardock's baby, but it has to return some value to be worth continuing to develop.

Considering they've been shooting for the "re-release" of Elemental for December for months, they may have been pinning profit forecasts on that and on the holiday bump.

Were they to miss December, Elemental might bypass the redline on its budget. That would be the point where other dev houses go broke. In Stardock's case, I think it's the point at which supporting Elemental starts cutting into their other operations at Stardock.

They're signed on to 1.2 and an expansion, whether they're making money or not. But I don't know if the future development of Elemental beyond that is a certainty.

[Sowelu]

I interpreted "feature locked" as "for 1.1".

[The Transcendent Tyrant]

I might get my money returned on the game. Could do with about £40 right about now. Is that offer still going on?

It doesn't seem like they're going in the direction I was wanting them to go in (ie. super strong magics), so I'm seriously not happy with it.

[GaelicVigil]

It doesn't seem like they're going in the direction I was wanting them to go in (ie. super strong magics), so I'm seriously not happy with it.

I feel the same way.  Even though the game has a decent AI now (emphasis on decent) and a lot of bugs have been squashed, the game just doesn't "click".  The game has certainly gotten better since 1.0, but it's still sub-par with a very muddled design direction. When I play, I have trouble understanding what the crap I'm supposed to be doing half the time, like the game is pulling me in 10 different directions with no idea what its doing.

The worst part about fixing this game, is that there simply isn't a silver bullet fix for it as the game has no direction.  The whole thing is screwy and really just needs to be torn apart and rebuilt from scratch.

[nenjin]

I think the game is coming together, actually. But I've played every version, so all the confusing parts of the tech are something I've gone over repeatedly. (They've also been in the process of breaking/repairing the tech tree since release.)

I think the game is starting to have some internal consistency now. Of course, that will go to taste. I still don't know if I'll recommend it after the 1.1 patch.

Basically, if you're the kind of gamer that enjoys the sensation of a game as much as the mechanics, I think Elemental is a good buy. I do look with pride at my massive, world-spanning empire, and I enjoy exploring each new randomly generated world and making tactical decisions about what to do next. I enjoy figuring out what I'll call my cities, my children, my units.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't carry you much past the "customize it and play it my way" interest. The mechanics break down in several places leaving you with not as fun options. The AI, which really should be the thing that drives game play, is fairly passive right now as Frogboy continues to work on it. (And he's done working on it until after 1.1).

So honestly, whether or not Elemental works for you is going to be based on: your previous irritation with them and your level of expectations going in. I've managed to get over some of my annoyance with Stardock, mainly because I see Derek Paxton working his ass off to get the game as close to complete for 1.1 as it can be. The guy has been working every single day for the last two weeks, and they've been putting out a patch everyday, even over the weekends. They're trying to solve as many issues as they can for the 1.1 release, so they can have the time and the ability to continue making the game better in the 1,000s of ways it needs to be to really meet fan expectations.

[Another]

I think it is worth mentioning that AI in latest (insecticide) MoM 1.40 patch is really much better and less bugged than in the latest official patch 1.31.

The graphics of Master of Magic are of course massively outdated by now but I doubt that Elemental has any chance to catch it in gameplay. If invisible flying regenerating paladins are too much "fun" for you - Catnip patch may get balancing reworked eventually. Will it ever be possible to mod Elemental into 100% MoM gameplay with different graphics?

[x2yzh9]

Yea, I'd be really interested in getting my money back.

[nenjin]

1.1 will be out tonight.

In regards to the future, Brad is toying with ideas such as:

Elemental has demons, dragons, drath, etc. that one can research up to.

That said, I think there's a real pacing issue that needs to be addressed in the future.

I am not convinced that we need 5 different tech trees.

I could almost imagine it broken down to 3 like:

Civilization

Lore

Magic

where Warfare, Diplomacy, Adventure and Magic get split into these areas.

Or put another way, the 3 basic means to victory should be the paths like Mundane, Magic, Adventure.  Win via Lord hammers, win through devastating spells, win through powerful creatures and allies or some combination.

Right now, you have a pretty solid civilization and warfare tree while the other 3 are kind of meh.

Basically targeting what's wrong in the same breath he uses to talk about dumbing down the game. Yeah, it's not technically removing anything, but it just shows again he's only listening to so much feedback. The problem with the tech trees aren't just one of pacing and presentation and usefulness, the content just isn't all there yet. So the solution is to just slam those tech trees into the one that works, and hope no one notices? Yeah, everyone that bought the game at release will notice. Maybe the newest players will be like "ah, three huge tech trees!", but the rest are going to see it for what it is: trying to hide the shallow parts of the game by not making them stand out anymore.

A lot of people have been saying "Polish, polish, polish" the existing parts of the game, where he seems to want to just reduce Stardock's work load so they can be out of "still trying to make the game what it should have been" stage. I get that as that the owner and developer, he wants to feel like Elemental is finally "released." But taking the paring knife to the parts of the game that actually lend it some diversity....just exposes how shallow some parts of it are even more.

[Sowelu]

I dunno.  In some ways it's valid.  Cut the scope down, polish what's there, then add new pieces incrementally once they become polished.

[EuchreJack]

I doubt anything is gonna get added once they remove it from their "list".

Honestly, I'll be surprised if they're still working on this in March.  One can read the message about Christmas as being: "If we don't do well, I'm pulling the plug".

Note that "well" is not defined.  Hence, it may just be a soft way of dropping the game, unless some miracle of gamer interest occurs.

[nenjin]

In some ways it's valid.  Cut the scope down, polish what's there, then add new pieces incrementally once they become polished.

That's a matter of faith, though, that "stuff gets added back in peacemeal."

Like I said on their forums, I get all the reasons for it, from their end. Tighter design, less polish work required, some pay offs to game play balance (at least as they see it.)

As a player, I don't see it though. I see the passion for the idea that carried them this far diminishing, replaced by the desire to just "get it done." After waiting this long for Elemental to shape up, that would seriously piss me off. 1.1 is supposed to be the jumping off point for the game to expand in scope, not shrink.

I'm all for being realistic about what they can achieve. But the goal still seems reachable, to me. I think they're just war weary and looking for short cuts, and I can't blame them. They put in some massive work just to get the game cleaned up enough for the 1.1 release, and as predicted, they didn't even get close to finishing the polish. Their desire to really build the game up beyond 1.1 is probably at conflict with their desire to just step away from a really rocky game.

One can read the message about Christmas as being: "If we don't do well, I'm pulling the plug".

That's how I interpreted it when I read it. Originally, back around release, Stardock was slated to begin new projects in March. I really don't see them staying with Elemental for much longer, not with the tone of development in some places. But we'll see after the holidays. For how much backend is supporting Elemental (the tools, the content download system, the book) it would be a MASSIVE loss on their investment to abandon development. I don't suppose they will, in reality. At worst development will just go luke warm. 

On the plus side, the "official" end of Elemental development means modders could seriously start getting to work. Which is a perk.

[nenjin]

*blows the dust off the thread*

So the post-Christmas plan is this: Elemental will continue to be developed through this year and into next. Mind-bogglingly, to me, Brad says Elemental sales have increased three months solid. Of course, there's not much context to that, but whatever. It's doing well enough they will be sticking with the game. Despite how big a venture a game is....apparently Stardock has enough cash on hand to pump another year straight into Elemental. Color me surprised.

Anyways, along with this is, yet another, big list of bullet point improvements they want to work on. While I appreciate their continued drive....you sort of get a sense of deja vu reading the list. Because these were goals throughout the release up to 1.1. But hey, it's the War of Iterations, so, saddle up.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/403352

This is by no means a complete list of things that are on our mind for Elemental for 2011.  For those of you just joining our community I should first start out with an explanation of what Stardock is about and what makes our games a bit...different that is the norm in 2011. It might be more accurate to say that Stardock is how game companies in the PC industry used to pretty much operate prior to the flood of IPOs in the late 90s that changed our industry so dramatically.

At GDC 2011 I will be doing a talk about game designs that fail and will be using Elemental's development and subsequent launch as my case study example as this may help up and coming game developers learn some of the pitfalls of when you transition from having a small game team to a much larger one.

Anyway, Elemental: War of Magic was released in August 2011.  Contrary to what some would have you believe, it was a finished game when it shipped. It just sucked and was horrendously buggy.  We didn't think it sucked or was buggy but given we had been working 90 hours plus for months on end, I think, with the benefit of hindsight, that our judgment was a bit impaired across the board.  But what is past is past.

However (and this is important), Stardock is both the developer AND the publisher. Next time you load up a game, pay attention to that first intro screen that lists TWO names: The guys who make the game and the guys who publish.  Since we're both on Elemental, we could go back and revisit all the things in the game that went wrong and do something meaningful about them.

So here's a partial list of things that we think are big deals that we want to address this year in the Elemental universe in order to make it the classic PC fantasy strategy game of its time.

1. Core Engine Stuff.  This means smarter memory management so that we can have larger maps, faster late game performance, etc.

2. Core Strategic AI stuff.  This means an AI that plays the game strategically in an intelligent way.

3. Core Tactical AI stuff.  This means that when you have a battle tactically, the AI units play as if they were being controlled by another human.

4. Core Diplomacy AI stuff.  More interesting and intelligent diplomatic options available to players.

5. More overt AI differentiation. That is, each faction plays different to the point that players can see a difference. They're not predictable but rather they have different ways of achieving their objectives.

6. More faction differentiation. That is, each player is blatantly different across the board. Techs, improvements, weapons, racial attributes, etc.

7. More interesting tactical battles. Specifically, tactical battles that blend the best of strategy and RPG together. A complete rewrite of what we have today.

8. More interesting and important city differentation. That means, more explicit ways to specialize cities, more interesting ways to make different cities unique and strategic on their own.

9. Vastly more interesting world. We have this great world with great lore behind it but you don't see it in the game. This is going to change this year as the lore of Elemental comes into play both in terms of actual game mechanics and game play but in the general feel of the world.

10. Much more modding support than what we have today.

Start Monday, 3 new people join Stardock and are being added to the Elemental team.  And two of them are pretty well known and the other is an amazing game developer that we've bee fortunate enough to find.

Stardock is looking to hire more people for the Elemental team (in particular, Kael and I are trying to recruit a seasoned lead game developer). Please contact myself of Derek if you know anyone who would fit that description.  Stardock has some other game projects that start up this year as well and the publishing group is working on some new things as well. So it's going to be a pretty exciting year for Stardock gamers.

The list I have above is not even remotely a complete one but it summarizes some of the big things on our mind.  I approved the necessary budget in December to fund Elemental for both 2011 and 2012 (most of Stardock's revenue comes from other parts of the company -- we don't live or die on our game sales but we care deeply about our games).

[Bluerobin]

I've actually played through multiple games of Elemental since the 1.1 patch. I quite like how it's looking so far. It may need a mod to get the magic to where I want it, but that's kind of the point of mods. I don't know if the direction is due to Frogboy or to Kael whatshisface that did Fall from Heaven and is the new project supervisor or whatever the title is, but I like it. I think the not-so-new list is kind of because I think the overall impression is "1.1 did awesome leaps and bounds things to help Elemental and we need more of the same." It would've been nice if 1.1 could have pushed it further than it did, but I like the new people working on it and the direction it's going. I really hope the next patches come soon and do as much as 1.1 did or more.

[nenjin]

I'd really like to see some fresh content. I've grown leery of using mods when Elemental is going through so many changes patch to patch. They seemingly have this very easy content creation system. Hiring three new people, I hope they stick someone on at least cranking out some new items, and taking a VERY hard look at the current item balance.