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[Sergius]

That's the whole point of it being a 'Beta' patch.  They are making significant changes, and none of it is optimized yet.  If you don't want to have to deal with it on an older PC, then don't install the beta patch.  That's a failure on your part, not Stardock, or even Brad Wardell; sense he's passed it to the new guy and is strictly AI coding now. lol.

That would be the case in a game that is perfectly playable (bugs and all) or at least resembles its final state. Or if a patch would update a game to work with a new OS. Not if the game is completely broken and needs patching so that people can finally start enjoying it.

"Beta" patch means nothing if the unpatched game is already an unstable hell.

[Viken]

Sergius, there were already something like 9 patches released for Elemental: War of Magic, which made the game very much playable and stable.  The point of the matter is, with the 1.1 patch, they're completely re-doing several features of the game, changing how it works on a fundimental level.  Its big enough to be a whole darn expansion.  But its still in beta; who the hell critizises a program that's in BETA when they play it for free? No one, cause it would be stupid to try.

Now, if you want to play Elemental, just install the 0.9 patch, and there you go.  All the problems are gone, and the game is very much playable then. 

[kcwong]

The performance has gotten much worse.  I was playing on my slightly older desktop PC a few patches ago and was having no problems at all with 0 anti-aliasing.  Now, the game hangs for up to a full 60 seconds every 2 minutes or so.  Every time I click on a unit, every time I move a unit, every time I click on my city, every time I open inventory, etc, etc, etc, the game just completely locks up for no reason.  Even lowering my resolution to freaking 1024x768 and lowering all of the game details to incredibly low levels, it does no good.

Are you using Windows Vista/7? If so, then it sounds more like your video driver had crashed instead of bad performance. Vista/7 has the ability to restart video driver - on older OSes you'd have a system crash.

Video driver crashes due to various reasons... bugs in driver software or the card overheating being two possibilities.

Check your system tray and see if there's an icon telling you your video driver has been restarted. Or you can check the Event Viewer.

[Viken]

I've had that happen to me before, kcwong; when I had installed the faulty Nvidia GeForce driver and it overheaded my graphics card.  I caught it before too much damage was done, but most of the firmware was destroyed; so I'm running my Nvidia 8800 directly off of PC drivers; which sucks because it can't change screensizes or anything in the case of games. *Sighs*  But I won't have to worry about that much longer.    I'm getting a Nvidia 465 GTX card this week. Hahahaha.

[nenjin]

Viken, I know you're like the ultimate fan of the things you're a fan of, but seriously. The game is not playable. It's not stable. It's not polished. It's not finished.

What I mean about a real open beta is this: you make it clear to people they're testing a version.

That's not being made clear, at all. They are just throwing work out there with the disclaimer it's a beta. That's not how you treat paying customers. You assure paying customers they're getting a product worth their money when you release something, or you give it to testers. You don't sit on the fence, and like I said, try to get the best of both worlds.

The fact they don't even have a reliable beta structure to evaluate their releases (other than a fuck load of "guess what's broken this patch" forum posts) shows you exactly how thorough or professional any of this is.

I've checked in with each patch to see where things are at, given them their due for the work they're doing without criticizing them too harshly for the stuff that's broken or wonky.

That was three patches ago. Seeing how the sausage gets made has undermined my confidence in Stardock, not increased it, as things get more bugged out and months of work still can't resolve crash issues. The fact new bugs relating to loaded save games are now arising in force is just compacting the problem. Games get more screwed up the more you try to play through and past all the problems.

I think most developers would learn their lesson at some point, and try to preserve their image a little. Because despite the good things that have happened to Elemental, the development of the game still seems pretty disorganized in general, and it has a direct impact on how many MONTHS it takes to get the game to a point where I don't feel like I threw my money away.

Put another way, better dev houses have folded for a lot fewer fuck ups. Elemental came almost 4 months ago, and I can't arguably say it's truly any more stable or playable than it was at release. It's just got a whole different set of issues now, which still result in the same thing: inconsistent game play, crashes and performance issues.

And what of this so-called god, Kael, everyone keeps talking about?  He was supposed to fix a lot of problems with Elemental, but since he has gotten hired on, I haven't heard so much as a peep out of him or anything he has accomplished thus far.  If he was supposed to be the new guy "in charge", it sure doesn't seem like it.  As far as I can tell, Brad is still calling the shots, as he is the only person I hear from.

To be fair, Derek Paxton (aka Kael) is doing a lot of posting on the forums, explaining their thinking, ect.... Stardock is very good at that, explaining what they're doing. It gives you a lot of confidence when they talk about the future. But the delivery is always astonishingly full of problems, at direct odds with how on top of what they're doing they seem to be.

I've seen the systems get deeper and more well planned since Kael got on the team. I didn't expect him to turn things around completely. But so far the reorganization and distribution of labor hasn't seemed to have an impact on how unbugged the game is with each patch.

[Viken]

I can't say I'm the ultimate fan of everything I'm a fan of, sense even I make mistakes, and I know some games just suck.  I guess I'm more optimistic of games that actually try to fix the shit they have problems with.  No one can denie that Stardock hasn't put alot of effort and love into Elemental, and to say they don't is to say that any mother doens't love her children, which is shit. 

Although, at this point my current interest in Elemental is almost strictly academic... I don't even own the game, and did the Try Me deal; but I've watched the progress of all of the patches and the like, and you can opt out of the beta builds, instead of just blindly installing every patch that comes out.

[nenjin]

So now the customer should be willfully blind for up to months for a product they bought? At what point are enough patches released that it's ok to try it? 

Like I said, better products and dev houses have gotten buried for stuff like this. I guess I should be happy that they're independently supported enough someone didn't just fire everyone and can the project, as is the norm today. And I would be, if the patches felt like a new breed or ethic of work, instead of a continuation of the same rocky development that landed Elemental where it did at release.

So yeah, if Stardock should get a pass for all this, it's equally true then they should be grateful that anyone outside their core fan base has taken the time to care. Because honestly, I think if people hadn't purchased, many of them would not look back on Elemental knowing what they know now. It's their purchase and the fact it still means something in terms of a changing product that's keeping them there, not some endearing love for the title.

[Sowelu]

Elemental Battlecruiser of Magic 3000

[Sergius]

Sergius, there were already something like 9 patches released for Elemental: War of Magic, which made the game very much playable and stable.  The point of the matter is, with the 1.1 patch, they're completely re-doing several features of the game, changing how it works on a fundimental level.  Its big enough to be a whole darn expansion.  But its still in beta; who the hell critizises a program that's in BETA when they play it for free? No one, cause it would be stupid to try.

Now, if you want to play Elemental, just install the 0.9 patch, and there you go.  All the problems are gone, and the game is very much playable then.

Really? Then:

Although, at this point my current interest in Elemental is almost strictly academic... I don't even own the game

I do own the game. I've tried up to 1.06 before I lost interest. It was still as broken as before, and the enemy didn't even try to expand their own bases. I don't know where you get that 1.09 is 100% bug-free, since you don't even own it. Is it faith? Like some sort of Stardockian religion, that tells you to just believe?

[Viken]

Nope, its called Skidrow'ding. Mwhahahaha.  They released all the patches up to 1.09, so I played the game through them all, with significantly better performance and better AI each time.  I just haven't tried the beta patches. No reason too. I expect to buy it come right before or right after christmas, anyway.  But the point of the matter is, the game worked out of the box, and I didn't have very many glitches, myself; but I saw and read every single changelog for each of the patches.

If you're still having problems, then your computer is a peice of cr@p; no offense, but its probably true.  Otherwise, if the game isn't good enough for you, then just don't play it.  They'll give you a full refund; so do something else than just complain and bug everyone else about it.

[GaelicVigil]

I don't even own the game

Okay, so you are defending a game against the rest of us who have bought the game and have concerns, and you haven't even paid for it?  Ever heard of firing bullets from a glass cannon?

Its big enough to be a whole darn expansion.  But its still in beta; who the hell critizises a program that's in BETA when they play it for free? No one, cause it would be stupid to try.

Now, if you want to play Elemental, just install the 0.9 patch, and there you go.  All the problems are gone, and the game is very much playable then.

There's so much wrong with this I don't even know where to begin. 

First of all, the 1.1 patch IS NOT AN EXPANSION.  If it were a true expansion, I would be more forgiving.  1.1 is changing fundamental, core parts of the game at the ground level such as population as a resource, zones of control, enemy AI and mult-threading.  Multi-threading alone is an extremely difficult process, even for the most experienced programmers, lots of stuff can go wrong here and a "patch" is not the place to test it (just ask Cliff Harris).  This is stuff that should have been planned, implemented and tested in a PRE-ALPHA 2-3 years ago, NOT 4 MONTHS AFTER RELEASE.

It's pretty easy to identify a true expansion, vs a patch.  Patch's fix bugs and balanced game-play and generally make the game "better" when applied, not worse.  Expansions primarily add content, such as new maps, creatures, factions and items.  This is not an expansion.

Secondly, you're seriously calling the 1.1 "patch" BETA software?  Okay, something is seriously messed up when a company has to release a so-called "patch" that has to go through a "beta".  That tells me that the core game itself and the planning that went into it is seriously, seriously messed up.

Finally, the 0.9 patch (including all the ones prior to it) is far, far from being problem-free.  Game Development 101 here teaches us that, #1) you don't release "patches" as beta software, #2) you don't turn your entire paying customer base into beta testers, and #3) you don't call fundamental game-changing patches, which should have been done in pre-alpha, "Expansions".

[Sowelu]

Game Development 101 here teaches us that, #1) you don't release "patches" as beta software

While I agree on the other points, I'm not sure I buy this one.  Ideally everything should go through beta, especially bigger things (and a move to a number like 1.1 is pretty big).  Hell even just bugfixes or support for new hardware are worth beta'ing.  Changes to game balance on a multiplayer game (think Starcraft) would also be worth beta'ing, to make sure there's no super-obvious new killer strategy that you missed, etc.

[Sergius]

Nope, its called Skidrow'ding. Mwhahahaha.  They released all the patches up to 1.09, so I played the game through them all, with significantly better performance and better AI each time.  I just haven't tried the beta patches. No reason too. I expect to buy it come right before or right after christmas, anyway.  But the point of the matter is, the game worked out of the box, and I didn't have very many glitches, myself; but I saw and read every single changelog for each of the patches.

If you're still having problems, then your computer is a peice of cr@p; no offense, but its probably true.  Otherwise, if the game isn't good enough for you, then just don't play it.  They'll give you a full refund; so do something else than just complain and bug everyone else about it.

No offense, but you're trying really hard to be a douchebag. And telling people not to complain about a product that they got that is fauly Seriously, what a douche. No offense.

[nenjin]

If you're still having problems, then your computer is a peice of cr@p; no offense, but its probably true.  Otherwise, if the game isn't good enough for you, then just don't play it.  They'll give you a full refund; so do something else than just complain and bug everyone else about it.

Your fanboi is showing Viken. Which is funny considering you pirated it.

[Gantolandon]

While I agree on the other points, I'm not sure I buy this one.  Ideally everything should go through beta, especially bigger things (and a move to a number like 1.1 is pretty big).  Hell even just bugfixes or support for new hardware are worth beta'ing.  Changes to game balance on a multiplayer game (think Starcraft) would also be worth beta'ing, to make sure there's no super-obvious new killer strategy that you missed, etc.

Uh, no. The entire point of testing after beta release is to root out the bugs which make it unsuitable for the user. Of course, sometimes software is released as open beta, but then it is expected that the recipients focus on reporting bugs instead of playing. Releasing a beta of a patch for the game (already released and sold) completely misses the point.