f13.net

Is it well and truly playable?  I need to know whether to pre-order and write this weekend off or wait for release.

Ive been following this game's development for over a year now, no way am I gonna ruin my fun by beta testing it.

I really like the way they did the tech trees.  I really like that the design calls for you to react to random events.  Civs often turned into a grind in the mid-game, because you knew exactly what was going to happen for 200 turns.  I hope he tweaks it to that "something" pops (tech, resources, lairs) and you just are sure what, rather than "something or nothing" might pop.  Being completely resource/tech starved isn't fun.

One of the better ways to add middle-late game ambiguity to a 4x that I've seen is Sword of the Stars randomized (weighted by race) tech trees.  It makes playing through multiple times interesting as you have to adapt to what tools the game gives you to work with.

Except that with SotS, "interesting" can sometimes equate to "oh look, I can't research point defense, I have no defense against missiles. Whoopsie."

That's pretty interesting, I'd say.  I can think of two other (less effective) active methods for defeating incoming missiles without having point defense but yeah thems the breaks.

Outgoing longer-range missiles? :)

(haven't played the game, just poking fun)

I'll get it after launch.  If this is the same crack candy MoM was for me, I'm in serious trouble.

Just one more turn...

Back to elemental, the latest beta fixed most of my crash issues, but, as Brad has mentioned, the pacing is off.  It seems especially bad in the research trees.

Funny, the latest patch has introduced a bug that I can't reload any saved games (not just the old beta saves, new ones) and I've been crashing a lot more. End result: I'm starting a lot of new games but not getting anywhere.

Are there hero units?  I'd keep summoning champions until I could get Warrax.  Allora was another of my favorites.

Sure Warrax had a silly name, but he'd melt your face if you told him that.

It also really lacks the flavor of MoM, with each faction being a generic human one.  No Dark Elves, Orcs, Barbarians, Draconians, Halflings.. hell they don't even tell you the differences between the factions at select, which means they must be pretty minimal.

I imagine Fans of SMAC will love the unit building options. I've seen some folks on the official forum complain "It's lame, everyone will just have a spear guy, a bow guy, a settler unit and a guy with a mace and some armor."   I haven't played it long enough to see if it plays out that way, but I do think you're limited on the # of unit types you can have at once.  That's a strike against the system vs MoM's list of ~60+ prebuilt units.

Outgoing longer-range missiles? :)

(haven't played the game, just poking fun)

I too loved SMAC and regretted that they never developed Civilization games with more of those elements. In fact, why the hell don't they do an updated SMAC already?

Either way put me down for fantasy SMAC anyday.

I too loved SMAC and regretted that they never developed Civilization games with more of those elements. In fact, why the hell don't they do an updated SMAC already?

EA holds the rights and refuses to transfer them to 2K and Firaxis.

updated simgolf

If you wander what Elemental is and never played Master of Might and Magic, think WarCraft3 mixed with Alpha Centauri.

I'm not in the beta, but I hope that Warcraft 3 comparison is just sinij being retarded. I mean, I liked Warcraft 3, but that is so not what I wanted out of this.

See, that's not WC3.. that's MoM.

If you wander what Elemental is and never played Master of Might and Magic, think WarCraft3 mixed with Alpha Centauri.

This SMAC talks needs to stop unless they include the damn cutscenes and voiceovers.  I'm hot in the pants for this game as is, but unless I get to hear the crazy treehugging hippies spouting coffee-shop philosophy, it's not SMAC.   I need my  Lady Deirdre Skye fix.  =( 

This comes out in a few days.  So what's the word?  Yay or nay?

Looking forward to launch and an (eventual) killing off of the memory leaks/oddities.

Shouldn't it be the other way around?

[...]
I will say that as much fun as it was, I think mods will greatly improve the game.  It felt very much like they were just providing a base game engine for folks to flavor as they seem fit.  Even moreso because the "races" all were so damn similar.
[...]

Steam is an annoying invasive piece of shit by comparison.

I think this is what they think as well (the effort to create a tutorial on how to mod the game even before the game has launched seems to imply this as well).

Everyone's beta-keys were disabled the other day Storm, will be back up in Impulse on the 24th.

I've had a couple of CTD's but aside from that it seems to be pretty stable. 

Apparently there was a crazy number of preorders and its taking them a long time to work through them.

It has somehow decided that 50% + 25% = 88%

So wait... did I just purchase a game that I could've gotten from a Civ4 mod?

And MoM always was just a Civ mod anyway.

You shut your dirty whore mouth until you know what you're talking about.

Apparently I should have used green.  :why_so_serious:

AUGUST 24th, 2010.

This is a day that the team has been waiting for for three years!

As some of you know, some retailers broke the street date and to make sure our beta testers and pre-order customers didn’t get the short end of the stick, we released an interim build of Elemental (internally called Gold Edition++).

It turns out that this was a blessing in disguise because we have gotten a tremendous amount of useful feedback from those of you who got the game before release. The results of this comes in two parts.

First, tonight we released a new interim build. This version is basically bug fixes and such based on player reports. You can see what’s new in it here. Looking at the change log gives you an idea of the complexities of making a new PC game in 2010 with a brand new engine.

But tomorrow (or later today as I write this) is the big one. The official day 0 update that the team and I have been working on since Beta 4 (the beta group can go into more detail on this but in brief: After beta 4, the game tree was split in two. One version went on to be the gold version which is what those people who have it early are playing. The other tree went on to become day 0.  These two trees were merged today already and will be going up tomorrow.

So what can you expect?

Here’s a few highlights:

   1. The UI is updated to be somewhat more intuitive.
   2. The campaign is significantly updated (though only for those starting fresh).
   3. Resources are treated more like units. This is hard to explain but essentially the game will let you know of what resources you’re not using and how to make use of them.
   4. There’s a lot of performance improvements the day 0 build, particularly for those with lower end CPUs.
   5. The “day 0” AI is in it.
   6. There’s been a polish pass to the spell books and tactical battles.
   7. There’s been a general polish pass to the main game UI overall.
   8. There’s been a lot of balancing to monsters, units, etc.

The day 0 version, as most of you know, is the version that was originally expected to be the first version most people would ever play.  We’re definitely glad, however, that people got to play the pre-day 0 builds because we got a lot of very useful feedback and some crash reports that were not known about.

Now, a couple words on multiplayer.  The servers are up but we are not going to enable multiplayer until next week. Part of this is, to be honest, team exhaustion. The early release meant a lot of people who were expecting this weekend off to rest from the grueling last few weeks had to come in.  So we’re going to let them get a couple of days off later this week and open up the MP next week.

One piece of good news on MP. Originally we had planned to eliminate tactical battles from MP entirely because of balance. Some people correctly guessed the misguided (in hindsight) reason for this: We were approaching MP from a purely competitive point of view.  Based on the persuasive arguments made by our players, we have decided that tactical battles will be made available in MP – as an option – at a later date as a free update.

So that’s all for now.  After the day 0 update, I plan to take a day or two off too. I hear sleeping is the new “in thing” and you guys know me, I’m all about being cool and…um..what not.

All the talk made me reinstall Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. Still brilliant, still awesome multiplayer. So while I'd like to see more fantasy 4x games I don't NEED them because the genre was pretty much perfected by the early Aughts.

Any chance of this hitting Steam?

lol wut



Also... buggy.  No other way to say it.  I eagerly await the first expansion that makes this game super-awesome.

Yeah, I think I'd go back for some retro AoW lovin' before hitting up Stardock. I didn't play galciv2, but galciv got old pretty quick.

Wouldn't mind seeing an updated AoW with higher res graphics (it does have widescreen support, though!). NOT THREE DEE, just higher res sprites. A lost art form.

So the general consensus is wait?  I'm looking specifically for a game to tide me over until Civ 5 comes out, so basically, something that isn't going to pay off right away is out for me.

So, if I'm reading right while avoiding all the tangents, this game has released?  It has a few really big patches to make it playable, but it is released?

Title threw me off.

lol wut

So the general consensus is wait?  I'm looking specifically for a game to tide me over until Civ 5 comes out, so basically, something that isn't going to pay off right away is out for me.

So CEO posts on Quarter to Three, tells people that if they disagree with his high opinion of the game to never buy another Stardock game. Eventually apologizes after a PC Gamer article savages the release.

Stardock’s Response to PC Gamer UK and RPS
By Frogboy Posted August 25, 2010 1:52:32 PM

There was an article posted earlier today on PC Gamer UK outlining some of the frustrations that the reviewer had with the pre-day 0 version of the game as well as a problem he was having with tactical battles.

In the article, he quoted an inflammatory forum posting I made on a site I participate in called Quarter to Three.  This is a site I’ve been a participant in for many years and many of the people I discuss things on there are personal friends of mine.

During one such exchange with my friend Ben Sones, I angrily responded with a statement “Ben, please stay away from our games in the future. I consider it ready for release and if others disagree, don’t buy our games.”

This comment was totally out of line and I apologize for it. It was made in the heat of a ~2000 comment long thread and is not how I honestly feel. Ben’s a friend of mine and his comment that the game felt like a “beta” to him upset me and I responded inappropriately.  I post a lot on many forums and unfortunately, sometimes the things I say are inappropriate or inflammatory.

As the CEO of Stardock, I want to be clear that my comments on the Quarter to Three forums do not reflect my team at large. They were words spoken out of frustration and sleep deprivation and I am truly sorry. We stand behind what we feel is a great product, one that we will continue to support for a number of years.

With regards to a post on Rock Paper Shot Gun, which picked up the PC Gamer UK story, they erroneously point to a 2+ year old URL to a Stardock news item that is no longer active (we switched news systems a year or so ago). Their article falsely implies that we have stepped away from our commitment to the Gamer’s Bill of Rights.

The site, www.gamersbillofrights.org was set up and is run by Stardock. We stand by it.  It is, with some irony, our commitment to no DRM on our DVD release that ultimately caused the rough pre-release experience of Elemental. Several retailers broke the street date and we felt we needed to release our gold version to our customers who had pre-ordered from us as well as to our beta community that helped make the game the outstanding strategy game that it is.

However, it also became clear that the pre-day 0 version of the game was problematic as outlined in the PC Gamer UK article. The official day 0 version of the game, what is available right now, should address most, if not all the issues that have been described.  That said, as is our long-standing policy, we will continue to release updates and improvements Elemental just as we do for the other titles we develop.

I anticipate us putting out regular updates for Elemental for months or years to come based on player feedback, suggestions, and yes, bug reports.

I hope this offers some explanation as to the events that have come up. I sincerely apologize and feel terrible for the effect my forum posting on Qt3 may have had not just on our fans but also my team that has worked incredibly hard over the past 3 years to produce what we hope, is a game that you will enjoy for years to come.

I'm amazed that any gaming executive has two brain cells to rub together. Your entire job as a CEO is company direction and PR, and you tell the consumers with complaints to fuck off if they are not entertained?  :ye_gods:

Here's his response to the PC gamer article, for the record. (http://forums.elementalgame.com/392474)

I'm entirely willing to grant that it was probably cheaper and easier to just make humans with different skin tones. Just not good. Really, when I fired it up I went looking for dwarves because I love dwarves. I found the Ironeers or whatever they're called and thought, "YES! Dwarves!"

But they weren't dwarves. They were humans with beards that mined better. No special units. No underground cities. No different art. Just people. Even fiddling with the unit design stuff all you seem to be able to do is make people with hats.

The actual close ups of people are hilariously bad, by the way. They look like pre-Morrowind models, all blocky and chunky.

How do retailers break the street date unless you've supplied them with your release client?

when is the Gamasutra rebuttal/post-mortem?

Two updates in less than 12 hours.  I think I am going to give this one about a month and check on it then.

Word is, hotfix tonight to the current 1.06 isn't going to be save compatible.  I think Yeg has the right idea.

In the mean time -
(http://web25.twitpic.com/img/152375264-d86794bc857f5d346db4e53bbf2d2994.4c781940-scaled.jpg)

[...]Combat is odd, it almost seems smarter to just auto-resolve the main hero's combat rather than go into battle and potentially lose your army. [...]

I don't plan on getting this game (4x is not my thing), but I found this (http://www.unamommer.com/?p=109) review of the accompanying book pretty amusing.  :awesome_for_real:

Game needs to be fine tuned with a sledgehammer. Still, it promises to be a nice mixture of Civ and HoMM once all the problems are worked out.

The one major problem that I have discovered is how trivial combat becomes early on if you get a few champions with decent int scores, transfer some of your essence to them, and train your way through all the summoning spells. Each champ can cast each summoning spell, and those guys are no joke, especially given how early you can have them. So you get a free army from one imbued champion. Seems like they should only allow 1 active summoning.

And that's not even counting how horibly broken the Empire's Vigilant Minion summoning can be is - a 3 mana spell that inflicts an unmitigatable 10 damage to every unit on the board. And it's their lowest level summoning. Maybe someone accidentally added an extra 0 to the damage?

I don't plan on getting this game (4x is not my thing), but I found this (http://www.unamommer.com/?p=109) review of the accompanying book pretty amusing.  :awesome_for_real:

She was wearing a long cloak. Underneath it, he saw, was a dress.

To be fair to stardock, I got a full refund, no questions asked, after submitting a short email to them on Friday outlining my unhappiness and the technical faults with the game. I presume at the moment they've said that anyone wanting a full refund can get it.

for at best a 75% refund on your purchase


and only after you submit to a technical review by SD of your problem.  Cause you know you may not really need a refund.  This is not in the manifesto.

We require that you utilize our technical support services prior to issuing a refund. [original in bold] ... We do not give refunds on beta or pre-release versions of software or subscription renewals. [original in bold]  Refunds are only available for fully-released programs....

For Stardock Products Only - Please review the minimum system requirements for our software carefully. If you request a refund and your computer does not meet the minimum system requirements, you will receive a partial refund of 75%.

If you are not willing to work with technical support on any problems you are having, or request a refund even if you are not having problems using the software, we will issue a partial refund of 75%. To receive a partial refund, please email sales@stardock.com.

1. Gamers shall have the right to return games that don't work with their computers for a full refund.
2. Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
4. Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
5. Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will adequately play on that computer...

(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.

And as for Demigod, that was pretty fun on release, its just the netcode kept crashing from the number of pirates trying to log onto the servers.

You could play Demigod singleplayer straight out of the box and have fun with it. I know I did.

I don't think Elemental's shortcomings can be fixed with tweaks or small patches. I think there are core game mechanics and AI that will have to be revisited. I think there are things that would normally be reserved for sequels that will have to be put in.

I think I mentioned this earlier but we employ multiple former editors of major review sites who were part of the process. When you're working a long time on a project it's easy to get way way way too close to it and soon, its foibles and flaws become simply part of the fabric.

When I get home, with the benefit of being away for a bit, I'll be able to outline some specific and in hindsight, obvious game mechanic things that will need to be addressed for Elemental to begin to reach its potential.

As an AI coder, the biggest disappointment to me is that I allowed the design to allow so many N^2 variables (I'll talk about this later). So don't think I'm thinking that we can just tweak around the edges to make Elemental what it needs to be. That would be just another version of denial of the problem -- as if we could just tweak it and suddenly it goes from a 3 out of 5 to a 5 out of 5 and no, that's not the case. Not even close.

The upcoming version they're working on, v1.07 is still about working on all the crazy compatibility issues that our engine has to deal with (that deserves a separate discussion but I've been looking at the check-ins and they're depressing to me. I see a lot of "Fix allocation that causes a crash on nVidia driver 1/10/2010" type stuff which makes me wince).

The kinds of changes Elemental will require to meet is potential are pretty big things IMO. Things that we (and myself in particular) were just blind to.  Let me give you a couple of concrete examples so you can see what I'm getting at (and this post BETTER post, this is like being back in 1994): My friend Mark Asher on a post on a forum talked about how boring our spells were. I took that to be about the spell names. But it wasn't just the spell names, it was about the spells themselves and how they worked.  The way resources are managed and handled is very limiting when it comes to the way the AI has to deal with them (N^2 variables).  

Anyway, the point is, we fell in love with a vision of the game that was largely in our minds rather than in reality. The difference here is that Stardock has the luxury of being able to address it. Even if Elemental didn't sell a single new copy, we would still be able to address it.

I truly wish I could ascribe Elemental's launch to cynical greed or something. Cynical greed beats out pathetic incompetence any day.

(Possibly this is one of the problems with only allowing beta-testing to pre-paid folks. People who are pre-ordering are the ones who are already your firm fans, and are the least likely to offer coherent criticism in a way that isn't just shrieking).

There was no single player; the alternative to broken multiplayer was to play against incredibly stupid bots.  Glad you had fun with it, though you stand alone.

That's not true AFAIK. Those who preordered could Beta, but there was beta testing going on even before preorderes were allowed. (And for the record I never beta tested it) I do however call foul on the idea that people who are enthusiastic on the game could not offer criticism on making the thing better. Enthusiasm is not a crime. Or are you suggesting only people who hate Stardock on principle should beta test?

No, the real problem with the beta test was that at no time were the beta testers allowed a full working build of the game. They were given pieces of the game to test, but there was not "ok, here's a working copy of the full whole game. Tear it to pieces" Without that no-one could report on how the game worked as a coherent whole. That said, the serious GPU problem that effects me WAS flagged and ignored.

(edit - spoiling Demigod discussion)
Again, no.  Gas Powered Games developed Demigod so the game itself which you liked (I liked it too!) is credited to them.  Stardock was responsible for the broken multiplayer part.

As an aside, Demigod is a multiplayer game.  Just like Starcraft without a campaign, or LoL / DoTA / HoN.  Playing multiplayer matches against bots does not constitute a single player game.  Sure you can play the multiplayer game alone but when Demigod's human multiplayer was nonfunctional it unfortunately went to the same place all bad games go.  
[/spoiler]

The only reason I brought up Demigod was the rant title above which said "WD amidts it's another Demigod" I argued, successfully I think, that that was an unfair and inaccurate comparison. Elementals problems are different. And the multiplayer was not "nonfunctional" as some people did always manage to have games, "semi-functional" might be more accurate. Now enough about it, please.

Comparing it to Demigod is probably inaccurate since SD didn't develop it.  

It is true.

Elemental's revenue was anticipated to provide the revenue both for our main games team's next project as well as a second team. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen so we've had to start laying people off.

No one is being fired. None of these people did anything wrong. Stardock is a small company and each person here is truly amongst the best and brightest.  So you can imagine how much it sucks for all of us to lay off anyone. We haven't had to lay anyone off since our migration from the OS/2 market in 1998. It would be great if we can bring as many of these people back over time if the studio can afford it.

No one involved on the core components of Elemental is affected.

Elemental's rocky launch can be summed up (IMO) as follows: Our QA process was insufficient to handle a brand new platform (Elemental = Kumquat 1.0 versus say Galactic Civilizations II was using Pear which was the same engine, modified, from 1997's Entrepreneur) + my own catastrophic poor judgment in not objectively evaluating the core game play components.

The reason I lept to thinking the beta process was flawed was because, having been in numerous beta's, one flaw I have seen on multiple occasions is that a large group of fanboys will quash any criticism of the game. That clearly wasn't the case here.

Umm, does anyone else think he's going a bit overboard in the self-crucification?

I wonder how many of the layoffs were the aforementioned liberals. ¬_¬

Umm, does anyone else think he's going a bit overboard in the self-crucification? I feel bad even watching this trainwreck, and it's certainly making me less likely to pick up the game in 6 months.

I wish someone made a Hitler clip of Elemental's launch.

I got my limited edition Boxed set today, as it happens. Its got some really nice stuff, a nice Cloth map, a REALLY nice dragon figurine and some books and a soundtrack CD. One of the better LE sets I've gotten, its fair to say.

Cross-posting here and in the Civ4/FFH2 thread, because people will be interested.

Good Old Games is releasing all three Age of Wonders games. (http://www.gog.com/en/search/sort/search/age%20of%20wonders)

He is "immersing himself in the world of Elemental" right now. The state the lore is in right now, we are lucky if he isn't suicidal after that.

Jokes aside, that might be a good thing for Elemental, but it likely kills Fall From Heaven 3 for Civ5. Don't know if thats a fair trade.

Oh fuck.  :heartbreak:

Sky wants Kael to work on FFH3 (on Civ 5, but really Civ 5 is coincidental) rather than polishing the turd that is Elemental (I'm putting words in Sky's mouth).

I think that the lore is incidental to playing a game that has systems with depth.  Kael has proven that he's more then capable of taking bland games and making them very diverse.  Given that frogboy's was most proud of how the game (Elemental) could be used to create something interesting, I have high hopes.

Who knows, they might even release FFH DLC.

Oh fuck.  :heartbreak:

Exactly.  TBH, Elemental is a better slate for FFH3 as a deep and complex game than Civ5... (snip...)

The real question is; when he inked that FFH deal with Firaxis that fell through, did he sign away the right to use the name.

Stardock is already well ahead of the financial curve with Elemental my friend.

Welp, Stardock is at least trying to appease people for this mess.  Giving away the first two expansions to anyone who bought the game before the end of this month free.  The expansions may or may not make the game worth playing, but at least they're trying.  Here's to hoping they don't chop them down in size since they're giving them away though.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/399482

Thanks to everyone for the good wishes.  I just spent my first day onsite with the folks at Stardock and I had a great day.  It’s a team of brilliant people and I’m honored to join them.  Any job that uses Monty Python trivia to test new hires is okay by me.

  I’m currently in the process of interviewing the elemental team members for feedback. After I get that I will incorporate it with feedback from this forum and my own experience to build a post 1.1 design doc and implementation plan.  We have big ideas for Elemental and I’m excited both to play the game once we get these ideas in, and to work on the project.

  Thanks to the folks at Stardock for welcoming me so warmly, and to Brad for offering me this opportunity.  Now I’m off to work!

I doubt you'll see a Christmas sale for Elemental. The deal is - if you buy it before the end of the year you get the first expansion free.

Sadly if its like Demigod it may never be finished. They will probably give up on it in a few months when they are no longer getting revenue. They promised long term support and wonderful great things for Demigod that never got delivered either. I dont buy Stardock games anymore because of Demigod.

The culprit you should be annoyed at is Gas Powered Games.  Stardock was just the publisher.

My only question is how hobbled he is by the Elemental engine

Actually Frogboy and Stardock themselves promised to continue support for Demigod. It was NOT all Gaspowered Games fault but I dont buy their products either anymore.

Shafer apparently landed at Stardock.

http://news.bigdownload.com/2011/01/04/exclusive-civilization-vs-lead-designer-hired-by-stardock/

But even then so what? It could turn into the greatest game of its genre and nobody's going to give a shit a year after launch, or at least not in the numbers to justify the money they just dumped on it between these two hires and continued relentless development. Don't get me wrong, I think it's fairly admirable that they're continuing to go at it but this is the sort of thing that turns into a company sinking Frankenstein if people aren't careful.

I'm not sure if you can BtS and FFH the Elemental engine.

Elemental is a fictional world designed to act as the setting for a series of fantasy strategy and role-playing games. During 2010, Stardock had two games in development based on this world, the first being Elemental: War of Magic and a second one being Elemental: <RPG Title>.
Unfortunately, as discussed above, War of Magic was a disappointment to Stardock and its fans in a number of areas and exposed some deep-seated problems with the games unit.
While War of Magic has subsequently been greatly improved, Stardock is not convinced that this title, with a 55 metacritic average, can redeem itself. Therefore, rather than tie new Designer/Project Manager Derek Paxton to the
previously planned expansions of War of Magic, it was decided to have Derek and his team focus on the creation of Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, a stand alone expansion which will not require users to purchase War of Magic.
Users who purchased War of Magic this past year will receive Fallen Enchantress for free; Stardock will also provide steep discounts to anyone who purchases War of Magic prior to the release of Fallen Enchantress. We are also committed to enhancing War of Magic on its own path for those users who prefer its game mechanics.)
Figure 3: Fallen Enchantress will take a dramatically different direction from War of Magic in terms of game mechanics.
As a practical matter, Fallen Enchantress is a new game, one that shares some art assets with War of Magic but little else. The scope of the differences between the two will become very apparent in the early months of 2011. Extensive brainstorming sessions between Derek Paxton (Fall from Heaven), Brad Wardell (Galactic Civilizations), and Jon Shafer (Civilization V) resulted in a complete redesign; combat systems, tactical combat systems, character creation, economic system, game mechanics, etc. are all new.

If anything defines poor Kael as a "failure" it'll be his legions of over-the-top fans the first moment he makes something that doesn't fulfill every single one of their FFH fantasies.

It should be interesting to see if the 'deep-seated problems with the games unit' that were exposed have been properly rooted out.

I'm pretty sure Brad Wardell still works there.

I have a vain, naive hope that his utter belief in teh awesoem of Elemental and it's early release and subsequent public flogging had some effect on his ego.

There are three main focuses for Fallen Enchantress that we really wanted to invest a lot of attention and design time in:

1.    Tactical Combat - Units and enemies have more strategic abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Every monster has been reviewed to be as strategically (and conceptually) interesting as possible.  Elemental Lords are huge multi-tile monsters that are devastating to all but the most powerful champions and armies. Some monsters are unique in the world, setting up boss-type battles that give the game an RPG feel.

2.    The World - A lot of time is going into making the world as interesting as possible. It’s a dangerous world; many of your early explorers will not make it back. But those who do will have resources, riches, and new recruits that make the risk worthwhile.

As important as making the world worth exploring is [making it] interesting to explore. Though it’s good to know that there are iron deposits in the next valley, we also want that valley to be filled with wilderness areas, sites, creatures, and opportunities for adventure that are new to even experienced players.

3.    Magic - Magic should be as effective a path to victory as creating armies. A player that is sitting on a large supply of mana and has invested in magic should be able to change the course of the game, much as a player sitting on a nuclear weapon stockpile can in modern games. Magic should be available earlier, have a larger impact, and do more interesting things.

4. We thought we would actually make a game that would be fun to play.

Hey, the 3-d world to cloth map transition was pretty cool.  Sure the implementation fell down a bit in that the two maps didn't (always) show the same information, but that was a cool art direction.  The cloth map with pewter army markers to push around was a good idea burried in a horribly produced game.

As for having more control over art assets and coding -- this is where you not having played Elemental comes in. Seriously the most boring art and character modelling you have ever seen, and at least in terms of game mechanics I cannot think of a single thing that was remotely interesting in its implementation.

I mean they're not describing cool perks and innovations here, they're talking about the genre baseline. Magic should be effective? Really? Exploring should be interesting? No way!

I don't care how shitty the code is: the original game's design just beggars belief. It is impossible to imagine anyone involved in making it ever thinking that it was fun to play. Even if they were high on ecstacy and rubbing the code all over their naked chests it is not conceivable that they felt this was a good game.

To reverse it, have you played FFH2? All I'm hoping for is FFH3.

Bless you. I thought I loved GalCiv2 when it came out because there just wasn't anything else out there. It was reasonably well crafted but then I realized just how fucking BORING the game was. Dull as dishwater. No spark. Even the tech trees were gray... Plasma Doodad I, Plasma Doodad II, etc etc.

And that's really what I'm talking about. They've never released a game anyone would think is good if it had real competition. Sins of a Solar Empire was the closest they got to a good game and it was still not great. Demigod or whatever it was called was a complete disaster. So I'm always puzzled when people act like Stardock is a company that has its shit together because I'm just not seeing it.

Bless you. I thought I loved GalCiv2 when it came out because there just wasn't anything else out there. It was reasonably well crafted but then I realized just how fucking BORING the game was. Dull as dishwater. No spark. Even the tech trees were gray... Plasma Doodad I, Plasma Doodad II, etc etc.

And that's really what I'm talking about. They've never released a game anyone would think is good if it had real competition. Sins of a Solar Empire was the closest they got to a good game and it was still not great. Demigod or whatever it was called was a complete disaster. So I'm always puzzled when people act like Stardock is a company that has its shit together because I'm just not seeing it.

I guess I still don't understand the f13 mindset of doooooomcasting things that could be really cool without waiting to see, you know, how they turn out. Maybe I've become an optimist after being around you lot for so long

One, FFH2 didn't really do a lot for me. Two, Stardock. Three, and most importantly, there's a strong argument that the base game, even the basic engine they made, is so flawed it's not salvageable.

ICE, you're starting to strawman a bit. I don't think anyone here is saying Stardock is a good studio. I thought GalCiv was a nice diversion at the indie level and never played GalCiv2 because it's still too goddamned expensive imo. Hell, I'm not even talking about Elemental.

I'm willing to give Kael the benefit of the doubt, and Jon seems to be sticking to UI stuff, and Civ V's UI was slick as a greased hog on a rainy sunday afternoon. I guess I still don't understand the f13 mindset of doooooomcasting things that could be really cool without waiting to see, you know, how they turn out. Maybe I've become an optimist after being around you lot for so long  :grin:

ICE, you're starting to strawman a bit. I don't think anyone here is saying Stardock is a good studio.

It looks exactly the same as Elemental.  And that's not a good thing.

I'll be buying it. The way I look at it, Kael wouldn't accept donations for FFH2, and I've sunk hundreds of hours into that game. If I get two hours out of FE, I'll still feel like I got my money's worth. Probably doesn't make sense, but there it is.

Hopefully it will be on steam. I look at dumping Impulse as a good thing, it's what kept me from buying galciv2.

Looks like Brad isn't done shitting all over his own company yet.   :oh_i_see:

http://pdfcast.org/pdf/brad-wardell-sues-employee-for-one-million-dollars

Ah, it's the marketing managers fault that Elemental was a piece of shit because Brad couldn't spend those '3 weeks prior to launch' brilliantly finishing code and had to recreate marketing materials.

It's amazing that three weeks for Brads time as a programmer & debugger is worth ~1,000,000 USD.  Although, you would think that once the game had launched he could have fixed all the broken in three weeks of un-distracted 'programming and debugging'.

As a result of the loss of the Elemental Materials, and the detraction from programming,
debugging and other responsibilities, Elemental was unsuccessful in the marketplace, earning
a fraction of its anticipated profits and causing Plaintiff damages of over $1,000,000.

"Lack of time wasn't the issue," Wardell admits. "It was blindness, sheer blindness. We felt the game was finished."

The claim doesn't have anything to do with how well the game did.  It simply states she stole/destroyed materials that had to be recreated.

30. Additionally, Plaintiff had to spend vital time leading up to the release of Elemental attempting to re-create the Elemental Materials, rather than programming, debugging and otherwise readying Elemental for release.

Seems to imply pretty clearly that they're saying that if they hadn't had to spend all that precious time recreating marketing materials, they'd have had time to fix the game.

I have learned something in my time working for corporations: everyone is a lying liar.  Also, I need to finish reading The Prince.  The truth isn't important so much as records and legal positioning.  Too bad Elemental is still shitty.

I don't see how the worth of the game is material to this lawsuit.  The questions to me seem to be:

1) If there was better marketing would more people have bought the game?
2) Did the destruction of the marketing materials result in marketing that was less successful then would have been enjoyed had the marketing not been destroyed.
3) Did the destruction of property cause staff to have to spend time apart from their normal duties - this isn't saying "I could have made the game great!", this is saying, "destruction of marketing materials prevented staff from perusing vital activities otherwise related to their jobs".  The are arguing that the value of the marketing materials was both lost revenue and lost time.

If I had any idea about how much effort had gone into the materials she destroyed, I might say 'yes' to all three.  But probably only 'yes' to the first two, three strikes me as a sort of double-dipping.

#3, however is not acceptable to me. I am an inappropriate, sexist, vulgar, and embarrassing person and I'm not inclined to change my behavior. If this is a problem, you will need to find another job.

#4, Again, I am not willing to adapt my behavior to suit others. IF you find my behavior problematic, I recommend finding another job.

I'm not some manager or coworker of yours. I own the company. It, and your job here, exist to suit my purposes, not vice versa. The company is not an end unto itself, it is a means to an end which is to further the objectives of its shareholders (in this case, me).

While I certainly agree that your rights as a person (certainly in terms of physical contact or interms of comments made towards you regarding your private live) take precedence over my rights as the owner of the business, that is as far as it goes.

This is running in the industry gossip thread as well, but over at quarter to 3 brad is responding directly to a thread regarding this, and they have copies of all the public evidence for the case. There's silly stuff all round, and (despite the above) may not be completely an open and shut case.

Personally I think he did do it, and deserves to get whacked with a stick and a huge financial penalty in court for it. But there's a reason it's going to court rather than settling in advance, and it isn't as entirely clear cut as that incredibly offensive email portrays.

Still annoyed that I gave this guy money for Elemental.  So I can only hope he shuts the company down.

Still annoyed that I gave this guy money for Elemental.  So I can only hope he shuts the company down.

so how's the game looking anyways?

I had a lot of high hopes this :sad:

Really, at this point shutting down Stardock is only doing everyone a favor.

Brad Sez:

"But we HAVE to keep our 'company culture' like this or else we can't hire/ retain people!"  (http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/431359/Why_companies_fiercely_protect_their_cultures)

While the unemployment rate nationally remains over 8%, the unemployment rate in the tech industry is basically zilch. Software developers and game studios can't hire people fast enough and fiercely compete for the talent out there.

I've read a lot of articles that imply that terrible working conditions in the game industry. But that's not the norm.

While the unemployment rate nationally remains over 8%, the unemployment rate in the tech industry is basically zilch. Software developers and game studios can't hire people fast enough and fiercely compete for the talent out there.

I've read a lot of articles that imply that terrible working conditions in the game industry. But that's not the norm.

Brad Sez:

"But we HAVE to keep our 'company culture' like this or else we can't hire/ retain people!"  (http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/431359/Why_companies_fiercely_protect_their_cultures)

...the right of Droit de Seigneur.

I was re-reading the first page of this thread and it made me smile a little.

I'm not smiling.

Personally, I'm in the 'separate the art from the artist' camp.

I like how Sky asserted that Elemental is art.

And really, I'm still holding out some hope for Kael.

I have no problem separating art from artist, for say, Wagner.  But he's dead and not getting any of my money or appreciation.

Someone still alive?  Yeah, they need to not be a complete dick to get those things from me.

Kael needs to put this project in the bag and look for a new job.

Kael needs to put this project in the bag and look for a new job.

There’s variety in each world the game generates but not a great deal of character. For all the fantastical spells and monsters whizzing about, it’s a bland, grey place. Maybe ugly is the word I’m looking for but it doesn’t seem quite right. Empty, maybe, like the lore. The lights are all on but the room is barren. Forests are colourless lumps and the wild lands, home to the deadliest creatures and large neutral armies, look too much like placeholder graphics to inspire any dread or mystery.

Despite some effective scene-setting at the opening of a new game and paragraphs of charmingly needless flavour text scattered throughout, Fallen Enchantress never inspired me. I didn’t feel a sense of struggle or purpose, and that’s mostly due to the disconnect between so many of the game’s features. It might seem odd to complain about a game that’s a construction of disparate systems shortly after writing about loving the very same, but Fallen Enchantress makes me feel like I’m doing most of the work and doesn’t inspire confidence that what’s happening behind the interface is particularly intricate, complex or interesting.

The other fantasy strategy game I’ve been playing this year, Warlock, is much more lean, but also compact and tight. Elemental is baggy and unfocused in comparison, although some people will undoubtedly laud its ambition.

Dear Stardock customer,

My name is Brad Wardell. I'm the President & CEO of Stardock.  Two years ago, you bought a game from us called Elemental: War of Magic.  We had great hopes and ambitions for that game but, in the end, it just wasn't a very good game.

Elemental was an expensive game. You probably paid $50 or more for it. And you trusted us to deliver to you a good game. $50 is a lot of money and companies have a moral obligation to deliver what they say they're going to deliver and frankly, Stardock failed to deliver the game we said we were going to deliver.

While we did update Elemental: War of Magic (you can still download v1.4). Its design just wasn't adequate to make it into the kind of game it should be. So we decided to start over. From scratch. We made a new game called Fallen Enchantress.

So even though it's been two years, we haven't forgotten about you.  This week, we released Fallen Enchantress. It is a vastly better game and, we believe, lives up to the expectations set for the original Elemental.  This game is yours. Free. It's already been added to your account.

You can download and play it by going to {redacted}

We hope you enjoy Fallen Enchantress.  Please feel free to visit the Elemental forum at www.elementalgame.com if you wish to talk to me and the rest of the team. We're there and very interested in your feedback.


Thank you for being our customers and your patience.


Sincerely,

Brad Wardell
President & CEO
Stardock -

Email I got today


I don't have any particular opinion of Brad Wardell like some people have, so I think this is an incredibly decent move to be honest. Too many companies would have just shoved out a full price remake and been done with it. Anyway, I didn't have time to play the beta so I'll give this a whirl.

The character in almost all 4x fantasy and sci-fi games comes from one thing.  The races.  With races you can do cool thematic builds and units and have a lot of fun.

The character, as you describe it, is irrelevant.  Civilization II had none.

I don't want to sound horrible but would it be possible for you to not mention FFH for maybe a month? It gets slightly repetitive you know...

I don't want to sound horrible but would it be possible for you to not mention FFH for maybe a month? It gets slightly repetitive you know...

If he's going to keep up his man crush on Kael

That's why he said specifically sci-fi and fantasy. Civilisation games already come with the worlds biggest lore book ever just from their names. (And even civ games have added unique bonuses and units to civs as the series has progressed).

Character in fantasy and sci-fi games of this type is *everything*.

That's a rather arbitrary distinction.  "This game, despite being built completely upon CivIV, is a fantasy 4x."

Because I'm pretty sure that the Norse elephant cavalry invasion of Vinland is ahistorical at the very least.  It also doesn't require whatever the hell Sky is talking about right above my post.  Just, you know, basic 4x game systems.  It probably helps if everything else about the game doesn't suck too.

For me, the "it's fantasy" is a red herring.  Why FFH 2 is more fun then Civ4 is because the FFH 2 races all play out differently, AND there are multiple valid tech paths that you can follow for each race (ok! ok! some races have less options, but most have plenty).

CivX throw one or two unique units for the entire 4000+ years and that is the pretty much the sole difference between nations.  After a couple play-throughs, you pretty much seen all Civ4 has to show you.  Not sure why the various Civ team never seem to figured that out,... MoM had diverse races FFS.  I guess they didn't' want to piss off there core audience.

It's not a case of 'not figuring it out'. The Civ series is the most successful turn based strategy game there is, why would they be messing with the core formula when it works so well? The idea that you need lots of different unique things to give a game replayability is odd as well - Monopoly, Chess, Poker, Call of Duty all have a small number of fixed pieces and are wildly successful and long lasting.

Fantasy games need the flavour, it's at the core of they 'storytelling' aspect of these games. Civ games already come with that loaded in - I don't need hundreds of unique units or abilities to tell the story of how the English invaded Russia with mechanised infantry. I already know what those things are and the story works naturally.

The idea that you need lots of different unique things to give a game replayability is odd as well - Monopoly, Chess, Poker, Call of Duty all have a small number of fixed pieces and are wildly successful and long lasting.